The Jefferson Journal

Commentary

Jefferson Forum
November 1, 2017

Every year at the state and local level of government, budget debates include funding issues surrounding our K-12 public schools. Teacher salaries and class size are usually the focus, and competing comparisons compensation and limited budget dollars are always at issue. But rarely do we discuss one of the on-going...

Jefferson Forum
November 1, 2017

Cities and counties across the United States are experiencing chronic fiscal stress, and the reason has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats and everything to do with what Chuck Marohn calls the “growth Ponzi scheme.” “Why are cities going broke?” he asked at a forum hosted by the Partnership...

Jefferson Forum
November 1, 2017
In response to the U.S. Senate passing a budget for the next fiscal year, which includes reconciliation instructions to cut taxes, the U.S. House of Representatives will now proceed to the process of crafting tax legislation....
Jefferson Forum
November 1, 2017
Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a Washington, D.C. think tank, sent a letter last week to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt which was signed by 60 climate and health experts. It requested EPA to review its “Endangerment Finding” which EPA uses to claim greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are...
Jefferson Forum
November 1, 2017

As the Affordable Care Act came into effect, many discussions took place as to whether certain health plans would be considered “Cadillac” plans, subjecting their sponsors to an excise tax because of too generous benefits. However, due to “subrogation” provisions, which enable a plan to gobble-up any personal injury award...

Mike Thompson
October 18, 2017
Most liberal-left activists simply cannot support tax cuts. They can’t help it. It is in their DNA. They firmly believe that money spent by government is always better than money spent by taxpayers. They don’t understand that more money in the taxpayers’ pocket means more money spent on shoes, movie...
Jefferson Forum
October 18, 2017

( This article is responded to by John Butcher in the next column.) Maybe it’s time for Virginia to scrap the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests. The SOLs arose in the mid-1990s as a way to provide feedback to the community on how well local schools were performing. It was...

Jefferson Forum
October 18, 2017
SOL Results Have Guided Home Purchase Decisions, With the Effect of Harming Low-Performing Schools...
Jefferson Forum
October 18, 2017

Everyone in high school is taught about the low water mark in yellow journalism — Remember the Maine. We are taught that the era of “yellow journalism” died with the rise of editorial standards in the 1930s and 1940s in the wake of FDR and the master propagandists of the...

Jefferson Forum
October 18, 2017
Most people probably wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that employment at online retailers or internet publishing and web search portal firms grew at a double-digit annual average pace over the last 10 years ending with 2016....