Category: Regulations, Gov’t Oversight
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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…
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Conservatism’s Foundation Showing Some Cracks
By Dick Hall-Sizemore The pandemic has presented a challenge to at least a couple of the basic tenets of conservatism. The first of these challenges is to the basic negative attitude toward regulations. Conservatives abhor regulations. In anticipation of objections from Jim Bacon and Steve Haner, among others, that such a statement is too broad…
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Brace Yourself for a Zero-Carbon Electric Grid
The defeat of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is just one battle in the ongoing war against fossil fuels in Virginia. Consider these statements in a column published by Mike Tidwell, executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, in the Virginia Mercury: It’s no longer enough to say you support wind and solar power. You…
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What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been
By Peter Galuszka Back in the winter of 2015, Craig Vanderhoef, a former Navy captain, got a disturbing surprise in his mailbox at his retirement home near Afton in Nelson County. A letter from Dominion Resources noted that it wanted to survey his land for a new 600-mile-long natural gas pipeline. On two occasions, he…
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Spanberger Vs. Trump
By Peter Galuszka U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th District, continues to draw international attention as a “New Look” Democrat from Virginia who is savvy about the intelligence community and global affairs. The former CIA case officer was featured on CNN criticizing the administration of Donald Trump for ignoring reports that Russian military intelligence had paid…
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COVID-19: Milder than We Thought
The latest numbers from the state and hospital-association COVID-19 dashboards suggest that the coronavirus in Virginia still is retreating. The seven-day moving average of test-positive cases for COVID-19 tests continues to fall, hitting a new low of 5.8%. Meanwhile, two measures of intensive hospital utilization have hit new lows. The number of COVID-19 patients in…
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Richmond’s “Numbnuts” Cripple Busch Gardens
by Kerry Dougherty Five more days until Virginia finally enters Phase 3 of the slo-mo reopening of the commonwealth. But if you were planning to take the kids to Busch Gardens or Kings Dominion to celebrate, forget it. Thanks to ridiculously small crowd limits, both sprawling theme parks said they can’t comply with Virginia’s rules.…
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COVID Workplace Rules Endorsed, But Not Final
The Northam Administration’s Safety and Health Codes Board agreed yesterday that COVID-19 in the state’s workplaces demands an emergency state response, but the nature and exact wording of that regulation remains undecided. If adopted, formal regulations come with the potential for heavy penalties for employers cited for failures. Earlier versions of the key documents have already…
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Northam Gets a Couple of Things Right
by James A. Bacon I do have my issues with Wise King Ralph, but I have to give credit where credit is due. He has done two things right in the past few days. He has given the OK to move to Phase 3 of the COVID-19 lockdown on July 1, and he has refused…
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It’s About Time: Phase 3
by Kerry Dougherty Finally. After weeks of plummeting death rates, dwindling hospitalizations and a sharp drop in positive test results for COVID-19, slow-walking Gov. Ralph Northam announced that the commonwealth can enter Phase Three. But not until next week, on July 1. Northam made the announcement at yesterday’s press conference. For months, Northam’s pressers have…
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BR’s COVID-19 Parallel Universe
By Peter Galuszka Almost every morning, I wake up a little before dawn, make coffee, let the dog out and feed her and start reading the news. I take The Washington Post in print along with The New York Times, Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Virginian-Pilot, NBC News, various television stations and, of course, Bacon’s Rebellion online.…
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Open the Schools
By James C. Sherlock I have written here multiple times about the terrible and disproportionate effects that school shutdowns are having on poor children in Virginia. The public school is an enterprise that has no admission standards. We do it that way on purpose, to try to give every American child as much opportunity to…
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COVID Regs Unclear, Unneeded, Contradictory
By Steve Haner More than two dozen Virginia business associations have asked that the state’s Safety and Health Codes Board reject proposed workplace regulations to prevent COVID-19, stating they are unclear, contradictory, and not needed in light of other existing worker protections. Some of the largest statewide associations, such as the Virginia Manufacturers Association, National…
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Virginia’s Recover, Redesign and Restart 2020 Manifesto – Legal Status
by James C. Sherlock Recover, Redesign and Restart 2020, discussed yesterday here, was presented as a set of “guidelines,” but the Governor’s manual for re-starting public schools this fall amidst the COVID-19 epidemic included a mandatory reporting provision clearly designed to intimidate schools and school boards. Let’s look at the legal status and implications of…
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Sweeping COVID Workplace Regulation Proposed
By Steve Haner The Northam Administration’s Safety and Health Codes Board will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday –- in a virtual process allowing no public interactions – to impose sweeping new regulatory mandates related to COVID-19 on Virginia workplaces. They could take effect immediately upon Governor Ralph Northam’s signature, and will not disappear if an end…