“Boomergeddon” is getting traction in France. Today, the lower house of France’ s legislature passed Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension reform package that increases the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60. A vote in the upper house is due Oct.1. For the luxury-loving French, called “EuroWeenies” by Boomergeddon author James A. Bacon, the idea of raising…

Barring a legal miracle Teresa Lewis will be killed by the Commonwealth of Virginia on Sept 23. She will be the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly 100 years. One of the few hopes Ms. Lewis has left is a grant of clemency by Gov. Bob McDonnell. I believe Gov. McDonnell should grant clemency.…

There’s been quite a bit of spirited debate on the Rebellion about bailouts and federal debt, much of it inspired by Jim Bacon’s new book on the financial problems Baby Boomers will face. In the heat of discussions, however, it seems that some key points are being lost. As bad as government bailouts are, they…

Is the beginning of a big shift in energy use at hand? Last week, Old Dominion Electric Cooperative based in Henrico County announced that it was delaying a controversial $6 billion coal-fired generating station in Surry County just an egret’s flight away from Colonial Williamsburg. For about two years, ODEC seemed to have been on…

As the U.S. economy limps out of recession, lending to business is showing no sign of revival. And that should worry us all. According to Federal Reserve Bank data, business receivables outstanding held by finance companies were less than $470 billion in July, down 22 percent from 2008. New securities issued by corporations are running…

There’s news galore all around the privatization front. Selling off the state’s huge Tidewater port facilities has been nixed; a bunch of private firms show interest in a partially state-funded new tollway tracking U.S. 460; and Gov. Bob McDonnell has finally unveiled his big idea for selling off the state’s ABC stores. The news, however,…

The United States, once regarded as the most economically competitive nation in the world, has fallen to 4th place, according to the 2010-2011 Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum, the folks who organize the prestigious Davos wonk fests. Only two years ago, the U.S. ranked No. 1 in the comprehensive assessment of…

Is there a Koch connection to Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s 31-member commission on government streamlining? The Kochs are brothers David H. and Charles who run Wichita-based Koch Industries, a petroleum-based conglomerate that is the second-largest privately held company in the United States. They are hard-right political activists with a libertarian, anti-Obama bent, who, according to…

Peter posted a very good Labor Day statement concerning The Wealth Gap and here is another transect through that same frightening territory. The current administration is proposing a $100 Billion tax break for Enterprise R&D. There are four BIG problems here: First: The obvious one that Jim Bacon will focus on: It drives the federal…

In “Matewan,” the 1987 film about organizing West Virginia coal miners, union activist Joe Keenehan, played by Chris Cooper, tells a group of dubious miners: “There’s two types of people. Them that work and them that don’t. You work. They don’t.” With that as a Labor Day message, let’s consider some very important structural changes…

My latest column from the Washington Times: The big three credit-rating agencies that totally missed the meltdown of the subprime mortgage market – Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch – still give the United States a AAA credit rating. But there’s a newcomer in the credit-rating game – Dagong Global Credit Rating – which has…

Here’s some important news from the Pew Hispanic Center. The center reports that the number of immigrants entering the United States illegally fell by nearly two-thirds between 2005 to 2009. In the first part of the past decade, the number of undocumented people coming into the country was about 850,000 a year. With recession and…

Yesterday, a depressing series of photos lined the second-floor room at the University Club in downtown Washington. They were of the effects of Soviet nuclear weapons testing at Semipalatinsk, a vast and lonely area on the steppes of Kazakhstan. I was invited to the event sponsored by Global Green USA and the Embassy of Kazakhstan…

Now that President Barack Obama has declared U.S. combat operations in Iraq over, it might be useful to remember just how much this effort and the one in Afghanistan cost. This is particularly important right now since there is so much hullabaloo over federal spending. The immediate critical question is whether there should be more…

If you live in Virginia and need to get a driver’s license or ID card at one of the state’s 74 Department of Motor Vehicles offices today, you are out of luck. Still due a tax refund? Wait a little longer. The Department of Taxation’s computers don’t work. Worried about pollution? Chill out until the…