Nearly 5,000 Criminal Aliens in Virginia Prisons and JailsGovernment Accountability OfficeOf the estimated 10.8 million illegal aliens in the United States, 350,000 are held in federal, state and local prisons and jails. Virginia ranks 11th in the nation for criminal alien population. (Would someone please explain the roughly 7,000 German illegals in U.S. jails?) Everybody…

I co-wrote this column, published in the Washington Times today, with Kenneth E. Powell, an investment banker with Stone & Youngberg, which sells TIF bonds. Four years ago, the Coliseum Mall in Hampton, Va., the city’s largest taxpayer, was on its last legs. Traffic was drying up. Tax revenues were wilting. The vacancy rate was…

Brace yourselves. Here comes the onslaught of massive tuition-and-fees hikes from Virginia’s institutions of higher education. Virginia Tech has just announced that it will raise tuition and fees from $15,879 per year to $17,365 — an increase of 9.3%. (See press release.) Tech’s board of visitors placed the blame largely upon to declining state support…

I’ll never forget it. It was bright sunny day at the Tuckahoe Little League park. Hundreds of kids and their parents were wandering around a grassy field. Standing stationary amidst the hub-bub was a tall, solidly built man, maybe 40 years old, holding his wife’s hand. Scars covered his cropped head, leaving his eyes utterly…

We hear the mantra so often that we have stopped questioning it: A major cause of sub-par educational performance for African-American and Hispanic students is due to the fact that school districts where minority students predominate suffer from less funding than school districts where white students predominate. But that so-called disparity is a myth, argues…

Energy-Water Nexus: Amount of Energy Needed to Supply, Use, and Treat Water Is Location-Specific and Can Be Reduced by Certain Technologies and ApproachesGovernment Accountability OfficeThe nation is using up the inexpensive sources of water. Future water sources will be more energy-intensive, hence expensive. Hampton Roads, take a look at your future.

The growing national battle over union labor has popped up regarding plans to continue with the Dulles rail project, including building an underground station at the international airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. Conservatives, including editorial writers at the Washington Examiner, are aghast that a resolution passed by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority issued…

Let us explore another aspect of the old class warfare theme invoked so often by my esteemed liberal counterpart on this blog: the increasing disparity of incomes between rich and poor. Many possible causes have been invoked, mostly entailing the rapacity of the rich. One cause that gets relatively little attention is immigration. Because a…

Virginia falls in the middle tier of states for the percentage of children in Medicaid receiving dental service — somewhere between 31% and 40% — according to a recent study published by the Government Accountability Office. (Click on map for more legible image.) The GAO estimated that 6.5 million children nationally had untreated tooth decay,…

Back when Tim Kaine was governor, he handed control over the Rail-to-Dulles heavy rail project to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority over the objections of those who thought that a multi-state authority might not represents the interests of Virginians. Well, it turns out that “not represent the interests of” was an under-statement. “Trample on” the…

Commentary on this blog shows persistent confusion about the share of federal personal income taxes paid by “the rich.” Pundits of a lefty persuasion focus on the tax rate, which is low by historical standards, and thereby assume that the taxes paid by the rich is likewise low. The left-hand bar on this chart shows…

Why ACOs Are Doomed to FailHeritage FoundationAccountable Care Organizations are the latest big-government “silver bullet” for bringing health care costs under control. They will only make matters worse. How to Make Health-Insurance Exchanges WorkThe Manhattan InstituteCritics expect Obamacare-mandated health insurance exchanges to get bogged down in politics and bureaucracy. Here is how to make an…

Federal fuel taxes (18.3 cents per gallon) paid into the federal highway trust fund are returned to the states according to mathematical formulae that have become increasingly outdated, contends Ronald D. Utt with the Heritage Foundation in a new report. The methodology creates winners and losers. “The shortchanged states are typically those with above-average population…

The obvious point of this chart published by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (“Top Three State Tax Charts”) is that state tax revenues suffered deeper, more prolonged losses during the 2007-09 economic slump than in previous recessions. While the Center provided no breakdown by state, it is hardly a stretch to suggest that…

Among journalists, there’s a tried and true expression: good stories just keep getting better. And that’s the case this morning with a Wall Street Journal story reporting that big, global U.S. corporations (the ones Republicans want to hand tax breaks to) have been hiring overseas while cutting U.S. workers. Firms such as General Electric, Caterpillar,…