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This year, the United States Supreme Court reversed years of precedent limiting how corporations may spend money to influence elections. This decision will substantially increase the importance of corporate influence in politics—both in determining who gets elected and how they decide once they are in office. As executives, owners, investors, and business professionals involved in…
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Democratic Party of Virginia chairman Dick Cranwell announced Tuesday that he will retire from the position in December. “After 39 years in public life as a member of the House of Delegates and as Chair of the DPVA, and after much reflection and discussion with my family, I have decided that 2010 will be my…
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American taxpayers bailed out the banks. They bailed out auto manufacturers. But at least they were our banks and automakers. Now, taxpayers are once again being asked to lend a hand. This time it’s to subsidize multi-billion-dollar foreign companies with names like Toshiba, Hitachi and Areva. If the going gets rough for them, taxpayers will…
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The partisan split in politics is getting old and stale. Real people want real solutions to real issues, and one of the gravest is within our grasp to solve. For decades, we have been under a nuclear cloud, but world and U.S. leaders have risen to the occasion to provide safeguards. The United States and…
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Reading the news is usually an ordeal of watching the world fall apart at an accelerating pace, so when four United Nations agencies offer a new count of mothers’ deaths worldwide in pregnancy and childbirth, one braces for another depressing and insoluble problem. The numbers over the past 20 years, after all, have been stubbornly…
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U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., voted on Wednesday to pass the Small Business Jobs Act, which now goes to the House of Representatives for final passage. “Small businesses are essential to the health of our economy — creating two-thirds of all new jobs over the last 15 years,” said Sen. Webb. “I have listened to…
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Confidence. That’s what America needs to get business moving again. “The challenge we have now is, what can we do to fix the confidence of the business community at large?” U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told a group of business owners in Staunton on Wednesday. Warner did some talking and a lot of listening as…
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It was sometime around 2000 or 2001 when I realized that the way we’ve always done things in Augusta County relative to the provision of fire and rescue service, with the bulk of the work done by volunteers, was no longer sufficient to get the job done. I had invited myself out on a Saturday…
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If you blinked, you might have missed Sen. Blanche Lincoln change what your child likely eats for lunch at school. Recently, in the wake of Elena Kagan’s confirmation, the Senate quickly and unanimously passed Lincoln’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. After years of negotiations and a recent push from Michelle Obama, the proposal received 30 seconds…
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Gov. Bob McDonnell addressed the joint Senate Finance, House Appropriations and House Finance Committees in Richmond on Thursday. Below are the governor’s remarks as prepared for delivery. Thank you. Chairman Colgan, Chairman Putney, Chairman Purkey, members of the General Assembly money committees, ladies and gentlemen: good morning. As is the custom each summer, I come…
