As our state’s General Assembly debates whether to expand the taxpayers’ financed Medicaid to an additional 400,000 of our citizens, we should step back and see what can be done today to reform the current program and help many of those folks who do not have health insurance.There are ways...
Conventional political wisdom says Republicans are not interested in the environment. After four years as Governor, a look at Bob McDonnell’s environmental record might suggest otherwise. When I was selected for the job, Governor McDonnell outlined several priorities for Natural Resources. First, he wanted to continue our efforts to improve...
Eleven years ago NASCAR racer Jerry Nadeau was blazing hot on the Richmond Raceway… until he barreled into a turn and smashed into a concrete wall. The wreck registered at 121 times the force of gravity — three to six times the force that had sent other NASCAR drivers to...
I’ve received several queries about a Nov. 21st front-page story in the Wall Street Journal about financial difficulties at a number of U.S. toll-concession projects. Besides noting the bankruptcies of the South Bay Expressway in San Diego, Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway, and American Roads (a holding company for the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel...
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth 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. This part discusses changes to the Standards of Learning upgrading to college-and career-ready standards and moving beyond...
To keep its economy moving, Virginia will need more than two million new workers in the next ten years, but there are only 1.5 million bodies in the pipeline. Why not encourage, rather than discourage, qualified students to pursue a better education, a higher-paying job, and stay in Virginia?
... Language used in the “immigration wars” has been rough. One American leader claimed that incoming immigrants were too stupid to learn English and represented a political threat to America, noting that the newcomers “will soon so outnumber us” that “even our Government will become precarious.” And he complained of the...
Next time you hear about the rising cost of a college education and the amount of debt students carry upon graduation, remember the Mason Inn. George Mason University, a Virginia state university located in Fairfax, suffered $11 million in losses on a $54 million investment in the on-campus hotel and...
So, what’s the alternative to expanding Virginia’s Medicaid program? Let an estimated 400,000 Virginians continue without health insurance? That option was workable in the past because the federal government gave financial aid to hospitals to help offset some of the cost of providing health care to indigent patients. But the...
“There ought to be a law,” is not a phrase that slips easily from my keyboard. Generally, I think there are far too many laws and, particularly, too many new laws. Old laws that have long outlived any usefulness are too seldom revisited and removed from the statute books. At...
