Category: Governance
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Fall Elections Threaten Northam’s Radical Education Team
by James C. Sherlock Politics is a contact sport, and the two people in the Northam administration most likely to be blindsided are Secretary of Education Atif Qarni and Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane. I say blindsided — they won’t see it coming — because the hits will come from their own team. This…
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COPN Monopolies Depress Income for Virginia Healthcare Professionals Without Lowering Costs
by James C. Sherlock Virginia is among the richest states in the country. We are ranked ninth among states with the highest median household income in the 2019 (latest) Census Bureau American Community Survey. Virginia median household income was $74,222 and the U.S. as a whole was $62,843. But Virginia has a Certificate of…
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Virginia Democrats Govern in the Service of Dogma and Power
by James C. Sherlock Socialism and communism are so 19th and 20th centuries. Under socialism, individuals would still own property. But industrial production, which was the chief means of generating wealth, was to be communally owned and managed by a democratically elected government. Socialists sought change and reform, but sought to make those changes…
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In 2019, 34% of Virginia’s Black 4th graders Could Not Read – Mississippi Offers Hope
by James C. Sherlock Since 2013, Mississippi has made unprecedented, best-in-the-nation improvement in the academic achievements of its children starting as measured in nationwide testing. The improvements were especially pronounced in 4th graders who benefited directly from its 2013 literacy law. I have done a deep dive into those results and traced them back to…
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The Real Nursing Home Scandal in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock Mike Martz has written three excellent columns that have appeared in the Richmond Times Dispatch starting March 19. Headline of one: “Virginia tries to move ahead of national ‘reform agenda’ for nursing homes.” The gist of it was that a couple of national nursing home industry organizations have taken advantage of the…
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Rich Jurisdictions Vote with Their Feet on the Virginia Department of Health
by James C. Sherlock A couple of days ago Antonio Olivo broke a story in The Washington Post that told of a law permitting Loudoun and Prince William counties to form independent health departments. It awaits Governor Northam’s signature. Having seen the performance of the Department of Health during COVID, they have decided they cannot…
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An Important Challenge to Employees of the Commonwealth
by James C. Sherlock I ask the employees of the Commonwealth of Virginia to be agents for its positive change. I will address you directly. The issue is state readiness, or rather lack of it, for the COVID epidemic. You are in the best position to know that your agency was surprised and overwhelmed when COVID…
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Confessions of a Virginia Whistleblower
by James C. Sherlock I decided last week in a paroxysm of good citizenship to contact the Virginia Inspector General (IG) to report wrongdoing by state officials. I have a considerable list centered around the failure of many state officials to carry out their longstanding, formally-assigned duties pre-COVID to plan for a pandemic emergency and…
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Fire State Officials Who Failed Us in COVID
by James C. Sherlock If senior members of the state bureaucracies escape accountability for their failures before and during COVID, the agency cultures won’t change and it will happen again. I am going to review below the extent of their written responsibilities for pandemic planning and the high quality planning support they were given…
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Virginia’s Covid Vaccination Plan – Nothing to Exercise
by James C. Sherlock I have read a lot of speculation here on who is responsible for the mess that has been the distribution and administration of COVID vaccines. I will try offer some clarification. On a day-to-day basis, people get flu shots or shingles shots or whatever from a lot of different providers. The…
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Virginia Pandemic Emergency Plan Was Never Exercised
by James C. Sherlock As we suspected, Virginia did not exercise its Pandemic Emergency Plan from the time it was published in 2012 until COVID-19 struck. I received the following response today to a FOIA request I sent to the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Emergency Management: The Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) received your…
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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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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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Business as Usual in the Virginia Senate – “Dominion Dick” Saslaw Delivers
by James C. Sherlock Associate Press headline Feb. 15: “Virginia Senate Democrats kill electric rate reform bills.” Fish gotta swim, Senator Richard L. “Dominion Dick” Saslaw gotta be Senate Majority Leader and Chairman of the Virginia Senate Commerce and Labor Committee. Saslaw has received nearly a half million dollars in campaign donations from Dominion Energy and…
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All According to Plan – the Biggest Government Scandal in Virginia History
by James C. Sherlock The Virginia Mercury published an excellent article on the difficulties being encountered in Virginia in scheduling COVID shots. But who could have anticipated the need? Who indeed. This story is part of the single biggest government scandal in Virginia history and the press is either ignorant of the underlying issue or…