Category: Uncategorized
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The Wacky World of Private Space Firms
By Peter Galuszka The spectacular explosion on the evening of Oct. 28 of an Orbital Sciences Corporation rocket at Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia raises safety questions about the rush to commercialize space launches. The Antares rocket with a Cygnus cargo shipment had been bound for the International Space Station but the…
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Sticking it to the Chinese
By Peter Galuszka This is a review of “Factory Man,” a book about the Virginia furniture business and dealing with the inequities of Chinese trade by Beth Macy (Little Brown, 451 pages). This was first published in the October 2014 Bulletin of the Overseas Press Club of America in New York of which I am…
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Why Virginia Has No Renewable Energy
By Peter Galuszka For all the hew and cry over renewable energy sources and the “War on Coal,” it is extremely interesting to see just how much progress Virginia has made with renewable energy. The answer: hardly any to none. A moment of clarity came when I was perusing blog postings by IvyMain, a D.C.…
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Brat’s Strange Immigrant-Bashing
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in Business and Economy, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Electoral process, Federal issues, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Labor and Workforce, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka It must have been an interesting scene. Congressional candidate David Brat had been invited to a meeting of the Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce along with his Democratic rival Jack Trammell to outline his views on immigration and undocumented aliens. Brat, an obscure economics professor who nailed powerhouse Eric Cantor in a…
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Could Surry Be an 80-Year Nuke?
By Peter Galuszka Here’s a new twist on the carbon emission debate: Dominion Virginia Power is considering seeking federal approval run its 40-plus year-old Surry nuclear power station for another 40 or so years. The arguments in favor are that keeping the two-units at Surry (1,600 megawatts) going would be a lot cheaper than building…
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More Coal Industry Propaganda
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By Peter Galuszka If you read a blog posting just below this (the one with the coal miner with an intense look on his grit-covered face), you will see how hyperbole, confusion, misunderstanding, ignorance and one-sided arguments twist something very important to all Virginians – how to deal with carbon dioxide and climate change –…
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The Forbidden City Comes to Virginia
By Peter Galuszka The Forbidden City has come to Virginia and it’s definitely worth a look. Rarely-seen works from the Palace Museum in Beijing’s Forbidden City, the imperial residence of Chinese emperors from the Ming to the end of the Qing Dynasty (roughly from about 1406 to 1912) go on display tomorrow at the Virginia…
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Why We’re Being Railroaded On “STEM”
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in Business and Economy, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka When it comes to education, a constant mantra chanted by the Virginia chattering class is “STEM.” How many times have you heard that our students are far behind in “STEM” (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics)? We have to drain funding from more traditional areas of study (that actually might make them better…
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Zydeco Comes to Richmond
Another reason why I love this town: The Richmond Folk Festival. When my wife and I arrived in downtown Richmond last night, an infectiously fun Dominican merengue band was playing, and I wondered how the final act could possibly top it. I need not have worried — the final act was Dwayne Dopsie &…
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“The Icy Elegance of Arthur Ashe”
By Peter Galuszka Arthur Ashe is one of the finest athletes Virginia ever produced and is well known for his work in social and social justice. There have been been many books written about him, including his autobiography, but here’s one of the latest, written by a professor at Georgia Southern University. Here’s a book…
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Good Ruling on Congressional Redistricting
By Peter Galuszka A panel of federal judges in Richmond has scrambled the carefully laid plans of legislators, most of them Republicans, to pack African-American voters into one congressional district to give the GOP an advantage in some of the state’s 10 other districts. The panel of U.S. District Court judges decreed that the General…
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Petersburg’s Renaissance
By Peter Galuszka Petersburg has been a special place for me. Years ago, when I’d pass through, I always felt I were driving onto the set of a 1950s or 1960s movie set in the South such as “Cape Fear” starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. A somnambulant ease pervades the place as does the…
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Et Tu, McAuliffe?
By Peter Galuszka Sure, parents want to help their children but in the case of former State Sen. Phillip Puckett, it is getting ridiculous. And the latest disclosure in this morning’s Washington Post makes the Terry McAuliffe administration look just as sleazy as their Republican counterparts. Puckett, of course was a Democratic senator who held…
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Hope for the Burbs
by James A. Bacon While urbanists trumpet the resurrection of America’s core cities, the nation’s inner suburbs are seeing a lot of action, too. In fact, the transformation of the burbs may be more radical. While cities are seeing more of the same — gentrification that restores decaying neighborhoods, in-fill development looking a lot like the…
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Retrofitting Suburbia — Henrico Edition
by James A. Bacon Regency Square Mall, a failing, 39-year-old shopping mall in the heart of the prosperous “West End” of Henrico County, is expected to go up for sale by year’s end. While the sale likely will prove distressing to bond holders — nearly $70 million in loans are 70% secured by the mall,…