Category: Politics
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Virginia Uranium’s Strangely Short Half-Life
Peter Galuszka After years building up to a critical mass, Virginia’s uranium controversy never quite reached fission. State Sen. John Watkins, a Republican and uranium backer from Powhatan, pulled the plug on his pro-mining bill Thursday as it faced certain death at a Senate committee. There are a couple of other legislative efforts out there,…
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Your Health Care System on the Government Needle
From the power-corrupts-and-absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely department in today’s Wall Street Journal: An extraneous and last-minute provision inserted in the New Year’s Day fiscal-cliff legislation sharply cut Medicare payments for Elekta AB, a Swedish maker of radiation tools used to battle brain tumors. Turns out that Elekta competitor Varian Medical Systems, of Palo Alto, Calif., had persuaded Senate Majority…
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Electric Cars and Burning Trucks
In a Dec.5, 2012 news conference, presumed Democratic candidate for governor Terry McAuliffe stated unequivocally that he chose to locate his electric-car manufacturing facility in Mississippi because Virginia economic developers were not interested. “They decided they didn’t want to bid on it,” he said. Nancy Madsen, writing under the Times-Dispatch Politifact banner, thoroughly demolishes that…
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Who’s Really Behind These Capitol Coups?
By Peter Galuszka Coup II seems well underway among Virginia’s Republican legislators. According to The Washington Post, state-level Republicans in the Old Dominion and several other states including Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are trying to redistrict voting more along the boundaries of federal congressional districts that typically are more heavily lopsided to one party or…
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The Overweening Power of Labor Unions
By Peter Galuszka Not that long ago during last year’s presidential campaign — before Bacon’s Rebellion became the mush it is now — brave conservatives were skewering Virginia’s and America’s most venomous threats and holding them high for us all to see. They were, of course, labor unions and the very unsavory thought that working…
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The Virginia GOP’s Destructive Palace Coups
By Peter Galuszka Just how out of control are Virginia’s Republicans? This week’s redistricting coup attempt staged by prominent Republicans John Watkins and his cohort Thomas K. Norment in the otherwise evenly divided state Senate is as cynical as it is destructive. On Monday, the pair took advantage of the absence of a key Democratic…
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Is Virginia a Leader in Gun Control?
By Peter Galuszka For all of the sound and fury over guns in Virginia — panicked shooters are draining firearms shops of ammunition — the Old Dominion actually has been a leader among states on the gun control issue on a couple of fronts. For details, see my story in this week’s Style Weekly. First,…
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The Wobbly World of Global Uranium Prices
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in Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka Highly controversial plans to mine and mill a rich tract of uranium in Pittsylvania County are before the General Assembly. Plenty of studies, lobbyists and scads of money are being thrown about on both sides of the argument. Yet a brief story on page B7 in today’s Wall Street Journal deals with…
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The Rehabilitation of Helen E. Dragas
By Peter Galuszka Call it the rehabilitation of Helen E. Dragas. Dragas, the head of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, got into a big mess last spring when she tried and failed to oust popular university President Teresa Sullivan. After a national embarrassment, the reappointment of Dragas, a politically influential construction…
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How Bleak Are Virginia’s Ports, Exactly?
By Peter Galuszka Is there something fishy about Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s push to privatize the Virginia Port Authority? For months, state Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton, privatization-minded corporate executives and some consulting firms have been beating a drum about the supposedly bad if not fatal fiscal outlook for the VPA and Virginia International Terminals, a…
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Uranium Mining on Slate.com
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, 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 & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka Just in time for your weekend reading, here’s a piece I did for Slate on the uranium mining controversy.
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Here Comes Cooch-ageddon!
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in 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, Water-waste waterHard right conservative Kenneth T. Cuccinelli has a very good chance of becoming the next governor. At least that’s my view 11 months out. I disagree with Cuccinelli on almost everything and will spare my readers the list. But I do agree on one thing: he has proved to be a wily politician. He’s turned…
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Thinking Outside the School Yard
by James A. Bacon Step aside Bob McDonnell, you and your tax-hiking, burden-shifting transportation-funding package. Make way for Dickie Bell, R-Staunton, who has introduced what may prove to be the most audacious piece of legislation of the 2013 General Assembly session — a bill to create a state virtual school organized as a free-standing statewide…
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Sticking Southside With Uranium Mining
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in Business and Economy, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka If you are a resident of Pittsylvania County in Virginia’s Southside, you can be happy to know that some Richmond legislators and a few citizens want to restrict uranium mining exclusively to your county. Led by Republican State Sen. John Watkins of Powhatan, the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission voted 11-2 to…
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Oh, Canada!
By Peter Galuszka The rumbling started Saturday and reached a head on Sunday, resounding through the tall, loblolly pines like a distant thunderstorm that somehow got stuck in a downdraft and just wouldn’t move on. The curiosity was that the early January sky was a bright blue with only a few high clouds zipping by…