Category: Poverty & income gap
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Rising College Costs Hit the Poor the Hardest
by James A. Bacon In 2009 President Barack Obama set a goal for the United States to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. To reach that goal, more than 65% of individuals between 25 and 34 need to possess a college degree. Things aren’t working out well. Conclude the authors of a…
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A Plan to Build the Best Educated Workforce by 2030
by James A. Bacon Virginia has one of the better educated workforces among the 50 states. The Old Dominion ranked 4th nationally in 2009 by the percentage of population 25 years or older with an advanced degree, and 6th nationally for the percentage with a Bachelor’s degree. Those statistics reflect the fact that the Northern Virginia…
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Cruz, “Liberty” and Teletubbies
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Entrepreneurs and Innovation, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Where’s the “Liberty” in Liberty University? The Christian school founded by the controversial televangelist Jerry Falwell required students under threat of a $10 “fine” and other punishments to attend a “convocation” Monday where hard-right U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for president. Thus, Liberty produced a throng of people, some 10,000…
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Parole Abolition — Did It Work?
by Sarah Scarbrough What does “worked” mean? What does “success” truly mean? If it means having offenders spend the majority of their sentence behind bars and don’t get released early, then, sure, it worked. If it means seeing crime rates drop, then one could argue it worked. But, there are so many other factors associated – really,…
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Dominion’s Clever Legerdemain
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Health Care, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka You may have read thousands of words on this blog arguing about the proposed federal Clean Power Plan, its impact on Dominion Virginia Power and a new law passed by the 2015 General Assembly that freezes the utility’s base rates and exempts it from rate reviews for five years. All of this…
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Community Policing and Human Settlement Patterns
by James A. Bacon Community policing is key to the war on crime, agreed top law enforcement officials yesterday at a public forum hosted by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Community policing gets police out of their cars so they can patrol neighborhoods on foot, interact with residents and build trust. “I do think the relationship piece … is…
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The Next Book I’ve Got to Read…
Robert Putnam, the Harvard sociologist who wrote “Bowling Alone” and popularized the concept of “social capital,” has written another book that will surely shape the public conversation: “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.” To quote from Bradford Wilcox’s review in the Wall Street Journal: For the well-educated, the phrase “our kids” may well bring…
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Economic Un-Development
I was planning to blog today about the sad fate of Tarek Hezam, a New Yorker who moved to the Richmond region and opened a convenience store in the Oak Grove neighborhood of the city in 2013. After neighbors complained that the store became a magnet for trash and crime, the City of Richmond revoked his…
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Are We Reducing Food Insecurity or Aggravating It?
by James A. Bacon The federal government has awarded Virginia an $8.8 million grant, to support a program in the City of Richmond and seven localities in Southwest Virginia to fight child hunger. Elaborates the Times-Dispatch: The children will receive a third meal before leaving school every day, and they will also participate in an off-hours…
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Celebrating an Architectural Classic
by James A. Bacon Bacon’s Castle, a 17th-century brick plantation house in Surry County, is vaguely known by Virginians for playing some kind of role in Bacon’s Rebellion, the first rebellion in the North American mainland against the English crown. Despite my passing interest in the conflict, I knew little about the building — other than…
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Are Do-Gooders Making Food Insecurity Worse?
by James A. Bacon Food deserts are back in the news here in Richmond with the premier of a documentary, “Living in a Food Desert,” at the Richmond International Film Festival. First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe, who has made food security her signature cause, attended the screening and addressed the audience. More than 300,000 Virginia children are…
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Big Data and Power to the People
by James A. Bacon In the previous post, John Butcher brought to light some incredibly important data long secreted in the Virginia Department of Education — Student Growth Percentile (SGP) scores. There are two aspects to this story. First, the data will bring unprecedented accountability to Virginia schools and school divisions. Second, it is a cautionary…
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SGPs: Bringing Accountability to School Systems
by John Butcher For much too long, the principal measures of educational quality were inputs: budgets, teacher salaries, class sizes, pupil/teacher ratios, and the like. Grades did not compare from school to school or even class to class. Specialized tests such as the SAT reached only limited numbers of students and, in the SAT case,…
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Measuring Automobile Dependency
Fascinating data from Governing magazine comparing auto dependency of various municipalities around the United States: Arlington, Alexandria and the City of Richmond led the pack in Virginia as the least auto-dependent, with Norfolk, Lynchburg and Roanoke close behind. There are two main variables affecting automobile dependency: income and availability of transportation alternatives. Income: Poorer communities,…
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Why Hide Details of Lethal Injection?
By Peter Galuszka It has to be one of the creepiest bills ever considered by the General Assembly. Senate Bill 1393, sponsored by Sen. Richard Saslaw (D-Fairfax), would drop a veil of secrecy over how Virginia executes prisoners by lethal injection. Its backers, including Gov. Terry McAuliffe, are pushing it against a backdrop of global…