Author: Steve Haner
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Virtue Signal With Somebody Else’s Morning
Yesterday it was nice. This morning brings a downpour. Being in this line today will be less fun. Making everybody with legislative staff, state employee or registered lobbyist badges get screened and scanned before entering the Pocahontas Building to do (or watch) the people’s business will get us all soaked. (Even U.S. Senator Tim Kaine…
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Rate Case Bill Offers Repentence to Legislators
By Steve Haner Sinners! The hour of redemption is at hand! For years now some of you have deprived your fellow Virginians of a fair hearing in front of the judges set above them. To deny justice is among the worst of abominations, but a chance for salvation has appeared. Yes, I am talking to…
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2020 Assembly May Not Vote on Carbon Car Tax
By Steve Haner It now seems unlikely the 2020 General Assembly will act directly on Virginia’s membership in the proposed Transportation and Climate Initiative, an interstate compact to cap, tax and then start to ration fossil fuels that add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Virginia would be the southernmost member. While six pieces of pending…
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The 20% Growth Claim Is Not Misleading
HB 30 Appropriations Total As Introduced Year Grand Total ($Billions) % Over Previous % Over 2010 2010 77 2012 86 12 12 2014 97 13 26 2016 109 12 42 2018 116 7 51 2020 139 20 81 By Steve Haner As I noted earlier, defenders of state spending growth have a number of tools…
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John, Alternatives to the VEA Do Exist!
by Steve Haner Dear “John Randolph of Roanoke,” you very much have a choice if you are tired of paying dues to the Virginia Education Association. I saw your lament in the comment string on Jim Bacon’s report today about pending legislation to force non-union employees to pay union dues. “Can’t drop out though. These…
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A 20% Budget Explosion That May Keep Growing
By Steve Haner The interesting thing is not how Virginia’s overall budget has grown 20% in just two years (seen that number reported anywhere else?) What’s interesting is how many interest groups are openly pushing to make it even larger. The $23 billion increase is not enough! Just two years ago, in December 2017, Governor…
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The Wildest Energy Whirlwind Ever is Underway
by Steve Haner If Bacon’s Rebellion at times has been “Dominion Pravda,” providing a window into that corporate giant’s C suite, our friends at the Virginia Mercury sometimes take the opposite role of “Environmental People’s Daily.” Its story today is a good example, for what it includes and what it does not. The long, detailed…
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After Santa Comes Carbon Tax Sugar Daddy
by Steve Haner The Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources will be the sugar daddy for the carbon tax dollars raised from electricity customers, according to pending legislation to fully enroll Virginia in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) next year. House Bill 20, sponsored by Norfolk Democrat Joe Lindsey, is similar (with some changes) to…
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The Good News Few Will Report or Admit
I ran across the illustration above on my favorite contrarian website, Wattsupwiththat.com, and decided to share. The media feed us a constant diet of gloom and doom and disaster, and only those with a sense of history understand this is a bit of a Golden Age (75 years ago the American and British armies were…
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The Carbon Car Tax Nobody Is Discussing
By Steve Haner So far there appear to be about six schemes before the 2020 General Assembly to save the Earth and its inhabitants from the fiery holocaust of climate catastrophe. The one that is going to cost you the most money in the shortest period of time is still missing in action. Finally we…
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Yes! A Statue for Virginia’s Black Union Troops
Yes! Where can I donate? Richmond Councilwoman Kim Grey’s proposal in this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch for a statute honoring the Civil War’s black Union troops from Virginia needs to be acted on promptly. It should replace the one statue that does need to disappear off Monument Avenue, the one to Jefferson Davis. In particular the…
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Conformity Article Errata, Semi-Mea Culpa
I got enough of importance wrong in yesterday’s post on state income tax policy that a real correction is required, not just a tweak to the existing previous post. Herewith what I know I got wrong: As Dick Hall-Sizemore pointed out, correcting me in a comment, the 2019 provision creating a new Taxpayer Relief Fund…
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Games Still Played with “Conformity Windfall”
By Steve Haner Sometimes you have to start the victory lap, even if you only get halfway around the track. A year ago, on Bacon’s Rebellion and in Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy organs, I was beating the drum for a proposal to double the state’s standard deduction, the amount of family income exempt…
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Two Medicaid Updates: Work Requirement, PBMs
By Steve Haner Medicaid Work – Training Requirement Dead Disappointing many, thrilling many, and surprising nobody, the Governor of Virginia has openly broken his 2018 promise to couple expanded Medicaid coverage with a work or job training requirement for able-bodied recipients. Moving people out of poverty is no longer the goal. Governor Ralph Northam was…
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Ignore the ROE Decision. Dominion Gets It All.
By Steve Haner After a long, expensive and contentious legal battle producing a huge case record, the State Corporation Commission left Dominion Energy Virginia’s authorized profit margin unchanged Thursday. The return on equity figure did not go higher, as the utility demanded, and did not go lower, as just about everybody else involved in case…