Not EVERYONE who works for MainStream Media is conspiring to increase the rate of consumption. Check out “Greed In the Name of Green: To Worshipers of Consumption: Spending Won’t Save the Earth.” It is a very good item by “Washington Post Staff Writer” Monica Hesse that ran in the Style section of 5 March issue…

This news has come in from Dominion Virginia Power… Dominion has started enrolling customers for the first of its nine energy-conservation pilot programs: the PowerCost Monitor. Sensors installed on home meters will send wireless signals to in-home displays estimating how much is being spent on electricity at any given time. The 1,000 residential customers in…

As Prince William County starts checking on the immigration status of criminal suspects, a team of sociologists and criminologists from Virginia universities will be watching. As reported by the Washington Post, the team will ask, “How does a community change when its police officers start checking citizenship?” The team will analyze everything from police records…

Well, the Bacon family is back from Jackson Hole, one of the most wonderful spots on the face of the planet. My wife and son enjoyed loads of skiing, while I got to work out and read. No skiing for me, though. I remain as determined as ever to stay off the slopes. You can’t…

In the comments on the 9 March AFFORDABLE AND ACCESSIBLE HOUSING – FROM BAD TO WORSE post, you made several comments to which we wanted to add a note: First, thank you for using ‘New Urban Region’ and ‘NUR’ in your comment. By using the comprehensive geographic scope implied by use of NUR you made…

At the request of several readers from Greater Charlottesville / Albemarle, we are posting this clarification: Back on 18 February Jim Bacons posted “Bus Rapid Transit Studied for Charlottesville.” We agree with Jim’s comments about the need for an authoritative analysis and who should pay for any shared-vehicle system. Given our experience with shared-vehicle systems…

In our latest Agree to Disagree column, Thad Williamson and I don’t disagree about much when it comes to the Richmond mayor’s race. Barring a huge change in existing conditions, this is Doug Wilder’s race to lose. Should he decide to run again, that is. And that is really the question: will Doug run again?…

Talk about history and Karma. Buried in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch is a column by librarian Larry Hall who recollects a horrible tale of power elite racism at William & Mary, the nation’s second oldest university that proponents love to dress up in fluffy history and the usual Rights of Man blather. Hall’s engrossing tale involves…

OK, I will admit it. I posted on this topic (See “Sub-Prime Lending and the Slums of Tomorrow” 21 Feb 2008) and committed a sin of which I have accused others. I posted without reading the Leinberger article in Atlantic “The Next Slum?” Since Jim Bacon’s original post went into the archives, I downloaded the…

The comments on settlement patterns and housing are going on and on with good comments but several sub-threads make it hard to follow. We need Jim Bacon back to keep enough topics on the table so that the comments stay at a manageable number. We will jump in later to try to answer some of…

We have not addressed the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis in some time, however, the last few days headlines suggest it is going from bad to worse. The front page feature in Sunday’s WaPo spotlighted the convergence of bad Agency policies, programs and controls that have created a crisis in the Federal District. (“Forced Out:…

Groveton travels a lot, observes a lot and offers a number of good perspectives. On 6:09 PM 6 March in a comment on Jim Bacon’s post “Virginia’s Nuclear Power Cluster Just got Bigger, Groveton noted: “4. In the early part of America’s history Virginia was the most populous colony / state. It was an economic,…

Welcome the newest player to Virginia’s nuclear industry cluster: Toshiba America Nuclear Power. The newly formed company has set up shop in Alexandria with the mission of marketing and promoting advanced boiling water (ABWR) nuclear power plants and providing support for related services. As the business develops, Toshiba plans to expand U.S. operations to provide…

Robert Reich, currently professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley has written another book. This one is titled Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business Democracy and Everyday Life. Supercapitalism is an important book and should be widely read. In particular, it should be read by Bacon’s Rebellion columnists and those who post and…

Over at The Caucus, they’re talking about making the federal government more transparent using new technology. Whether our betters in DC will ever allow more sunlight to shine on their work remains doubtful: …Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation, which pushes for more government transparency, said the White House site is mostly full of P.R.-friendly…