Category: Business and Economy
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RIP E. Morgan Massey
by James A. Bacon Virginia lost one of her greatest sons today when E. Morgan Massey passed away after a brief battle with cancer. As author of the Massey family history, I had the good fortune to get to know him these past three years. At 94 years, he was a kind man, and a…
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Port Development a Double-Edged Sword
by James A. Bacon An enduring question on this blog is what accounts for the lagging economic performance of the Hampton Roads metropolitan statistical area. Growth in Gross Domestic Product since 2001 has been roughly half that of Virginia’s, while growth in real personal income since 2010 has lagged by 30%. We have explored various…
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Virginia’s Progressive Assembly Turns to Taxes
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. The COVID-19 recession barely dented Virginia’s state budget. The massive spending growth adopted in the pre-COVID budget a year ago is largely back on track. Yet some legislators think the time is ripe to hunt for more revenue by re-writing…
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The Virginia War On Fossil Fuels
by Steve Haner First published in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star Feb. 26 then distributed by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. The lesson of the Texas grid collapse is not just about electricity. Imagine the week Texans would have had if once the power went out and stayed out, they had no gasoline, diesel,…
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WaPo Nabs Polk Award, Is Pulitzer Next?
By Peter Galuszka How ironical. Our esteemed Jim Bacon has been on a tear in recent months writing about media coverage of the problem of systemic racism at the Virginia Military Institute. Of special interest to Jim is the reporting of Ian Shapira, a Washington Post reporter who has been digging into the VMI. After…
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Certificate of Public Need’s Hall of Mirrors
by James C. Sherlock In Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, everything is reflected hundreds of times. The mirrors were also a commercial. They represented an effort of Louis XIV to establish for France monopolies on the production of luxury goods. Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need (COPN) law and regulations represent a similar structure. Everything in the…
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Help for Small Businesses–One State Use of CARES Funding
By Dick Hall-Sizemore I owe the Dept. of Small Business and Supply Diversity (DSBSD) an apology. In an earlier post, I questioned whether the agency would be able to quickly distribute $120 million in grant funds. It turns out that its first checks went out in mid-August and it had to stop accepting applications on…
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Buy Bacon’s Book
By Peter Galuszka This is a shameless advertisement. Jim has written an excellent book and you should buy it and review it. While some of Jim’s focus is at odds with a similar book I wrote eight years ago, “Maverick Miner” is a really well put together effort at research and writing. In my reporting,…
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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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Certificate of Public Need – This Seems Promising
by James C. Sherlock Democrats, the primary bulwarks for the Certificate of Public Need (COPN) law in Virginia, took the opportunity last year to create as part of a major revision to COPN law a new 19-member State Health Services Plan Task Force. That group is to advise the Board of Health on the content…
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The Democratic Coalition’s Conflicts of Interest Cause Much Political Scrambling
by James C. Sherlock It is tough to be a Democratic politician in Richmond or Washington. Now that they govern, they find it one big game of coalition whack-a-mole. I have written today of the conflicts between the interests of teachers unions and those of parents playing out in the Virginia General Assembly. That vital…
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Mandate Teacher Vaccinations in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock I wrote this morning about Virginia SENATE BILL NO. 1303 (Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute) Local school divisions; availability of virtual and in-person learning to all students. The lengthy Democratic substitute to a one-sentence Republican bill was written over the weekend to provide political cover to the Democrats. Unfortunately, it…
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Union-Written Bill Fundamentally Redefines Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock Democrats are attempting to rush through a bill to provide political cover from a backlash by parents against the continuing closure of Virginia schools. Never ones to let a crisis go to waste, they have put union-written provisions in the bill that will permanently change the nature of the public schools…
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The Latest Lunacy: Face Masks for Fishermen
by Kerry Dougherty Ever wonder what would happen if feminists, man buns and smoked salmon socialists crafted federal policy? You’d get moronic rules like this one from the Biden administration: One of Joe’s latest executive orders requires all commercial fishermen to wear face masks – including while asleep in their cramped berths – and the…
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Signs of the Bubble Economy…
From Virginia Business magazine: Charlottesville-based Blue Ridge Bank has made it possible for customers to purchase and redeem bitcoin at its ATMs — the first commercial bank in the country to do so. Blue Ridge Bank cardholders can purchase and redeem the virtual currency at 19 locations across the state. A year ago, bitcoins were worth…