Tag: Dick Hall-Sizemore
-
Does This Highway Need to be Widened to Six Lanes?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There is a campaign underway to expand a stretch of I-64 from Richmond to James City County. Currently, the Interstate highway is a four-lane divided highway. The proposal is to add an additional lane in each direction. The Department of Transportation estimates the cost of the project at $750 million. The first…
-
Deja Vu, All Over Again
by Dick Hall-Sizemore As reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Governor Youngkin “wants state employees back in their offices under a new telework policy that will take effect July 5 to guide executive branch agencies out of workplace restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.” To that effect, he has announced a policy that will let state…
-
“Let the Sunshine In”
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Dwight Yancey, editor of Cardinal News, has a fascinating piece today dealing with solar energy in Southwest Virginia and Southside Virginia. In a piece replete with information and rumination, he sets out 13 takeaways from the recently-released Virginia Solar Survey “and other solar energy news, as viewed through the lens of the…
-
Another Perspective on Youngkin Education Policy
by Dick Hall-Sizemore After thinking about this a little more and doing some poking around on the Internet, I want to take issue with some of what Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Rogstad Guidera said at an AEI forum, as reported on Bacon’s Rebellion yesterday. The goals are sound, but I am not so sure…
-
A Lot of Unanswered Questions
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Painting racial slurs on the face of an unconscious Black teenage boy is wrong. That being said, a recent incident in the Richmond area leads to a lot of questions, including concerning the quality of reporting done by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. According to an RTD on-line story Friday by reporter Mark Bowes,…
-
The Trumpification of Bacon’s Rebellion
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Rather than engage an opponent in reasoned debate, Donald Trump has a habit of conjuring up a derogatory nickname for that person and attacking in that way. One aspect that attracted me to Bacon’s Rebellion a little more three years ago was the civility of the discourse and the willingness to engage…
-
The Book Burners Next Door
by Dick Hall-Sizemore James Sherlock alerted us yesterday to a “bigger threat to our nation than Russia and China” by the left. While the Biden administration’s establishment of an effort to combat online disinformation is somewhat disquieting, its dimensions are somewhat vague. It could be no more than a federal government “fact checker.” On the…
-
A Different Tone
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There have been some complaints lately about how the Richmond newspaper should be called the Richmond Times-Dominion, due to its biased coverage in favor of the utility. While I agree with a lot of the criticism about taking a Dominion news release, rewriting it and then publishing it as news, a sentence…
-
Supreme Court Refuses to Require T.J. to Resume Prior Admissions Process
by Dick Hall-Sizemore As reported today by The New York Times, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday refused to require the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology to resume using its prior admissions process, pending an appeal of a judge’s decision overturning a new process adopted by the school board. This issue has been…
-
General Assembly to Governor: Not So Fast
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The page 1 lead story of Saturday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch announced what anybody who had been paying attention already knew: the General Assembly will not be taking up the biennial budget bill when it convenes on Wednesday. However, that does not mean the legislators will be able to leave early. They have a…
-
Coming Soon to a Grocery Store Near You — Climate Change Inflation
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Some commenters on this blog have downplayed the effects of climate change and even derided early projections of serious consequences. Except for more frequent flooding in parts of Hampton Roads (which is serious for those directly affected), Virginians have not experienced serious consequences of climate change. However, the American West is experiencing…
-
Honor: An Old-Fashioned Virtue?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There have been numerous articles recently on this blog about the honor codes at various Virginia colleges and universities. I remember a ceremony in which we incoming freshmen at the College of William and Mary signed our honor code pledges. These codes set out the behavior that people expect of each other…
-
The Quest for Ways to Store Energy
by Dick Hall-Sizemore We have frequently discussed on this blog one of the major shortcomings of solar and wind energy — intermittency and the problem of storing energy. There was a reference in a recent discussion about new technologies and even “outlandish” new technologies. Along those lines, I just ran across this article in The…
-
Paying for Miscarriages of Justice
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The 2022 General Assembly appropriated $6.5 million to compensate seven individuals who had been wrongly incarcerated. The men had been convicted of crimes which it was later determined they did not commit. They were: Eugene Stevens–$1.7 million. (HB 394) Stevens was convicted of murder in 1986 in Lancaster County and sentenced to…
-
Teachers Can Take Only So Much
by Dick Hall-Sizemore I learned recently from a friend that his wife, after more than 15 years of teaching, will not be going back to the classroom next year. She teaches in one of the school divisions in the Richmond area. The reasons for her leaving are myriad. However, they did not include students and…