Tag: Guest contributors
-
Richmond’s Reaganesque Time for Choosing
by Chris Braunlich Richmond, like Washington, has always been a place where an “insider’s game” is played – not in a pejorative sense, but simply as the way things are done. Relationships are paramount, people speak in the arcane language of lawmaking, agendas are confusing for outsiders, and the activities of a subcommittee for an…
-
Key Data on Dominion Wind Project Still Secret
By David Wojick A previous article published by Bacon’s Rebellion and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow challenged the notion that Dominion Energy Virginia can build a huge amount of wind and solar generating capacity and retire all of its fossil-fueled generators with almost none of the enormous storage capacity that is required to make the…
-
Remembering Til Hazel
by Ken Reid Northern Virginia is the object of admiration and contempt, in Republican circles, and even among some liberals in economically stagnant Maryland and Washington, D.C. In the last few years, Loudoun County, where I had a political career as a Republican, has gone “blue” as has Prince William and much of Fairfax counties.…
-
A Disastrous Week for UVa
Open letter from Bert Ellis, president of The Jefferson Council, to members of the University of Virginia community. Last week will go down as one of the worst weeks in the history of UVA. The Honor Code is Effectively Dead By a margin of over 4 to 1, UVA students voted in a referendum to…
-
The Legislatures Strike Back: The Pandemic and Balances of Power
by David Toscano In her recent SLogLaw post “Harrisburg COVID-19 Response Is No Model,” Meryl Chertoff provides a great explanation of Pennsylvania’s response to the pandemic. Except for the use of a constitutional amendment pushed by Republicans in the Keystone state to constrain a Democratic governor, the dynamic is similar to what is occurring in…
-
Still Time to Limit Governor’s Emergency Powers
by Barbara Hollingsworth First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Should the governor of Virginia have the power to unilaterally declare an open-ended state of emergency that indefinitely restricts Virginians’ civil and constitutional rights without a recorded vote by the General Assembly? The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns raised this serious question.…
-
UVa Needs Facts and Reason, Not an Opinion Survey
by Charles L. Weber, Jr. Recently Jim Bacon argued that the University of Virginia needs to conduct another Climate Survey to compare the results with the one conducted in 2018. He argued as follows: The premise of the Ryan administration is that making African-Americans feel more welcome at UVa requires rooting out the racism endemic…
-
Reliable Electricity Not Part of the Plan
by David Wojick I recently published a report on how Virginia’s big electric power utility, Dominion Energy Virginia, deliberately ignores the fact that the state’s zero emission law does not work. Utilities are doing this around the country. They will make a fortune building useless wind and solar generation before they finally admit it does…
-
GMU Re-Koched
Republished with permission from VoxFairfax.com. There are several cognitive cautions that may sensitize a reader’s appreciation of important information. Among these is the elegant French caution that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Another is the guide that instructs the reader on the behaviors of public figures to “watch what they…
-
Poll: Bipartisan Support for Scholarship Tax Break
by Chris Braunlich The following was issued today by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy as a news release: As National School Choice Week 2022 concludes, the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy today released results of a polling question demonstrating the overwhelming popularity of Virginia’s sole education choice program. Support is particularly strong…
-
Don’t Delay Electric Vehicles in Virginia
by Alleyn Harned In the 2022 General Assembly, Delegate Tony Wilt, R-Harrisonburg, has introduced legislation which will increase consumers’ transportation costs and maintain our dependence on foreign oil. Both consequences are unacceptable in Virginia’s beautiful Shenandoah Valley region, which produces no oil and stands to benefit greatly from access to renewable technologies. On Friday, January…
-
A Monumental Outrage
Charlottesville’s hasty—and possibly illegal—destruction of its Robert E. Lee equestrian statue establishes a toxic precedent. by Catesby Leigh The century-old equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been broken up, and, more likely than not, melted down into bronze ingots by now. But nobody involved in this officially sanctioned act of iconoclasm…
-
The New McCarthyism at UVa
by Joel Gardner One of my earliest memories is sitting with my mother as a pre-kindergartener watching the McCarthy hearings in the spring of 1954. Television was a new medium for most American households and the bombastic anti-communist antics of the junior senator from Wisconsin held the population enthralled for months. But, while television gave…
-
Impractical Solar Power, Illustrated With the Math
by David Wojick This was first published at cfact.org and is reproduced with Wojick’s permission. Many states and the utilities they regulate are talking about replacing their coal and gas fired generators with solar and wind power. For example, I recently wrote about how the crazy-named Virginia Clean Economy Act already has almost 800 square…
-
Virginia, Take Another Look at Nukes
by Brian Glass Dominion Energy, Inc., has ordered 176 wind turbines from Siemens Gamesa for its 2.6-gigawatt offshore wind farm at a cost of $9.8 billion. Electricity consumers will pay for this generating capacity. Let’s take a look at whether or not we will be getting our money’s worth. The Virginia Clean Economy Act went into…