Many people have the wrong idea about “green” houses. They think of Mongolian-style yurts, or solar-mounted rooftops, or kitchen counters made of recycled glass. But going green rarely entails anything that exotic or expensive, says Karl Bren, executive director Earthcraft Virginia. “It’s just a matter of paying an attention to the details. Like making sure…

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s action yesterday in expanding the state’s telework policy to the 120 employees working in the Governor’s office and cabinet is no more than a single step. But it pushes the Commonwealth of Virginia along on a very important journey. “Rising…

Yesterday, at a meeting of 100 members of the Virginia Commonwealth University community, Dr. Francis Macrina admitted that his school was wrong for the secrecy agreements it has entered into with Philip Morris USA. Other speakers among the 100 or so attending the meeting of a task force tasked with exploring corporate research addressed a…

Jim Bacon and EMR tune in on different MainStream Media outlets and today they saw different stories and came to different conclusions. Bacon reported on a Richmond Times-Dispatch op ed column by the US Secretary of Transportation (“Mary Peters on Virginia Transportation Policy”). EMR has been reading WaPo. In SundaySource, WaPo splashes a lot of…

Mary E. Peters, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, has published a column in the Times-Dispatch today that displays a surprising familiarity with Virginia’s transportation-policy gridlock. Perhaps, as a federal employee, she is a resident of Virginia, which means she is affected by the actions (or non-actions) of the General Assembly. Or, perhaps her knowledge derives…

The special General Assembly session on transportation collapsed in a heap yesterday, with no one agreeing on much of anything. None of the three major proposals for raising revenue to fund transportation improvements managed to get any traction. There were three major proposals on the table, one submitted by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, one by…

TheNewspaper.com, a blog that bills itself as a journal of the politics of driving, has made quite a scoop: It has obtained a copy of nine pages excerpted from the “Comprehensive Agreement Relating to the Route 495 HOT Lanes in Virginia Project,” dated Dec. 19, 2007, between the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Capital…

We’ve been preaching energy-efficient growth and development for years now, and we’ve remained stuck on the margins of public opinion. But now, with gasoline prices zooming past $4 per gallon, people are waking up. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, they are. When the Wall Street Journal runs a story on the front page, “With Gas Over…

Two hundred and thirty-two years ago, our forefathers declared independence from a distant monarch and parliament to preserve their liberty. Who can we rebel against? We have no tyrant on the far side of a vast sea to blame our troubles on. The oppressors reside among us. Indeed, perhaps it can be said that we…

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has devised one of the most hare-brained schemes I’ve ever heard of: spending $10 million to bail out homeowners threatened with foreclosure and help others buy vacant properties. According to Amy Gardner, who reported the story for the Washington Post, Fairfax is “one of the first communities in the…

Jeff Schapiro, the Times-Dispatch‘s preeminent political reporter, has expanded his repertoire from print and PBS radio to video commentary. It’s good to see that the T-D is making progress in melding the resources of its old media newsroom with the new media capabilities of inrich.com. The subject of Schapiro’s commentary is a favorite theme of…

Virginia does do a few things right. One of them is helping welfare recipients get back to work. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has ranked Virginia highest in the nation for job entry rates for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients in 2005 and 2006, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has announced.”…

You know it’s a slow summer news day when Scott Leake’s Virginia State Republican Caucus “News Clips” newsletter contains only five stories — and one of those is an editorial in the Bristol Herald Courier calling for tougher laws against negligent dog owners. With my usual wells of ignorance and foolishness running dry, I am…

Virginia’s economy and housing sector will remain sluggish for the rest of 2008 but the state’s economic performance should pick up in 2009, forecasts Chmura Economics & Analytics in a study commissioned by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. While the state economy will slow, Virginia should skate past a recession, the report concludes.…

Last year HB 3202 made the Hampton Roads Transit Authority (HRTA) a political sub-division of the Commonwealth. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled unanimously that this new Regional Government was un-constitutional. This year some Republicans want to make the Hampton Roads Metropolitan Planning Organization the new Regional Government. HB 6055 provides a shell fund and the…