Category: Politics
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Standard & Poor’s Rains on Candidate Parades
When you run for governor in Virginia, you have to make promises, and when you make promises, the only ones that cut through the media clutter are vows to cut taxes or launch expansive new spending programs. Thus, this year, Republican candidate Ed Gillespie has rolled out a plan to cut taxes by $1.25 billion…
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Your Money Ain’t No Good Here, Dems Tell Utilities
Antipathy toward Virginia’s electric power companies is entering the realm of electoral politics. More than 50 Democratic candidates running for the Virginia House of Delegates have signed a pledge saying that they will “never” accept campaign contributions from Dominion Virginia Power or Appalachian Power, reports Graham Moomaw with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The pledge was circulated…
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Tom Perriello — the Radical Chic Candidate
After Virginia gubernatorial candidates filed their campaign finance updates yesterday, all eyes turned to Democratic Party candidate Tom Perriello. The progressive populist, who decries the role of big money in politics, was himself the largest beneficiary of big money of the six announced candidates. The Perriello campaign pocketed $385,000 from hedge fund billionaire George Soros and…
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Tom Perriello: Let’s Make Community College Free!
Tom Perriello, Democratic Party candidate for governor, is right about one thing: The cost of attending college is far more expensive today than it was when his father, a son of Italian immigrants, got a scholarship to the University of Virginia and graduated debt free. And he’s right that many young people today are graduating…
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Ed Gillespie Tax Plan Checks All the Right Boxes
Republican Ed Gillespie has issued a blueprint for tax cuts that could define the terms of debate for Virginia’s 2017 gubernatorial campaign. It is a fiscally credible plan. It offers a well-articulated vision for how to jump-start Virginia’s economy. That’s not to say the plan is unassailable, but it is too big and bold to…
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Frank Wagner Calls for College Tuition Freezes
Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, has called for a tuition freeze for public colleges and universities in Virginia as soon as the state economy improves and revenues start climbing again. Moreover, in a speech delivered Friday on the Senate floor, he proposed restrictions on the funding of for financial assistance to out-of-state students. While many General…
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Steve Bannon: Richmond Boy Made Good… Er Bad
by Les Schreiber Virginia has contributed much to the political growth of the United States: George Washington as leader of the Revolutionary Army and first president; Patrick Henry as fiery supporter of the Revolution; Thomas Jefferson as author of the Declaration of Independence and third president. More recently, Doug Wilder became the first African American…
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Corey Stewart Defines Himself through the Fights He Picks
I met Corey Stewart, Republican candidate for governor, for the first time last night and interviewed him outside a public hearing about coal ash disposal. The Prince William County board chairman came across as a genial guy. But he’s not one to run away from a fight. Indeed, he’s more likely to be the first…
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Lefties Confront Stewart. Stewart Wins.
Corey Stewart is one of those politicians that you either love or love to hate. He’s a conservative populist who built a state-wide reputation on his pugnacious, in-your-face opposition to illegal immigration. And as the prominent Virginia politician to align himself mostly closely with Donald Trump, he is surely loathed by many. Whatever you might…
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Keep the Politicians Honest, Too
“Keep the big boys honest,” was the campaign tag-line of populist “Howlin” Henry Howell when he very nearly won his bid for the governorship in 1973. By “big boys,” he was referring to executives of VEPCO, a predecessor company to Dominion Virginia Power. Four decades later, it appears that Howell’s rhetoric is coming back in…
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The Self-Employed as a Political Constituency
The maker movement is transforming the American economic landscape. The number of people who make a self-employed living making stuff is still small — almost imperceptible in a U.S. labor market of 160 million — but it is growing. In 2014 more than 350,000 manufacturing establishments in the U.S. had no employee other than the…
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Who Will Champion Mobility as a Service?
Around the world, companies and muncipalities are experimenting with Mobility as a Service (MaaS). Fast Company describes how a new company, MaaS Global, is changing the thinking about transportation, in Helsinki, Finland: If you need to go somewhere, you pull up a new app, which calculates the best way to get there—public transit, a bike-share…
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How to Give Virginians Real School Choice
Virginians enjoy a wide range of school choice… providing that they are affluent enough. If they can’t afford to pay private school tuition or buy a house in neighborhoods served by the best public schools, however, their options are limited. The Old Dominion has among the smallest number of charter schools in the country —…
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Natural Libertarians, a Virginia Majority
It’s the holiday season, the news is slow, and I’ve been thinking about things that I probably shouldn’t be thinking about. One is how to convert the latent “small L” libertarian potential of Virginia’s electorate into a meaningful political force. A large percentage of the Virginia population, I firmly believe, is what writer Lee Harris…
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2016 a Big Year for Libertarian Party
Unless you read the LP News, you probably didn’t realize that 2016 was a record-breaking year for the Libertarian Party. The national news media tuned out Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson after he suffered his “Aleppo moment,” and his poll numbers fell in the last weeks as the race tightened between Donald Trump and Hillary…