The Jefferson Journal
Commentary
Virginia gained only 12,900 jobs in 2014, or a 0.3 percent increase from the previous year. That increase was the worst year-over-year performance the state has had since 2010, when it shrunk by 4,800 jobs in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The meager employment growth in Virginia last year...
We continually hear about an “infrastructure crisis” in the United States, a malady from which Virginia has not been spared. Talk of pot-holed streets, tottering bridges and crumbling highways invariably moves to talk about the need to spend more on infrastructure, which morphs into raising taxes — never by talk about paring...
(Editor’s note: This article from Watchdog.org’s Virginia Bureau on February 17th is reprinted because the idea that legislation needs to be passed to make sure the transportation funding’s top priority is congestion relief speaks volumes about what is wrong with government. This article highlights this legislation pending in the General...
In late January six environmental groups filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia claiming that EPA violated their rights by not responding to a 2011 petition to regulate ammonia as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The environmentalists request that EPA be found in violation...
They say politics makes strange bedfellows. In a perfect example, U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) are cosponsoring the “Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act,” to abolish the corn ethanol Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires that increasing volumes of this biofuel be blended into gasoline. Let’s hope...
In 2013, the Virginia Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit (EISTC) finally cleared all the hurdles to become the Commonwealth’s best mechanism for creating new opportunities for educationally at-risk students. So, two years later, last week’s celebration of National School Choice Week was an ideal time to examine the effects of...
When I joined the nursing profession 6 years ago, I made it my goal to provide the best health care possible to all of my patients. And part of that care is to ensure that my patients and their families have access to necessary medical services when they need it....
One of the perennial arguments raised against long-term public-private partnerships (P3s) for transportation infrastructure is that the financing cost will be higher, because revenue bonds issued by the private sector carry higher interest rates, since the interest on those bonds is taxable. If the same project were carried out by...
The majority of newly elected members of Congress are men and women who ran and won in direct opposition to President Obama’s policies. But there is more to their victory than a triumph over liberal policies. The 2014 election also represents a repudiation of an attitude and style of governance...
In 2013, the Virginia Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit (EISTC) finally cleared all the hurdles to become the Commonwealth’s best mechanism for creating new opportunities for educationally at-risk students. So, two years later, National School Choice Week (January 23-31) seems an ideal time to examine the effects of that law,...