Search results for: “amazon”
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Solar Mega-Project Proposed for Pulaski County
by James A. Bacon Developers of solar energy projects in Virginia often encounter resistance from rural communities where residents worry about the impact of vast solar farms on viewsheds, the tax base and the rural way of life. In Pulaski County, Hecate Energy LLC is dangling a new incentive to make its project palatable —…
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Shellenberger’s “Apocalypse Never” Lessons for VA
“Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem.” By Steve Haner That statement opens the dust jacket summary for “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All” by Michael Shellenberger, once named “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine. It remains the…
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Loudoun’s “Anti-Racism” Discriminates against Whites
by Hans Bader The Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) are planning to impose illegal racial preferences in student discipline, and have already made changes to school admission policies that are being challenged in court. The district also plans to restrict teachers’ out-of-school speech, by punishing them for speech that disagrees with school policies, and by…
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Fairfax County Tax Dollars at Work
by Asra Q. Nomani One Thursday morning, in early August, author Ibram Kendi tucked Apple AirPods into his ears and nestled into his seat in front of a camera to chat online in an “exclusive” “conversation” with principals, teachers and staff of Fairfax County Public Schools. An hour later, he was done, and laudatory messages…
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Herring Substitutes Emotion for Logic in Price-Gouging Case
by James A. Bacon Attorney General Mark R. Herring has joined 30 other state attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in a federal appeals court to support the right of states to enforce price-gouging regulations against Amazon retailers. National and local emergencies, such as the COVID-19 epidemic, create shortages of essential items, says a…
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Teaching African American History in Virginia
By James C. Sherlock I fully support integrating African American history into the broad sweep of history taught in the nation’s primary and secondary schools. On September 17, there will be a Virginia Board of Education meeting with an agenda item titled “Report from the Governor’s African American History Education Commission, August 2020” (the…
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COVID-19’s Long-Term Changes in Virginia
by DJ Rippert In the long run… Over the past eight months COVID-19 has dramatically impacted the world, the United States and Virginia. One hundred and twenty thousand cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Virginia Over 2,500 people have died from COVID-19 . The cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to grow in the Old…
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Boomergeddon vs Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)
by DJ Rippert Saving America’s bacon. In 2010 Jim Bacon, blogrunner of this site, wrote a book titled Boomergeddon. The sub-title of the book is, “How Runaway Deficits and the Age Wave Will Bankrupt the Federal Government and Devastate Retirement for Baby Boomers Unless We Act Now.” The book is well written and contains considerable…
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Democrats Govern in the Dark
by Shaun Kenney Del. Glenn Davis, R-Virginia Beach, was greeted with this notification as he attempted to log in for virtual voting: Whoops. Garren Shipley with the House Republican Caucus was more direct: Right now a member could be muted, attempting to get the Speaker's attention, and be ignored. The press and public would have…
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How Fed Policy Is Wrecking the Economy
by James A. Bacon Of all known government interventions in the U.S. economy, the most insidious and dangerous is regulation of the price of money (interest rates). Years of Federal Reserve Bank monetary stimulus and quantitative easing, promulgated for the purpose of easing or avoiding a recession, is wrecking the U.S. economy in ways that…
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How COVID Will Transform Higher Ed
by James A. Bacon The COVID-19 epidemic will permanently alter the landscape of higher education, one of America’s most broken industries, contends Stephen McBride, writing in Forbes. College costs have ballooned “beyond all reason,” he says, but as recently as a year ago, he held out little hope that anything would change. Why? “It’s a…
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More Big, Honking Data Centers Coming to Virginia
The COVID-19 epidemic may be slowing the national economy, but it is accelerating the trend toward a digitized and virtual economy. That requires more data centers, and Virginia is still a key locus of the data-center universe. Amazon Web Services is proposing to build 1.75 million-square-feet of data center space in Loudoun County, reports the…
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Ocean Pathfinder Maury Swamped by Culture Wave
Today we get the attempted cancellation of Matthew Fontaine Maury, one of the world’s greatest oceanographers. Having had his memory preserved on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, and having served the Confederate States Navy, any scientific contributions he made before or after the war are hereby nullified, despite worldwide acclaim. The crane is at his statue as…
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Students Gaining Bargaining Power with Colleges
by James A. Bacon In a properly functioning marketplace, consumers exert power through their ability to comparison shop and bargain with sellers. One of the main limits to this consumer power is something economists call “information asymmetry.” Information asymmetry occurs when sellers of a good or service possess more information than buyers, and it typically…
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Beyond COVID-19: New Opportunities in Land Use
by James A. Bacon The stay-at-home orders prompted by the COVID-19 epidemic accelerated a trend that was already reshaping the American economy: the shift of commerce from bricks-and-mortar retail to online delivery. Traditional retailers are retrenching; malls and shopping centers are hollowing out. If current trends continue, we’ll be seeing a lot more UPS and…