(Editor’s note: If high speed rail can work in Florida without government subsidy, maybe we can do the same here in Virginia under the right circumstances.) As regular readers of this newsletter will recall, I have been generally supportive of the effort by a division of the company that owns...
In an op-ed about the Obama administration’s pending regulation of greenhouse gases from coal-fired electricity plants, Paul Krugman recently declared in his New York Times column that: The international community will join together to curtail greenhouse gases if only the U.S. would do so. The regulatory costs of “saving the...
Guaranteeing the future of American air superiority is a task that extends well beyond the five walls of the Pentagon. In fact, we in Virginia have an important part to play. This is certainly the case with the futuristic and important new F-35 Lighting II stealth fighter currently under development....
Each year, Virginia shoppers seeking back-to-school bargains have an added incentive to make those purchases during the back to school tax-free holiday leading up to the beginning of the school year. This year, it occurred this past weekend, August 1-3. The bitter irony about that isolated weekend is its status...
(The first part of this article was run in the last issue of the Jefferson Policy Journal here.) On March 30, 2012, Virginia’s Secretary of Natural Resources submitted Phase II of Virginia’s Watershed Implementation Plan. “The Phase II WIP supplements the Phase I WIP and the activities already implemented in...
When high-spending politicians are plunging our children deeper and deeper into debt and when government regulations and taxes are strangling our businesses, driving them overseas, why are so many good conservatives wasting time and resources circling the Export-Import Bank like a pack of wolves hungry to kill it? Why are...
Weeks after the release of the “Special Review of the U.S. Route 460 Corridor Improvements Project,” submitted last month to Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne, important questions remain about how the Commonwealth could have paid $250 million to US Mobility Partners, the design-build contractor on the $1.4 billion project, and run up...
Ten years ago Virginia started down the road of lifting the federal government’s moratorium on offshore drilling. Late last week, the Obama Administration announced it was going to allow seismic testing off the Atlantic coast so that energy companies could use updated technology to determine just how much oil and...
Cover crops, Virginia says, “…comes at considerable expense to agricultural producers…” Virginia’s WIP (Watershed Implementation Plan) wants cover crops on 10% of available cropland. Financial incentive programs will be available. Virginia’s WIP claims there are approximately 27,000 farms in Virginia managing approximately 1.5 million cattle. Virginia officials state “Achieving livestock...
State DOT’s are planning cutbacks in various projects as the Federal Highway Administration begins reducing reimbursement payments next month to a level that can be sustained by existing federal highway funding sources. Just to cover existing contractual obligations through Dec. 31st of this year would require an additional $8 billion,...
