Tag: Richard Hall-Sizemore
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Still Making Furniture in Virginia
Since we have been discussing manufacturing in Virginia, I want to take the opportunity to recommend this wonderful book. It is the story of how one man fought to maintain his manufacturing operation in Virginia. While the main focus of the story is the problem of Chinese subsidization of companies that were competing with Virginia…
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Bad Analysis, Legislative Gamesmanship, Misplaced Priorities
In 2016, Keith Harward was released from Virginia’s prisons after serving 33 years for a crime he did not commit. Harward was convicted of a 1982 rape and murder largely on the basis of the testimony of forensic dentists that bite marks on the victim matched his teeth. Many years later, following improvements in DNA…
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Give a Warm Bacon’s Rebellion Welcome to Dick Hall-Sizemore
I am pleased to announce that Richard W. “Dick” Hall-Sizemore has joined the stable of semi-regular contributors to Bacon’s Rebellion. Dick has haunted the halls of Capitol Square for some 40 years, first as a legislative aide, then as a local government lobbyist, and in the past 25 years as a policy analyst with the…
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What? You Want Us to Be Consistent?
by Richard Hall-Sizemore In 2014, Sen. Philip Puckett, a Democrat from far Southwest Virginia, was in a quandary. His daughter was vying for a juvenile and domestic relations court judgeship, to which she had already been appointed as a substitute judge. However, Republicans in the Senate, led by Sen. Tommy Norment, R-James City, were holding…
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General Assembly Acts to Curb Evictions
by Richard Hall-Sizemore Virginia has made another “top-10 in the nation” list. But this one is not one to be celebrated. Last spring, using national eviction data, researchers at Princeton University released eviction rate rankings of large cities in the United States. Cities in Virginia comprised five of the ten cities with the highest eviction…
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When Businesses Welcome Regulations
by Richard W. Hall-Sizemore The recent news that the General Assembly may not confirm Governor Ralph Northam’s appointment for director of the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR) triggered one of my longstanding complaints. It is not about Jay DeBoer, the beleaguered appointee; I know nothing about his record as director of this agency.…