Category: Politics
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ALEC, the Tea Party and the Feral GOP
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in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Gun rights, Immigration, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Virginia’s conservatives have gone through a spasm of controversy as they struggle to find their message. They desperately need to balance their ideas of fiscal discipline and limited government with a wide spectrum of unrelated hard-right social issues. The clearest evidence yet of the quandary for their soul involves the American Legislative…
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“Young Gun” Cantor Gets Tiresome
By Peter Galuszka What a difference nine months makes. Last summer, Boy Wonder Eric Cantor, the U.S. house majority leader from Henrico County, was riding high politically. If he wasn’t snubbing President Barack Obama in meetings over the need to raise the debt ceiling, he was racing to get ahead of the Tea Party parade…
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Corey Stewart’s Racist Baggage
By Peter Galuszka Corey A. Stewart, the scourge of “illegal” immigrants and standard-holder of good old fashioned American values, is now running for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket in 2013. News reports of his recent announcement were predictably bland – comments in the right-wing blogosphere even more so – despite the fact that Stewart…
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Closely Watched Trains
By Peter Galuszka A few weeks ago, I was making another trip to the area near Matewan, W.Va., a small, historic town of red brick buildings a stone’s throw across the Tug Fork River from Kentucky. Matewan is noted for its coalfield labor strife caught dramatically in John Sayles superb 1987 movie of the same…
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Bye, Bye, Vice President McDonnell
It appears that ultrasounds, handgun purchases and helping groups ban gays from becoming adoptive parents are costing Gov. Robert F. McDonnell his dreams of being a Republican vice presidential candidate. Now that Mitt Romney has 655 electoral votes tied up and looks like a sure thing as far as the GOP nominee, McDonnell has fallen…
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Another “F” for Transparency
By Peter Galuszka Imagine learning that a court date or a city council meeting is to be held in two days. You show up at the door, only to be told by a guard that admittance is by invitation only. You will have to leave. That, in essence, is how the administration of Virginia Gov.…
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Expanding U.S. 460 and the Chinese Connection
By Peter Galuszka In the past day or so, there’s been a bit of buzz about a decades-old plan to expand the northwest to southeast route U.S. 460 takes through Virginia’s peanut country on its way to Tidewater. This latest bit of boosterism posits that giant ships inbound to Virginia via the widened Panama Canal…
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Five Ways Virginia Sucks
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in Blogs and Blog Administration, Children and Families, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Gun rights, LGBQT, Money in politics, Science & Technology, Social Services and EntitlementsBy Peter Galuszka An alternative blogger is listing five ways Virginia may be the worst state in the union, a.k.a. “Bob Land.” Tara Lohan of AlterNet notes that generally, watching the news these days is like going through a time warp when it comes to debates about birth control or teaching science in the classroom.…
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What Baconauts Won’t Discuss
By Peter Galuszka Reading the Bacon’s Rebellion Blog always displays breathtaking contradictions. Chief among them is the huge contradiction between pushing “smart growth” and shunning any form of increasing gasoline taxation. The crux is that we have lots of horrendous sprawl in the state such as all of Northern Virginia, Route 3 in Fredericksburg and…
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The Uranium Quagmire
By Peter Galuszka For the 50 or so people sitting in the quaint Pepsi-Cola building Tuesday in Danville’s tobacco warehouse district, the information seemed to spawn more frustration than clarity. They had gathered to hear two economic impact reports regarding controversial plans by Virginia Uranium to mine an ore deposit a dozen miles to the…
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Who Gets Credit for Virginia’s Recovery?
By Peter Galuszka As with fruit tree blossoms, economic recovery is in the springtime air in the Old Dominion. Virginia’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.8 percent in January, a three-year low. The question now is who gets credit for it. Leading the “credit me” pack is Gov. Robert F. McDonnell who insists that his job…
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Richmond’s Arab Spring
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in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Government Finance, Health Care, Immigration, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, LGBQT, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka What seems one of the wildest General Assembly sessions that ended on Saturday was actually a healthy display of democracy in action. It could presage a fundamental way that things are done in Richmond. True, a new Republican and conservative majority in the House of Delegates pushed odious wedge issues at the…
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¡Viva la Revolución!
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in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, 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 waterEstimado Jefe! Usted nunca debe salir de la ciudad, señor! Ahora que usted está ausente, la revolución comienza! Amados lectores de ya no ver los artículos que glorifican a los ricos y privilegiados. Vamos a ayudar a la tierra y los pobres y redistribuir los fondos de cobertura. ¡Viva la Revolución!
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That Danged News Media!
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in Business and Economy, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Immigration, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Planning, Politics, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka After a deluge of negative national publicity in recent weeks over a number of socially conservative and highly controversial bills that he originally endorsed, Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has complained on a WTOP radio interview that he’s disappointed with the news media. “All we ever ask from the media is to…
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The Atlantic: Virginia’s Pathetic Leadership
With proposals such as mandated ultrasounds for abortion seekers and bans on Sharia law, state legislatures avoid actual governance in favor of dead-end ideas. Virginia’s attempt to intrude (literally and figuratively) upon the privacy of its pregnant women would be bad enough if it were merely a rare example of state lawmakers unhinging proposed legislation…