John McCain’s faltering presidential campaign keeps grasping desperately at straws. The former beauty queen from Wasilla is one; NASCAR and country music is another. It amazes me just how the GOP scrapes for the support of the working classes it has so badly screwed over in the past eight years. And the McCain campaign and…

Presidential candidate John McCain drew a crowd tens of thousands strong at his campaign rally in Hampton Roads earlier this week, and it wasn’t just because the former naval aviator was once stationed at Oceana Naval Air Station. While his supporters share McCain’s flag-waving patriotism and his larger world view, material self interest undoubtedly lurks…

In a bold stroke of investigative journalism, WaPo has nailed the Washington Airports Authority for excess travel by Board members and their families at Agency expense. (“Airport Board’s Travel Spending Has Few Limits” 13 October) Great Work! Got them dead to rights… But where is WaPo on the big problem: Plowing $100s of millions into…

Jonathan Mallard, a Bacon’s regular and a candidate for the 4th District School Board seat in Richmond, has created a budget game, of sorts. Or perhaps it’s more of an experiment. Using data from the RPS he’s created a spreadsheet that shows where the money went. It’s a mind-bending list of numbers, to be sure.…

It feels like we’re on an economic roller coaster these days, so why not plot real estate values since 1890 on a virtual roller coaster and go for a ride? Just remember to hold on tight. (cross-posted at Tertium Quids)

As I argued in my last post, fiscal crises call for emergency measures. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has no choice to resort to whatever short-term expediency he can find to close a $2.5 billion revenue gap in the current biennial budget. But it would be nice if Virginia’s fiscal exertions resulted in some lasting gains…

With respect to the current economic pain it is elementary that: A. If a nation-state with a democratic governance structure is going to create an economy based on consumer consumption (much less claim to lead the world in creating democracies with market economies) then: 1) Agencies of that nation-state must insure that the market benefits…

The outlines of the spending cuts that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has in mind to close a looming $3 billion revenue shortfall in the $77 billion biennial budget are coming into view. As Jeff Schapiro reports in the Times-Dispatch today, Kaine will focus on controlling state payroll, which runs about $5 billion annually (or $10…

Virginia’s Gulag Archipelago keeps growing. Back a decade or so ago, Republican Gov. George Allen got attention for his proposals to expand the state’s prison system. That was then. Today, the hot idea is to create “detention centers” for those hordes of illegal immigrants that we all know are overrunning the Old Dominion doing such…

Contrast the news of canceled construction projects and maintenance cut-backs at the Virginia Department of Transportation with the ongoing investment that Transurban is making in the 8.8-mile Pocahontas Parkway toll road southeast of Richmond. Last week Bacon’s Rebellion published a communique from VDOT Commissioner David Ekern outlining how he planned to prioritize spending — and…

David Ekern, the Virginia Department of Transportation Comissioner, has kept a lower profile than his predecessor Philip Shucet, but he seems to be a capable, even impressive, administrator in his own way. He has been thinking hard about how to maximize Virginia’s road/highway revenues in an era where revenues are stagnant and costs, especially for…

Please forgive my unexplained absence from this blog over the past week. I have taken on a full-time job, which starts today, and my time has been consumed by the winding up of a number of projects and ensuring a smooth hand-off on others. As soon as I get acclimated to my new schedule, I…

Taking a break from the all-consuming matter of the six chaplains who resigned from the state police over the prohibition of mentioning Jesus in their invocations — in which the Northern Virginia Daily, the Washington Post, the Lynchburg News & Advance, and the Richmond Times Dispatch collectively devote 1,516 words to the subject — we…

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. The Commonwealth Virginia is facing a $3 billion shortfall in its two-year budget, a hiring freeze has been put into place, and state agency chiefs face a deadline to submit contingencies for chopping spending by up to 15 percent. And what has Virginia’s newspapers all in a…