Tag: University of Virginia
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McAuliffe’s Ethics End Run
By Peter Galuszka Kudos to Terry McAuliffe. Virginia’s new governor has taken strong and important steps to force the state into much needed ethics reform by issuing an executive order setting a gift acceptance cap of $100 for himself, his staff and members of state agencies. He’s also allocating $100,000 to set up a state…
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Drinking Water and the “War on Coal”
By Peter Galuszka It’s curious against whom the “War on Coal” really is. You might ask the 300,000 residents of Charleston, W.Va. who are being trucked emergency bottles of water because the spill of a toxic chemical used to help prepare coal has polluted their drinking water. As many as 5,000 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol…
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Cuccinelli, the NSA and the Pentagon Papers
By Peter Galuszka Tomorrow, Kenneth Cuccinelli leaves office after an intriguing run as attorney general and as a failed Republican gubernatorial candidate. Say what you want about him (I certainly have) but Cuccinelli can never be accused of being boring. So, it seems especially remarkable that his first task after leaving office will be to…
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A Toothless Ethics Proposal (No Surprise)
By Peter Galuszka Virginia finally seems on a path toward toughening its ethics rules after the Giftgate scandal involving Gov. Robert F. McDonnell. but — predictably — the deal reached by the two parties is toothless. The arrangement proposed by a bipartisan group within the General Assembly would cap gifts to officials and their families…
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Renewable Portfolio Standards: To Mandate or Not to Mandate?
This blog posting represents the first in a debate series developed by authors of Bacon’s Rebellion and Blue Virginia on actions that Virginians can take to address climate change. All articles will be simultaneously posted on both blogs. Introduction. Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) are laws or regulations designed to increase the percentage of energy…
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Where the Poor Are
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka With expanding Medicaid about to become a major issue with the incoming Terry McAuliffe administration, it is curious to see exactly where the poor people in Virginia live. An intriguing New York Times interactive graph provides clues and allows one to draw some rather disturbing conclusions. The single worst pocket of poverty…
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Maureen, Bob, Ken, Jonnie and the FDA
By Peter Galuszka Here it is, the New Year, and we’re still facing news about Robert and Maureen McDonnell and Star Scientific — last year’s biggest political story. The news is puzzling. It turns out that the dietary supplements Maureen McDonnell was pushing more than two years ago for Jonnie R. Williams Sr., former head…
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Redneck Chic
By Peter Galuszka One of this country’s most popular past times is the constant spinning and re-spinning of cultural stereotypes for profit. I’ve actually only seen snippets of “Duck Dynasty” and have noted the cheap goods on sale under its brand in convenience stores. But it fits the bill. The supposed patriarch of the A&E…
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How Shanghai, Finland and Canada Teach
By Peter Galuszka Not one to be carried away by the STEM craze, I did find it fascinating in today’s editorial page of the New York Times that the United States is way low on the totem pole on math scores for students. We’re below Latvia, Russia and Spain and a little above Sweden, Israel…
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Behind a Massey Energy Lawsuit Settlement
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Money in politics, Politics, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka It might have otherwise gone unnoticed, but Bristol-based Alpha Natural Resources, one of the country’s largest coal companies, has agreed to settle a leftover securities fraud lawsuit for $265 million involving Massey Energy Co., the notorious, formerly Richmond-based firm that Alpha bought in 2011. The settlement with the Pension Reserves Investment Management…
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Mental Health: McDonnell’s Small Gesture
By Peter Galuszka It seems so little so late. Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, apparently trying to get some 11th hour positive spin, has announced that he wants to put $38.3 million over two years to improve the state’s mental health system. He also wants to expand the amount of time an individual can be held…
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The Zany, Crazy Cold War Days Return
“Give me back the Berlin wall give me Stalin and St Paul I’ve seen the future, brother: it is murder.” Leonard Cohen By Peter Galuszka The other night I watched Dr. Strangelove, one of my favorite movies. Then I read the headlines. China is cracking down on U.S. journalists, especially those representing The New York…
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The Man Who Changed Dominion Virginia Power
by Peter Galuszka Back in the 1970s, Virginia Electric & Power Co. was a mess. Its corporate culture was insular and hostile to public input. Its troubled nuclear reactors at North Anna and Surry had major design and safety problems. Their constant outages and big fines brought on the wary eyes of Wall Street. Back…
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Rise Up and Strike, Abused Adjunct Profs!
By Peter Galuszka Despite the common view on this blog that college professors are lazy, closed-minded louts always out on sabbatical, the reality may be something quite different. Cash-strapped colleges across in the country, and in Virginia, are relying increasingly on low-paid adjunct professors to close the gap, especially when they increase the number of…
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ObamaCare: Sound Idea, Bad Private Contractors
By Peter Galuszka With all the bloviating one reads about the introductory failures of ObamaCare, a big, big point is being missed. It could very well be that the concept of ObamaCare is viable if not admirable, but the government badly bungled how it hired an under-performing, private lead contractor for the system. That raises…