Ken Plum: Virginians leading the nation

Ken Plum

In the late 1990s the state teachers’ organization distributed a hopeful poster. With scenes from Monticello and colonial Virginia printed in the background, the text proclaimed that “Virginians led the Eighteenth Century, Virginians can lead the Twenty-first Century.” There is a plentiful supply of documentation of Virginians providing leadership in the Revolutionary period through the…

State announces $311M surplus

AFP

Gov. Bob McDonnell announced today that the state ended the 2011 fiscal year with a $311 million general-fund surplus. A key to the fiscal picture – state revenues were up 5.8 percent over fiscal-year 2010, well ahead of the 3.5 percent revenue growth that had been projected. The state ended fiscal-year 2010 with a $228…

Kate Wofford: Congress should accept Valley’s caution on gas drilling

AFP

A dozen Shenandoah Valley residents and I went to Washington last Friday, where I served as a witness at a congressional oversight hearing. The focus was a U.S. Forest Service proposal to ban a controversial natural gas drilling technique – horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing – from more than one million acres of public land…

DN-R publisher named president of VPA

Chris Graham

On July 1, 2011, Peter Yates of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg became the 111th president of the Virginia Press Association and Virginia Press Services, Inc. (VPA/VPS) Yates began his newspaper career in 1985 at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville. He became publisher of The Herald-Tribune in Batesville, Ind., in 1987. Yates published several newspapers…

A way to finance the land deal

Chris Graham

Here’s how Waynesboro City Council can close the deal on a proposed industrial park without breaking the bank. Three words, two hyphenated: low-interest, back-ended loan. The idea – the city agrees to purchase the land, approximately 170 acres located off South Delphine near the Interstate 64 interchange at Exit 96, and the property’s owners, Afton…

Robert Hurt: Protecting taxpayers

Robert Hurt

This past week the Department of Labor released a very disappointing jobs report for the month of June. Our national unemployment rate rose to an unacceptable 9.2 percent and only 18,000 jobs were created. The report makes it abundantly clear that the economic uncertainty caused by out of control government spending, excessive regulation, and the…

Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis: The debt, women and our future

AFP

What do women really want from our President? This is a question President Obama should be asking if he wants to keep his job for another term — which hinges on the women’s vote. His campaign emphasizes the appointments of very talented women: Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Elizabeth Warren to…

Wilson Library appoints new chair, board members

Chris Graham

The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library Foundation today announced that its Board of Trustees has elected Charlottesville pediatrician Michael Dickens as its new Chair and appointed six new Board members: Dr. Richard L. M. Coleman of Staunton; Dr. Gordon A. Haaland of Lancaster County, Virginia; Judge Stephen H. Helvin of Charlottesville; Dr. Edward G. Lengel of…