Tag: Don Rippert
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Virginia Trophy Rockfish Season under Threat of Cancellation
Between a rock(fish) and a hard place. Striped bass, locally known as rockfish, migrate up the coast of the Atlantic each spring to spawn. The biggest rockfish come into the Chesapeake Bay to mate and then leave the Bay to resume their trip north. Other smaller rockfish remain in the Bay. The period of time…
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Tim Kaine and Mark Warner both embarrass Virginia with relief legislation vote
Midwest apocalypse. As of March 30 satellite data shows that flooding caused at least one million acres of Midwest farmland to be covered in water for at least seven days in March. One million acres is 1,562 square miles. Up to a million calves may have died in Nebraska alone. This is a disaster of…
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Food Trucks Can Create Oases in Food Deserts
Food desert theory. Food deserts in cities can be defined as urban areas where it is difficult to buy high quality fresh foods at an affordable price. This lack of access to healthy food causes problems for people living within these food deserts. Instead of eating healthily people living in food deserts buy the “junk…
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Virginia’s “Secret” Medical Marijuana Program
The doctor who should be governor. State Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant is a Republican from Henrico County. She is also a practicing physician. In this year’s General Assembly session she put forth SB1557 which expanded last year’s so-called “Let Doctor’s Decide” legislation (HB1251). What’s new? The 2018 legislation (HB1251) authorized licensed medical providers to prescribe CBD and…
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The Marijuana Legalization Debate in Virginia: Lessons from Colorado
Elevated thinking. I recently had the opportunity to do some skiing in Colorado. I hadn’t been to Colorado since the state legalized recreational marijuana use in 2014. I expected to see a Cheech and Chong movie played out on a vast scale high in the Rocky Mountains. That expectation went unmet. Instead, I saw an…
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Proffers: They’re Baaaaack!
Gentlemen may prefer blondes but localities prefer proffers. A proffer is an arrangement between a locality and a land developer whereby the developer offers something of value in order to get a rezoning request approved. Why do developers want land rezoned? For residential development they want to build more homes on the land than the…
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Amazon in Northern Virginia: 5 Positives
1-The Future. In 2011 Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal titled, “Why Software is Eating the World.” The eight years since Andreessen’s essay was published have served to vindicate, validate and verify the accuracy of his thesis. Yet while software eats the world, it doesn’t necessarily dine in the…
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Unraveling the Ralph Northam Infanticide Controversy
Background. The past several weeks have been full of controversy for three of Virginia’s leading Democratic politicians – Ralph Northam, Justin Fairfax and Mark Herring. The local, state and national media have been focused on allegations of racism against Northam and Herring and sexual assault against Fairfax. However, prior to the media onslaught regarding racism and…
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Fifteen Months Later and Still No Answers on the Bijan Ghaisar Killing
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OXvXQqZE8g&w=500&h=315] 463 days. November 17, 2017 was the date that U.S. Park Police gunned down / assassinated Bijan Ghaisar on a street in Fairfax County. That was 463 days ago. n all that time there has been no comment from the U.S. Park Police or the FBI (assigned to investigate the case) regarding this killing.…
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Virginia’s Two-Faced Democrats
A very bad week. One can only assume that Virginia’s Democratic Party is very happy to see this week draw to a close. The Democratic Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General are facing deep scrutiny over revelations that came to light this week. While the specifics of each scandal remain hazy the sudden evaporation of moral…
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Tommy Norment’s Turn in the Yearbook Whipsaw
Da Bomb. The Virginia Pilot is reporting that Tommy Norment, R-Williamsburg, Republican majority leader of Virginia’s State Senate, was an editor for a VMI yearbook called The Bomb that printed “racist photos and slurs, including blackface”. The yearbook in question was published in 1968. African Americans were allowed to enroll at VMI in the Fall of…
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Virginia Voters Should “Clean House” this November
State of affairs / affairs of state. Multiple scandals have rocked Virginia’s state government this week. All three of our state’s top officials stand accused of substantial wrongdoing. Governor Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring have admitted to dressing in blackface during their college / medical school days. Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax is being…
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Five Virginia Politicians Thwart the People and Democracy in Marijuana Reform Legislation
We the people elite. A number of proposed bills to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana were put forth in the ongoing General Assembly session. These bills were systematically killed in subcommittee by a tiny fraction of the General Assembly. Generally speaking, five Republican Delegates decided that the proposed marijuana reform bills should not…
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Chesapeake Bay Foundation State of the Bay: The Bay is Regressing
School daze. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation(CBF) recently issued it biannual State of the Bay Report. The report can be found here. The CBF assigns both a numeric and letter grade to the bay. This report (2017 – 2018) garners a score of 33 for a grade of D+. The last report (2015 – 2016) tallied…
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Virginia’s economy continues to sputter
Blue state blues. The Associated Press is summarizing Virginia’s latest Comprehensive Annual Financial Report regarding the economic health of The Old Dominion. The news is bleak. “Personal income grew 4.1 percent in Virginia compared to 4.5 percent in the U.S. Housing prices in Virginia rose 5 percent compared to 6.8 percent nationally. Virginia also lagged…