Category: Property rights
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Whose Water Is It?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There are some issues that seem to be baked into public policy and, because they affect sensitive and important areas, tend to lead to controversies periodically. Many years ago, one of the hottest controversies was the “inter-basin transfer of water.” Because Virginia is a “riparian rights” state, folks who live next to…
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Deja Vu, All Over Again
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Today’s Washington Post has an article about efforts to preserve farmland in Loudoun County. That headline instantly took me back to the late 1970s and early 1980s when there was a flurry of activity regarding the need to preserve farmland and provide landowners incentives to keep their farmland from being developed. Loudoun…
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Virginia Republicans Should Run in the Fall on the Virginia Senate Silencing of Suparna Dutta
by James C. Sherlock Virginia Republicans, not noted for organization, common approaches or dexterity, have been granted a gift by Democrats if they will accept it. The Democratic majority in the General Assembly rejected the appointment of Suparna Dutta, a mother, engineer and an immigrant from India, to the Board of Education. This happened because Senate…
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The Box and the Snowball
by Joe Fitzgerald There’s a box, and there’s a snowball. The box is the support of the Bluestone Town Center. It is a well-constructed but beautifully decorated box, built on strong buzzwords. Affordable Housing, and Climate Change, and Dense Development are the shiny wrapping on this gift. The snowball of opposition rolling toward City Hall…
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Virginia Democrats’ Rent Control Bills Would Make Housing Scarcer
by Hans Bader In Virginia’s legislature, rent-control legislation has been introduced by five Democratic delegates and a Democratic state senator. Economists oppose rent control because it makes it more difficult for people to find decent housing in the long run. In a 1992 poll, 93% of those surveyed said rent control reduces the quantity and…
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Little Guys Lose, Again
by Dick Hall-Sizemore A recent article on this blog about the high cost of housing generated a considerable amount of discussion. Much of the discussion centered around the role of government in contributing to the affordable housing shortage. I offer another reason: good old-fashioned capitalism. A recent article in The Virginian Pilot well illustrates this point.…
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Flag Fight
by Deborah Hommer On March 3, 2021, the Fairfax County Planning Commission recommended against adopting proposed regulations governing the number, size and setbacks of flags and flagpoles. “This was a solution, looking for a problem,” said Planning Commission Vice Chairman John Ulfelder. “I suspect, based on a lot of comments we’ve received, a lot of…
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Podcast: How the General Assembly Has Changed
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in Agriculture & forestry, Blogs and Blog Administration, Business and Economy, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Demographics, Economic development, Energy, Entrepreneurs and Innovation, Environment, General Assembly, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race RelationsBy Peter Galuszka I haven’t contributed much to BR lately since I am slammed with non-Virginia work. I did manage to help out on a Podcast about how the General Assembly has changed the state over the last two years as Democrats have gained power. This Podcast is produced by WTJU, the University of Virginia…
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What Texas’s Crisis Means for Virginia
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in Blogs and Blog Administration, Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Corruption and Scandals, Culture wars, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Political Influence, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technologyby Peter Galuszka The Texas freeze and ensuing energy disaster has clear lessons for Virginia as it sorts out its energy future. Yet much of the media coverage in Virginia and certainly on Bacon’s Rebellion conveniently leaves out pertinent observations. The statewide freeze in Texas completely fouled up the entire energy infrastructure as natural gas…
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Behind Dominion’s Shift to Renewables
By Peter Galuszka Ever wonder why Dominion Energy found religion and announced a major shift to renewable energy? The answer is that modern, high technology businesses want it and the Richmond-based utility wants to respond to their desires. This one of the themes in this recent cover story I did for Style Weekly that explores…
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Elmer Gantry In Lynchburg
By Peter Galuszka The resignation of Jerry Falwell Jr. amid a series of scandals may have a strong impact in Virginia where his late father built an extraordinary, ultra-conservative evangelical university in Lynchburg that later became highly politicized lightning rod supporting President Donald Trump. Falwell has been caught up in a number of controversies including…
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What Needs To Be Done After the ACP
By Peter Galuszka For six long years, Dominion Energy and its partners in the $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline have waged war against Virginians as they have pushed their way forward with the 600-mile-long natural gas project. Their strong-armed methods have created untold misery and expense for land-owners, members of lower income minority communities, nature…
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What It Is, Is Not Journalism
By Dick Hall-Sizemore I never thought that I would agree with Jim Bacon on the slant of the RTD’s news coverage, but an article on evictions today just really irritated me. It was the usual article about activists demonstrating at the Richmond courthouse and protesting evictions. (At least the demonstration on Thursday was peaceful; no…
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What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been
By Peter Galuszka Back in the winter of 2015, Craig Vanderhoef, a former Navy captain, got a disturbing surprise in his mailbox at his retirement home near Afton in Nelson County. A letter from Dominion Resources noted that it wanted to survey his land for a new 600-mile-long natural gas pipeline. On two occasions, he…
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The Systemic Racism of Monument Avenue
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in Blogs and Blog Administration, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Demographics, Electoral process, Federal issues, Housing, Labor and Workforce, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Richmond’s grand Monument Avenue, a double lane, tree lined thoroughfare, has been the epicenter of the Black Lives Matter campaign that has focused on the statues of several Confederate figures one the road, including Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Jefferson Davis. All are up for removal, but the…