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We're writing an editorial for Wednesday about national investment in a "smart" power grid. President Obama today announced $3.4 billion will go toward projects around the country that will save money and energy over the long-haul. The work has industry support, too.  The private sector will invest billions more.

Virginia Tech is receiving a slice of the recovery act support for smart grids. The school will receive a $1.25 million grant to build a smart Grid Information Clearinghouse Web portal that encourages use of electricity in an environmentally responsible way.

Good news all around.

America should listen to this Cassandra

Dan Radmacher

Radmacher is editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.

The problem with prophets is it's so difficult to tell who the genuine ones are until after the fact. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., for instance, turned out to be a genuine prophet in an article he wrote back in 1994. The problem was that no one realized it until the global financial system teetered on the brink of collapse 14 years later.

In that 1994 article in Washington Monthly, Dorgan warned that the trading of new, complex financial instruments called derivatives could lead to a "real financial conflagration -- one that would make us nostalgic for the days of the $500 billion savings-and-loan collapse."

Read more.

Tuesday, Old Dominion University's Regional Studies Institute issued its 10th annual State of the Region report for Hampton Roads. We're working on an editorial to run later on one of the issues addressed, the impact of global warming and climate change on the coastal metropolitan area. While the study's authors acknowledge the continuing dispute over the causes of global warming, they leave little room for doubt that it is occurring and causing sea levels to rise, to potentially devastating effect. The report urges a regional reduction in carbon emissions and a statewide increase in fuel taxes, to curb vehicle emissions, and it recommends Hampton Roads start planning "a system of dikes and levees unless we intend to forfeit huge portions of our land to the sea." That's a warning state and national policymakers should heed.

We're writing our Sunday NRV Current editorial today about events at Tuesday night's Christiansburg Town Council meeting. Boxley, a company based in Roanoke, wanted to open a concrete plant in the Chritiansburg Industrial Park.  It's a permitted use, but the town manager at his discretion may pull an application for such a plant and ask the council to approve or deny it.

The council, on a 4-1 vote, told the plant to take a hike. Never mind that it is located in an industrial park specifically built to handle truck traffic and close to the highway. Never mind that Boxley is a local company that promised to keep its dust under control as it does at its Roanoke plant.

No, the council said no because it worried that Boxley would compete with the concrete company already in Christiansburg. It did not want a new plant to take business away from the existing one.

In our editorial, we will wonder whatever happened to the free market. It is not council's role to serve as guardian for existing businesses, turning away new jobs because they might affect old ones. Now Christiansburg is stuck with an artificial monopoly.

When Congress approved the federal stimulus package, the Obama administration promised Americans they would be able to monitor how it spent the $787 billion it contained.  The new era of transparency never really took off as the recovery.gov Web site was, honestly, pathetic.

On Monday, the administration rebooted the site with a new interface and better access to information.  I haven't had time to play with it too deeply, but it certainly appears to be an improvement, though perhaps not as much as I'd hoped. The interactive map, for example, is clunky beyond words. What have they got against embedding data in a google map?

Check it out and see where your children's and grandchildren's taxes are going.

Right decision was made on unemployment

Keith D. Cheatham

Cheatham is the vice president of government affairs for the Virginia Chamber of Commerce in Richmond.

As a spokesman for the Virginia business community, I wanted to respond to your Sept. 18 editorial piece "The price of intransigence," taking certain members of the Virginia General Assembly to task for doing exactly what the business community asked them to do.

Read more.

Thursday, we'll argue that Virginia lawmakers should resist the urge to call another special session of the General Assembly, this time to reverse the governor's decision to close the Natural Bridge Juvenile Correctional Center. The closing is an unfortunate repercussion of the state's steep revenue shortfall, but the decision was the governor's to make in weighing cuts to a budget already slashed in earlier rounds of reductions that left few, in any, easy choices.

In an effort at transparency, the Obama administration ordered federal agencies to publicly report contacts with lobbyists for any of the $88 billion in stimulus money that will go to projects by way of competitive grants and loans. Yet fewer than 200 contacts have been reported since Congress passed the stimulus package in February. Tuesday, we'll write that lobbying subterfuges used by interest groups to seek funding while flying under the radar of open-government rules will add to Americans' cynicism about government. The administration needs to close loopholes as fast as K Street can find them.

Sunday, we'll comment on the grim news that Virginia is facing another $1.5 billion budget shortfall, leaving Gov. Tim Kaine to make the fourth round of cuts to the state's general fund since September. The general fund supports the state's core services: education; health, including mental health; and public safety. Virginians should keep in mind, during this year's election campaigns, that these already reduced services are what are at stake when candidates talk about reducing government or avoiding new transportation taxes by tapping into general fund revenue streams.

Bruce Bartlett, a leading conservative economist, has a great piece in The Daily Beast in which he lays out an incredibly strong case that Bush's stewardship of the economy was a disaster that laid the foundation for the current mess and that until conservatives "once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect."

Among the strongest section was comparing the performance of the Bush economy to the Clinton economy. In short, there is no comparison:

• Between the fourth quarter of 1992 and the fourth quarter of 2000, real GDP grew 34.7 percent. Between the fourth quarter of 2000 and the fourth quarter of 2008, it grew 15.9 percent, less than half as much.

• Between the fourth quarter of 1992 and the fourth quarter of 2000, real gross private domestic investment almost doubled. By the fourth quarter of 2008, real investment was 6.5 percent lower than it was when Bush was elected.

• Between December 1992 and December 2000, payroll employment increased by more than 23 million jobs, an increase of 21.1 percent. Between December 2000 and December 2008, it rose by a little more than 2.5 million, an increase of 1.9 percent. In short, about 10 percent as many jobs were created on Bush’s watch as were created on Clinton’s.

• During the Bush years, conservative economists often dismissed the dismal performance of the economy by pointing to a rising stock market. But the stock market was lackluster during the Bush years, especially compared to the previous eight. Between December 1992 and December 2000, the S&P 500 Index more than doubled. Between December 2000 and December 2008, it fell 34 percent. People would have been better off putting all their investments into cash under a mattress the day Bush took office.

• Finally, conservatives have an absurdly unjustified view that Republicans have a better record on federal finances. It is well-known that Clinton left office with a budget surplus and Bush left with the largest deficit in history. Less well-known is Clinton’s cutting of spending on his watch, reducing federal outlays from 22.1 percent of GDP to 18.4 percent of GDP. Bush, by contrast, increased spending to 20.9 percent of GDP. Clinton abolished a federal entitlement program, Welfare, for the first time in American history, while Bush established a new one for prescription drugs.