The Jefferson Journal

Commentary

Jefferson Forum
April 26, 2017

Senior Judge Stephen Williams, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, wrote on April 11, 2017, that an EPA rule governing air releases of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide from animal waste storage must be reported to state and local authorities. (This rule was finalized in December, 2008.) The...

Jefferson Forum
April 26, 2017

My in-box these days is flooded by commentaries and studies dealing with our autonomous vehicles (AV) future. It’s hard to keep up, but three recent items struck me as particularly interesting. The first was from Scientific American, “How Pedestrians Will Defeat Autonomous Vehicles,” by Karinna Hurley. She summarizes a recent...

Jefferson Forum
April 12, 2017
The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors voted Monday to approve a $78 million plan to make the university a leader in “intelligent infrastructure.” The term encompasses everything from self-driving cars and drones to smart construction and energy systems — areas, in the words of President Tim Sands, that are “related...
Leonard Pulley
April 12, 2017
Most consumers of electricity in Virginia are unaware that their electric market is deregulated and therefore have the option to purchase power competitively. However, in many ways, the market is “deregulated” in name only....
Bob Poole
April 12, 2017
Anticipation that the Trump Administration's trillion-dollar infrastructure plan will be based largely on long-term public-private partnerships (P3s) has led to a number of attacks on the P3 concept, most of which either fail to understand what it is or deliberately misrepresent it....
Jefferson Forum
April 12, 2017
Mark March 28, 2017, on your calendar. The USDA and the U.S. EPA have been engaged in an epic dispute regarding the use of chlorpyrifos. The insecticide is used on at least 40,000 farms in the U.S. and on 50 different types of crops. If you read The New York...
Jefferson Forum
April 12, 2017
Coal-fired power plant scrubbers now remove 80-90 % of airborne particulate, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other pollutants. But that means “fly ash” and noncombustible residues (what we used to call clinkers) must be sent to landfills. That’s opened a new front for anti-energy activists, who use accidents, “detectable”...
Christian Braunlich
March 31, 2017

Partisan attacks on judicial nominations and insistence that nominees say how they would vote on an issue before even hearing the facts don’t serve the American people well. Isn’t it time for a truce?

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Mike Thompson
March 30, 2017

Ed Gillespie, one of the candidates running for Governor this year, has proposed a major tax cut that makes a lot of sense. Its key provisions would cut individual income taxes by 10 percent across the board over a three year period, and would accelerate reform of an antiquated system...

Mike Thompson
March 30, 2017

Key provisions of Ed Gillespie’s proposal for major tax reform includes cutting individual income taxes by ten percent across the board over a three year period, and accelerating reform of an antiquated system of local business taxes that now depresses economic growth and job formation. The proposal makes a lot...