Tag: Stephen D. Haner
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The Radioactive Donors In 2019? Healthcare
By Steve Haner The following is one of my “revise and extend” follow-up posts, this one adding detail to an exploration of the raging attacks on Republican efforts to offer alternative health insurance plans. You can read the original post on the Jefferson Policy Journal. Not many months ago, it was a safe bet…
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Northam Opposes Coming Retail Choice Bill?
By Steve Haner Governor Ralph Northam is quoted in a Standard and Poor’s Market Intelligence news article Friday as opposing any efforts to change Virginia’s electricity regulations, which presumably would include the 2020 retail choice proposal gathering steam in the background. Reporter Michael Copley wrote about Friday’s state solar and wind power purchase agreements and…
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JLARC: Medicaid Jumps 19% In Expansion Year
By Steve Haner Every year, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission issues a report looking at ten years of state spending, sliced and diced various ways. In recent years, the headline results have largely been surprisingly consistent and the 2019 report issued Monday fit the pattern. As seen before: Medicaid program costs lead the…
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Dems & Dom, RGGI Grows, Medicaid & Work
By Steve Haner What Was Lost Is Found Again. Couldn’t they wait at least another few weeks? Anybody foolish enough to believe that Dominion Energy Virginia and the Virginia Democratic Party establishment have really parted ways (as Jim Bacon seemed to think a while back), take note of this from today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch: Governor Ralph…
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Will These Insurance Ads Also Sway VA Voters?
By Steve Haner As the state campaign debate rages about health insurance plan which are short term or less comprehensive than the Affordable Care Act, two on-going national ad campaigns may cross-pollinate the debate. They are bolstering the Republican position nicely. The first are the spots with people saying they are worried about the various…
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Carbon Tax for Your Car, SUV Takes Shape at TCI
By Steve Haner In this politically sensitive moment, they don’t call it “cap and tax” but instead “cap and invest.” Yet, the recently released draft Transportation and Climate Initiative proposal fits a Bacon’s Rebellion prediction in March that next they would be coming to tax your SUV. Reducing CO2 emissions from electric power plants…
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Happy Birthday, Mr. President
By Steve Haner I love this photo, for some reason. The lieutenant in the background is President Carter, 95 today. Our last WWII vet president, but I very much hope not our last military veteran president. There are veterans in the Democratic field. This is an AP photo now appearing on the Richmond Times-Dispatch webpage, …
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Lobbying Entertainment Data Still Deceptive
By Steve Haner ‘Our friends at the Virginia Public Access Project are a bit later this year with their data and visuals on Virginia’s embarrassingly weak and intentionally vague lobbyist entertainment reporting. It is still nothing but a sham, exactly how the legislators and lobbyists want it. The 2018 VPAP coverage was subject of a…
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Don’t Abandon Medicaid Work Requirement
By Steve Haner To Republicans who supported the 2018 decision to expand Medicaid services to more Virginians – and encouraged yes votes from reluctant colleagues — the promise to couple those benefits with pathways toward gainful employment was a key reason. The compromise has worked in other states as well.
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Medicaid Expansion Cost Still Off-Budget, Elusive
By Steve Haner All the signs point to trouble. The next state budget, a two-year plan to be proposed in December, adopted by March and implemented in July, may be caught between stagnant revenue and soaring spending. The spending charge will be led once again by Medicaid. Just how much the decision to expand Medicaid…
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Environmental Balderdash: Exporting CO2 to EU
by Steve Haner In parts of Virginia, conservation groups are being paid by California to preserve forest land because trees capture the CO2 considered the culprit in global warming. In other parts of Virginia, large swaths of trees are being cut to convert into biomass fuel for European power plants, based on a claim that…
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There Is a Line and These Two Crossed It
The silly season is in full swing. Stop believing (in fact, maybe stop reading) the political trash coming into your mailbox, inbox or showing up online. Television you already know not to trust, right? Someone told me that political ads have invaded streaming services now, which is depressing. It was Democratic senate candidate Debra Rodman’s…
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Dominion’s Move Against Green Competitors Fails
by Steve Haner The verdict is in and green energy virtue in Virginia’s electricity market remains available in monthly increments. You do not need to be green twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, tracking every change of demand. That was the requirement demanded by Dominion Energy Virginia in its recent effort to block…
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GOP Also Concerned About Electricity Consumers
by Steve Haner With an eye on November 5, Virginia’s Republican legislators are expressing their concern for Virginia’s electricity customers and warning that their Democratic competitors will support a new energy carbon tax if they gain the majority. The carbon tax is a key element of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). In media releases…
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Tweet First, Check Your Notes Later
by Steve Haner It doesn’t matter what you say, only what they say you said. This was demonstrated once again this morning as the State Corporation Commission’s hearing on Dominion Energy Virginia’s profit margin unfolded in Richmond courtroom. While Dominion’s lead attorney droned on in his opening statement, Sarah Vogelsong of Virginia Mercury – doing…