Category: Business and Economy
-
Things Fall Apart: Workforce Edition
by James A. Bacon A friend of mine, a Richmond-area attorney, received this message from his accountant explaining the increasingly difficult conditions in which his business was operating: Increasingly, we’ve experienced extreme disruption with our US Postal Service as well as the handling of payments by government agencies, regardless if they have confirmed delivery. This…
-
Preparing for the Costs to Government of Virginia’s Generation COVID
by James C. Sherlock To justify her insistence on keeping schools closed, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in February of 2021, “kids are resilient and kids will recover.” She brought that same message to Virginia. In one of the strangest choices in Virginia political history, Terry McAuliffe brought Weingarten…
-
Projected $312 Billion Cost of Lost Earnings of Virginia K-12 Students due to Pandemic School Closures
by James C. Sherlock Over $312 billion in present value. That is the estimate published by Stanford’s Eric A. Hanushek of expected economic losses attributable to Virginia’s pandemic school closures. Virginia students in the COVID cohort can expect on average 5.5 percent lower lifetime earnings. History indicates that the economic losses will be permanent unless the schools…
-
Who Kept Your Grocery Taxes High This Holiday Season?
by Scott Dreyer Turkey, ham, chuck roast, pork loin, cornish hens, cranberries, potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls, corn, cheese, flour, sugar, egg nog, hot chocolate mix. Quick! What do these items have in common? For one thing, they are popular food items, most not only year-long, but especially at the holiday season. Plus, if…
-
The Big Christmas Chill Was a Wakeup Call
by Bill O’Keefe As temperatures dropped dramatically over the Christmas weekend, Dominion Energy’s advice to its customers — those who still had power — was to turn down their thermostats. Virginia was not alone. PJM, the regional grid management organization covering 13 states and the District of Columbia, made the same request because its gas…
-
Offshore Wind Turbines in International Waters Raise Big Defense Issues
By James C. Sherlock The Department of the Interior (DOI) is unlikely to be expert in the diplomatic issues and defense vulnerabilities inherent in building wind turbine farms in international waters. The DOI is, however, greatly concerned with “viewscape” – whether the turbine blades can be seen from shore. By the wealthy who live there…
-
Factoid of the Day: It Still Pays to Work in Virginia
In three states — Washington, Massachusetts, and New Jersey — a family of four can earn more than $100,000 annually in equivalent government benefits, according to a study, “Paying Americans Not to Work,” published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The earned income equivalent for the state of Washington is a mind-boggling $122,653 a year,…
-
Dominion’s Planned Offshore Wind Farm Need Not – and Must Not – Be Built Where Planned
by James C. Sherlock I am referring in the title, of course, to Dominion Power’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project to be located in the hatched area below. It is planned for one of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DI) Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) offshore wind farm lease areas. Lease areas…
-
Offshore Wind Turbines and Submarine Warfare
by James C. Sherlock Upon investigation of open source literature, I find that offshore wind turbines are less noisy than I imagined. But they present obstacles nonetheless, both physically and acoustically. United States submarine and anti-submarine efforts, operationally, in Navy labs, and in industry are led by some of our best and brightest. That is…
-
New Youngkin Tax Cuts Total $7 Billion By 2028
by Steve Haner The set of Virginia tax changes Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has baked into his proposed 2023 budget amendments is far more extensive and involves substantially more tax relief than the descriptions he offered in his December 15 presentation.
-
Workforce Development: Wrestling with the Alligator
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin wants to consolidate the plethora of Virginia’s workforce development programs spread across 13 agencies and six secretariats, according to Virginia Public Media. Not only do these programs consume $485 million in federal and state funding but there are a bewildering 1,500 of them. I find that number so astonishing as…
-
Richmond’s Next Chapter
by Jon Baliles The Times-Dispatch Editorial Board printed a piece this week entitled “The city’s Lost Cause statues are all gone. So what now?” While it recaps the events and protests of 2020 and the fact that all of the former Confederate statues have been removed, it offers a bit more foresight by looking at…
-
Junior ROTC – Important to Students, High Schools, Society and the National Defense
by James C. Sherlock Richmond Senior High School (RSHS) is a 1,200-student grades-10-to-12 school in the Sandhills Region of North Carolina. Its mission, vision and belief statements genuflect at none of the shrines of progressive dogma. Not a single one. Minority enrollment is 57% of the student body (majority Black), which is higher than the…
-
SCC Drops Wind Energy Performance Standard
by Steve Haner The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) has abandoned its push for an offshore wind performance standard fiercely opposed by Dominion Energy Virginia. It agreed instead to some capital cost limitations for its project that the utility has endorsed . In a decision released today, the two commissioners accepted in full a stipulation put…
-
Virginia Agrees To Compensate Fishing Industry For Damage From Offshore Wind
by Steve Haner Nine states, including Virginia, have agreed to establish a major compensation fund to pay their private commercial and recreational fishing companies for damages caused by offshore wind turbines. Three guesses where the money comes from. The announcement, made December 12, hints at it coming from project developers, but in Virginia of course…