Category Archives: Environment

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Posted in 2012, Economy, Energy, Environment

Tagged James A. Bacon

Clarity Amid Blather on Dulles Rail

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 30 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

It has always been supremely puzzling to me why this blog has taken such a strident and shrill anti-union attitude. The shining example is the smear campaign against project labor agreements (PLAs) and Phase Two of the Silver Line of Metro to Dulles airport. The attacks extend to attempts to liquidate personally Dennis L. Martire, a union leader and member of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, whose crimes against the people I cannot understand.

This McCarthy-esque anti-union campaign has become dogma among the harder right Republicans in Virginia. It’s as if we’re standing up and saying there are 50 Communists in the State Department, but no one bothers to ask that the list of names be read because there aren’t any. Ditto the supposed vulnerability of the state’s anti-union Right to Work law, which has been around for decades and is in no serious jeopardy whatsoever.

So, after paddling through all the Bacons Rebellion blather regarding the MWAA and the PLA, I find it refreshing to have a moment of clarity. It comes in today’s Post in a column written by Steve Pearlstein, whose hard-nosed sensibility has caught my eyes before.

Pearstein zeroes in on the all-Republican Loudoun County Board of Supervisors who are throwing big wrenches into long-standing plans to bring public rail transit to Dulles and bring the official airport of the nation’s capital into the 21^st century. Gee, I even lived in the DC area when Dulles was opened in the early 1960s and it still doesn’t have the transit links that most of the major airports of the world have.

Here are some points from Pearlstein’s piece:

Loudoun’s new board is suddenly sticking its nose into something that county officials generally don’t. That is a $5 billion project managed by a regional agency representing three states and dozens of local jurisdictions.
Previous Loudoun boards have long ago committed to Dulles Rail. Only 4.8 percent of the Silver extension and half of the cost of the Loudoun stations and track work are being financed by Loudoun taxpayers.
The point of the PLA is not to kiss Big Labor’s butt, but to get enough skilled workers to do the job. The first PLA on Phase One involved a no-strike pledge and flexibility on work rules, Pearlstein says.
Despite this background in which a functional process was set up and put to work, Associated Builders and Contractors mostly non-union firms, saw some daylight to quash unions as hard right Republicans and Tea Potters can’t strength.
A new deal was hatched. No PLA of sorts, but bidders would get extra points in the bidding competition if they had one. Gov. Robert McDonnell and his Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton seemed OK with this but later went back on it. There’s even a new state law outlawing PLAs in the Dulles project.
Someone hit the “send” button on a new propaganda campaigning about the project’s supposedly exorbitant costs with organized labor somehow responsible. PLAs were alleged to come with a 10 to 15 percent cost markup. In Phase One is was actually about 3 percent for labor and non-labor units, in effect, a wash. Little problems with the facts there.
Despite opponents claims that no one will use the last link of the Silver Line to Dulles, new studies show that residents within a few miles of the stations will likely start using them for their commutes to downtown DC. The added convenience of rail access should be a bump, although limited, to some housing prices.

The vicious anti-union campaign has always left me a bit dumbfounded. It would be one thing is there had been a major and crippling strike in the DC area or anywhere in Virginia, for that matter. The only big strikes that I can remember involved Verizon workers about 12 years ago, Steelworkers at the Newport News Shipyard decades ago and the United Mine Workers of America strike in the mid-1980s. There really hasn’t been anything confrontational in years.

So, why the big attack on labor and Martire and the like? The reason seems to be that the hard right (which may be damning the Romney campaign to the dustbins) has decided that collective bargaining is one the devils it must destroy. We are reeling from barrage after barrage of the evil of labor unions even though Americans have a constitutional right to organize. Unions, which fought for and won better living standards for workers years ago, have been in decline for decades.

Why are they the target? It is somewhat like undocumented aliens. They are an easy target.

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Posted in 2012, Budget, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Finance, Immigration, Infrastructure, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, Planning, Politics, Taxes, The Economy

Who’s Paying for McDonnell’s Happy Talk TV Ads

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 3 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

It’s hard to have your ego dunned.

Yet it’s happened to Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, who, according to the Quinnipiac University, lost five points in a popular poll thanks to his disastrous 2012 General Assembly session that brought the arrests of pro-abortion rights protestors on Capitol ground and a spate of national Bronx cheers on the Daily Show and Saturday Night Live.

McDonnell, anxious to get a VP bid, is paying $400,000 from fat cat political honchos for a series of television ads that are intended to set things right. We’ll see just how “positive” the Virginia is that Bob has developed. Presumably, we’ll see the other good things he has done, such as create jobs and manage our budget responsibly.

Never mind that a lot of those jobs come from Good Ole Uncle Sam who conservatives despise and that much of the budget progress is smoke and mirrors by withdrawing from one fund and putting it in another.

Even state Republicans who should be happy that one of their own is itching for such a high national profile and muttering that they sure could use that $400,000 in various and critically important political races this fall, according to The Washington Post.

Yet some folks, somewhere believe it is really important to make Bob look good just now.

Who are they? Let’s take a look. The $400K is coming from the Opportunity Virginia fund, a PAC for Bob. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, the fund isn’t exactly made up of little people tossing int heir dear dimes and dollars. It is fat cat money.

Some $25,000 comes from John A. Luke Jr., head of MeadWestvaco which recently relocated its headquarters from the Northeast to Richmond. Luke is so arrogant that he refuses to talk to the news media at all. He is former head of the National Manufacturers Association. Another is G. Gilmer Minor, powerman at a firm that distributes health goods in Richmond.

A few of other names at Opportunity Virginia likewise stick out. Smithfield Foods, which has had a lot of environmental issues over the years with its hog operations, gave $25,000. Wal-Mart, now in the middle of a huge bribery scandal in Mexico, gave $25,000. Lastly, Baxter F. Phillips Jr., an executive at coal producer Alpha Natural Resources in Bristol, gave $10,000. Phillips had been CEO of the notorious Massey Energy firm after renegade CEO Don Blankenship was forced to retire in Dec, 2010 and then the firm was acquired by Alpha. Phillips served in top positions for years at Massey, which has been skewered for the way it ran Upper Big Branch coal mine in Montcoal, W.Va. in April 2010 and where 29 miners were killed in a blast that formal reports blame on Massey’s horrendous management.

So as Bob garnishes his image at the expense of his party, it might be worth remembering who is paying for the upbeat TV ads.

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Posted in 2012, Budget, Economy, Energy, Entitlements, Environment, Finance, Media, Money in politics, Politics

Tagged goozeviews

ALEC, the Tea Party and the Feral GOP

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 5 Comments

House Speaker William J. Howell

By Peter Galuszka

Virginia’s conservatives have gone through a spasm of controversy as they struggle to find their message. They desperately need to balance their ideas of fiscal discipline and limited government with a wide spectrum of unrelated hard-right social issues.

The clearest evidence yet of the quandary for their soul involves the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has just backed away from pushing “Stand Your Ground” laws that were involved in the shooting of a young African-American from Florida, Trayvon Martin.

ALEC had been a cozy, four-decades-old group of deep-pocketed corporations and lobbyists that ghostwrote template-style laws for state legislatures around the country to boost the conservative agenda of cutting taxes and government spending and cater to the business community’s desire for few regulations. For a long while, it seemed like a gigantic Chamber of Commerce funded by big corporate names such as Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart and Johnson & Johnson to push business-friendly laws.

But as the Tea Party movement gained steam in 2010, its disparate elements pushed right-wing social issues that ended up alienating many and polarized legislatures, including Virginia’s General Assembly. That spilled over into ALEC, which ended up pushing voter ID laws designed to take voting power away from minorities when there was no real issue over identity fraud and suck up to the gun lobby by pushing the idea that if one feels under attack, he or she may whip out a firearm and blow away an assailant without much legal consequence.

Incredibly, Virginia taxpayers have shelled out $231,000 over the past decade so legislators, mostly Republicans, can go to ALEC confabs and learn what the latest is in conservative designer legislation. A big player is House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford), who, according to The Washington Post, made 60 percent of his publicly funded trips to ALEC meetings.

The unexpected fury over the Trayvon Martin shooting involving a Stand Your Ground law blew everyone’s cover. It had the entire cossetted ALEC world tossed on its head. Firms such as Coca-Cola, Mars, Wendy’s and Kraft, all of which are consumer products firms whose billions debate on a positive public image bailed on ALEC. The constant deluge of the Trayvon shooting was very bad for their business. Now ALEC says it is dumping social issues and sticking to economic ones.

Howell didn’t seem to know what to do. He attacked left-leaning critics such as “ProgressVa” and had the bad taste and judgment to personally insult Anna Scholl, the head of ProgressVA at a press conference, demeaning her intelligence by saying he needed to speak to her only in monosyllables. Howell, usually more stately than that, soon issued a public apology to Scholl.

What’s revealing about Howell’s tantrum, however, is how it shows that mainstream conservatives really don’t know what to do with the social radicals in their movement. For years, they’ve enjoyed the upscale, closed-door demeanor of ALEC meetings until the Tea Party types shook everything up. It was fine, everyday work bashing unions and trying to cut taxes for companies and the rich. Yet they became spooked by what ended up being a weak, ephemeral and loosely organized group that they went freak-out if not totally feral.

Big business interests figured it out faster and with the exceptions of firms such as Wal-Mart, they bailed on ALEC. This shows that a lot of the GOP stalwarts in Virginia and nationally have feet of clay. They are not sure of their agenda, as their unimpressive primary run so far has shown. Locally, they have let social right-wingers hijack this year’s General Assembly with issues that had been decided decades ago, such as women’s right to abortions and gay rights. Real work important to the Commonwealth didn’t get done. Because of the distractions, it took four tries to get a (bad) $85 billion budget passed.

It is time to put the Tea Party in its place and get past it. The Republicans are paying a huge price and will probably lose the presidential election if they continue. Meanwhile, the Democrats, who have stood on the sidelines snickering at the GOP melee, need to get engaged and shut down this social nonsense once and for all.

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Posted in 2012, Abortion, Budget, Children and families, Courts and law, Crime and corrections, Demographics, Economic development, Economy, Education (higher ed), Energy, Entitlements, Environment, Finance, Gay rights, Gun rights, Immigration, Insurance, Labor & workforce, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Taxes, Transportation

Tagged goozeviews

Dulles Rail: “Good Night, John Boy”

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 23 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

The convoluted schemes of Virginia state politicians to avoid paying for rail service to Dulles International Airport are as frustrating as they are self-defeating and unfair.

Just a few days ago, it seemed that the General Assembly would consider adding $300 million to extend Metrorail to Dulles on the Silver Line when the legislature meets to approve an $85 billion budget April 18.

Thanks in part to last minute opposition by Democratic deal-maker State Senator Charles J. Colgan of Prince William County, the $300 million went “puff.” No deal. No money.

The $300 million cut underscores what seems to be Richmond’s ancient philosophy on expanding Dulles Rail: stick as much of the cost as possible on taxpayers and tollpayers in Northern Virginia.

Days after the $300 million in state funds for Dulles Rail disappeared, the Board of Supervisors of Fairfax County confirmed its buy-in for Phase Two of the Dulles Rail project, whose ultimate costs will top $2.7 billion. The county says that while it is looking for alternate funding sources, it may pay up to $965 million for the project. About $730 million – or 80 percent – will be paid for by “voluntary” special tax districts created by landowners.

Once again, Northern Virginia, which provides more state tax revenue than any other region of the Old Dominion, gets stuck with most of the bill for Dulles Rail. That is the criticism of the Coalition for Smarter Growth which was quick to note the bizarre budget cut. They point out that, at the same time, the administration of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell is proposing at least $750 million in state funding for a new superhighway near U.S. 460 in the rural peanut country of Southeast Virginia and diverting $200 million for a controversial bypass in Charlottesville.

It’s hard to fathom why providing Dulles rail with state money is such anathema. The new U.S. 460 tollroad project, for instance, raises many questions. It is being billed as a necessity for Virginia’s economic future since the port of Hampton Roads needs better transportation access to handle bigger, deeper-draft cargo ships when the Panama Canal is expanded in 2014.

Yet, Norfolk Southern railway which serves the port has already finished a $321 million public-private project to raise mountain tunnels to handle more double-stack rail shipments from Hampton Roads to the Midwest. The chief executive of the Panama Canal Authority says that thanks to rail improvements, Hampton Roads is already prepared to handle the expanded trade the canal project will bring. If he’s right, then why is there urgency for the new road?

There have been other peculiar impediments to the state paying for Dulles rail, such as Knee-jerk anti-unionism. Right-wing Atty. Gen. Kenneth Cuccinelli and others are crying foul at any attempt by the airports authority to use the a similar but somewhat tougher project labor agreement that helped move Phase One forward. A more deep-rooted issue is Virginia’s traditional philosophy, dating back to the one-party system of Harry F. Byrd 100 years ago, that public projects must be funded on a “pay as you go” basis.

That might have worked for building a two-lane bridge in bucolic Virginia when TV’s John Boy Walton, attired in bib overalls, might have been around. Today, the fact remains that Washington is the only capital in the advanced industrialized world not to have public rail service to its leading international airport.

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Posted in 2012, Budget, Demographics, Economic development, Economy, Environment, Finance, Infrastructure, Labor & workforce, Transportation

Tagged goozeviews

Closely Watched Trains

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 4 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

A few weeks ago, I was making another trip to the area near Matewan, W.Va., a small, historic town of red brick buildings a stone’s throw across the Tug Fork River from Kentucky. Matewan is noted for its coalfield labor strife caught dramatically in John Sayles superb 1987 movie of the same name and is the locus for part of a book I’ve been researching for the past 18 months.

There isn’t much hotel space available in the Tug Fork Valley. At times, I’ve had to stay dozens of miles away in Eastern Kentucky. When available, I prefer a bed and breakfast right in the middle of Matewan and just steps from where Sid Hatfield, the town police chief, shot it out with rent-a-thugs from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency in 1920 (yes, Big Money was into privatization even then).

Aside from seasonal all-terrain vehicle enthusiasts, the only big noise in Matewan is the Norfolk Southern. The original mainline of the old Norfolk & Western runs just behind the bed and breakfast. First you hear an odd whir, then a diesel horn blast and then your world shakes. Trains run anytime, day and night. It was the route of the fancy red and black Powhatan Arrow passenger train from Norfolk to Cincinnati. Now what you see are endless coal trains and hot shot containers racing their East Coast to Midwest route. Most recently, I have seen jumbo-sized, extra-tall coal hoppers whip past.

What’s the point of this travelogue? The extra-sized cars are the point. Nearly two years ago, Norfolk Southern completed a $321 million project using private and public money to raise tunnels in West Virginia and southwestern Virginia. The low ceilings had forced east-west,double-stack trains to spend an extra day going through Pennsylvania or Tennessee. Not anymore.

In fact, the so-called Heartland Corridor project means that Hampton Roads is uniquely qualified to take advantage of the larger, deeper-drawing container ships that are expected to boost trade when the Panama Canal expansion is completed in a couple of years.

That, at least, is the opinion of Alberto Aleman Zubieta, chief executive officer of the Panama Canal Authority. Zubieta worries, as many do, that U.S.East and Gulf Coast ports just aren’t ready for the new Panama Canal trade, except for Hampton Roads. “Norfolk is ready,” he was quoted as saying. “Rail has been modernized between Norfolk and Chicago; they understand the benefit of getting cargo to its destination.”

So, if Hampton Roads is already the beneficiary of a major rail improvement project that is now ready to handle Panamax cargo, then why all the hullabaloo over a $1.8 billion public-private project to expand U.S. 460? The expansion from Suffolk to Petersburg would relieve clogged Interstate 64 on the other side of the James River and would offer an extra emergency escape route should a major hurricane show up.

But the big reason for the project, enthusiastically backed by Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and his Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton, is that Hampton Roads desperately needs transportation access to handle all the new trade coming with the Panama Canal is expanded.

Yet if you listen to Zubieta, the project is in place. Finito. Even if you wanted to expand distribution and manufacturing centers in Southeastern Virginia, why couldn’t you do it with rail spur lines coming from the NS mainland that neatly parallels the existing U.S. 460? A number of distribution centers already use the rail line, including a Food Lion warehouse near Petersburg.

The road project has lots of problems. Its backers admit that tolls won’t pay for it. Some kind of industrial authority would have to be created with new factory or warehouse owners kicking in payments to make it work.

What about the already existing rail line? Why doesn’t someone bring that up? Doesn’t it make the expensive road project unnecessary? Or is there some under-the-table log-rolling going on that we don’t know about?

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Posted in Economic development, Economy, Energy, Environment, Insurance, Land use & development, Money in politics, The Economy, Transportation

Tagged goozeviews

Studying the Study Group

Posted on April 5, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 2 Comments

Maureen Matsen, deputy secretary of natural resources, and Martin Kent, governor's chief of staff.

by James A. Bacon

The McDonnell administration hosted a hastily assembled meeting yesterday to address, in the words Deputy Sectretary of Natural Resources Maureen Matsen, the “perceived lack of transparency in the conduct of [the] Uranium Working Group.” The meeting was attended by a couple dozen stakeholders, administration officials and members of the press.

If the goal was to appease critics of the governor’s working group, however, the meeting fell flat. The late-afternoon meeting lasted less than an hour, administration officials made few tangible promises, and uranium mining foes said their concerns about openness and transparency remain unresolved.

“They’re trying their best but there’s definitely an arm’s-length [feeling] here,” said Mae Fox, a lobbyist representing the Virginia Coalition, a group of Southside business interests worried by the stigma that uranium mining might give the region.

“It was a very abbreviated meeting,” said Dan Holmes, director of state policy for the Piedmont Environmental Council. “Some of the answers made me feel a little more comfortable [but only] about 30% of the issues got thrown on the table. … How much real discussion can you have with that many parties at the table for an hour?”

A press release from the Roanoke River Basin Association characterized the meeting as a “damage control PR” session called in response to critical articles and op-eds in the media. The RRBA never received an invitation to the meeting. “It is apparent that local citizen groups are being excluded from the discussion. We and many other citizen groups in Southside Virginia and North Carolina are at the ground zero,” said Gene Addesso, RRBA vice president.

McDonnell established the Uranium Working Group (UWG) in January after deciding not to pursue legislation in the 2011 General Assembly session to lift the ban on uranium mining in the state. The group is comprised of staff from the Departments Environmental Quality (DEQ), Health (VDH) and Mines Minerals and Energy (DMME) and supported by outside consultants. Its purpose is to address 18 issues regarding uranium mining safety and regulation listed in a governor’s directive.

According to the UWG’s website, the group will make “regular reports of its progress” at meetings of the Uranium Subcommittee of the Coal and Energy Commission. The four meetings, which will be open to public comment, will address mine permitting issues, water quality, tailings storage, workers health and other issues.

The purpose of the group is to find answers to questions left unanswered by a National Academy Sciences study and to develop a “conceptual statutory and regulatory framework” to assist the General Assembly in making “well informed policy decisions in the future.”

“This is not a rule-making process,” stressed Matsen at the meeting. “It’s just the executive branch trying to bring resources to bear on the issue.” She said the group would make its deliberations “as open and transparent as possible.”

: Cathie France, head of the Uranium Working Group

Cathie France, deputy director for energy policy at DMME and a key staff member of the UWG, said the group’s first question would be: can uranium be mined safely? The group will examine a wide range of data bearing on the short-range and long-range impact. The group would be receptive “to any data you’d like us to consider,” she said.

Interested parties can suggest “anything you want us to look at” by submitting it on the UWG website, said Matsen. “The intent is to get more [information] rather than less,” added Martin Kent, McDonnell’s chief of staff.

Concrete ideas for making the process more transparent included maintaining a ListServ for the purpose of communicating information to stakeholders and posting transcripts of meetings online. “We’ll try to find ways to make [them] accessible statewide,” Kent said.

While those suggestions would improve the administration’s communications to the public, some attendees wanted to ensure that the public had ample opportunity to communicate to the administration.

“The task is going to be huge,” said Fox with the Virginia Coalition. A large number of people are very riled up, she said. She expects public meetings in the Danville/Pittsylvania area, where the Coles Hill uranium deposit is located, will generate broad participation. People are going to want to have their say, and meeting organizers need to ensure that there will be enough time to hear them.

Fox also wants to ensure that stakeholders receive UWG reports in a timely fashion. “It’s difficult to comment on something you’ve just heard. … Is there any chance of seeing materials in advance?”

Holmes, with the Piedmont Environmental Council, has even more fundamental concerns. Citing the information surfaced by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in the Charlottesville Bypass controversy, he said he wants to be assured that the UWG will be subject to FOIA and not exempted as “governor’s working papers.”

The UWG’s final report will be issued December 1, Holmes said. “It’s hard to look at that abbreviated timeline and not be concerned that it’s a set-up for the 2013 legislature.”

This article was made possible by a Piedmont Environmental Council sponsorship.

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Posted in 2012, Economic development, Energy, Environment

Tagged James A. Bacon, uranium

Expanding U.S. 460 and the Chinese Connection

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 4 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

In the past day or so, there’s been a bit of buzz about a decades-old plan to expand the northwest to southeast route U.S. 460 takes through Virginia’s peanut country on its way to Tidewater. This latest bit of boosterism posits that giant ships inbound to Virginia via the widened Panama Canal will make for a large opportunity in trade.

Since existing Interstates linking Virginia Port Authority facilities in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Newport News are inadequate to handle the transshipment of cargo containers (and the role of railroads Norfolk Southern and CSXT is curiously left out of the equation), the thinking seems to be that U.S. 460 is the only way to go. Or, we miss out on a big bonanza. Or so “economic development officials” think.

I, for one, have never been completely trusting of economic development people. They are like Realtors trying to make sales. The last bargain they brought us involved Amazon sans state sales taxes. That idea was so wrong-headed that the public screamed and the General Assembly actually slapped on the country’s largest digital retailer to same tax a small Virginia business has to pay. So much for intelligence or egalitarianism.

Yet there’s a much bigger issue out there that must be considered before Virginians start signing all those public-private deals to create superhighways through Planters-land. Most of the increase in imports that will enter the U.S. thanks to the Panama Canal project will be from China. Believe it or not, the U.S. has big and unresolved issues with the People’s Republic, which still is a Communist-controlled country that puts dissidents in jail or exiles them.

For evidence, look no farther than the op-ed page of today’s New York Times. Richard A. Clarke, who was George W. Bush’s special advisor for cybersecurity, warns that Chinese officials have long raided our Websites and data bases and emails to mine out advantageous bits of intelligence, mostly of an economic nature. Among victims of China’s data theft are such as firms as Sony, Citibank, Lockheed, Booz Allen, Google, EMC and Nasdaq. By hacking our files, the Chinese gain a leg up in research. They don’t have to spend so much on R&D because they can easily steal ours.

Meanwhile, a new report by the Brookings Institution is so worried about such thefts of intellectual property and cybersecurity that it urges a new round of negotiations between Washington and Beijing before things really get out of hand. “U.S.-China strategic distrust is growing, is potentially very corrosive, is little understood on either side, and therefore should be addressed directly as a major issue,” write authors Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi.

The authors cite some other familiar issues, such as Beijing’s one-sided currency trading and hard-edged trade policy negotiating as reason for wariness. Another issue is China’s acceleration of military strength. This may not involve the ability to strike globally with nuclear weapons as was the case with the former Soviet Union, but China is making big strides with regional weaponery that could ward off U.S. tactical moves or threaten Taiwan. A big component involves the ability to hack digital files and launch cyberattacks.

President Obama is wary of the threats China is posing. As wars in South Asia wind down, he is proposing placing U.S. Marines in Australia. They would be a small force designed to be a tripwire and send a message to Beijing that the U.S. is nearby and might respond to aggression.

As one who has covered the Soviet Union and Russia for many years, I have always been puzzled about why the U.S. was quick to slap the Russians with trade sanctions a’ la Jackson Vanik while the Chinese got away with similar human rights violations not to mention very hardball economic and trade policies.

From the sounds of it, Virginia’s economic development sector either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know about the uncertainty of where America’s future with China is going. If they don’t start paying attention, however, we might end up with huge, empty ships at deserted docks with the rest of us paying for a huge, underused highway.

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Tagged goozeviews

Five Ways Virginia Sucks

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 6 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

An alternative blogger is listing five ways Virginia may be the worst state in the union, a.k.a. “Bob Land.”

Tara Lohan of AlterNet notes that generally, watching the news these days is like going through a time warp when it comes to debates about birth control or teaching science in the classroom. States such as Georgia and Missouri come to mind in this regard, but Virginia, she says, is the worst.

Here are five reasons why:

Despite the horrific Virginia Tech shootings and public polling wishing otherwise, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has successfully pushed through a measure to repeal the one handgun a month purchase limit in the state. He apparently doesn’t care that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says that “Virginia is the No. 1 out-of-state source” of handguns in the country.
Virginia may have 1,600 children up for adoption. But not if you are gay or lesbian. Virginia allows adoption agencies to deny placements” to people who conflict with their religious beliefs.
Hard right Atty. Gen. Kenneth Cuccinelli has waged a vigorous and expensive campaign in his witch hunt against former University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann.
Virginia’s powers have been backing a new coal-fired electricity plant just upwind of Colonial Williamsburg. According to The Virginian-Pilot, the plant would emit 2,000 pounds of arsenic, up to 7,000 pounds of benzene, 1,390 pounds of chromium and 118 points of mercury into the air every year.
McDonnell launched a “War on Women” with his backing of a law requiring women considering abortion to have an ultrasound test. He backed away from a more invasive way of doing the test which is not deemed a medical necessity.

In general, Lohan hits the highlights, although she misses a little context. One is that since he is elected separately, Cuccinnelli doesn’t report to McDonnell. The Old Dominion Electric Cooperative coal plant has been put on hold mostly because of financing issues. The flood of natural gas, much from hydraulic fracking, has put a serious dent in the viability of new coal-fired electricity.

But she hits most of the notes. Interesting to read something other than what a dandy state Virginia is for business.

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Posted in 2012, Abortion, Blogs and blog administration, Children and families, Consumer protection, Courts and law, Demographics, Disaster planning, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Finance, Gay rights, Gun rights, Money in politics, Science & Technology, Social services

Tagged goozeviews

Even NAS Braniacs Have Unanswered Questions about Uranium Mining

Posted on March 31, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 6 Comments

by James A. Bacon

The National Academy of Sciences report on uranium mining in Virginia covers a lot of ground, as anyone who peruses the 290-page document can attest. But the panel of co-authors attending a public presentation of the report in downtown Richmond last night conceded that there was a lot that they didn’t know — often because their study mandate did not include evaluating specific mining sites.

Paul A. Locke, chairman of the NAS study committee

As it happens, while uranium has been detected in some 55 spots around the state (as shown on the map above), only one site, the Coles Hill Farm in Pittsylvania County, has potential for commercial grade production, said Paul A. Locke, chairman of the committee and a Johns Hopkins University professor of public health. Members of the audience asked numerous questions about the feasibility of mining uranium at Coles Hill in a environmentally safe manner, but committee members could answer only with vague generalities, if at all.

Lisa Guthrie, executive director, Virginia League of Conservation Voters

Among the questions outside the scope of the NAS study:

Will there be a large up-front cost to establish a regulatory regime for uranium mining, considering that Virginia has no existing regulatory apparatus and no existing uranium-mining industry from which to generate licensing revenue?
Given the fact that uranium tailings remain radioactive for thousands of years, long after the mining company will cease to exist, what mechanisms exist to monitor and ensure environmental compliance of an impoundment site over the long term?
How much radiation is likely to leak in the event of an extreme event such as an earthquake or massive flood — an amount equivalent to the radiation from a radium watch… or a Chernobyl disaster?

Further, neither Locke or other board members could point to specific Best Practices that should be implemented for uranium mining and processing at Coles Hill. Speaking generally, they said that technological and regulatory advances over the past two or three decades have vastly improved the safety and environmental health of uranium mining. No other uranium mine in the world exactly matches the Pittsylvania site in terms of geology, climate and surrounding population, but a mix-and-match approach, picking Best Practices on the basis of specific characteristics, should be feasible.

Neither did the NAS board conduct a “probabilistic risk assessment,” an exercise that would be possible only for a specific site. But Locke did acknowledge that site-specific analysis and risk assessment of Coles Hill would be critical for the mining project to move forward.

The Coles Hill ore deposit is the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States and the seventh largest in the world, according to Virginia Uranium Inc., the company lobbying to lift the moratorium on uranium mining in the state. Gov. Bob McDonnell has assembled a Uranium Working Group staffed by state employees to examine risks associated with uranium mining and analyze how they could be addressed by regulation.

The working group has scheduled four public hearings between June and November, launched a web portal and set up mechanisms to accept questions and comments from the public. Fearing that critical Working Group decisions might be made behind closed doors, environmental groups have expressed concerns about the transparency of the process.

In a letter to legislators Martin L. Kent, McDonnell’s chief of staff, responded to those concerns: “This working group is solely focused on scientific, legal, regulatory, and factual questions that need to be further examined. If the General Assembly directs the agencies to promulgate appropriate regulations to govern uranium mining, that is a separate process.”

(See PeterG’s coverage of a previous NAS meeting in Danville here.)

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