Bacon's Rebellion

  • Middle Schools Are the Problem, Not Pre-K

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    James A. Bacon

    Fewer Virginia middle schools met state benchmarks for full accreditation this year, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Standards of Learning test results released yesterday by the Virginia Department of Education showed that elementary schools and high schools are holding their own, but the percentage of middle schools meeting state benchmarks fell from 71 percent last year to 69 percent this year.

    The lagging performance of Virginia middle-school students, especially in math and science, is reflected also in the National Assessment of Educational Progress numbers.

    Why, then is Gov. Timothy M. Kaine so insistent upon expanding pre-K programs? Virginia’s problem isn’t at the pre-K level. Virginia pupils perform well when they go to elementary school. They start under-performing in middle-school. If the answer is pumping more money into an ossified public educational system — a premise that I dispute — then why don’t we at least apply funds and creative thinking to the part of the system that is most obviously broken?

  • Economic Logic Blossoms in Hampton Roads Transportation Debate

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    James A. Bacon

    Hampton Roads could wind up with an economically rational scheme for funding its ambitious road-building plans if the Hampton Roads Transportation Authority adopts recommendations emerging from a legislative subcommittee. As Kimball Payne with the Daily Press reports:

    Raise the local gasoline tax more, but throw out the levy on home sellers.

    Charge car buyers more, but don’t tax them on repairs.

    Jack up the levy on car rentals, but do away with the $10 added to the local registration fee.

    Responding to a public outcry during a series of public hearings, the HRTA is re-considering the $165 million-a-year tax mix approved by the General Assembly earlier this year. John McGlennon, chairman of the James City County Board of Supervisors, sums up the new logic: The revenues would be “more rationally tied to roads.”

    The bulk of new taxes would come from a 13-cent-per gallon increase in the gasoline tax. That would move the tax mix towards a transparent, user-pays system that would reward motorists for driving less, rather than subsidizing those who drive more. A gasoline tax, combined with the congestion tolls that the HRTA is said to be eyeing, might be sufficient to persuade a number of drivers to telecommute, walk to work, or avail themselves of mass transit, thus easing the ever-escalating strain on the road network.

    One drawback: The gasoline tax is living on borrowed time, as we have noted frequently on this blog. The HRTA would be well advised to give some thought to replacing that tax in the future through a Vehicle Miles Driven tax, an option being seriously considered by several states.

    Of course, even an economically rational transportation-funding system is all for naught in the absence of Fundamental Change to scattered, disconnected, low-density human settlement patterns. But it’s a start. As motorists change their driving behavior, they may put more pressure on developers and municipalities to create more compact, more walkable, more transit-friendly communities.

  • Omeish Out

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    James A. Bacon

    Following up on Jim’s post from earlier, the AP is reporting that Omeish has resigned from the Immigration Commission in light of a number of videos and other information that has come to light regarding statements the Doctor made regarding U.S. foreign policy, Israel, and “the jihad way.”

    The Governor’s volte face on this matter is rich indeed. In Garren Shipley’s article, Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall is quoted saying:

    …Kaine had nothing for which to apologize.

    “That these delegates would spread innuendo, moving dangerously close to slander, is disappointing,” he said. “If they have evidence of what they’re alleging, I would suggest that they bring it to us.”

    Wonder of wonders, it looks as though the information got out. It seems as though the Governor’s staff failed him in this matter — both in properly vetting an appointee and in defending said appointee in the face of what is fairly damning evidence (which begs the question — is the Governor’s staff aware of Google? Perhaps they should check into that sometime). Worse still for the Governor is that he had to be publicly confronted with such information by a caller to his monthly radio show.

    Sloppy. Very sloppy.

    Update

    Garren Shipley, who broke this story yesterday, has a follow-up here. Snips:

    Due diligence in vetting a nominee should at least include an Internet search, [Del. Todd] Gilbert said. That’s how he found his initial information about Omeish.

    “It took about 30 seconds,” Gilbert said.

    That sounds about right. And this one is just precious:

    Gilbert sent a letter to Kaine on Wednesday afternoon expressing his concerns about Omeish and his views, but the governor’s spokesman, Kevin Hall, dismissed Gilbert’s letter as nothing but repeated “whispers and smears.”

    “That these delegates would spread innuendo, moving dangerously close to slander, is disappointing,” he said. “If they have evidence of what they’re alleging, I would suggest that they bring it to us.”

    Hall didn’t return calls for comment following Kaine’s announcement.

    I think that’s because there’s no phone behind the woodshed.

    Update (by Jim Bacon): This may be construed as piling on, given the fact that Omeish has resigned, but it’s worth learning more about the radical Islamists in our midst. Del. Gilbert provides details in a follow-up press release.

  • Questions About Virginia’s Global Warming Policy

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    James A. Bacon

    The Commonwealth of Virginia no longer has a state climatological office, but Gov. Timothy M. Kaine still has a lot to say about Global Warming. Yesterday, he testified before Congress, warning that rising sea levels due to Global Warming threatened the health of the Chesapeake Bay and put Hampton Roads, the second lowest-lying metropolitan area in the country after New Orleans, at risk. (Read accounts by the Virginian-Pilot and Times-Dispatch.)

    Kaine endorsed a bill that would set up a “cap-and-trade” mechanism for controlling emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas widely blamed for rising temperatures globally. If you’ve got to regulate C02 emissions, a market-based, cap-and-trade system is probably the best way to go. But it won’t come close to solving Virginia’s problems.

    Here’s why. C02 emissions are rising, and they will continue to rise, no matter what the United States does. By capping emissions, we can slow the rate at which “greenhouse gases” accumulate, but we can do nothing to halt what’s happening in China, India or the rest of the developing world. According to the Christian Science Monitor, China is on track to build 562 coal-fired power plants in the next eight years, while India is planning 213. Those power plants will produce twice as much C02 as the Kyoto protocols are designed to reduce.

    If the linkages exist that Kaine believes exist — (1) rising C02 emissions will push global temperatures higher, (2) higher temperatures will melt the icecaps on Greenland and Antarctica, and (3) the release of melted water into the oceans will cause ocean levels to rise two feet this century — then Virginia still has a problem.

    If Kaine believes the commonly accepted Global Warming scenario, then he needs to spend less time telling Congress what the nation should do, and spend more time figuring out what Virginia and Hampton Roads can do.

    A few questions:

    What is Virginia doing about the continued residential development in low-lying areas likely to be inundated by rising sea levels? Does it make sense to allow development, and to expend public dollars on providing infrastructure for that development, on territory that could lie underwater by the end of the century? Does it make sense to spend millions of dollars for sand replenishment along beaches that will most likely be washed away?

    How is Virginia modifying its transportation plan to accommodate rising sea levels? Hampton Roads plans to spend billions of dollars upgrading its road system. The route for the proposed Southeastern Expressway would run through some extremely low-lying ground. Would parts of that route be inundated by rising sea levels? Would it be prone to flooding in a hurricane? If one of the stated purposes of the Expressway is to function as an evacuation route in a hurricane, that question would seem germane!

    What other measures can be taken to protect Hampton Roads against a New Orleans-style disaster?

    What measures can be taken to offset the effects of rising temperatures on the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem? Would it help to reduce sources of man-made stress on the ecosystem, such as reducing the flow of pollutants into the Bay?

    What can we be doing here in Virginia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? The state’s new energy plan notes that Virginia should adopt more energy-efficient human settlement patterns, and more energy-efficient transportation systems. But is the Governor willing to expend political capital to change Business-as-Usual practices?

    Update: The Baltimore Sun has more on the Sprawl-Global Warming connection. A report by the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education estimates that more compact, mixed use development patterns could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7 to 10 percent.

  • More Details on the Michaels Ouster

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    James A. Bacon

    Politically inconvenient state climatologist Patrick Michaels enjoyed lukewarm support, at best, from his colleagues in the University of Virginia’s Environmental Science Department. That’s what I glean, reading between the lines, from Bob Gibson’s follow-up story in the Daily Progress about his resignation as state climatologist and semi-retirement from UVa. His colleagues were hardly rushing to his defense.

    James N. Galloway, a UVa colleague and acid rain researcher, said Michaels, an outspoken Global Warming skeptic, politicized the office: “It’s too bad it was so politicized, but I think we can get beyond that.”

    It doesn’t appear that Michaels got much support from his departmental chair, Joseph C. Zieman, either. As the Cavalier Daily reports:

    The governor’s office stated earlier this year in an open letter interview that Michaels did not speak for climate policy for the Commonwealth of Virginia. … As long as the pieces he has written have nothing legally wrong with them, however controversial, they are protected by academic freedom. University faculty are free to write about whatever they wish and can express diverse opinions.”

    Zieman added that Michaels — who he described as “a member … of a small group of people that are called skeptics” — has not resigned as a research professor at the University.

    The state climatological office, now re-named the university climatological office, has been turned over to research coordinator Philip J. “Jerry” Stenger.

    Update: It appears that Michaels is still updating his “World Climate Report” blog.

    Update: Our understanding of climate change grows daily — and not always to the benefit of the conventional wisdom. Check this out: “Carbon dioxide did not end the last Ice Age.
    Deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before atmospheric CO2, ruling out the greenhouse gas as driver of meltdown, says study in Science.”

    I guess we can add Lowell Stott, professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California, to the list of Global Warming deniers. “The climate dynamic is much more complex than simply saying that CO2 rises and the temperature warms,” Stott said. The complexities “have to be understood in order to appreciate how the climate system has changed in the past and how it will change in the future.”

  • Loathesome Creature

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    James A. Bacon

    Kudos to Global Web Solutions, a Roanoke Internet service provider, for cutting off service to William A. White, a Roanoke Nazi and white supremacist, who spews racist vitriol on his website. If the weak-chinned, pasty-faced White thinks he’s an exemplar of a superior race, he’s the only one. (See his photo in this Roanoke Times article.) Short of restricting his right to free speech, we Virginians collectively should do anything we can do to marginalize loathesome creatures like this.

    Let’s just hope he doesn’t wind up getting appointed to the Virginia Commission on Immigration.

  • Holy Toledo! Did Tim Kaine Really Appoint This Guy?

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    James A. Bacon


    Dr. Esam Omeish is the leader of the Muslim American Society, a front group for the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Timothy M. Kaine has appointed him to the Virginia Commission on Immigration.

    Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Woodstock, has asked Kaine to reconsider the appointment, reports Garren Shipley with the Northern Virginia Daily.

    “It is unfortunate that the Governor would choose the leader of an organization such as this to represent many the freedom-loving Muslim citizens of Virginia on this important commission,” Gilbert wrote. “While the Muslim American Society claims to be the innocent face of peaceful Islam in America, their history and teachings tell a much different story. Unfortunately, it is a story about which all Americans have become much too familiar — that of the promotion of a global Islamic state.”

    Don’t believe Gilbert. Click on the Youtube video, listen to what Omeish has to say about Israel and Palestine. Is this really a guy Kaine wishes to legitimize? He couldn’t have found someone else to represent the perspective of tens of thousands of Muslims living in Virginia?

    Update: The Gates of Vienna blog has more detail about Omeish and the internal wranglings of the Virginia Commission on Immigration. (Referring to this blog post, Dymphna wisecracked, “I guess when the Ummah arrives he [Bacon] will have to change his name real quick.”)

  • Cost Cutting via Paper Cuts

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    James A. Bacon

    Chris Saxman’s latest email update contains a few recommendations for how the state can actually save money through — of all things — managing its printing and paper use more efficiently:

    Printers, copiers, and paper are essential to government operations and while we all recognize that, sometimes we don’t consider the cost. Consider that the state has a printer and copier inventory of more than 34,000. In FY06, the cost of these and related devices was $29,607,712. In FY06, the cost of paper was $7,499,837 and the cost of outside printing services was $37,702,417. The team offered the following recommendations:

    Recommendation 1: Promote a printer, copier, and paper savings awareness campaign—promoting print efficiencies, cost-savings, and best practices.

    Recommendation 2: Implement print management best practices

    Recommendation 3: Move toward phasing out fax machines. Personal computers and multifunction machines now have the capability to fax documents. Significant cost reduction could be realized by eliminating fax machines and performing these functions on personal computers or multifunction machines.

    Recommendation 4: Move toward or transition to the implementation of managed print services–as appropriate for meeting agency and department mission and goals. Managed print services (MPS) are services offered by an external provider to optimize or manage an organization’s document output. A MPS contract can include assessment services, asset management, output management services, and support services. The external service provider either owns or leases the hardware, with the customer paying a monthly or quarterly fee—based on a cost per page or cost per seat. Gartner suggests that candidates for MPS are midsize or large organizations with 100 or more employees. Agencies and departments should document their print needs and determine if the use of managed print services would reduce their print cost.

    Recommendation 5: Encourage agencies use of high-volume print shops for large print jobs. Virginia Correctional Enterprises (VCE), a printing service within the state, continues to demonstrate its ability to produce quality and timely print for state agencies and departments—at a cost savings. In addition, state procurement regulation mandates that goods and services produced or manufactured by state correctional facilities be purchased by all departments, institutions, and agencies of the Commonwealth (there are some waivers to this regulation).

    Saxman has a lot more in his note, but this list gives a fairly good look at some of the ways government can shave its operating costs and still provide the services people demand.

    And with the threat of state budget cuts looming, any amount of economizing will be welcome.

    Now if only Chris and his colleagues could find a way to rebate those savings to taxpayers…

  • Illegal Immigration Round Up

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    James A. Bacon

    The latest idea for combating illegal immigration in Virginia: Build a detention center capable of holding 1,000 illegals arrested for certain categories of crimes. That comes from the State Crime Commission, reports the Washington Post. The usual nervous nellies are worried that someone’s rights will be violated — as if the same risk weren’t true of illegals held in local jails.

    Meanwhile, Fairfax County estimates that it holds about 4,500 illegal immigrants in its jail, about 16 percent of the county’s inmate population, reports Examiner.com. Previous statewide estimates by the state crime commission had run around 8 to 10 percent.

    Meanwhile, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is talking tough on illegal immigration, castigating the federal government for the “bankruptcy” of its policies, even as he argues that it’s not the states’ job to police immigration, reports the Associated Press.

  • Kaine Administration De-funds Global Warming Heretic Patrick Michaels

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    James A. Bacon

    As Al Gore (the “Goracle”) has frequently told us, there is a scientific consensus that human-caused global warming is real. One way to achieve that consensus is to de-fund anyone who disagrees. And that is exactly what has happened to global warming contrarian Patrick Michaels.

    Bob Gibson with the Daily Progress reports that Michaels has not only resigned as the official state climatologist, he has negotiated an early retirement package with the University of Virginia and will remain affiliated with the university only as a part-time research professor on leave. Here is Michaels’ explanation:

    Michaels, whose utility industry funding and controversial views on global warming made him a lightning rod on climate change issues, called his resignation a sad result of the fact that his state climatologist funding had become politicized as “a line in the governor’s budget,” which he said compromised his academic freedom.

    “It’s very simple,” Michaels said in an interview. “I don’t think anybody was able to come to a satisfactory agreement about academic freedom.”

    Delacey Skinner, communications director for the Kaine administration, had no comment. Joseph C. Zieman, chairman of UVa’s Department of Environmental Sciences, had little to add either.

    Global Warming advocates have attacked Michaels for his utility industry ties, suggesting that the source of his funding compromised the integrity of his research. Ironically, Michaels calls into question the objectivity of GW scientists by noting that government-funded climate research — which is heavily influenced by one-sided newspaper articles and grand-standing politicians holding congressional hearings — is highly politicized. But now skeptics like Michaels are being labeled “global warming deniers,” akin to Holocaust deniers, and there is an active movement to de-fund them. Thus the scientific “consensus” that Global Warming is caused by human activity becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Orthodoxy shall prevail; heretics shall be punished.

    Academic freedom and a diversity of viewpoints are core values at Virginia universities. If anyone within the UVa administration or faculty rose to Michaels’ defense, however, Gibson makes no note of it. Does academic freedom exist only for liberals and leftists? If so, this is a scandal of first-order magnitude. The circumstances of Michaels’ departure should be laid bare.

  • A Cautionary Tale

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    James A. Bacon

    From the New York Times comes a story about Riverside, New Jersey, one of a small number of localities that passed tough anti-illegal immigrant laws but are now rethinking them. Snip:

    With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.

    Meanwhile, the town was hit with two lawsuits challenging the law. Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town’s already tight budget. Suddenly, many people — including some who originally favored the law — started having second thoughts.

    So last week, the town rescinded the ordinance, joining a small but growing list of municipalities nationwide that have begun rethinking such laws as their legal and economic consequences have become clearer.

    Virginia counties that have jumped on the populist, anti-illegal bandwagon most likely won’t face the same fall-out. They have far stronger economies, for one, and most likely could fight any future challenges without inflicting harm on other parts of their budgets.

    Nevertheless, the consequences, both in economics and perception, are real.

  • Curb Weight and Taxes

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    James A. Bacon

    While we’re on the subject of the Vehicle Miles Driven tax (see previous post), I would add one modification: Drivers should pay for road maintenance not only on the basis of how many miles they drive but their vehicle’s weight.

    Why should the owner of a Mini Cooper (2,679 pounds curb weight) pay the same as the owner of an H3 Hummer (4,700 pounds curb weight)? With only 57 percent of a Hummer’s heft, the Mini Cooper contributes correspondingly less to the degradation of streets and roads. If the car creates fewer potholes, its owner should pay a lower road maintence fee.

    One more thought: Some cars emit more pollution than others. Automobile pollution imposes costs on society, particularly through an increase in low-level ozone and nitrogen deposition in rivers, streams and waterways. (Among the automobile’s sins, include carbon dioxide emissions, implicated in global warming, if you want to.) One way to encourage people to operate low-pollution vehicles would be to add a “pollution tax” based on Vehicle Miles Driven, as adjusted by pollution emissions. Revenues from that tax could be used to fund programs to offset, or otherwise clean up, the pollution. Of course, such a fund would have to be set up in a way to ensure that politicians couldn’t raid it for other purposes.

    To assess how such a funding mechanism would impact Virginians geographically, visit http://www.autochoice.org/ and type in your zip code. There, you’ll see that in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, where I live, 53 percent of the vehicles are light trucks and SUVs. By contrast, in the 8th district, which includes Arlington, only 42 percent of the vehicles are light trucks.

    My region of the state would get hit harder, but I can’t let that stand in the way of an economically rational system of road funding. (For the record, my family owns one car and one SUV.) Most people, I believe, would be willing to accept a system that operates according to the objectice principles that I have laid out. If they don’t, it’s only because politicians have convinced them that “government” can somehow spend more money on roads and that “someone else” will pay for it. Eventually, though, even the dimmest bulb will figure out that “someone else” is, in fact, them.

    (Hat check to the blogger Groveton to pointing me to the Autochoice.org website.)

  • The Vehicle Miles Driven Tax is Coming — Just Not to Virginia

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia’s policy for funding roadway maintenance and construction — adopting a miscellaneous grab-bag of taxes, fees and fines — is increasingly out of sync with the rest of the country. USA Today reports that early next year, six other states will begin testing a new fund-raising mechanism: charging motorists for the number of miles they drive instead of the amount of gasoline they consume.

    Researchers from the University of Iowa Public Policy Center will install computers and satellite equipment in the vehicles of 2,700 volunteers — 450 each from Austin, Baltimore, Boise, San Diego, eastern Iowa and the Research Triangle region of North Carolina.

    Over the next two years, the drivers will get sample monthly bills for the number of miles they’ve driven. They can compare what they now pay in gasoline taxes with what they would have paid in per-mile fees.

    As Americans embrace hybrid technologies, with electric vehicles and fuel cells looking increasingly likely in the future, there is increasing awareness that the gasoline tax is not a stable long-term revenue source. In other news, USA Today reports:

    • Oregon this year finished a year-long experiment that tested a “virtual tollway” system that could eventually replace the state gas tax with a road-user fee. Volunteers drove vehicles equipped with state-installed Global Positioning System (GPS) devices and odometers that kept track of the miles they drove. When they gassed up, the drivers paid for their gas as well as 1.2 cents for each mile driven since their last fill-up; they did not pay the 24-cents-a-gallon state gas tax.

    • Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty says part of his state’s plan for dealing with declining gas tax revenues is a mileage tax or fee. He wants a test project this year.

    • Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter appointed a 32-member commission in March to explore long-term options, including mileage fees.

    Virginia can still do these states one better. Instead of using a Vehicle Miles Driven tax to raise revenue for all types of transportation programs, including new construction, use it to pay for maintenance only. That way, the tax becomes a direct user-pays system. You want to drive? Fine, you need to pay for your car, your gasoline, your insurance, your repairs… and the wear and tear you put on the roads. (There are other mechanisms, as I have discussed ad nauseum, for funding road construction and coping with traffic congestion.)

    I don’t see how any rational person can object to such a system, other than the grounds that, “I don’t want to pay, I want someone else to pay. I want a free ride.” Once upon a time, we could afford such an attitude, but we can’t any more.

    (Hat tip to Ted McCormack for pointing out the USA Today article.)

  • “It was just butt-ugly”

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    James A. Bacon

    That’s how Richmond city councilman Marty Jewell characterizes the latest, weirdest spat between Doug Wilder and the Richmond School Board.

    For the life of me, I can’t fathom why the Mayor felt the need to pull a Bob Irsay and try to eject the School Board in the middle of the night — complete with a phalanx of cops! Yes, he’s made it clear that he wants the Board out of City Hall in order, he says, to save money (a charge former Wilder aide Paul Goldman disputes).

    It’s also clear the School Board is either incapable, or more likely unwilling, to accept the eviction notice.

    And now the City Council is getting involved, opening yet another chapter in its long-running battle with the Mayor over who wears the pants in Richmond government.

    It’s enough to make one pine for the good old days, when all city government had to offer were the tirades of Sa’ad El-Amin, the antics of Reva, the occasional hunger strike by Rev. Gwen.

  • Virginia: A World-Class Player in Nuclear Power?

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia has the potential to become one of the largest energy-producing states/provinces in North America. Certainly not through the production of oil and gas, nor from mining dwindling reserves of coal in the Appalachian mountains, nor even from tapping the phenomenal potential of wind farms off the coast of Virginia Beach. No, the energy source where Virginia enjoys the strongest competitive advantages is nuclear power.

    Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s recently published energy plan calls for a massive push to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, thought by many to be a cause of global warming. While wind, solar and biofuels have long-term potential, the only large-scale energy source able to substitute for fossil fuels in the intermediate term is nuclear power. And nukes need uranium.

    It just so happens that Pittsylvania County sits atop the largest uranium deposit in North America. Thanks to the revival of the nuclear power industry, there is renewed interest in tapping this incredible energy reserve. Mining and processing the mineral could create a billion-dollar industry for Southside Virginia, which has fallen on hard times as its traditional mill economy — textiles, apparel, furniture — was devastated by globalization.

    Sad to say, I’m so old, I can remember the controversy 25 years ago surrounding a proposal to mine the Pittsylvania uranium. I was a reporter then with the Martinsville Bulletin, one county over. That wasn’t long after Three Mile Island, when the anti-nuclear power sentiment was running strong. Concerned that uranium processing would release radioactivity into the surrounding air, water and land, environmentalists were able to persuade the state to order a moratorium on any uranium mining.

    But a lot has changed in 25 years. Global warming has replaced nuclear melt-downs as environmentalists’ leading fear. Nuclear power in the United States is on the rebound now, not in a state of decline; indeed Dominion could receive permits by 2010 to add new nuclear units at its North Anna facility. And Southside Virginia’s economy has been hollowed out, leaving local leaders more receptive than ever to a new industry.

    As it happens, Lynchburg, about an hour’s drive north of Danville, is home to BWX Technologies and Areva NP, major providers of engineering, design and maintenance services to the nuclear power industry. Over in Hampton Roads, the Northrop Grumman shipyard in Hampton Roads builds nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.

    Between Dominion’s power plants, Pittsylvania’s uranium mines, Lynchburg’s nuclear manufacturing/service companies and Northrop Grumman’s shipyard, Virginia has the potential to assemble a world-class nuclear power cluster — not just mining, but designing, manufacturing, installation and servicing. With all those capabilities concentrated in a small geographic area, who knows what synergies might develop?

    Supporting the growth of the nuclear-power cluster is a stated goal of Kaine’s energy plan, although the document takes a cautious attitude towards uranium mining: “Virginia should assess the potential value of and regulatory needs for uranium production in Pittsylvania County.”

    Basic scientific questions remain unanswered. Unlike other uranium deposits, the uranium in Pittsylvania does not physically migrate into the water system, reports the Danville Register and Bee. The geology needs to be better understood, and Virginians need to know that mining and processing can proceed safely. We need to begin laying the groundwork now. Meanwhile, someone in the Commonwealth — perhaps Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra — should organize a nuclear industry working group to explore avenues for building the industry cluster.

    (Photo credit: dkimages.)

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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