Author: Steve Haner
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Medicaid Enrollment Reaches 1.5 Million Virginians
By Steve Haner Just under two years into Virginia’s Medicaid expansion, and less than one year into a pandemic-sparked economic crisis, enrollment in the program is now about 1.5 million Virginians. Enrollment has grown more than 25% in less than two years and spending more than 30%. The financial impact on state taxpayers has been…
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GOP Group Seeks Repeal of 2020 Energy Omnibus
By Steve Haner A Virginia GOP activist group aimed at suburban voters will be advocating repeal of the Virginia Clean Economy Act by the 2021 General Assembly, seeking to return a herd of cows that is well out of the barn and busting down the pasture fence. The Suburban Virginia Republican Coalition has produced a…
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TCI: Taxing the Poor to Benefit the Rich
By Steve Haner “I think TCI is just taxing poor people so that we can subsidize rich people’s electric cars.” So said New Jersey’s Maria Lopez-Nuñez, Deputy Director, Organizing and Advocacy for the Ironbound Community Corporation. She was speaking during an online seminar September 29 organized by Transportation and Climate Initiative advocates. That particular comment…
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One Governor Blinks on Carbon Tax. Will Northam?
By Steve Haner The governor of Massachusetts stated yesterday that he and other unnamed governors in Transportation and Climate Initiative states are reconsidering the new carbon tax. Is our Governor Ralph Northam among them? He has a news conference this afternoon and somebody should ask. From a post late yesterday at the Boston Herald: “Gov.…
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RGGI Carbon Tax Hits Dominion Bills Next Summer
By Steve Haner Beginning August 1 of next year, Dominion Energy Virginia proposes to begin to collect the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative carbon tax from its customers, collecting $168 million during the first year through yet another of those proliferating rate adjustment clauses (or “RACs”). It will get it by charging a flat $.002388 per…
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Another VA Gas Pipeline Project Dies Under Fire
By Steve Haner Another proposal to build a pipeline pumping wealth and prosperity into the Virginia economy has been brought down. That is my impression of what the impact would be of expanding natural gas supply to our state – added wealth and prosperity. This beneficial project is not to be. Virginia Natural Gas has…
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What Cox Brings to the Contest for Governor
by Steve Haner Virginia’s 66th House District, basically Colonial Heights and part of Chesterfield County, was drawn by a federal court special master. The incumbent delegate, Republican Speaker of the House Kirk Cox, was not supposed to survive the 2019 election based on past partisan performance in those precincts. But Cox ran nine points ahead…
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Outcome Disputes May Help Kill Electoral College
By Steve Haner The battle is now rejoined to kill the Electoral College and elect a U.S. President in 2024 based purely on the national vote total. The stubborn refusal of President Donald J. Trump and many other Republicans to accept the November 3 outcome is likely to become a new talking point for Electoral…
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More Falsehoods and Malarkey from Clean Virginia
By Steve Haner The big money behind the Clean Virginia activist group was all earned by a Charlottesville hedge fund manager through the great American system of capitalism. That didn’t stop his organization from a recent attack that could have come from Communist Party USA. This one would have made Bernie Sanders blush. Dominion Energy…
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Shellenberger’s “Apocalypse Never” Lessons for VA
“Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem.” By Steve Haner That statement opens the dust jacket summary for “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All” by Michael Shellenberger, once named “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine. It remains the…
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Assembly Protected Utilities, Not Other Businesses
First published this morning (with some slight differences) by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. By Steve Haner Now that the Virginia General Assembly’s “Cops and COVID” special session is all but finished, will it be easier or harder for the state’s struggling economy to recover in 2021? It will be harder, probably, except…
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Lost Absentees, Found Roll Call, Missing Statues
By Steve Haner Faulty Absentee Ballot Tracker Still Losing Track Complaints continue about an absentee ballot tracking system on the Virginia Department of Elections website. Someone with a problem similar to what I encountered in September reached out to Richmond’s WTVR-TV 6 News, which reported that the problem lies with the United States Postal Service.…
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Energy “PIPP” Proposal Just the TIP of an Iceberg
By Steve Haner As the State Corporation Commission prepares to set up Virginia’s first electricity cost shifting program, using a tax on all electric bills to provide discounts to low-income customers, advocates are already pushing to expand and enrich it. An expert hired by an environmental group argues in testimony that the General Assembly erred…
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Is DMV Hiding 26% of Virginia’s Fuel Tax?
By Steve Haner The Division of Motor Vehicles website is not honestly reporting fuel taxes in Virginia on that table above. This cannot be an oversight.
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VA COVID Deaths Drop Again. Distrust the Data.
By Steve Haner The Google satellite photo shows Rhine River cruise boats parked recently at Basel, Switzerland, probably including the one that my wife and I would have been boarding tomorrow morning. Losing a scheduled cruise is of no concern against all the other human and economic costs of this pandemic, but it provides a…