Category: Government Finance
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Ms. Dragas’ Greek Drama
By Peter Galuszka The antagonist in the drama against Teresa Sullivan is a rich real estate developer from Virginia Beach who holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Virginia, took over her construction firm from her father and is a major donor to political, mostly Democratic, causes. Helen E. Dragas, 50, president of…
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Hail ($6 million) to the Redskins!
By Peter Galuszka There’s something strange here: Virginia loses a major oil company and 2,100 high-paying jobs but we get to spend $6 million or more in state and local taxpayers money to keep the hapless Washington Redskins in the Old Dominion instead of Maryland and get them to practice a few weeks a year…
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“It’s for you!”
By Peter Galuszka The coincidences are revealing. How many times have you read this blog and you find that much of the comment seems scripted from afar. The American Legislative Exchange Council, the cabal of right wing business and propagandists who draft laws for harried state legislators, pushes a template for private school tuition tax…
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UNDERCLASS LOVER
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by
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, 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, Transportation, Uncategorized, Water-waste waterI want to be an underclass lover Lay it down like a big ole’ brother No mind who gets stuck With the leftover I get my F&%# Without too much workover Don’t care about the deficit Don’t give a damn about the debt ’cause when it comes to lov’in You ain’t seen noth’ yet Ya…
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How Far Will Private School Tax Breaks Go?
By Peter Galuszka Hunter Country Day School is slated to open this fall for kindergarten through fifth-grade pupils at a quaint, red-brick outbuilding of the Dover Baptist Church on a leafy Goochland County road a few miles west of the Richmond Country Club. Its founder is Ann McLean, who has an art history doctorate…
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VDOT Restructures U.S. 460 Financing — Public Private Partnership Is Out
by James A. Bacon Having concluded that the U.S. 460 Connector cannot be financed under a public-private partnership (P3) arrangement, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has opted to pursue the $1.5 billion-to-$2 billion project as “63-20” nonprofit corporation. U.S. 460, which would provide Hampton Roads an interstate-quality alternative to Interstate 64, would have insufficient…
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Boomergeddon Watch: Japanese Debt Downgraded
From today’s Wall Street Journal: Fitch Ratings delivered a surprise announcement yesterday, downgrading Japan’s sovereign debt rating to A+, a far cry from AAA status. That puts the debt of Japan on a par with Estonia and Malta. Fitch cited Japan’s lack of progress in bringing its massive deficit under control. “With 93% of the…
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Are We Going Back to Selma?
By Peter Galuszka Imagine it is Alabama in early 1965. The Southern state, like Virginia, has for decades deployed a number of ruses such as poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent U.S. citizens and state residents from voting. These people otherwise would have been qualified voters but also happened to be African-Americans whom the…
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Bail outs for Failed States? No Way!
by James A. Bacon As Greece stumbles towards default on its budget promises and the European Union continues its slow-motion meltdown, a growing number of people are wondering if default is in the cards within the Dollar Union, in other words, the good ol’ United States of America. California’s projected budget gap has increased from…
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Virginia Tobacco Bonds in Technical Default. Is Anyone Paying Attention?
by James A. Bacon Alarming news about Virginia bonds. The NYT reported last week that Virginia is one of three states that have tapped special tobacco-bond reserves to pay their bond holders — “something analysts consider a technical default because it effectively means the bondholders are being paid with their own money.” The underlying problem…
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Clarity Amid Blather on Dulles Rail
By Peter Galuszka It has always been supremely puzzling to me why this blog has taken such a strident and shrill anti-union attitude. The shining example is the smear campaign against project labor agreements (PLAs) and Phase Two of the Silver Line of Metro to Dulles airport. The attacks extend to attempts to liquidate personally…
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Something Stinks About This Tax Proposal
By Peter Galuszka Pick a number. Any number. Could 49,000 jobs be created? How about 44.000 jobs? It could be 77,000 jobs, or maybe as few as 900 jobs. These are the all-over-the-board possibilities suggested by the grandly-named Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy in Springfield, which touts itself as a non-partisan think tank, when,…
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The Drones in our Future
By Peter Galuszka The backyard of my house in the piney woods of southern Chesterfield County is shaped like a half moon surrounded by very tall and skinny loblollies and gum trees. It faces north and can be a good place for aircraft watching. I live maybe 20 miles as the crow flies from Ft.…
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Who’s Paying for McDonnell’s Happy Talk TV Ads
By Peter Galuszka It’s hard to have your ego dunned. Yet it’s happened to Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, who, according to the Quinnipiac University, lost five points in a popular poll thanks to his disastrous 2012 General Assembly session that brought the arrests of pro-abortion rights protestors on Capitol ground and a spate of…
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Boomergeddon Watch: Social Security
by James A. Bacon File this under the “Long, Slow Demise of America’s Democratic Welfare State”… The Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees have published their 2012 annual report on the financial condition of Social Security and Medicare, and the news just keeps getting worse. The combination of a slowing economy and a payroll…