Category: Poverty & income gap
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Your PIPP Tax Will Buy Heat Pumps For Poor
by Steve Haner Lower-income Virginians who are customers of the two largest electricity providers may begin to receive subsidies on their residential bills in March 2022 under legislation moving forward in the General Assembly. The money for the subsidies will come from their fellow customers.ย
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In Praise of Trailer Parks
by James A. Bacon Nobody knows for sure how many trailer parks there are in Virginia, and Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax, wants to find answers. He has introduced a budget amendment to establish a Virginia Manufactured Home Park registry, to be funded with a $100 database maintenance fee from each mobile home park.ย Krizek regards…
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McAuliffe’s “Big Bold” Housing Plan Is Neither
by James A. Bacon Homelessness spiked in the Richmond area over the past year — more than 50%, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The increase from 549 to 838 people in 2020 was the largest single-year jump since anyone began tracking the number in the 1990s. Given the fact that hundreds of thousands of Virginians are…
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Holding Richmond Public Schools Accountable — Part I
by James C. Sherlock We have discussed here the failures of the City of Richmond Public Schools (RPS) in educating its economically disadvantaged children, as well as the abysmal performance of Black children in its schools. ย I intend to help readers understand how it manages to fail repeatedly even with major federal funding as…
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The Mythology of Robert E. Lee
By Peter Galuszka With excellent timing, the former head of the history department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has come out with a book about the mythology of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and much of the White โSouthernโ culture. Retired U.S. Army Gen. Ty Seidule, a former paratrooper, has deep Virginia…
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Lockdown Lobby Crushed the Poorest Children
by Kerry Dougherty The Federalist, one of my daily must-read news sources, had a great piece yesterday. It supported my point of view, naturally. And itโs timely as Michael Osterholm, one of Bidenโs advisors, predicted Sunday that lockdowns will return with a vengeance once the U.K. variant of Covid-19 becomes dominant in the United States.…
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To Solve Homelessness, Equip People to Rise from Poverty
by David Cooper There is an ongoing debate among nonprofits providing homeless shelters on the best way to address homelessness. Should they focus on finding places for people to live, regardless of what mental health or substance abuse problems they might have, or should they stress equipping them with life skills, even if it means…
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Add an Extra 40 Days to the School Year? It Just Might Work.
by James A. Bacon Jason Kamras has spent much of his time as superintendent of the City of Richmond school district blaming systemic racism for the system’s failure to educate thousands of inner-city school children, and most of his remedies call for more money — even though city schools spend significantly more per pupil than…
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More Data on SW VA’s Breakout School Performance
by John Butcher Weย have seenย that the divisions in SW Virginia (โRegion 7โ in the VDOE system) formed their own organization, theย Comprehensive Instructional Programย (โCIPโ), that brought nice improvements in student performance. While we wait to see whether the Board of โEducationโ will punt on the 2021 SOL testing, Iโve been looking over the 2019 data (there…
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Tufts Study Projects Major TCI Carbon Taxes
By Steve Haner Monday the organizers of the Transportation and Climate Initiative, a carbon tax and rationing regime for Virginia motor fuels, will be announcing details of the underlying interstate compact, according to media reports. The media in Virginia has been disinterested in the issue, but the debate is raging in New England. The Boston…
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UVa Builds Scholarship Endowment to Half-Billion Dollars
by James A. Bacon Over the past four years the University of Virginia has raised $500 million, enough to endow 350 undergraduate and graduate scholarships, President Jim Ryan informed the Board of Visitors Friday. He highlighted two programs in particular that share the goal of “fostering excellence and diversity of the student population, and ensuring…
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Richmond Schools Discover that the Shutdown Magnifies Mental Illness
by James A. Bacon The downside of the COVID-19 school lockdown has become fully apparent to Richmond Public School officials. Richmond schools are experiencing an “alarming surge” in mental health issues — depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation — among the district’s 21,000 students in depression, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The impact of social isolation, fear…
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Richmond’s Infamous Icon
By Peter Galuszka Since 1890, the Robert E. Lee Monument has dominated Richmondโs grand Monument Avenue and has stood as a striking protector of the stateโs long history of systemic racism. True, other Confederate heroes such as Thomas โStonewallโ Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart also found a memorial spot on the Avenue but Lee has always…
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Governor Northam, If You Want to See Educational Equity in Schools, Visit Southwest Virginia
by James A. Bacon The Northam administration’s education equity initiative declares that “equity” will have been achieved when outcomes can no longer be predicted on the basis of race, gender, zip code, ability, socioeconomic status or languages spoken at home. The administration does not acknowledge it, but there is a region of Virginia that has…
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The Lies in “Hillbilly Elegy”
๏ปฟ By Peter Galuszka A 2016 memoir by J.D. Vance, a former Ohio resident, drew praise from conservatives for its laud of self-reliance and disciple and criticism from others for its long string of debunked clichรฉs about people from the Central Appalachians. The book, โHillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,โ…