Category: Regulations, Gov’t Oversight
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DePaul Hospital’s Closing Presents a Unique Opportunity for Hampton Roads
by James C. Sherlock Not too long ago, before the decline of the malls and COVID, the healthcare community coined what they called the Nordstrom Rule. The meaning was that if you wished to optimize profits in your healthcare business, build it close to a Nordstrom. The theory was that Nordstrom had already done the…
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Biden Ups Vax Plan. Will Northam Be Ready?
by DJ Rippert Joltin’ Joe. President Joe Biden increased his planned administration of the Coronavirus vaccine from 100 million doses in his first 100 days in office to 150 million doses. Given that the United States is already distributing around one million doses per day Biden almost had to increase his plan if he wanted…
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Industrial Escape from Green Energy Costs Blocked
by Steve Haner Virginia’s major energy-intensive industries will not get a requested path to avoid some of the coming cost shock from the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). The bill that sought them a lifeline was tied to an anvil and sunk in a House of Delegates subcommittee today. It didn’t even help when…
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Fix the Structurally Broken Virginia Government
by James C. Sherlock When offered a choice of reasons for failures of large scale government actions, your first choice should always be incompetence, not bad intentions. Big government requires competent legislatures, competent management and control of executive departments, apolitical oversight by attorneys general and objective studies of its failures if it has any hope…
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GE Sues Siemens Over Dominion Data Leak
by Steve Haner General Electric (GE) has filed suit seeking major monetary damages from Siemens Energy in a Virginia federal court, alleging “willful and malicious misappropriation of GE trade secrets” as they competed to be suppliers to Dominion Energy Virginia. Dominion is not a named defendant, but an employee (reportedly now gone) is accused of…
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A Last-Ditch Effort to Improve Regulatory Balance
By Steve Haner In a matter of weeks, Dominion Energy Virginia is expected to initiate the long-awaited review of its revenues, expenses, and profits in front of the State Corporation Commission, the first since 2015. A series of bills in recent years has set rules for that process which constrain the SCC’s discretion and fix…
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Democrats Propose Expanded Virginia Government Personal Information Collection, Integration and Dissemination
by James C. Sherlock There are few things the Left desires more than government access to personal data on every citizen and everything he or she does. Virginia continues down that path. Government Data Collection & Dissemination Practices Act Chapter 38 of Title 2.2 of the Code of Virginia (§ 2.2-3800 et seq.) reads in…
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Employer COVID Mandates Might Outlive Pandemic
by Steve Haner Virginia’s emergency temporary workplace standards on COVID-19 are one step closer to becoming permanent, over the continuing loud objections from employers that they are duplicative, expensive, and not making anybody any safer than existing health and safety protections already do. UPDATE: The text of the final permanent standard approved Wednesday was finally…
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SCC: “Independence, Honesty, Commitment to Law”
On Monday, Mark Christie took the oath of office to become a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and simultaneously vacated his seat on the Virginia State Corporation Commission. He did it sitting in one of the SCC courtrooms downtown. The following is an excerpt from remarks (in full here) he made from the…
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CO2 Taxes, Gas Rationing Poll Badly With Voters
By Steve Haner The Transportation and Climate Initiative plan to tax and ration motor fuels suffered a major setback just before Christmas, when eight of the eleven states considering it decided not to move forward in 2021. Less than two weeks earlier, advocates had released polling that claimed to show overwhelming popularity for the idea.
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A New Fad: Bashing Offshore Wind Turbines
By Peter Galuszka Offshore wind power is becoming a whipping boy even as the technology involved becomes more advanced and its costs go down. Northwestern Europe is offshore wind headquarters globally and countries such as the United Kingdom have wholeheartedly embraced it. Yet some critics, some of whom are supported financially by the fossil fuel…
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COVID Has Exposed Massive Failures in Governance
by James C. Sherlock In a comment to my previous post, we saw a statement “most parents are happy with the education their kids are getting.” That is no longer true. Polls say overwhelmingly it is not. On a personal note, my two grandsons in Albemarle County schools, twin seniors, haven’t set foot in…
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School Superintendents Are Accountable for Special Ed Compliance
by James C. Sherlock – Updated 23 Dec. with division-by-subject table of bad SOL results for students with disabilities. I just finished reading the December 14 JLARC Report. “K–12 Special Education in Virginia 2020.” The report is highly critical of public school special education in Virginia, but it misses the mark on its findings as…
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Virginia and Other States Pass on Carbon Tax Pact
by Steve Haner The organizers of the Transportation and Climate Initiative announced Monday that only four of the twelve jurisdictions involved have agreed to move forward and implement the carbon tax on motor fuels, and Virginia is not one of them. Not yet. The 2021 Virginia General Assembly could consider legislation to join the interstate…
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Northam’s New Rules. Worse Than the Old Ones
by Kerry Dougherty I missed Gov. Ralph Northam’s Thursday presser. But I heard and read all about it. Two things stand out: First, his idiotic curfew is simply the action of a little man attempting to flex his muscles for a populace that is growing weary of his arbitrary and capricious rules. Second, this secular leader…