Category: Politics
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Sparks Will Fly
by James A. Bacon Step aside Medicaid expansion. The big uproar in the General Assembly this year is over who gets the final say over the shape of Virginia’s Clean Power Plan: General Assembly Republicans or Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe. At stake is the future of Virginia’s electric grid. Democrats and their allies are pushing for 30%…
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PolitiFact Claim Based on Faulty Assumption
by James A. Bacon In a recent survey asking people if they supported or opposed Medicaid expansion in Virginia, Del. R. Steven Landes, R-Weyers Cave, made what PolitiFactVirginia reporter Sean Gorman regarded as a fallacious statement: While expansion would enroll up to 400,000 currently uninsured Virginians in Medicaid, it could cost the Commonwealth of Virginia…
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Welcome to the Fan, Randy
In recent years Virginia’s politics has appeared disjointed. In the past two presidential elections, the Democratic nominee has prevailed here. The current governor as well as both U.S. Senators, John Warner and Tim Kaine, are Democrats. Yet representation in the House of Representatives favor the House G.O.P. by a ratio of 8-to-3. It is small…
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Why T.J. Deserves a Place in Our Pantheon of Heroes
by James A. Bacon Students at the College of William & Mary have carried on a long tradition of festooning the campus statue of Thomas Jefferson with accouterments ranging from woolen scarfs to party hats. The latest fad is to append the effigy with sticky notes denouncing the founding father as a slave holder, a…
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Battle Lines Forming Over Clean Power Plan
The partisan battle lines are forming over the implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which calls for Virginia to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from state power plants 32% by 2030. Attorney General Mark R. Herring, a Democrat, announced two weeks ago that Virginia will join a coalition of 17 other states supporting the Obama…
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Thanks For the Memories
I have not written much over that past several months because I have been dealing with some family problems. I thought a brief article on the Dave Brat interview might be worth a comment. Boy,was I wrong. I was upset at one of the responses to my Brat article and have decided that continuing to…
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Dave Brat, What to Make of this Guy?
As I flipped though the New York Times Sunday Magazine, I was shocked to find a full-page interview with Rep. David Brat. The Times usually does not pay much attention to House freshmen, but Brat has created a high profile for himself by becoming an outspoken member of the “Freedom Caucus” of ultra-right wing Republicans…
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The Terry McAuliffe Show
by James A. Bacon Terry McAuliffe doesn’t just fill the room — he fills the banquet hall. He’s loud, he’s animated, he’s funny and he’s prone to superlatives. Economic development success, he proclaims, comes from superior salesmanship and the art of the deal. Indeed, if he doffed a wig of thinning blond, slicked-back hair, you’d be…
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Virginia GOP Flunks the ABC Test
by Justin Trent With the Virginia Department of Alcohol Beverages Control in the news again, residents of Virginia have another opportunity to ask their elected officials why the Commonwealth of Virginia holds a monopoly over an entire industry. In addition, small government conservatives should consider whether the continued existence of Virginia ABC proves that the…
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George Mason Profs: Prosecute Climate Deniers
by James A. Bacon Jagadish Shukla, a George Mason University climate scientist, thinks corporate climate deniers should be criminally prosecuted under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law. Corporations and other organizations have “knowingly deceived” the American people about the risks of climate change, wrote Shukla and nineteen other scientists (five of whom…
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Purge the Algorithms
by James A. Bacon It’s Labor Day, a suitable occasion for opining on the future of work… One of the great questions of our era revolves around the impact of robotics and artificial intelligence on the job market. People have fretted about automation since the days of Ned Ludd, the knitting-frame wrecker. Machines have been replacing human…
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Dominion Does the Right Thing, Eats Cost of Some Charitable Giving
I’m a few days late getting to this, but it’s still worthy of note… Dominion Virginia Power has told the State Corporation Commission that it will not try to recover $2 million in charitable deductions made in 2013 and 2014. The Associated Press had reported that the power company had sought to include in its rate base…
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Charging Rate Payers for What?
by James A. Bacon In 2012 Dominion Virginia Power donated $10,000 to the Appalachian College of Pharmacy in Buchanan County, far outside the company’s service territory. It so happens that Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, head of the House Commerce and Labor Committee, has been a salaried fundraiser for the school, according to the Associated…
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Something to Think About
Last week I was reading in the New York Times an article on Jeb Bush’s plans for the economy. One of his talking points was to reduce the federal workforce by 10%. For a state as dependent on the Feds as Virginia, this could have serious financial implications. Already, in the CNBC rankings as the…
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Alpha Natural Resources: Running Wrong
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka Four years ago, coal titan Alpha Natural Resources, one of Virginia’s biggest political donors, was riding high. It was spending $7.1 billion to buy Massey Energy, a renegade coal firm based in Richmond that had compiled an extraordinary record for safety and environmental violations and fines. Its management practices culminated in a…