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This week, I was blessed to be sworn in as our district’s representative in the 111th U.S. Congress. It’s a sacred duty to serve you in Washington, and I am already hard at work on strategies for economic revival for Southside and Central Virginia and for a new era of accountability for our corporate and…
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“We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” – Golda Meir (1898-1978), former Israeli prime minister For Israel, the axis of evil is Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran with the latter supporting the two terror groups. With all three entities hell-bent on the destruction and eradication of…
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2008 is now another chapter in life’s annals. Seems like just yesterday, I opened my 2008 Dave Barry desk calendar and put it in the space reserved for such important data/date managers on the kitchen counter. Now, I’m about to discard (actually, recycle) the plastic housing that held the sacred writ – and helped jumpstart…
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I’ve been yammering endlessly about how Waynesboro needs to get ahead of the green-collar-job curve. The folks at Vector Industries have been doing more than yammering endlessly. “At the beginning of the year, when I was doing my yearly budget, I realized that I was spending more and more on utilities, and I was trying…
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Some bad news in the short term for Staunton came out of the governor’s budget message to the Virginia General Assembly today. And then there was the good news. “The construction of the new Western State Hospital and development of the existing hospital property come as great news for Staunton,” said city manager Steve Owen,…
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A proposed increase in the cigarette tax and $400 million in cuts to K-12 education are among the strategies being proposed by Gov. Tim Kaine for dealing with the state’s $2.9 billion budget shortfall.
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The chicken, or the egg? The debate over Waynesboro’s economic future is akin to the timeless yarn over which came first, with a twist. Which should we do first in Waynesboro – build up the downtown, or rebuild our industry base?
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It’s looking like 500 workers at the Invista plant are going to be out of jobs between now and February, give or take. Let’s look at that number, 500. What does it mean to the Waynesboro economy? Because at first glance, OK, 500, that’s a lot of people, but the Waynesboro economy supports roughly 11,000…
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Nobody was pushing for gay marriage, either, but that didn’t stop Republicans from pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban it. Ditto now for the latest from Staunton Republican Del. Chris Saxman, who is conjuring up the idea that Virginia’s right-to-work status is under attack and promising to solve the nonissue by proposing a constitutional…
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In short, everything. Invista, and its predecessor, DuPont, is the last significant vestige of the city’s once-glittering manufacturing economy. According to figures from the Virginia Employment Commission, Waynesboro began 2008 with around 2,100 manufacturing jobs, with roughly 1,100 of those being at the Invista plant, either directly employed by Invista or by a contractor providing…
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