Tag: James Sherlock
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Dysfunction Exposed in COVID Demands Overhaul of Virginia’s Government
by James C. Sherlock We all like to discuss the politics of things. That in many instances is appropriate. But political leadership is neither the problem nor the solution I will discuss here today. We will spend every day between now and November’s election debating how the politicians responded to COVID. And we should. But…
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A Horse Built by a Committee
by James C. Sherlock Updated Jan 31 at 8:46 AM Virginia’s Attorney General has offered a bill to create a new state bureaucracy to handle the opioid settlement money about to flow into the Commonwealth to support prevention, treatment, and recovery. It is going to be a lot of money. The state opioid settlements will…
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DePaul Hospital’s Closing Presents a Unique Opportunity for Hampton Roads
by James C. Sherlock Not too long ago, before the decline of the malls and COVID, the healthcare community coined what they called the Nordstrom Rule. The meaning was that if you wished to optimize profits in your healthcare business, build it close to a Nordstrom. The theory was that Nordstrom had already done the…
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Better Angels
by James C. Sherlock “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Abraham Lincoln, first inaugural address, March 4, 1861 DePaul Hospital Closing The DePaul Hospital closure announcement…
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Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
by James C. Sherlock Jim Bacon commented yesterday upon a study underwritten by the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA) that said Virginia hospitals were getting shortchanged by health insurers, and that the insurers were charging too much to consumers. We can’t stand still for that, can we? It may have been published in support…
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Looking for a Do-Over – Secretary Qarni, the Fairfax County School Board and the Left’s War on Asian Americans
by James C. Sherlock President Biden yesterday signed a couple of executive orders on race. “We must change now,” the president said. “I know it’s going to take time, but I know we can do it. And I firmly believe the nation is ready to change. But government has to change as well.” From the…
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Labeling “Ineffective Teachers” in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock My last post about new legislative attempts at reforming public education led to a very appropriate discussion of the term “ineffective teacher” used in that legislation. Bestowing the “ineffective teacher” tag with some patina of objectivity requires a major effort that does not exist in Virginia. The studies that showed the Virginia…
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Fix the Structurally Broken Virginia Government
by James C. Sherlock When offered a choice of reasons for failures of large scale government actions, your first choice should always be incompetence, not bad intentions. Big government requires competent legislatures, competent management and control of executive departments, apolitical oversight by attorneys general and objective studies of its failures if it has any hope…
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Unintended Consequences of Minimum Wage Hikes
by James C. Sherlock Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and Del. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, contributed an op-ed titled Home health workers at risk without legislative action this morning in the Virginian-Pilot. They will be surprised to read that I agree with every word. And that I would go farther. Unintended consequences in the government economy Lucas…
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Charter Schools and How Things Work in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock As an object lesson on how things work in Virginia, I’ll relate a story of campaign donations, the Virginia Education Association, a Democratic Governor, a Republican Senator, Democratic Senator Dick Saslaw, his wife Eleanor and charter schools. The Virginia Education Association The Virginia Education Association has given nearly $1.8 million in…
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The Deadliest Nursing Homes in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock (updated Jan. 20 at 2 PM) Today I have assessed the Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services COVID-19 Nursing Home Dataset to determine the deadliest nursing homes in Virginia measured by COVID death rate of residents from Jan 1, 2020, through Jan. 3, 2021. The results are profoundly disturbing at several levels. There…
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HB 2094 Poses a Risk to Objective Assessments of Virginia Public Schools and Students
by James C. Sherlock HB 2094, Public schools; Standards of Learning assessments poses a risk that Virginia parents will be left without an objective measure of their children’s progress in school. That is likely a risk unforeseen by its patrons. The bill has been introduced by Del. Israel O’Quinn, R-Bristol, with support from co-patrons Del.…
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Virginia’s State Health System Will Continue to Kill its Citizens If We Let It
by James C. Sherlock Virginians of every political stripe have grown very tired of watching the Northam administration obfuscate repeated, very public failures to carry out its role in protecting the health of its citizens since the onset of COVID. But that is an effect, not a cause, of the massive and continuing failures at…
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Everything Here Is Exactly As It Seems
by James C. Sherlock I just reviewed the newest Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) CYA buck- passing disguised as K-12 school reopening guidelines. Interesting. It consists of a page of “indicators” followed by two pages of “considerations” and then seven pages of multivariable decision matrices called “steps” which together can help produce a decision. Or…
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Live by the Sword
by James C. Sherlock. This is a follow up to Jim Bacon’s story about Levar Stoney, his contributor and city statue removal contractor, credible accusations of corruption and Attorney General Herring. From the Washington Washington Post: “In what may become a heated Democratic primary contest for Virginia attorney general, state Del. Jerrauld C. “Jay” Jones…