Author: Bob Rayner
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Virginia Set to Help Taxpayers for a Change
from The Republican Standard Good news for Virginia taxpayers. In the coming weeks, several hundred dollars are heading back into the pockets of eligible Virginians. Up to $400 per household will be heading to mailboxes and bank accounts across the Commonwealth thanks to a surplus in the state budget recently signed by Governor Glenn Youngkin.…
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Democratic General Assembly Would Be Much Softer on Crime
from Liberty Unyielding Democrats are slightly favored to win control of Virginia’s legislature in this year’s election, although the election will be very close. If they take over, the legislature will become much softer on crime than it is now, because incoming Democratic leaders are more left-wing than their mainstream liberal predecessors. For example, if…
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Conservative Boycotts Work
by Kerry Dougherty In the first month after Dylan Mulvaney began promoting the Anheuser-Busch beer, sales of America’s most popular beer dropped 26.5% while Modelo’s were up 13.5%. The Mexican beer quickly toppled Bud Light as America’s best-selling beer. Likewise, the June “Pride Month” boycott of Target resulted in a 5.4% drop in that company’s…
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Will the Left Repudiate this Evil?
(This column was published earlier today by The Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy) by Chris Braunlich “You dance with the one who brung ya” goes one of the oldest sayings in politics. It means that when elected officials get into public office, they vote with those who helped put them there. The deadly Hamas…
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To Graduate or Not
by John Butcher The 2023 4-year cohort graduation rates are up on the Virginia Department of Education Web site. VDOE likes to report its “On-Time Graduation Rate” because it inflates the numbers by counting the nonstandard diplomas. The data below are the “Federal Graduation Indicator” that counts only the Standard, Advanced, and IB diplomas. On average,…
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Tales of Student Success in 2023
by Matt Hurt Virginia Standards of Learning test results remained rather flat from 2022 to 2023 (see Table 1). This occurred despite the fact that many considered the pandemic over. There were many contributing factors, such as (but certainly not limited to) worsening teacher shortages and continued high rates of chronic absenteeism. However, among Virginia’s…
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The Californication of Virginia
by Kerry Dougherty Does anyone really think fewer gas mowers will make a difference? More importantly, is it the role of government to tell citizens what they must use to trim their fescue? Of course it isn’t. Why should we in Virginia care? Because we’re just one car back on California’s crazy train. During the…
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Electric Vehicles May Be Worse for the Environment than Gasoline-Powered Ones
by Hans Bader Electric vehicles require enormous damage to the environment just to produce their batteries — 250 tons of mining is required for a single battery, according to Real Clear Energy. Switching to electric cars would require a radical expansion of mining across the world, and the minerals for the car batteries will be…
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Resorts Like Airports
by Jon Baliles There has been a lot of boasting from the casino advocates about their partnership with Kentucky-based Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI). The rebranded Richmond Grand casino developer Urban One is a radio and TV conglomerate that has said they are partnering with CDI because of their huge capitalization and experience with casinos. But…
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Hey NCAA, Let JMU Go Bowling!
by Kerry Dougherty File this under “Even A Blind Squirrel Finds A Nut Occasionally”: Louise Lucas, one of the worst members of Virginia’s General Assembly and the ringleader of the obstructionist “brick wall” in the state Senate that blocked chunks of Gov. Glenn Youngin’s popular agenda, is on the right side of an issue. For…
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Virginia Beach School Board Adopts Controversial Youngkin Policy
from The Republican Standard The school board for Virginia’s largest city has adopted controversial guidelines announced by the Youngkin administration. Under the new rules, teachers and students have the right to call transgender students by their birth name and the pronouns of their biological sex. The Virginia Beach School Board initially opposed the governor’s order…
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Erica Ausch: The Last Holocaust Survivor in Hampton Roads?
by Kerry Dougherty More than 80 years ago the Nazis began “cleansing” Europe of Jews. The reign of terror began with hate and harassment. It moved on to expulsion and finally to the death camps. Initially the rest of the world didn’t know what was happening. By the time they noticed, six million Jews were…
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The High Stakes in Virginia’s Very Close Nov. 7 Election
from Liberty Unyielding Virginia is holding a very close election. The last day to vote is on Tuesday, November 7. If you live in Virginia, you can also vote early, at specified locations, on Monday through Friday, from September 22 to November 3, or on Saturday, October 28 or November 4. Voters are almost evenly…
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Loudoun Dems Reject Former House Speaker’s Donation
from The Republican Standard Democrats in Loudoun have rejected the donation of one of their declared 2024 Congressional candidates. In a move that raised eyebrows, the Loudoun County Democratic Committee (LCDC) Officers hastily decided to donate $1,000 to the International Committee of the Red Cross for their Israel/Gaza Relief Fund, following the receipt of a…
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What’s Going On with Rep. Kiggans?
by Kerry Dougherty It’s a good, old-fashioned clusterfart in our paralyzed House of Representatives as Republicans fruitlessly bicker over a replacement for Speaker Kevin McCarthy who was deposed recently by eight GOP agents of chaos without a plan for what comes next. Early on, it appeared that Louisiana’s Steve Scalise would be the consensus candidate…