I wouldn’t want to be Gov. Tim Kaine at the moment. He has the unenviable job of chopping $1.3 billion out of next year’s budget. There are no easy choices, and there is no way to avoid making a lot of people unhappy. Kaine summarized his major initiatives in a press release you can read…

Puzzling is the only word to describe it. In Richmond, proponents of “high speed” rail say that $1.6 billion federal funds would help bump passenger train speeds from about 50 m.p.h. to about 90 m.p.h. on crowded CSX track from Petersburg to Washington. The state estimates that another route in the state — passenger train…

As reported in previous posts, The Obama administration has forecast that the U.S. federal government will rack up another $9 trillion in debt over the next 10 years (barring the enactment of tax increases and/or new spending programs). That forecast was based upon an assumption that economic growth will rebound vigorously from the current recession.…

What is it about Barack Obama that gets some folks so riled up? He can’t broach health care, doubtlessly one of the most pressing issues in the U.S. without opponents stirring up a bee hive of anger. He can’t try to deal with economic recovery after one of the worst downfalls since the Great Depression…

Against the backdrop of the federal march to insolvency, it is fearful to see that many states are following the same path. As Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, “State government finances are a wreck.” Think things are bad now but will get better as soon as the economy starts…

I’ve always envisioned the fiscal end game of the federal government as similar to the fate of, say, Circuit City, where creditors simply stopped lending to it because they no longer believed they would get repaid. The federal government cannot “go out of business,” however, so national leaders would have to soldier on, slashing spending…

In my last blog post, “From the U.S. to Argentina in 20 Years,” I noted that interest on the national debt will amount to $829 billion a year by 2019, if we are to believe the Office of Management and Budget’s most recent 10-year budget forecast. That projection assumes, however, that 10-year Treasury bond yields…

Sometimes commentators scold our political leaders for running up deficits that will have to be repaid by our children and grandchildren. I suspect that many politicians would gladly foist our nation’s obligations onto the next generation if they thought they could get away with it. But they can’t. Our nation’s profligacy will come back to…

Until The Washington Post’s revelation of Bob McDonnell’s rather Cro-Magnon views of homosexuals, family and women, Virginia’s gubernatorial race had been a snoozer. While a graduate student at Televangelist Pat Robertson’s Regent University in the early 1980s, McDonnell, then in his 30s, posited in a master’s degree thesis how the rise of homosexuals, abortion, divorce…

CREATIVE OBFUSCATION OF SOLUTIONS TO THE MOBILITY AND ACCESS CRISIS WILL BE THE KEY TO WINNING THE FALL POLITICAL FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP The political football season is upon us. As it now stands, the championship match up between the Elephant Clan and the Donkey Clan will be decided by which team is best at playing Hide-The-Ball…

The starting point for the discussion of public policy in the United States and the 50 states today is the looming insolvency of the federal government at some point in the next 20 to 25 years. By “insolvency,” I mean we are heading toward an Argentina-style financial crisis that will lead to the radical truncation…

Professor Sugrue’s “The New American Dream: Renting”(The Wall St Journal 14 August 2009) is a must read for anyone interested in shelter or in solving the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis or shelter in general. The article can be accessed at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409904574350432677038184.html#mod=article-outset-box Sugrue makes it very clear that: 1. The emergence of, 2. The overwhelmingly…

“Quack, n., An untrained person who dispenses advice and expert opinions.” First Rule of Quack Identification: If a known Quack consistently cites a third party as a source of support for their strain of Quackery, then the third party is also a Quack. Exception to the First Rule of Quack Identification: If the third party…

As the gubernatorial race heats up, one might think that the candidates will go a step further with some real issues facing Virginia. Former Atty. Gen. Bob McDonnell, for instance, seems so fixated on sex crime that he has some kind of plan to fit sex offenders with global positioning devices. His Democratic opponent, Creigh…

Far, farking out, man! Okay, I’m entitled. It’s almost the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. I went. I am going to tell you about it. What this has to do with public policy in Virginia, I have no idea. I was 16 and almost in 12th grade at a high school in suburban DC. Some guys…