Author: sherlockj
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Headline – The Richmond Times-Dispatch Needs Help
by James C. Sherlock Finally some good news about the dumpster fire that has been the Virginia Unemployment Commission (VEC). Governor Glenn Youngkin has reported definitive progress — real numbers in reductions of backlogs. Here is the full Richmond Times Dispatch (RTD) headline on the story reporting those improvements. Youngkin claims progress in reducing backlog…
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The Real and Present Threat of Flooding in Virginia Requires Coordinated Action
by James C. Sherlock An editorial in The Virginian-Pilot this morning is titled, “A worrisome, watery future,” and is built around an update on flooding from NOAA. It is a grave situation. NOAA projects one foot of combined sea level rise and subsidence here in Hampton Roads by 2050. The adjacent map has not been…
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Virginia ACLU Sues to Keep Schoolchildren in Masks – Forever
by James C. Sherlock The ACLU of Virginia is suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in United States District Court in Charlottesville to keep all Virginia school children in masks. Potentially forever. The lawsuit contends that Governor Youngkin, with his EO making masks optional, “has effectively barred…
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A Dangerous Overreach in Public School Policy
by James C. Sherlock Disturbed by the actions of Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), I have just finished reading Threat Assessment and Management in Virginia Public Schools: Model Policies, Procedures, and Guidelines (Model Policies), a publication of the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). It enjoins schools to investigate everyone, including “persons unaffiliated with the…
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The National Association of School Psychologists is Going to Get Its Members Fired
by James C. Sherlock I had dinner with George Will once years ago aboard ship. He is very smart, uncannily observant, understatedly amusing and a terrific dinner guest. He published yesterday in The Washington Post a column, “Witness how progressives in government forfeit the public’s trust.” The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) has proven…
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LCPS Superintendent Ziegler and the Superintendent of Public Instruction
by James C. Sherlock Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) can generously be described as “troubled” during the tenure of superintendent Scott Ziegler. You know, the guy who got left holding the bag when his predecessor fled the state. To make a very long story short, his fate is in front of the new Superintendent of…
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State Interest in the Operating Efficiency of Virginia’s Nonprofit Hospitals
by James C. Sherlock Virginia’s nonprofit hospital systems are partially funded with taxpayer money, pay no taxes, and are protected from competition by the state. The state, having provided all of those advantages, needs to make sure its citizens reap as much benefit from them as the hospitals do. Yesterday I wrote that the…
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Virginia Should Regulate Healthcare Monopolies as Public Utilities
by James C. Sherlock I am a capitalist, but we haven’t had capitalism in the healthcare market in Virginia since the Certificate of Public Need (COPN) made its way into the Code of Virginia in 1968. If we repealed COPN today, we’d still be left with the monopolies it has created and protected. All that…
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Budget Actions to Implement the Methods of the Nation’s Most Successful Educators of Poor, Minority and Special Needs Kids into Virginia Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock I am a graduate of the University of Virginia. I am not a proud one on this subject. I have just completed yet another review of the centers, labs and projects of the UVa School of Education and Human Development (ex-Curry School). The review highlighted two major issues. UVa’s School of…
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Infrastructure Bill, Meet Richmond’s United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
by James C. Sherlock The President and members of Congress have celebrated the enactment of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act into law. In Virginia and the other states (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia) of the federal Fourth Circuit, good luck with that. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit just published two…
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COPN’s Regional Monopolies Helped Boost Virginia Hospitals’ Operating Margins to more than 3x National Median in 2020
by James C. Sherlock Virginians have been assured forever by the hospital lobby that the non-profit regional monopolies established and protected by COPN nearly everywhere but Richmond: are benign public servants with a charitable mission; certainly don’t drive up costs; that competition does not matter; that the State Medical Facilities Plan on which COPN is…
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Virginia Penalties for Battery Against School and Healthcare Personnel are a Problem
by James C. Sherlock Virginia has a law that, having been amended piecemeal over the years, is inconsistent, inflexible and may not provide the protections that lawmakers or potential victims intended. The law is Code of Virginia § 18.2-57. Assault and battery; penalty. A member of the Fairfax County bar has reported that progressive Commonwealth’s Attorney…
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Virginia is Facing a Citizen Revolt on Inflation-Driven Tax Increases
by James C. Sherlock Virginians must fund their local governments. It is not wise to chip away at local government revenue without an integrated plan to ensure they are funded to carry out the things we need them to do. However, two key ways in which we raise local revenue, property taxes and sales taxes,…
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A Lesson for Virginia Democrats in California’s Failed Universal Healthcare Bill
by James C. Sherlock California is one of the five bluest states in the Union. Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature and a sometimes-masked Democratic governor. It can’t pass single-payer healthcare. It has not even been able to get a bill to the floor of the Assembly (lower house). It failed…
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School Discipline – a Big Debate with Big Consequences for Education
by James C. Sherlock Learning can only happen in an appropriate learning environment. How to establish and maintain that learning environment is one of the most consequential debates in public education. In a lot of schools in Virginia, what we are doing now is not working. Laura Meckler, writing in The Washington Post about a…