Category: Politics
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I Miss The GOP That Welcomed Bob Calhoun
Former State Senator Bob Calhoun’s death on August 6 at age 83 is apparently only Alexandria local news so far, but he was such a colorful and useful member of the Senate that his passing needs more notice. The family is delaying any formal memorial services. Calhoun was funny, one very smart lawyer and an…
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Stoney Didn’t Comply with State Procurement Rules Either
by James A. Bacon The defense of Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s awarding of a $1.8 million statue-removal contract to a campaign supporter — that he followed state emergency procurement law, even if he didn’t abide by the City of Richmond’s law — has no basis in fact. Stoney’s defenders have argued that the public health…
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Virginia’s Special Session: Political Theater
by Kerry Dougherty Gov. Ralph Northam’s “special session” of the General Assembly that begins today in Richmond is quickly turning into political farce. What began as an emergency convocation of lawmakers to address the budget catastrophe brought on by Northam’s shutdown of the commonwealth and was expanded to include law enforcement reforms, now threatens to…
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Double Standards and the COVID Crisis
by Kerry Dougherty You want to know why some of us are so cynical about the Covid crisis? It’s the double standards. The lack of consistency. The shifting goalposts. Officials saying one thing and doing another. We saw a glaring example of the latter it here in Virginia in May, when the Governor — who’d…
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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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Who is Behind NAH, LLC?
by James A. Bacon Most of the Confederate statues and memorials in the City of Richmond are gone. Only the statue of Robert E. Lee, the subject of ongoing litigation, remains. The statues and cannons are not coming back. The broken egg cannot be reassembled. But there are legitimate issues relating to Mayor Levar Stoney’s…
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Brace Yourselves: Another Northam Presser Today
by Kerry Dougherty Get ready, Virginia. Gov. Ralph Northam, the man who can’t stop the rioting in Richmond but thinks he can stop the spread of COVID-19, is holding a press conference. No, he won’t be announcing strong measures to end the violence and lawlessness roiling the streets of the Capitol. Like most Democrats, the…
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Charlottesville Elites and Virginia’s New Ruling Class
by James A. Bacon Before it sold off its national newspaper division to Lee Enterprises for a measly $140 million in March, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway owned most of the newspapers in western and central Virginia, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Roanoke Times, the Daily Progress (in Charlottesville), and the News Virginian (in Waynesboro).…
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Virginia’s Special Session: Act in Haste, Repent at Leisure
by Kerry Dougherty Get ready, Virginia. Bad things are brewing in Richmond. On Friday, Gov. Ralph Northam announced that he was bringing the General Assembly back for a special session on August 18. Lucky us. The mischief that the far-left majority — bankrolled by Michael Bloomberg — could get into should alarm every moderate Virginian.…
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Gerald Smith: Richmond’s New Top Cop
By Peter Galuszka FYI, here’s a piece I did for Style Weekly about Richmond’s new p0lice chief, the third in about a month, and his interpretation on the problems of law enforcement in this period of defunding.
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Uncertain Times, Uncertain Leadership
by Shaun Kenney You have to give Governor Ralph Northam the tiniest bit of credit. Not only did he survive wearing blackface or wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood (we still don’t know which) but he has done just about everything possible to present himself as the only governor who is also a doctor of…
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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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Dominion Scraps the Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Breaking news: Dominion Energy and Duke Energy have announced the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, citing ongoing delays and increasing cost uncertainty. The cost of the project had escalated from $5 billion to $8 billion, and, despite winning a victory in the United States Supreme Court, the power companies still have no certainty of…
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Who Rules America in 2020?
by James A. Bacon One of my college textbooks back in the early 1970s was a book by G. William Domhoff, “Who Rules America?” He argued, as best I can remember, that a corporate elite wielded power through its influence over government as well its control of cultural institutions such as think tanks, foundations, academic…
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Spanberger Vs. Trump
By Peter Galuszka U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th District, continues to draw international attention as a “New Look” Democrat from Virginia who is savvy about the intelligence community and global affairs. The former CIA case officer was featured on CNN criticizing the administration of Donald Trump for ignoring reports that Russian military intelligence had paid…