Category: Politics
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Disregard that Law
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Well, Virginia made the national headlines again last week and over the weekend. This time it was over the requirement that couples applying for a marriage license list their race on the application. And Attorney General Mark Herring was the hero, saying that, despite what the law said, the couples did not…
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Big Money Update
by James A. Bacon Looks like my post of a few days ago arguing that the Democrats were the party of Big Money in Virginia requires an update. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Republican state Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper, will report a $500,000 campaign donation from top GOP contributor Richard Uihlein, an Illinois industrialist. Taking…
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Virginia Ethics Enforcement So Weak It Can’t Be Rated
by Don Rippert Your General Assembly in Action (or inaction). The Coalition for Integrity (C4I) has rated the political ethics enforcement approaches of the 50 states. Virginia’s ethics enforcement is so weak that it is one of seven states that cannot be rated. This should not be surprising to anybody who regularly reads this blog.…
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Dems, Big Money, and Cultural Dominance
by James A. Bacon It happened so slowly, I hardly noticed. The Democratic Party has morphed into the party of Big Money in Virginia. The Republican Party has become the party of the little guy.
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Bacon Bits: Dark Money Update
Things Go Better with Koch. George Mason University wants its university foundation board to be exempt from Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. But Transparent GMU, a student group, has sued the foundation to turn over records of agreements with private donors, in particular those from the conservative-libertarian Charles Koch Foundation. University officials have conceded that…
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A Shaft of Light in the Dark Money Gloom
by James A. Bacon As a follow-up to yesterday’s “dark money” post comparing the resources available to the conservative Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy (TJI) and the liberal Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis (CI), it is only fair for me to note that CI did disclose its major donors in its 2016 990 form.…
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Dark Money and Think Tanks
by James A. Bacon When writing about the passing of Mike Thompson, founder of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy (TJI) (see previous post), I chanced to look at TJI’s 990 forms. It had been my impression that Mike ran the small-government think tank on a shoestring, and the IRS filing confirmed it. The…
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We’ll Miss You, Mike
by James A. Bacon Mike Thompson, president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy (TJI), passed away this weekend after a battle with leukemia. Founder of Virginia’s only state/local think tank with a conservative bent, the Northern Virginian was a regular fixture in Richmond and a consistent voice for small government. I had the…
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Democrats Dominate Dark Money
by James A. Bacon Left-leaning groups have done an amazingly effective job of highlighting the role of conservative and libertarian “dark money” in the public sphere. Newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times have eagerly amplified the findings, for example, of a student group, Transparent GMU, that raised issues about the influence of…
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Just Pretending To Protect Ratepayers Won’t Cut It
by Steve Haner If you have nothing substantive to offer, try some meaningless virtue signaling. That’s the only way to interpret a claim from 36 General Assembly Democrats that they are taking steps to oppose “Dominion raising Virginian’s energy bills by $147 million,” to quote a Blue Virginia headline today. The story reports on a…
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How Trump’s Trade Madness Hurts Virginia Farmers
by Peter Galuszka Virginia farmers are paying a big price for President Donald Trump’s chaotic trade war with China. If anything, it’s likely to get worse as Trump vows even bigger tariffs, drops the idea and then comes back to it. There’s no question that Trump’s peculiar negotiating behavior and questionable logic are having their…
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Catholic Bashing No Disqualification for Northam?
by Steve Haner Try this thought experiment. Imagine a headline in the state capitol newspaper reading: “Appointee’s posts disparage Republicans and others on the web.” Or swap Democrats for Republicans. Would anybody bat an eye? Instead, of course, the story in the Richmond Times Dispatch is about Governor Ralph Northam’s recent appointment of a vicious…
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The Death of David Koch
by Peter Galuszka Imagine the coincidence. On Friday I was reading business writer Christopher Leonard’s excellent “Kochland” book on the hard-right, billionaire industrialists, Charles and David Koch. I put my Nook down for a moment to check the news. David Koch had died at age 79. He, his brother, the rest of the family and…
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Does the Left Have an Understandable Position on Immigration and How Much Does It Matter?
by Don Rippert Debate: The debate on immigration in America continues to rage. People who hold right-of-center political beliefs seem to think that the U.S. immigration laws should be vigorously enforced. There may be some “wiggle room” on the right. For example, some conservatives believe there should be exceptions to deportation for those illegally in…
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Gun Issues Return to Capitol Monday, Tuesday
by Steve Haner Proposed firearms regulations will pack a General Assembly meeting room Monday and Tuesday, and for that portion of the population not already locked into an ideological position either way, it could be useful to pay attention. The Republican majorities have taken some political bashing for failing to act on the flood of…