In the December 5th edition of the Jefferson Policy Journal I told you about the Pew Commission’s report condemning large-scale livestock farms. The report is called, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America. I thought it might be important for you to know the credentials of...
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series reprinting the Virginia Board of Education’s SOL history published in the 2013 Annual Report on the Conditions and Needs of Public Schools in Virginia. Part I focused on the origins of SOL reform and creation of a system of support under...
Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears,” declared a recent front page headline in the New York Times. The event that served as the catalyst for this article was the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide reaching 400 parts per million (ppm), up from 288 ppm or by 39% since the dawn...
Virginia is faced with a serious problem as are all states: the aging population requires us all to figure out how to handle the “costs” that this is going to bring to government and personal budgets. Long Term Care is one of the more important problems facing all families as...
Mention “computer science” to a large swath of people, and they’ll think of Sheldon and Leonard, the two science geek characters in TV’s Big Bang Theory. But nothing could be further from the truth. Rather than confined simply to information technology companies, those with computer science skills are in high...
If you were out shopping this past Black Friday weekend, you probably noticed that the stores were packed. The holiday shopping season, traditionally considered to be between Thanksgiving and Christmas, is a key time for retailers because they can generate up to 40 percent of annual sales. How will retailers...
(Editor’s Note: Virginia Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe campaigned on a pledge to radically “reform the SOLs” – Virginia’s Standards of Learning and their accompanying tests. As the General Assembly and the Commonwealth’s opinion leaders begin that discussion it is critically important that we look at why the SOL program began, how...
“The present system of producing food animals in the United States is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health and damage to the environment, as well as unnecessary harm to the animals we raise for food.” In other words, concentrated animal feeding operations should be...
George Allen and Standards of Learning reform. Jim Gilmore and car tax reduction. Bob McDonnell and transportation reform. That’s what we remember. So what does Governor-elect McAuliffe want to be remembered for when he walks out of the office? How about reforming K-12 education through “Weighted Student Funding?” This is...
If one assumes that Ferris Bueller was a second semester senior in the 1986 classic comedy hit “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, today he would be 44 or 45. While Ferris would have never voted for Ronald Reagan, he was a child of the times as we all are children of...
