Category: Regulations, Gov’t Oversight
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Worthy Cause, Wrong Approach
by James A. Bacon Give Amanda Chase credit for one thing: She knows how to get into the news. Whether the resulting headlines help the Chesterfield state senator win the Republican Party nomination for governor is quite another matter. The latest brouhaha over her refusal to wear a mask in a Harrisonburg restaurant is not…
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Maryland Governor Stands Up for Private Schools
by Kerry Dougherty It was inevitable. Once teachers’ unions and associations began using their muscle to lobby to keep public schools closed this fall it was likely that city and state officials – who often owe their jobs to militant teachers’ groups – might try to close private schools, too. Think about the optics: Private…
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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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How Discount Power For Poor Will Raise Your Bill
By Steve Haner Virginia’s two major electric utilities estimate that as many as 150,000 of their poorest residential customers will see their monthly bills reduced next year using money extracted from all their other customers on their own power bills. Appalachian Power Company projects about 30,000 of its low income customers will receive subsidies of…
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Atlantic Coast Pipeline Necessity and the FERC
by James C. Sherlock Peter Galuszka’s piece earlier today in this space made two claims the greens offer endlessly trying to achieve what I call truth by repeated assertion: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) either did not review or did not review properly (he inferred both) the wisdom and necessity for natural gas pipeline…
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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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Limit On Emergency Powers is First Bill
Aaaaaaand, they’re off. The first five bills have been filed for consideration by the August 18 Special Session, all introduced by Senate Republicans. As the list of proposals fills in rapidly, you can track it here. First on the list, surprising no one, is a bill from Senator Steve Newman of the Lynchburg region limiting…
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Civil War within the Northam Administration on School Reopening Guidelines?
by James Sherlock Steve Haner wrote a very important essay today about the new workplace guidelines about to be published by the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry(DOLI). In a similar vein, the progressive warriors in the lower levels of the Northam administration are trying to offer stricter school reopening guidelines than the Governor. States this…
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How Employers Must Prevent COVID, Or Else
By Steve Haner The first thing every employer in Virginia needs to understand about the state’s new COVID-19 temporary workplace standard (here) is it is universal. It applies to every workplace, public and private, for-profit and non-profit, with 10,000 workers or two. The rules are the same, “one size fits all,” without regard to the…
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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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Northam’s COVID Conference
by Kerry Dougherty Well, I sat through another Ralph Northam press conference Tuesday eager to hear if any reporter – just one – would ask the governor if maybe, just perhaps, the uptick in Covid cases in Tidewater might be linked to recent protests. I mean it’s possible, isn’t it? After all, the positive tests…
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Will Northam’s COVID Crackdown on Hampton Roads Work?
by James A. Bacon Yesterday Governor Ralph Northam blamed the recent rise in confirmed COVID-19 cases in Virginia upon noncompliance with his May face-covering order. In a Tuesday news briefing, he announced that the state will step up enforcement of the order. Northam singled out the spread of the virus in Hampton Roads for special…
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State Board of Health Regulations are Fundamentally Flawed
by James C. Sherlock The Northam administration has a robust program for regulation review. It is time to use it to totally overhaul Virginia’s healthcare regulations. Healthcare facilities and providers in Virginia are subject to dueling regulations — one set for state licensure and another for Medicare/Medicaid certification. Virginia’s regulations in these cases are not…
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Virginia Supremes Uphold SCC, Rule Against Wal-Mart
by L. Steve Emmert Yesterday the Supreme Court of Virginia issued a ruling in Wal-Mart Stores East, LP v. SCC. The question here is whether Wal-Mart can shed the shackles of buying electricity from the dominant utility, a regulated monopoly that you know as VEPCO or APCO, depending on where in Virginia you are. Some time…
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Thank Europe For a Badly Needed Reality Check
By Peter Galuszka It’s time for a pandemic reality check, especially at Bacon’s Rebellion. The blog is flooded with post after post about how the coronavirus crisis is exaggerated and how Gov. Ralph Northam “King Ralph” is Public Enemy No. 1 and wields improper power by closing schools, bars, beaches, businesses and so on. I…