Share
If there was any doubt about the broken state of our prison system, the news this week should put it to rest. The Global Commission on Drug Policy, made up of former presidents and other luminaries from the United States and abroad, concludes that the Drug War is an expensive failure. The California prison system—which…
Share
While recently shoveling aged horse manure around berry vines on my small organic farm to fertilize them, which gives me great pleasure, I thought about what I have learned about the community of the land by farming over the last two decades. I noticed how spreading brown gold–to which I add the green manure of…
Share
Two-and-a-half years after this deep recession brought our nation’s economy to the brink, we still are in the middle of a painfully slow recovery. We do not have time to waste playing the blame game about the policy decisions, business practices and consumer choices that got us to this point. The fact is, new job…
Share
The Augusta Regional Free Clinic and the Augusta Regional Dental Clinic are pleased to announce the grand opening of their expanded dental facility at 342 Mule Academy Road in Fishersville. The new Clinic began serving patients this morning. The expanded facility supports the Clinics’ mission to deliver high-quality, compassionate care to our community’s most vulnerable…
Share
The Center will be closed on Tuesday, June 14 as the members go on a field trip. They will be traveling up to Camp Overlook, a United Methodist Church camp, in Keezletown. The camp is preparing for a summer season of church camp weeks for children. They are staffed by college students from all over…
Share
If there is to be a war, let it begin here. Or in twenty-two other right-to-work states, including Virginia. Or, best of all, in South Carolina. The reasons we will go to war again is the same reason we went to war 150 years ago – freedom. Wars are about freedom. For Civil War II…
Share
As we witness one battle after another over the runaway federal budget and national debt, the political class must begin to think big. Repeated fights over individual line items in the federal budget have produced the same results: threats of government shutdowns accompanied by minimal reductions. We will get nowhere in reducing the size, scope…
Share
George Mason head men’s basketball coach Paul Hewitt announced Thursday the hiring of Mike Wells as an assistant coach, rounding out Hewitt’s staff after joining the Patriots in May. Wells arrives in Fairfax following an extensive career in the professional ranks, most recently as assistant coach and advance scout with the NBA’s Washington Wizards. “I…
Share
For both Sam Gbaydee Doe and Al Fuertes, the vocation of peacebuilding was forged in the trauma of civil war. In Doe’s native Liberia, 10 percent of the population perished. For Fuertes, growing up on the Philippine island Mindanao, one of the world’s longest recent wars seemed “a given.” Now, over more than a decade,…
Share
A new study has found that inverting state tax structures—whereby the highest income earners would be taxed at the current percentage of income for the lowest income earners, and vice versa—would collectively raise $6.9 billion more in revenue, a 21.4 percent increase over Virginia’s current tax structure. “Flipping” the tax structure would eliminate future budget…
Local news is in “serious jeopardy,” according to experts. Pitch in and help AFP continue to deliver news to the Valley, Virginia and beyond.