Category: Regulations, Gov’t Oversight
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Improving Petersburg Public Health is a State Issue as Well as a Local and Personal Responsibility
By James C. Sherlock The RTD today published an article “Petersburg is Virginia’s least healthy locality, and money is a big reason why” about one of my favorite subjects – the stubborn health problems in Petersburg and other poor urban areas of Virginia. The story references the latest annual study from the University of Wisconsin…
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Miyares Challenges Secrecy in Dominion Wind Case
by Steve Haner Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) has moved to open to public inspection much of the secret data and analysis about Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposed Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. His petition filed with the State Corporation Commission April 29 comes about two weeks before formal hearings on the application begin in…
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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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George Orwell Call Home
by James C. Sherlock This blog, while proudly based in individual research, often offers controversial ideas. Uniform agreement is not expected. Debate is encouraged. We learn from one another and even occasionally change a few minds on both sides. Yesterday the Biden administration announced the establishment of a federal “Disinformation Governance Board” in the Department…
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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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Fix the Virginia Department of Health
by James C. Sherlock Governor Youngkin and his new administration have an opportunity to fix crucial problems in the Department of Health that have been festering for decades. The issues: How can Virginia regulate effectively its state-created healthcare monopolies? In a directly related matter, how can we fix the failures, famously demonstrated during COVID, of…
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Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics in the Virginia Department of Education – Average Teacher Salaries Edition
by James C. Sherlock I was in the early stages of researching a column on school salaries in Virginia when I came upon yet another bad report. In 2021 Special Session I, the General Assembly directed the Superintendent of Public Instruction to provide a report on the status of staff salaries, by local school division, to…
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Building Systems to Use Methane Not From Wells
by Steve Haner Methane (CH4) is money. It is also known as natural gas, one of the most efficient fossil fuels we use, and allowing it to leak into the atmosphere when it could be used wastes energy and money. Methane is also a greenhouse gas (GHG). But the story gets more interesting here, because…
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SCC Asked for Hearing on Secret Renewables Costs
by Steve Haner Appalachian Power Company has asked the State Corporation Commission to schedule a separate hearing on Attorney General Jason Miyares’ motion to break the seal on exhibits in its application for new renewable energy sources. Miyares’ April 6 motion was first reported by Bacon’s Rebellion, in a story on Appalachian’s pending application for…
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Key Victories for Virginians in 2022 Legislative Session, But Work Remains
by JC Hernandez This past legislative session, the Virginia General Assembly set the stage to unleash opportunities for all Virginians by passing several key measures. One of the most significant victories came in the form of a “regulatory sandbox” for health care authorized in the new budget. In simple terms, this sandbox creates space for…
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Youngkin Vetoes Bill Because It Weakened SCC
by Steve Haner Reliance on the controlling phrase “in the public interest” helped get an energy bill vetoed by Governor Glenn Youngkin (R), bringing a rare call from a governor to maintain the independent oversight of the State Corporation Commission. Recent governors of both parties happily signed bills with the phrase into law over and…
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VCEA Could Raise APCo Power Bills by Half
by Steve Haner Compliance with the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act will result in a 49% increase in monthly costs by 2035 for residential customers of the Appalachian Power Company, according to a State Corporation Commission staff analysis. That’s a $57 increase on a typical 2020 residential bill of $117. Rates on the largest industrial…
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SCC Staff: Dominion May Exceed Wind Cost Cap
by Steve Haner A similar article was published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Testimony filed by the State Corporation Commission staff on April 8 opened a slight possibility that the Commission could reject Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposed $10 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project off Virginia Beach. It all depends…
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Exploding Requirements and Workforce Shortages – An Existential Threat to the Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock The hottest buzz around many of the public schools, including my home area of Virginia Beach, is around the very real hardships posed by unprecedented staff shortages. On return from COVID, it seems that our schools faced record shortages of personnel to deal with students that were traumatized and afflicted with…
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Updates: Missing Wind, Lazy Assembly, Gas Wars
by Steve Haner The German Energy Mix in March When you dig in, the amount of data available on energy usage is stunning, and the presentations are often quite clear and informative. Case in point is the illustration above of Germany’s energy mix during March, in the news now as Europe seeks to wean itself…