Category: Government workers and pensions
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The Wacky World of Private Space Firms
By Peter Galuszka The spectacular explosion on the evening of Oct. 28 of an Orbital Sciences Corporation rocket at Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia raises safety questions about the rush to commercialize space launches. The Antares rocket with a Cygnus cargo shipment had been bound for the International Space Station but the…
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Good Ruling on Congressional Redistricting
By Peter Galuszka A panel of federal judges in Richmond has scrambled the carefully laid plans of legislators, most of them Republicans, to pack African-American voters into one congressional district to give the GOP an advantage in some of the state’s 10 other districts. The panel of U.S. District Court judges decreed that the General…
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Et Tu, McAuliffe?
By Peter Galuszka Sure, parents want to help their children but in the case of former State Sen. Phillip Puckett, it is getting ridiculous. And the latest disclosure in this morning’s Washington Post makes the Terry McAuliffe administration look just as sleazy as their Republican counterparts. Puckett, of course was a Democratic senator who held…
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Bob McDonnell’s Big Decision
By Peter Galuszka It was a gubernatorial quandary only Virginia could have . In the summer of 2011, former Gov. Robert F. McDonnell was ready to take a few days off. He and his family had been going to Smith Mountain Lake, a popular destination near Roanoke with lots of golf courses and seven-figure lakeside…
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Maureen McDonnell and Sexism
By Peter Galuszka Sitting for hours listening to former Gov. Robert F. McDonnell testify in his federal corruption trial makes one wonder exactly what his values are, especially as they relate to women. His entire legal strategy is to “Throw Maureen Under the Bus” – namely his lawyers and those of his co-defendant wife Maureen…
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Is Pretentious Richmond Really Hooterville?
By Peter Galuszka Is Richmond really Hooterville? By golly gosh, that’s the impression that one might come away with after 14 days of testimony at the corruption trial of former Gov. Robert F. and Ms. Maureen McDonnell. Pretentious Richmond likes to see itself as a genteel and sophisticated historic relic with a Southern snob appeal…
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State Workers: GiftGate’s Unsung Heroes
By Peter Galuszka The McDonnell corruption trial, now going into its third week, is an enormously sad and tawdry affair bringing shame on the defendants and the prosecution’s key witness, businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. Yet there are heroes — state employees. A number of them have testified over the past week that they sensed…
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Cantor’s Self-Serving Special Election Scheme
By Peter Galuszka It looks like a small group of the Virginia Republicans elite has once again hatched a plot behind closed doors to manipulate elected politics without input from voters. U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the victim of a surprising defeat in a June 10 Republican primary, has come up with a self-serving scheme to…
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One Very Sad Day In Court
By Peter Galuszka One literally could have heard a pin drop in U.S. District Court in Richmond today. William Burck, lawyer for Maureen McDonnell, said in his opening argument in a trial that Virginia’s Former First Lady who has been indicted no 14 corruption charges along with her former governor husband was “collateral damage” in…
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The McDonnell Trial Gets Underway
By Peter Galuszka This morning marks the start of the long-awaited corruption trial for Robert F. McDonnell and his wife Maureen, the first ever involving the governor of a state that fancies itself above petty corruption. McDonnell, a Republican, faces 14 felony counts in federal court including wire fraud and lying on a federal loan…
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Two UMW Daughters of the ’60s
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in Business and Economy, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Environment, Federal issues, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, 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, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Just a few days ago, Elena Siddall, a Mathews County Republican activist and Tea Party Patriot, posted her account on the Rebellion of being a social worker in New York in the 1960s and the wrong-headedness of Saul Alinsky, a leftist organizer who had had a lot of influence back in the…
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Child Services in the Shadow of Cloward and Piven
by Elena Siddall In 1963 I graduated from Mary Washington College of the University of Virginia, with a BA degree in Pre-Foreign Service and headed for New York City. The degree did not get me a job as translator at the United Nations, so I answered an ad for Social Investigator in the Department of…
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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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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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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…