Tag: Hans Bader
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EVs More Likely to Kill Pedestrians, Damage Roads and Bridges
by Hans Bader “A recent study published by the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that drivers of electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids are twice as likely to hit pedestrians compared to those driving traditional gas-powered cars, potentially leading to more fatal accidents. This conclusion came from a review of British road accidents. The study…
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Electric Cars Are Harder on the Environment than Gas-Powered Ones
by Hans Bader “Electric vehicles release more toxic particles into the atmosphere and are worse for the environment than their gas-powered counterparts,” according to a study, reports the New York Post: The study, published by emissions data firm Emission Analytics … found that brakes and tires on EVs release 1,850 times more particle pollution compared to…
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Democrats Proposal to Cut Sentences Would Undermine Public Safety, AG Says
by Hans Bader On February 27, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares sent a letter to Virginia state legislators about a Democratic proposal to allow some violent offenders to receive sentence reductions previously available only to non-violent offenders. Miyares asked legislators to prevent the proposal, passed by the House of Delegates on February 22, from going…
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Judge Uses Crude Statistics to Find Racial Profiling by Richmond Police
by Hans Bader A judge recently found that the City of Richmond racially profiles black motorists, dismissing the indictment of a black convicted felon accused of illegally possessing a gun. The judge did not find that defendant Keith Moore had been treated differently than a similarly situated white motorist. Instead, he ruled that Richmond police…
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Virginia Legislation Would Penalize Lack of Diversity in Firms Seeking Economic Development Aid
by Hans Bader Recent Virginia legislation raises interesting constitutional issues under the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. Virginia legislators have introduced bills that would make corporate board diversity a factor in whether to give corporations tax incentives for economic development. In deciding whether to approve tax incentives to a company, the MEI Project Approval Commission…
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Virginia Bill Would Redefine Revenge Porn to Include Non-Porn, Making It Easier to Prosecute Politicians’ Critics
by Hans Bader Virginia’s revenge-porn law may soon be expanded to punish people for posting embarrassing, revealing images of public figures, such as politicians, if Virginia’s legislature approves HB 926. Doing so would violate the First Amendment, and invite lawsuits by civil-liberties groups like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression or the Institute for…
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Virginia Bill Could Define Student Bullies by Race
by Hans Bader Should students be defined as bullies partly based on race? A confusingly-worded bill just introduced in Virginia’s legislature seemingly classifies students as bullies partly based on racial differences between “the aggressor” and the victim, such as a “real or perceived power imbalance between the aggressor or aggressors and victim, including on the…
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Rent Control Bill Introduced in Virginia
by Hans Bader A just-introduced Virginia bill, HB 192, would limit rent increases to “one percent over the Consumer Price Index” in places where the rental vacancy rate is “less than 10 percent,” if the “Consumer Price Index … is greater than five percent.” Virginia has a rental vacancy rate of about 4%, well below…
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Not Every Teacher’s Salary Can Be Above Average
by Hans Bader In the mythical Lake Wobegon, all the children are above average. But in real life, half of all people have to be below average, by definition. Half of all people are paid below average, especially in counties with very low living costs, where the vast majority of people are paid below the…
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Virginia Might Legalize Abortion in All 9 Months of Pregnancy
by Hans Bader Virginia may permanently legalize abortion in all nine months of pregnancy by banning any regulation of abortion unless necessary to meet a compelling interest, and — more importantly — defining “compelling interest” to exclude the life of the fetus even after viability. That is what is mandated by a state constitutional amendment…
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Democrats, Judges, and Higher Taxes
from Liberty Unyielding For generations, Washington State had no state income tax, because of anti-income tax provisions in its state constitution. But the Washington state supreme court recently upheld a classic example of an income tax — a state tax on income from capital gains — by making the absurd argument that a capital gains tax…
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Electric Vehicles May Be Worse for the Environment than Gasoline-Powered Ones
by Hans Bader Electric vehicles require enormous damage to the environment just to produce their batteries — 250 tons of mining is required for a single battery, according to Real Clear Energy. Switching to electric cars would require a radical expansion of mining across the world, and the minerals for the car batteries will be…
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The Benefits of School Choice and the Risks in the November Elections
from Liberty Unyielding The debate over school choice has tended to focus on whether students learn more as a result. But learning improvements from school choice are probably smaller than improvements in other dimensions, such as civic participation, law abidingness, and family stability later in life. Jason Bedrick of The Heritage Foundation notes that “School-choice…
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Sex, Lies and Virginia Law: The Susanna Gibson Case
Republished with permission from the Liberty Unyielding blog. “Susanna Gibson, a House candidate in Virginia, had sex with her husband in live videos posted online and asked viewers to pay them money in return,” notes USA Today. A recent video shows the Democratic candidate for Virginia’s House of Delegates doing sex acts. She allegedly also…
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The Sorry State of the ACLU of Virginia
by Hans Bader The communist activist Angela Davis advocated abolishing prisons in the U.S., while supporting the incarceration of political prisoners in totalitarian communist regimes overseas. The ACLU of Virginia has touted Angela Davis’s stances in the past, such as in an April 4, 2022 tweet quoting Davis. Now, the ACLU of Virginia has returned…