From a Wall Street Journal article on government austerity and economic development in the United Kingdom, making the point that efforts to rejuvenate regional economies have a mixed track record in the UK and elsewhere: Stuart S. Rosenthal, an economics professor at Syracuse University, remembers driving through Virginia in 1997 and seeing a sign saying,…

Virginia has long been in the forefront of using privatization as a way to finance public projects without draining public budgets. It has been touted as a way to have your cake and eat it, too, by both Democrats and Republicans. But there have been big problems with the concept. Most recently, offers to buy…

Gov. Bob McDonnell has repeatedly asserted that the government of Virginia managed to close a $1.8 billion shortfall in the Fiscal 2010 budget “without a tax increase.” (See his column in the Wall Street Journal.) That may be true from a technical viewpoint but it leaves a few things unsaid. I won’t even get into…

This Tuesday, the Lawn at the University of Virginia was a portrait of early fall beauty. Inside the equally-magnificent Rotunda, Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks spoke on “Difference and Democracy in the Post-Secular World.” Somehow I got on the mailing list of U.Va.’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. I don’t know why but suspect…

A common refrain on this blog that gains more currency as frustration with the anemic economic recovery grows is that regulation of business is somehow to blame. That might suit the right-wingers but it is a fallacy. And just as the big financial institutions were allowed to run amok by federal and state regulators during…

The timing couldn’t be more revealing. Just as Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, pushing his goal of making Virginia “the Energy Capital of the East Coast,” was set to open a hydrocarbon-heavy lineup at a two-day energy conference in Richmond, Google struck. The Internet giant and Good Energies, a New York investment firm, announced a $5…

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia has issued an important new report on transportation, “Well Within Reach: America’s New Transportation Agenda.” The report is the brainchild of former Gov. Gerald Baliles, the last governor of Virgina to think seriously about transportation. I haven’t had time to read it closely enough…

Paul Krugman advanced the argument in a recent NYTimes column — I kid you not — that there has not been a big expansion of government spending under the Obama administration. America needs more spending and bigger deficits in order to gin up some real stimulus! I know, I know, Krugman is an easy target…

One fact coming out of the Tea Party convention hasn’t really come out on these blog postings, but it is probably the most important one: Kenneth Cuccinelli is the big beneficiary. Any political ambitions that the highly ambitious attorney general might have had got a huge boost when the Cooch got a standing ovation at…

At different points in its brief history, the Tea Party movement has been variously portrayed by the ruling class and its compliant tools in the mainstream media as (a) an astroturf rent-a-mob orchestrated by conservative special interest groups, (b) an ignorant rabble of rustics, cranks, gun lovers, spittoon users and Deliverance Creatures, (c) a racist…

The Tea Party extravaganza now going on at downtown Richmond’s tax-payer built convention center. I went yesterday and was very impressed. The confab seemed to have everything. There were Patrick Henry Re-enactors ringing their Liberty Bells. Slogan-covered gun nuts toting .45 cal. ACPs in holsters. Opponents of eminent domain. Bumper stickers toting Sarah Palin and…

With Federal mid-term elections less than a month away and important contests facing voters in many states, it is time for The ANTIPARTISAN VOTERS GUIDE – YEAR ONE. After analyzing parameters, principles and strategies, The ANTIPARTISAN VOTERS GUIDE for the inaugural year of the AntiPartisan campaign can be reduced to four simple rules: 1. If…

Virginia’s Tea Party movement has grown with a vengeance to become what some observers say is the best organized such movement in the country. Its success, and strident resentment of current politics, will be in evidence Friday and Saturday when the movement convenes at Richmond’s Convention Center for a big conference. Drawing on anti-Obama sentiment,…

This November there will be another federal election. As always in a mid-term election all of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate will be up for grabs. This election is a bit more exciting than usual due to the prospect of significant gains by the Republicans at the expense of the Democrats.…

For the last three decades Billions of dollars have been spent on traffic congestion “solutions.” These ‘solutions’ are based on conventional wisdom and validated by the annual Texas A&M / Texas Transportation Institute’s (TTI) annual Urban Mobility Report (UMR.) Every year for three decades Urban traffic congestion has grown worse and settlement patterns have become…