On Salom.com, Michael Lind excoriates Southern states for leading the attempt to “kill” the North’s auto industry by opposing the multibillion-dollar bailout of the Big Three (or should we now call them the Midsized Three?) automakers in Detroit. He accuses Southern states, led by “Neo-Confederate” elites, of engaging in beggar-thy-neighbor economic development policies to advance…

Virginians need to be concerned about what the federal government will do to screw up the economy – like Hoover and FDR did. Bad ideas come from both sides of the aisles and in and out of state. This is a critique of some wrong-headed ones coming out of our Commonwealth. I’m sure there are…

It’s one of Jim’s topics, I know, but this post from a former Richmond Times-Dispatch employee, lays out the topic in sobering detail. Snip: So here’s the thing: here’s why they’re even trying to keep the RTD going, despite its inevitable funeral, despite that it’s dead already and they keep kicking the corpse around: because…

Where will the impetus for Fundamental Change in Virginia come from? One source is concern about climate change, and the resulting push to conserve energy. Another is the price of gasoline, which, though temporarily depressed, will shoot back up again as soon as the economy recovers. To those two, we can add a third: the…

A benefit of working for the Boomer Project is the opportunity I’ve had to look at some issues of long-standing personal interest, such as transportation, land use and the environment, through a new lens: the generational perspective. Each generation — the Silent/G.I. generation, the Baby Boomers, GenX and GenY — has a unique zeitgeist shaped…

Could bloggers have stopped Hitler? Yes, says Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature on Sunday. “Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler’s criminal plot would not have succeeded — ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day,” the…

Fellow bloggers, I apologize for my absence. If I’d been more attentive, I might have been able to smooth things over before the rupture between Peter Galuszka and the new publishers of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine took place (see previous post). Here’s what’s going on. Mike Thompson, president of the Jefferson Institute for Public Policy…

As you know Jim Bacon has transferred some or all control (not clear) to the Thomas Jefferson Public Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. In all the years I have known Jim, I know that he has stood for the finest values in freedom of speech, the media and of ideas. The Institute does not.…

One of the more curious things about November’s election is how immigrant-bashing somehow evaporated as a Republican issue. Even more interesting is that two of the GOP’s biggest immigrant-bashers – Virgil H. Goode Jr. and Thelma Drake – are toast. This should be an instructive tale as Virginia moves forward into 2009 and tries to…

The economic and political ‘news’ via MainStream Media during the week before Thanksgiving 2008 provided a strong incentive to give fervent thanks. But perhaps not the thanks that some think. First some context: In the early 1970s EMR’s and his Clustermates worked hard to elect a “reform / change” candidate for County Executive in Howard…

It’s going to take a lot more than cool new commuter bikes like the one pictured here to persuade more people to use bicycles for transportation, not just recreation, in the Richmond region. It would be helpful if Virginia jurisdictions designed balanced communities where a variety of destinations were located within easy biking distance. In…

Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta, has proffered a partial solution for Virginia’s transportation-funding woes: Index the gasoline tax to the average fuel economy of vehicles on state roads. According to an editorial in the Staunton News Leader, Hanger has joined the growing number of legislators to worry about the impact of improving gasoline mileage on the…

The grim news just doesn’t quit. From today’s Times-Dispatch: The Senate Finance Committee of the Virginia General Assembly is projecting a budget shortfall of at least $3.2 billion for the 2008-10 biennial budget — an even bleaker projection than the $2.5 billion Gov. Timothy M. Kaine had forecast previously. Had enough Business As Usual? Tired…

On Sunday, I drew attention to a power industry-backed study that forecast widespread blackouts and brownouts within a few years unless more electric infrastructure is built. (See “When the Lights Go Out.”) Although I didn’t endorse the findings of the report, I did say that we need to take such fears seriously. We have much…

Virginia state government has taken another big step towards transparency thanks to the publication today of the Virginia Public Access Project’s redesigned website. VPAP provides a deeper, richer database of campaign contributions and lobbying activity, and it’s searchable in more ways than ever. Click on the profile for Attorney General Bob McDonnell, candidate for governor,…