Category: Poverty & income gap
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Cantor’s Brat Problem
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in Business and Economy, 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, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, 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, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka The jockeying for power among Virginia conservatives is certainly curious if not frightening. It seems the diminished Tea Party is trying to make a comeback and relive its heyday of 2010 at the expense of moderates. I personally hope they don’t because the movement brings up far too much hateful baggage of…
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A Worthwhile Experiment in Bringing Nutrition to the Inner City
by James A. Bacon The East End of Richmond is a notorious food desert where thousands of low-income residents don’t have ready access to healthy food. Richmonders have responded in a number of ways, most visibly by encouraging the cultivation of gardens in empty lots and back yards and by working with local convenience markets…
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Richmond’s Incredible Blindness
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in Business and Economy, 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, Health Care, Housing, Infrastructure, 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, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Following up on Richmond Opening Its Kimono post from Monday, I note some significant news developments and points: First, the Richmond City Council has restored $10.6 million of the $13.6 million Mayor Dwight Jones wanted to keep his plan to build a new baseball stadium, slavery museum and mixed use development worth…
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The Kimonos Are Opening in Richmond
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Housing, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka There’s an old expression called “opening your kimono” that dates back to the 1990s but seems to have roots in Japan. It means having no secrets. When a Japanese husband and wife greet each other, they draw open their clothes to show they are being open – full disclosure in other words.…
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Map of the Day: Cycling to Work
The number of U.S. workers who traveled to work by bicycle increased from about 488,000 in 2000 to about 786,000 in 2008-2012, the largest percentage increase of any transportation mode, according to a new report issued by the U.S. Census Bureau based upon its annual American Community Survey. Fully one percent of the population in…
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What If They Gave a Health Care Plan and Nobody Paid?
Here’s the news you heard: More than 8 million Americans signed up for Obamacare through state market exchanges. Here’s the news you didn’t hear: One third of those 8 million did not pay their first month’s insurance premium. The Obama administration refused to release the payment information so the House Energy and Commerce Committee rounded up the figures itself.…
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A Frenchman Turns Economics Upside Down
By Peter Galuszka Call it “The Anti-Baconomics.” Thomas Piketty, a French economist, is turning conventional, conservative economic thinking on its head. Goodbye to the idea that all boats rise in capitalism. What we are seeing instead is a dangerous concentration of 21st century wealth in the hands of an ever-smaller elite. This is Piketty’s message…
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The Perils of Gas Fracking
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, 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, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka More media accounts are showing up now that 84,000 acres of lands south and east of Fredericksburg have been leased for possible hydraulic fracturing drilling for natural gas. This Sunday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch published a map showing the leased area covering big swaths of land from the Fort A.P. Hill military area east across the…
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Fracking the Mother of Presidents
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By Peter Galuszka Controversial hydraulic fracking appears to becoming a distinct possibility in areas south and east of Fredericksburg on land that is famed for its bucolic and watery splendors along with being the birthplaces of such historical figures as George Washington, James Monroe and Robert E. Lee. After several years of exploring and buying…
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The City of Great Places
So, here we are in San Francisco, in the heart of the land of fruits and nuts. We’re planning to do a lot of the usual tourista things — take the boat to Alcatraz, bike to Sausalito, visit the Exploratorium — but your roving correspondent also will be applying a keen eye to the human…
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Blaming the Innocent and Exonerating the Guilty
by James A. Bacon In the previous post, PeterG questioned the priority of “Richmond’s elite” of building a new baseball stadium for the Flying Squirrels over patching the city’s scandalously decrepit public schools. I share his skepticism that what the city really needs right now is a new stadium. However, I disagree with a core…
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“Where Is the Closest Tiki Bar?”
By Peter Galuszka Often times, blog commenters really hit the nail on the head. This is the case with “Virginiagal2” who responded to my blog post earlier this week that Richmond’s schools are decrepit and crumbling, as Style Weekly detailed in a recent cover story. They note that Richmond’s elite has done little for its public…
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Richmond’s Huge and Hidden Problem
By Peter Galuszka There’s been plenty of image-building on this blog site in favor of what is perceived to be a “new” Richmond. In this view, the former Capital of the Confederacy famous for its gentile white elite and, unfortunately, race politics, is being transformed to a major draw for talented young people and active…
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Income Inequality and Party Representation
by James A. Bacon As a follow-up to my previous post, yes, honest liberals do exist. One of them is Michael Zuckerman writing in Atlantic Cities, who squarely confronts the reality that Democratic congressional districts experience far more income inequality overall than Republican congressional districts. He compiled the chart above which shows the Gini coefficient,…
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Trickle-Down Economics Revealed
by James A. Bacon A generation ago, liberals mocked the so-called “trickle-down economics” of the Reagan administration, the idea that creating wealth for the rich would trickle down to the less affluent by way of expanded economic activity. While Reagan himself never used that term, his economic philosophy of tax cuts, tax-code reform and restrained…