Poll: Virginians split on McDonnell

Chris Graham

A new VCU poll has Virginians split on the job performance of the new governor, Bob McDonnell. The Commonwealth Poll conducted July 15-19 has 48 percent of Virginians rating the Republican’s performance as excellent or good, and 52 percent saying that McDonnell is doing a fair or poor job. Inside the numbers, the views on…

Hurt pledges to defund health-care reform: Good politics, but is it good policy?

Chris Graham

Robert Hurt’s move to sign the DeFundIt.org pledge to pull funding from the health-care reform measure passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in March is good politics. It’s probably also bad policy, but you could say that policy is the province of those who are good at politics first. “By signing…

Chris Graham: They’re both gone

AFP

Today was already bound to be a sad day, what with it being my grandmother’s birthday, and her not being here. Then it got sadder. My grandfather passed this afternoon. He had been in decline for some time – years, many years, really. He was just a shadow of his former self, particularly after the…

City looks for help in collecting unpaid taxes

Chris Graham

Governments are running on ever-tight budgets. Keep that in mind when you consider this number: $1.8 million. Delinquent motor-vehicle taxes in Waynesboro in a four-year period prior to fiscal-year 2011 totaled more than $1.8 million. The roughly $450,000 a year that has gone uncollected is equivalent to about 1 percent of what the city spends…

Rapids down Generals, 4-2

Chris Graham

The eighth inning was cruel to Waynesboro Tuesday. A failed suicide squeeze in the top half of the inning and some successful small ball by Rockbridge in the bottom half proved to be the difference as the Rapids defeated the Generals 4-2. A leadoff double by Jared King had Waynesboro, then down 2-1, in business….

Drilling in the Valley

AFP

Millions of gallons of water are used to literally fracture the earth to get at the natural gas below. And below is the operative word – hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, as it’s commonly called, aims at natural-gas reserves anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 feet beneath the earth’s surface. The good news is that natural gas…