Press

Jefferson Forum
December 30, 2015

A recent news article in The Wall Street Journal included this provocative sentence: “Some of the features being added to trucks are similar to those in cars, but generally the move to autonomy in commercial and industrial vehicles is far ahead of the autonomous systems offered on most passenger vehicles.”...

Jefferson Forum
December 30, 2015

Many American’s, including presidential candidates from major political parties, have suggested we have a National Convention to amend the U.S. Constitution, most for the purpose of passing a balanced budget amendment. I must admit at times I thought that would be a good idea, but then, like Sen. Marco Rubio...

Jefferson Forum
December 30, 2015

Why does Virginia have the highest rate of referring school children to police? A report last April by the Center on Public Integrity, using U.S. Department of Education data, demonstrated that Virginia schools referred students to law enforcement at a rate nearly three times higher than the national average. And...

Mike Thompson
December 18, 2015

Once again, the financial numbers from the hospital industry show that it is doing very well overall. Close to 80% of the hospitals in our state are profitable. The number of hospitals running operating deficits has decreased each of the last three years. And the numbers laid out in our...

Jefferson Forum
December 16, 2015

Once again, the financial numbers from the hospital industry show that it is doing very well overall. Close to 80% of the hospitals in our state are profitable. The number of hospitals running operating deficits have decreased each of the last three years.  Our study last month showed that the hospitals...

Jefferson Forum
December 16, 2015

The revolution in online education continues. It’s just taking longer than it should. Two years ago, the Georgia Institute of Technology partnered with Udacity, a company that runs massively open online courses (MOOCs) and ATT to launch an online masters degree in computer science charging a fraction the cost per...

Jefferson Forum
December 16, 2015

“We find no evidence that legislated U.S. smoking bans were associated with short term reductions in hospital admissions for [heart attack] acute myocardial infarction or other diseases in the elderly, children or working-age adults.” This startling conclusion comes from four authors in the Congressional Budget Office, RAND Corporation, Center for...

Jefferson Forum
December 16, 2015

Much of today’s urban transportation planning focuses on transit and “smart growth.” According to this set of ideas, suburbanization (aka “sprawl”) is bad and should be discouraged, while higher density is good and should be increased, so that “we can get people out of their cars” and do other good...

Jefferson Forum
December 16, 2015

The recent Paris climate talks became frenzied, as delegates desperately tried to salvage an agreement beyond empty promises to do something sometime about what President Obama insists is the gravest threat to our planet, national security and future generations. Determined for once to lead from upfront, he took a 500-person...

Mike Thompson
December 14, 2015

The most recent financial numbers posted on the Virginia Hospital information website show that hospitals overall are doing very well. The combined profit of the reporting hospitals was $1.9 billion, an 8.6 percent increase year-over-year — $150 million more than a year earlier.

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