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I have had enough of hearing about death panels for the elderly and the sickly in the new health-care law. There is so much to try and understand. Each political organization has a different take in the outcome of this legislation. I believed it was removed, but it made headlines again during Christmas. Gee, how…
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Retired Ford executive Bob Terrell was reminded of his childhood while working with a U.S. soldier returning from Afghanistan struggling to get back on his feet. “In 2001, we sent our young men and women to war to die and be wounded and maimed, and here at home 98 percent of us have gone on…
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U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. joined Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., yesterday in introducing an amendment to pending tax legislation which would save billions of dollars and redirect funding from ineffective ethanol subsidies and tariffs toward advanced energy technologies and U.S. deficit reduction. “Reducing the ethanol subsidies and trade barriers would reduce…
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The national conversation on our fiscal health for the past few months has been about whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for households with incomes over $250,000, or to allow them to expire on December 31st. To my amazement, lost in all this controversy and discussion has been any mention of what this would…
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Last week, Congress completed several pieces of overdue legislation to provide economic relief for the middle class and the unemployed, approve adequate reimbursements for doctors under Medicare, and to censure a senior legislator following an ethics investigation. In the weeks remaining in the 111th Congress, we have an opportunity and obligation to complete meaningful work…
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In the very near future Virginia will receive its official population numbers from the 2010 census. Our numbers are among the first to be issued because our off-year elections require us to redraw our legislative district lines in time for the 2011 fall elections. Follow the progress of the census results being made available at…
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A bipartisan group of Virginia leaders will work to get the Obama administration to reverse its move to block drilling off the coast of Virginia until at least 2017. “As a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we learned a number of lessons, most importantly that we need to proceed with caution and focus…
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“The federal government,” says Bill Howell, the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, “has long ago usurped the power reserved to the states and the people via our Constitution.” Here we go again. Looks like we’re about to refight the Civil War. Howell is in Washington today to talk up something called the Repeal…
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The so-called New START, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, is poised for an historic ratification vote in the Senate this year. Three more major international treaties are also lined up on President Obama’s ratification to-do list: the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and CEDAW,…
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A new poll out today has former governor and U.S. senator George Allen well out in front of a potential 2012 Republican Senate nomination field, but also trailing in hypothetical matchups with Democratic Sen. Jim Webb and another former governor, Tim Kaine. Allen, who lost the seat that is up for re-election in 2012 to…
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