If you’ve ever spent time with a couple of economists, you may walk away thinking they never agree and enjoy criticizing each other’s models and assumptions. After spending a few days with over 300 economists at the National Association for Business Economics conference last week, I walked away with a...
Imagine this: A regime of rising carbon taxes and tightening emission allowances extending from Virginia’s Cumberland Gap to the Canadian maritime coastline. It covers coal, natural gas, gasoline, diesel fuel, fuel oil, compressed natural gas, wood and biomass fuel, in all the various ways they are now used. If energy...
By Lindsey M. BurkeAlthough he is facing steep opposition from the school board in the city, Green has mobilized parents around Richmond who are supportive of his fight to bring more quality education options to an area that desperately needs them. That fight may not be easy, however. Jason Kamras,...
Earlier this month, EPA’s Administrator and the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works announced their agencies were repealing the Obama Administration’s 2015 promulgated rule – the one that a number of agriculture associations had accused the Obama Administration of impermissibly expanding the definition of Waters of the United...
Virginia stopped being a red state a decade or two ago.Despite a Democratic sweep of all statewide elections (U.S. senators, governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general), one could maintain the pretense that Virginia is a “purple” state thanks to a Republican-dominated General Assembly. But it has been long apparent that...
Call them the Secretary of Finance’s worry beads. It is easy to imagine Aubrey Layne putting his fingers on one bead on the strand after another as he asks the economic powers outside his control to smile on Virginia and avert any recession (or even a hiccough) that would slice...
More than 300,000 Virginians have something today they didn’t have last year — health insurance through Medicaid, observes Virginia Public Radio. What they don’t have is a primary care physician. Many are still seeking primary care treatment at hospital emergency rooms. Admissions to the emergency room of Norfolk General Hospital...
During the Q&A at a presentation I gave in June, a questioner cited $40 tolls on the I-66 (inside the Beltway) high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes as an example of what driving would be like if tolling were more widely used. I had to explain to the largely non-Virginia audience why...
The jobless rate is at historic lows and certainly is an important economic barometer. But looking at the labor force participation rate might be a more telling story. That rate, which calculates the number of people employed or unemployed looking for work as a percentage of the total adult working-age...
Virginia is poised to become the eleventh state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a regional compact created to limit CO2 emissions from large electricity plants. Although emissions are already declining, the compact would be financed with a carbon tax to be paid by consumers in the form of...
