Before I could enjoy a movie last week, I was forced to endure five minutes of climate and weather fear-mongering, when the theater previewed Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Sequel.” His attempt to pin every weather disaster of the past decade on humanity’s fossil fuel use felt like fifty minutes of water...
While activists and politicians, and even world governments, debate over how to stop global warming and defeat climate change, the solutions to reducing humankind’s impact already exist in the private sector. Technologies now exist, or are on the cusp of first commercialization, to gasify coal and even coal ash cleanly;...
With students packing up to go back to college this month with declared or undeclared majors, it’s a good time to consider the fields that graduating students are going into and whether they match up with the skills businesses need. From 2010 to 2016, students with a degree in computer...
How do Virginia’s public higher-ed institutions rate on the goals established in the 2005 Restructuring Act and embedded in state code? The data is incomplete. This is the fourth of four articles exploring higher-education accountability in Virginia since enactment of the 2005 “Restructuring Higher Education Financial and Administrative Services Act.”...
Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued an opinion regarding biofuels. Jim Lane of Biofuels Digest claimed “…it [court decision] was the biggest victory in the courts for biofuels, ever.” The decision is 85 pages. The dispute arose when EPA did not publish sufficient volumetric...
Back in May, Pat Jones, CEO of the International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association issued the following statement: “Giving states flexibility to toll their Interstates for the purpose of reconstruction is consistent with two principles outlined in Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s recent testimony before the Senate EPW Committee: long-term reform...
The Roanoke region needs more health care availability according to Carilion, the area’s mega hospital. It now recognizes a problem that other health care providers have long known – the Roanoke area is underserved and has inadequate access to many important health care services. And, of course, Carilion wants to...
President Trump last week endorsed legislation introduced by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Representative David Perdue (R-GA) that would reform legal immigration in America through a “merit-based” system and slash immigration based on family ties – for a 41 percent reduction in legal immigration the first year alone. They’ve got...
The General Assembly enacted the 2005 Restructuring Act with the idea of holding public universities accountable to a set of performance metrics. Many measures have fallen by the wayside. This is the third of four articles exploring higher-education accountability in Virginia since enactment of the 2005 “Restructuring Higher Education Financial...
Here are two recent headlines about efforts to begin the transition to paying for highways based on miles driven rather than gallons of fuel: “Senate Votes to Prohibit Mileage Tax,” Connecticut Post, May 25, 2017 “States Considering Taxing Drivers by the Mile Despite Privacy Concerns,” Politico, June 8, 2017 Both...
