Category: Environment
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Coming up: Car-Lite Burbs
A California developer is teaming with Daimler AG to bring buses, shuttles and ride sharing to an Orange County community — with no government subsidies.
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McAuliffe: Time for Some Real Ethics Reform
Peter Galuszka One can hardly blame Gov. Terry McAuliffe for ditching the General Assembly’s absurdly weak ethics panel along with deep-sixing the line items in the budget that restrict him from expanding Medicaid. Obviously, the nice-guy, bipartisan approach he had advocated simply isn’t possible with the likes of Tommy Norment and Bill Howell in the…
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Menu Items on the Free Lunch Smorgasbord
Last week I published “Lean Urbanism and the Bureaucratic State,” a post that described a New Urbanist project to rectify the baleful effects of excess regulation upon urban re-development efforts. Questions arose in the comments regarding this initiative. What were these terrible regulations? Were the New Urbanists exaggerating the costs they imposed? Reader Richard N.…
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Harnessing Citizen Science
This first section of this post by James A. Bacon is cross posted from the Datamorphosis blog… Recent years have seen the rise of what European Union officials are calling “citizen science,” a phenomenon in which amateurs, enthusiasts and others acting in a non-official capacity collect data (usually environmental data), participate in the design of projects…
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Suburbia’s Silent Storm Water Crisis
America’s older suburbs may face an infrastructure crisis from the last place they expect — aging storm water management systems. In a presentation at the annual LOCUS conference in Washington, D.C., this morning, Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of “Retrofitting Suburbia,” listed a number of factors driving the re-development of America’s suburbs. They include the usual suspects…
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Want to Combat Noise Pollution? Measure It
I’m a big fan of city life but I’m the first to acknowledge that there are drawbacks to crowding and congestion. The foremost of those is noise. Cities are noisier than the burbs and the countryside. The older I get (I’m 61 now), the larger the noise factor looms in my consideration of things. Even…
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Tea Party Populism vs. Eric Cantor
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Political analysts and the media are still trying to tease out the meaning of soon-to-be-former House Majority leader Eric Cantor’s primary loss last week to an obscure college professor. Two major themes seem to be emerging. One is what the Tea Party’s role was and what the Tea Party really is. The…
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Lean Urbanism and the Bureaucratic State
by James A. Bacon The really big idea to emerge from the 2014 Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) was “lean urbanism.” The idea isn’t entirely new. Andres Duany, New Urbanism guru and the driving force behind “lean” urbanism, has been publicly discussing the idea for a year or more. But he used the annual confab…
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Nash Nails Neanderthal GOP
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Infrastructure, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and EntitlementsBy Peter Galuszka Imagine Norfolk spending $300 million for light rail only to have it covered in salt water. Or consider that Virginia’s statewide mean temperature has risen 0.46 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1975. Or that, due to carbon dioxide emissions, the sea level on the Virginia coast is expected to rise by two…
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Brat and Cantor: Two Unsavory Choices
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka The hottest political race coming up is the Republican primary this Tuesday involving the 7th Congressional District now represented by Eric Cantor, a powerful conservative who is House Majority Leader and could possibly one day be Speaker of the House. His opponent, college professor David Brat, has gotten much national attention because…
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Thank God for Obama’s Carbon Rules
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in Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka At long last, President Barack Obama has released proposed new pollution rules that would target shutting or cleaning up coal-fired electricity plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent over the next 16 years. The plan gives states the initial responsibility for coming up with regimes to reduce carbon through state-run…
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Coal: The High Cost of Carbon Capture
By Peter Galuszka It sounds almost too good to be true and it apparently is. A few years ago, trying to keep burning coal while dealing with carbon dioxide pollution, the Southern Co. announced plans for a $1.8 billion coal-fired generating plant in eastern Mississippi that would do the near impossible. Some 65 percent of…
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The Perils of Child Labor in Tobacco
By Peter Galuszka The humidity was wet as a warm washcloth one July morning at 4 a.m. some 43 years ago. I was an 18-year-old cub reporter working college summers at the Washington (N.C.) Daily News, a small afternoon newspaper on the fringe of North Carolina’s bright leaf tobacco belt. About a dozen youngsters, maybe…
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Rethinking David Brat
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka Knocking David Brat as I did a couple of days ago got the predictably nasty response from Rebellion-land. So, I went back and looked into it a little more, without an eye towards his Tea Party links. What did I find a mixed bag for the economics professor who’s challenging Republican House…
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Cantor’s Brat Problem
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in Business and Economy, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka The jockeying for power among Virginia conservatives is certainly curious if not frightening. It seems the diminished Tea Party is trying to make a comeback and relive its heyday of 2010 at the expense of moderates. I personally hope they don’t because the movement brings up far too much hateful baggage of…