Category: Politics
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The Defense Production Act as a Political Tool to Boost Solar Farms
by James C. Sherlock We have had multiple discussions, good ones, on the issues surrounding solar farms in Virginia. Jim Bacon wrote an excellent column about it in February of 2021 titled “The Political Economy of Solar Farms.” It was good then and prescient as of yesterday. He wrote another one two days earlier. From that…
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Home Price Volatility and Virginia Property Taxes
by James C. Sherlock Housing prices have more than doubled since 2012, reflecting shortages of supply and the resulting speculation. The increasing slope of those curves above is not comforting. Prices have soared over 20% in a year. Mortgage rates are up. What could possibly happen next? Most can figure that out. But this article is…
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Progressive Dogma Untethered to Results – Voter Laws Edition
by James C. Sherlock The armies of the progressive left are what the great political scientist George Edwards called “Prisoners of Their Premises.” Many persons and institutions are captives, to a greater or lesser degree. Lesser is better in this case. Mistakes flow from the best of intentions. You can learn from them or repeat…
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Only Ghouls Use Tragedies To Score Political Points
by Kerry Dougherty When news of the mass shooting in a Buffalo supermarket broke on Saturday, Americans recoiled in horror. The fact that the “suspect” was an 18-year-old white man who traveled 200 miles from his home to a Tops market in a predominantly African-American section of Buffalo apparently so he could kill black people…
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What’s the Governor Waiting For?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore At the reconvened session on April 27, Governor Youngkin returned 116 bills to the General Assembly with recommended amendments. Legislators accepted the Governor’s recommendations on 91 of those bills. The remaining 25 bills were returned to him as originally passed. The Governor has three options for each of these remaining bills: sign…
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Talking Out of Both Sides of Their Mouths
by Dick Hall-Sizemore While perusing today’s edition of the Roanoke Times, I ran across an article that astounded me. It concerned a meeting recently in Southwest Virginia about the Coalfields Expressway. I remembered hearing about this proposed highway many, many years ago and thought that it had been dismissed as a pipe dream. It turns…
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De Facto Secretary?
On April 15, Governor Youngkin issued a press release announcing “additional key administration appointments”. Several of those appointments were duly noted by various newspapers and other media outlets. Others were not, although they are interesting in their own right, raising some issues and shedding light on the administration. Because different issues are raised with different…
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Virginia Partisanship in Congress
Virginia Congressmen have scored at the extremes on a national measure of bipartisanship in Congress. As reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th, has been ranked as the fifth most bipartisan member of the House of Representatives and Rep. Bob Good, R-5th, the fifth least bipartisan member. The Lugar Center, founded by the…
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Biden Mounts a Direct Attack on America’s Most Successful Schools for Poor Minority Children
by James C. Sherlock This is pretty cringeworthy, even for the Biden administration. We have new rules for federal funding for new and expanded charter schools that are demonstrably racist. They uniquely disadvantage the poorest minority students because charter schools are proven to help them learn better than any other option. But the rules…
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Virginia is the Queen Mother of Bellwethers
by Chris Saxman Honestly, where does one start in trying to explain Virginia politics? Wednesday’s leadership change by House Democrats should not be considered shocking. Democrats had very close contests for caucus control after they won the majority, so losing that majority would naturally jeopardize their leaders. Suffice it to say, Delegate Eileen Filler-Corn has…
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Virginia Democrats in Disarray
by Kerry Dougherty Whoa. That was quick. Unprecedented in recent years, too. Del. Eileen Filler-Corn, the much ballyhooed first female Speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates, as well as the commonwealth’s first Jewish speaker, was tossed overboard Wednesday from her leadership role in the Democratic caucus by fellow party members. Five months after Republicans regained…
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A Different Tone
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There have been some complaints lately about how the Richmond newspaper should be called the Richmond Times-Dominion, due to its biased coverage in favor of the utility. While I agree with a lot of the criticism about taking a Dominion news release, rewriting it and then publishing it as news, a sentence…
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General Assembly to Governor: Not So Fast
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The page 1 lead story of Saturday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch announced what anybody who had been paying attention already knew: the General Assembly will not be taking up the biennial budget bill when it convenes on Wednesday. However, that does not mean the legislators will be able to leave early. They have a…
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Unionize Virginia’s Worst Nursing Home Chains
by James C. Sherlock If you go back to the series of articles I published here in October of 2021, you can refresh your memory on the dangers represented by Virginia’s worst nursing home chains. If you look at the complete spreadsheet of every Virginia nursing home from that data sorted by ownership, the bad…
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Honor: An Old-Fashioned Virtue?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There have been numerous articles recently on this blog about the honor codes at various Virginia colleges and universities. I remember a ceremony in which we incoming freshmen at the College of William and Mary signed our honor code pledges. These codes set out the behavior that people expect of each other…