Category Archives: Disaster planning

The Cooch’s Freak Show Dream Team

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 6 Comments

cooch dream teamBy Peter Galuszka

Ken Cuccinelli just can’t keep away from the bizarre, but perhaps that’s what makes him what he is.

He stages a convention instead of a primary to neuter Bill Bolling. And since a convention is smaller, it draws more GOP hard-righters than  June bugs on a humid night and they succeed in getting Bishop E.W. Jackson and Mark Obenshain selected. They underline the social conservatism that turns millions off and makes Virginia the butt of jokes on late night talk shows.

The Bishop is an even bigger gay basher than Cuccinelli and says that Planned Parenthood is responsible for more fatalities among African-Americans than the Ku Klux Klan. This may be new to a Harvard Law graduate, but women of any color have a legal right to an abortion within limits. The U.S. Supreme Court said so. Look under Roe vs. Wade.

Then there is the attorney general candidate Mark Obenshain of the legacy Republican family. He proposed and withdrew legislation to require any woman in Virginia who miscarries a pregnancy to report it to the police. The idea is so repulsive it is beyond words. A woman may have miscarried to her great sorrow due to medical reasons and then would have to go through the added horror of having to report to the police? Yes, this comes from a cabal that otherwise wants to keep the government out of your lives. Even Josef Stalin wouldn’t think of this.

What does the dream team have to say on the many policy issues facing a troubled state? We have a bunch of lame and poorly thought out tax cuts and Cooch playing hardware store populist. Cuccinelli was against McDonnnell’s mammoth road building tax plan and has since backed away from his opposition.

Is this good news for Terry McAuliffe, who has plenty of issues of his own? Yes, I would think. Cuccinelli doesn’t need the fringe hard right voters. He’s already got them in his pocket. He needs the center and Mark and the Bishop aren’t going to be much help there.

It boggles the mind how Virginia is so schizo. It is attracting hundreds of thousands of newcomers who are running the state’s economy and are dragging it into the 21st century world. Yet the Republicans put up people like this who aren’t dragging us to Virginia’s recent dark past but to medieval times.

Global investors might think twice or three times before investing in this freak show.

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What the Clams Know: Warming Waters

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 31 Comments

atlantic surf clamBy Peter Galuszka

Are warming seas forcing fish to migrate to cooler waters?

That’s the thrust of an intriguing report in Nature magazine as covered in this morning’s Post. The impacts on the seafood industry are already playing out. New England fishermen after cod and haddock report having to move farther north to catch them.

There are impacts in the Mid-Atlantic as well. According to The Post, warmer waters from Delaware to Virginia are pushing Atlantic surf clams to move farther north, and this has resulted in the closure of a clam processing plant in Virginia. Atlantic surf clams are a popular variety used for fried dishes or in chowders

I tried and failed to find out what plant it was. I did find one that was shut down in recent years near Mappsville on Virginia’s Eastern Shore but could not confirm the reason. The firm, Eastern Shore Seafood, was bought by Maryland-based Seawatch International which later shut the plant down.

I spoke with Mike Hutt, executive director of the Virginia Marine Products Board who had seen The Post story but couldn’t confirm details of any related plant closings or the impact of warming waters regionally

It would seem that warmer waters will add further stress to the region’s troubled seafood industry, especially for certain species. I’m not certain how it would affect favorites such as blue crabs that seem to thrive in tepid waters much farther south or oysters, which are struggling make a comeback in Chesapeake Bay. My guess, and I am no expert, is that other prized species such as bluefish and rockfish (striped bass to Northerners) might change their migration patterns because of climate change.

If the Nature research is correct, the fish may be sending us a powerful message that many haven’t figured out yet.

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Posted in Disaster planning, Economic development, Economy, Energy, Environment, Regulation, Science & Technology

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Dissecting Obama’s “War on Coal”

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 13 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

During elections a few months ago, headlines, blog sites and televisions screens were crowded with news about the “War on Coal” being waged by President Barack Obama and his EPA chief.

Coal firms were laying off thousands of miners as their bottom lines took big hits. Virginia politicians including Kenneth Cuccinelli and Bob McDonnell were in the Southwest Virginia coalfields piling on.

The mood was equally dark at a Platts coal conference in Ft. Lauderdale Thursday and Friday, but the true despair is coming from the Central Appalachian fields of Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia, which are especially distressed.

Does this mean coal is toast? Not at all, speaker after speaker said. Fields in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana – representing about half of U.S. production — are doing just fine. The Illinois Basin east and south of St. Louis is enjoying a revival, as is Pennsylvania anthracite (hard coal) which went into a steep decline about a century ago.

As for Central Appalachia, the bell is tolling. The killers are natural gas and high costs. Barack Obama is partly to blame, but some of his allegedly overwrought policies haven’t taken effect or haven’t really been formulated yet, despite how much coal executives love to talk about the administration’s “Train Wreck” of tougher rules on mercury and toxics, polluted coal-field air moving to cleaner places and tighter carbon dioxide emissions plans for new coal-fired electrical plants.

While one can whine all he wants about the Sierra Club and Michael Bloomberg’s stand against coal, the biggest culprit is natural gas. Hydro-fracking drilling methods and technology innovation in finding new fields have unleashed a flood of cheap methane. True, gas prices are edging upwards of about $3.50 per million BTUs, but they are low enough to cause havoc with coal.

According to Nick Carter, a West Virginia-based coal executive who is regarded as the Godfather of the Appalachian industry, says that when gas prices drop to $3 at that rate, they impact Powder River coal which is cheap and inexpensive to mine. At fifty cents more, it impacts Illinois Basin coal. But gas prices would have to rise beyond a level between $4.50 to $6 to make Central Appalachian, including Virginian, coal, worth mining. “We will be in a period of transition and there will be a new normal,” he says.

The impact of cheap gas cannot be underestimated. It is the reason one doesn’t hear much talk about utilities putting in advanced carbon capture technology to continue using coal. It is too expensive to do so. If gas goes to the $7 or $8 levels, says Seth Schwartz of Energy Venture Analysis, “companies would be investing in new controls. But if gas stays at near $3, “the utilities would just idle (coal-fired) plants,” he says.

Gas is also going to push a rash of coal company consolidation because it is much harder for smaller coal firms — and there are plenty in Virginia’s small coal fields — to continue to operate because they lack the capital to stay in business. Today in the U.S., the top 10 percent of the mines in terms of production produce 70 percent of the coal. Most are in the Powder River Basin.

Virginia’s two prominent coal firms are taking big hits. Bristol–based Alpha Natural Resources, which took over troubled Massey Energy in 2011, has seen its credit cut from B+ to BB. Its stock is down 88 percent. Richmond-based James River Coal saw its credit cut from B to CCC and its equities are down 91 percent.

True, there’s a bright spot in the metallurgical coal market to make steel. China, a big buyer, is starting to come back with bigger buys after an economic slowdown that should benefit met-heavy Alpha.

But the writing is on the wall. It’s brutal what is happening to Central Appalachian coal. It’s not coming back,” Schwartz says.

Sounds right and all the complaining about Obama and the EPA can’t turn it around. Indeed, if anything is killing Virginia coal industry, it is the free market.

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Posted in Disaster planning, Economic development, Economy, Energy, Environment, Federal, Governance reform, Infrastructure, Labor & workforce, Money in politics, Politics, Regulation, Science & Technology

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Out: Sustainability. In: Resilience.

Posted on March 6, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 19 Comments

Dan Slone

by James A. Bacon

If you want to move green initiatives forward in the Richmond region, it’s best not to invoke “sustainability,” a word that quickly gets tangled in the controversy over global warming and inflames the anti-Agenda 21 element of the conservative movement. Instead, advises Daniel K. Slone, focus on concepts in which the interests of environmentalists align with those of business and local government. Talk about “resilience,” “ecodistricts” and “biophilia.”

Other regions are advancing environmental goals under these new headings, said Slone, a McGuire Woods attorney who works nationally with developers on smart-growth projects, serves on the board of the Congress for New Urbanism and is counsel to the U.S. Green Building Council. “You’ll hear those words more,” he told an audience of University of Richmond students as part of a speaking series sponsored by the law school’s Center for Environmental Management.

The idea of resilience came to the fore after Hurricane Sandy showed the vulnerability of New York’s electric power infrastructure and disrupted industrial supply chains. While Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, many could write off the Big Easy as an economic backwater. But when New York experienced cascading disruptions, corporations and urban planners paid notice.

The big insurers are paying bigger claims for business disruption after Sandy than for damaged facilities, said Slone. Some are working on rate structures in which insurance fees vary by how resilient an organization is. Lenders are focusing on the issue, too, reviewing their exposure to the hurricane-vulnerable coast of Florida, for instance. Businesses, already sensitive to supply-chain disruptions caused by the Fukushima earthquake, are paying closer attention as well.

Dropping off the grid with a house powered by solar panels, the dream of some environmentalists, is not resilient — lose your solar panels from a falling tree and you have no electricity. The way to increase resilience, said Slone, is to create redundancy and multiple paths. When corporations think about where to locate, they may want resilient transportation systems. A system entirely dependent upon the automobile is less resilient, he argued, than a system in which employees live within walking distance or can reach the office by bicycle.

Slone pitched the idea of urban eco-districts as a way for enterprises to reduce the cost of water and waste water services. In the past, he worried that the suburbs might supplant the inner city as a locale for green development. After all, it takes less money to develop a green-field project. But densely populated urban areas can turn their drawbacks, such as a high volume of storm water runoff, into assets. Enterprises can spend less money on water and waste-water utilities by harvesting rain water and recycling gray water and run-off. Green roofs can lower HVAC costs and density can create better walking environments. “That has a lot of appeal to folks making decisions now.”

Thirdly, people like green, growing things, and they are willing to pay a premium to be around them. According to the Urban Land Institute, Slone said, properties adjacent to parks enjoy a 10% price premium. He cited the example of Singapore, which has built a walkway on land too hilly to construct buildings upon, lit up the structure at night and integrated solar-generating and water-harvesting structures that have gained international renown as architectural icons.

“Richmond will get there,” Slone said. “We just can’t talk about it in the same terms.” In Virginia, the key words are “competitiveness,” “flexibility” and “entrepreneurial opportunity.” But they can lead to the same place.

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Posted in 2013, Disaster planning, Economy, Environment, Planning

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The Lessons of the 2013 General Assembly

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 21 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

If there’s any good news from the 2013 General Assembly session, it is that the hard right’s strange hold on taxation has been broken. Republicans can start acting like responsible adults once again instead of dogmatic shills or spoiled children.

Gov. Robert F. Donnell and legislators found a way to raise badly needed money for transportation although it came via a very bad law that ties itself up like a contortionist doing this and that when all that needed to be done was to simply raise the gasoline tax for the first time in 26 years.

The Democrats were right to strong-arm McDonnell into going along with expanding Medicaid. It would have been absolutely ridiculous for Virginia to hold its stubborn head high and deny thousands of needy people medical assistance so they can feel good about some ludicrous oath from Grover Norquist they may have recited at one point to get votes. The feds will be paying for the expansion until 2016 and then for 90 percent of it. Imagine a well fed delegate saying, “No, you poor person can’t have health care because it is doctrinally impure!”

The upshot is is that we need to get of the Grover Norquists, the Tea Baggers and all their ilk to get on with the serious business of running the state and country. The sequestration debacle is more than embarrassing for its stupidity. So is Kenneth Cuccinelli with Bob Marshall cheering him to to find any bogus constitutional challenge to anything he finds political impure as far as taxation.

The bottom line is that if you want fixed roads, good schools and a decent place to live, you have to pay for them through taxes. Simple. You can’t depend on private industry to see you through, especially not when a good chunk of it in the Old Dominion is actually federal government money that’s about to be cut off in a big way. You can’t do it through little shell games with public private partnerships to build roads you often do not need. And you just can’t kick the can to younger generations so you can remain holy.

In other words, the days of the Tea Party, “Boomergeddon” and all the clarion calls to the need for budget cutting are over. They’ve been over for a while. We get it. We’ve been spending too much. But it is idiotic to go cold turkey without some thought given to it because you will crash the economy and die of the DTs. You don’t cure a crash victim by denying him blood. That’s not voodoo economics, that’s vampire economics. You need a balance and that’s exactly what the Boomergeddons and Baconauts want to deny us.

As for McDonnell, well, he’s finally got his legacy. It looks pretty messy. He did manage to get more money for roads, but he did through a Rube Goldberg contraption of taxation. He has a totally wrong-headed tax on alternative vehicles which shows,once again, just how Neanderthal much of the thinking in the General Assembly is.

McDonnell failed to get legacies through privatizing state alcohol stores or erecting offshore oil rigs. Last year, the legislature got so out of control with social conservative nonsense — another Tea Party legacy — that Virginia scored on national Snark TV for its inane war against women. That cost McDonnell a hell of a lot, namely the vice presidential nomination.

Now, he’s reportedly thinking about something bigger and I gather his platform for that will be his tax victory. Good Luck.

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Peanuts, Tobacco and Corporate Greed

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 1 Comment

By Peter Galuszka

Stewart Parnell had a dilemma. The owner of Lynchburg-based Peanut Corporation of America faced deadlines in shipping peanut butter from his troubled manufacturing plant in Georgia but test results from salmonella, a problem because of unsanitary conditions at the factory, were not back from the lab yet.

His customers included schools, snack firms and dog snack makers. “Shit, just ship it,” Parnell instructed in an email.

While many are concentrate on the failings of government, not that many pay attention to the wrongdoings of private enterprise. The peanut story is a huge lesson for Virginia, based on a 76-count indictment that was handed down in Georgia on Thursday that charged Parnell and three other firm employees with a host of crimes.

Thanks to their quest for the profit, prosecutors charge, hundreds of people were made sick and nine others died in 2009 of a national outbreak of salmonella that was traced back to the peanut factory. One was a 78-year old Korean War vet who was killed after eating peanut butter at his assisted living facility in Minnesota.

The company’s problem trace to its factory in Blakely, Ga., which inspectors found infested with mold and rat feces. Food and Drug Administrators visited the plant a number of times in 2008 and 2009. Aside from the dangerously unsanitary conditions, they found evidence that Peanut Corp. officials had knowingly shipped products infested with salmonella in 2007 and 2008.

Meanwhile, in other headlines, Russia is launching on a plan to increase its citizens’ life expectancies from 66.5 years to 74 years by 2018. Two big reasons for the early death rates are alcohol and tobacco. Regarding the latter (I know from personal experience), Russians can’t live without a cigarette sticking out of their mouths and start at a very early age.

Tobacco companies, including Virginia-Based Philip Morris USA, used to take full advantage of this. True, PM split itself into USA and Philip Morris International a few years back as a sop to health related lawsuits in this country. But its freshly-independent sister firm, based in Switzerland, actively promotes high-nicotine products in Russia and other smoking-prone places such as China, India and Indonesia.

Pointing out the health hazards of tobacco are always problematic in Virginia which has based much of its economic history on tobacco since the 17th century. Philip Morris employs about 6,000 in the state and its parent firm, Altria, contributes generously to the arts and other philanthropy.

But that doesn’t change the deadly nature of its products. In the case of Peanut Corp. of America, its products should be healthy and peanuts also date many centuries in Virginia history. Until greed steps in.

And that takes us back to the essential point. In many cases, the problem is not enough government regulation instead of too much—a common mantra around this blog.

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Posted in Agriculture & forestry, Consumer protection, Courts and law, Crime and corrections, Disaster planning, Economy, Federal, Governance reform, Labor & workforce, Regulation

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So, What Would Happen If Richmond, Like, Got Hit by a Killer Asteroid?

Posted on February 15, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 10 Comments

Asteroid 2012 DA14 is expected to pass 17,200 miles from Planet Earth today. What would happen if a splinter, say the size of a school bus, broke off and plummeted to earth at 12 miles per second, striking downtown Richmond?

You can get a glimmer from these videos on the Atlantic Cities blog of a kitchen table-sized meteor streaking through the sky near Chelyabinsk, Russia. But a school bus is a lot bigger than a kitchen table. Thanks to the good folks at KillerAsteroids.org, we can simulate the impact, as seen above.

The entire downtown area would be incinerated, and the better part of the city would be subject to a zone where “steel buildings are knocked over.” Tragically, the Third Street Diner, a genuine Richmond landmark, would be consumed in the blast. On a positive note, the entire apparatus of state government — including the General Assembly, if the asteroid hit during the session — would be obliterated. Don’t worry: Yours truly resides safely outside the blast zone, so Bacon’s Rebellion would continue publishing.

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Disaster planning, Uncategorized

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Is Virginia Uranium Quickly Running Out of Money?

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 3 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

Just how financially viable is Virginia Uranium, which appears to be losing its battle to lift a 31-year-old ban on uranium mining in Virginia?

Corporate documents filed with Canadian securities regulators state that as of last September, Virginia Energy Resources Inc., Vancouver, British Columbia-based parent of Virginia Uranium that wants to mine a 119-million pound deposit of uranium near Chatham, was having serious problems with financial losses and cash flow.

According to documents obtained through Canada’s System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR): “For the period ended September 30, 2012, the Company incurred an operating loss of $5,354,146, and has an accumulated deficit of $17,109,894, limited resources, no source of operating cash flow and no assurances that sufficient funding will continue to be available.”

For several years, Virginia Uranium has funneled cash and gifts to legislators to influence them to support ending the state’s uranium mining moratorium. The effort appeared to fall apart when State Senator John Watkins, R-Powhatan, withdrew a bill that would have ended the ban and started setting up the regulatory to allow mining. He did so before it was due before an unfriendly Senate committee that most likely would have killed it.

Lobbyists are now focusing on Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell to get the issue moving again before Tuesday, known as the “crossover” day or the last day in a General Assembly session that a bill in one chamber can move to the other. A bill similar to Watkins’ is in the House of Delegates but, so far, McDonnell seems to be avoiding taking a stand on uranium.

Despite having paid legislators to go on trips to France, including stopovers in Paris and Canada, to drum up support for uranium mining, there were hints that something was amiss financially. In 2011, Virginia Public Access Project records show that Virginia Uranium spent $120,000 on gifts – the most of any company in the state. This past year, that amount dropped to $107,000. With the exception of Democrat Richard Saslaw, most of the money went to Republicans.

So, big questions loom.  Would McDonnell kick start the move for Virginia Uranium as it struggles with money? Why would the General Assembly seriously consider spending millions in new expenses setting up as many as 30 new regulators to handle uranium mining?

Watkins and others have said that Virginia Uranium would pay for the cost so it won’t fall on taxpayers. But how could that happen if the firm itself seems to be running out of money?

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Virginia Uranium’s Strangely Short Half-Life

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 4 Comments

Peter Galuszka

After years building up to a critical mass, Virginia’s uranium controversy never quite reached fission.

State Sen. John Watkins, a Republican and uranium backer from Powhatan, pulled the plug on his pro-mining bill Thursday as it faced certain death at a Senate committee. There are a couple of other legislative efforts out there, but it probably safe to say that the state’s now 31-year-old ban on mining uranium stays.

This year’s dramatic battle joined well-pocketed interest groups from both sides. Virginia Uranium, which wants to develop the 119 million pound deposit near Chatham, had given thousands of dollars in donations, trips and gifts to many legislators. Anti-mining advocates, including the cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach who feared for their drinking water sources, hired their own advocacy muscle. Ordinary folks down in the gently rolling hills of Pittsylvania County organized a strikingly tightly-disciplined and effective anti-mining campaign.

At the end of the day, however, the real reason uranium failed lurks behind the scenes far from the polished floors of the State Capitol.

The fact is that the dynamics of energy pricing are undergoing a huge change in this country. A flood of natural gas, some from controversial “fracking” drilling methods, is making other forms of electricity generation, notably nuclear, financially less attractive.

Back in 2007, uranium prices were about $140 a pound. That touched off a renewed effort to mine the Coles Hill Farm tract in Pittsylvania County, one of the country’s largest uranium deposits.

As both sides of the argument poured money into lobbyists’ pockets, something happened that was beyond their control. Uranium prices set by global demand started dropping. By 2010, they had plummeted to about $70 a pound because of the global economic slowdown. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011, they fell to the mid-$40-a-pound level, where they are now.

What that means for uranium mining in Virginia can be explained with simple arithmetic. According to Brett Arends of the Wall Street Journal, “The industry needs prices to be at $75 to $80 a pound for future mine production to be profitable.” In other words, for Virginia Uranium’s project to work, prices would likely need to rebound by about $30 a pound. I have noted this in a previous blog.

The bad news for uranium continues. According to another article in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, U.S. utilities are starting to shut down or consider dropping some of their nuclear power stations because of unexpectedly cheap natural gas. Richmond-based Dominion Resources has announced it is shutting down its Kewaunee nuclear plant in Wisconsin this summer, even though it has 20 years left on its operating license.

Dominion says it is cheaper for it to meet its sales contracts with other utilities by buying electricity on the open market. Presumably that means electricity created by gas. Industry analysts believe that other nuclear utilities that might consider shutting down or have already idled some of their nuclear operations are Exelon Corp., Entergy Corp., Edison International and Duke Energy Corp.

The invasion of natural gas also means tough times for the future of nuclear power, which just a couple of years ago seemed on the verge of a rebound. According to the Journal, fixed costs for a power stations run $15,000 per megawatt for a modern gas plant, $30,000 for a coal plant and $90,000 for a nuclear plant. The newspaper notes that nukes also have extra costs because they need more security guards and have more demanding maintenance and spent fuel storage issues. It is hard to recover the higher costs because regulators who set electricity rates in some states require utilities to go with the cheapest fuel possible.

To be sure, demand for nuclear power still looks promising in places such as India and China, but that is unlikely to result in a spike in global uranium prices for at least a few years.

This all made Virginia Uranium’s proposal look shakier than ever, despite all of the hullaballoo, battling op-ed pieces in newspapers and expenses-paid trips to Paris and Canada organized by the firm.

For now, at least, uranium is dead. Its killer was cold, hard economics.

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Posted in Disaster planning, Economic development, Economy, Electoral process, Environment, Infrastructure, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, Media, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Science & Technology, The Economy

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Is Virginia a Leader in Gun Control?

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 2 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

For all of the sound and fury over guns in Virginia — panicked shooters are draining firearms shops of ammunition — the Old Dominion actually has been a leader among states on the gun control issue on a couple of fronts.

For details, see my story in this week’s Style Weekly.

First, Richmond was in the forefront of a much-imitated program back in the 1990s called “Project Exile” which carried mandatory federal prison terms for any felon caught in a crime.

Back in the day, Richmond’s central area was racking up the second highest murder rate in the country. The problem started with an inner-city crack cocaine epidemic and then morphed into an OK Corral motif when a lot of kids started carrying guns and using them whenever their blood got hot during a macho argument.

Project Exile worked, former Richmond Police Chief Jerry Oliver told me, because it addressed “so much gun carrying among immature young males who were unschooled and unchurched.”

To be sure, there were criticisms that Project Exile had racial tinges because it was directed at mostly young African-Americans in Richmond’s central area. Civil rights lawyers told me that they watched a kid go to jail because he had a gun on him while he was caught with a marijuana joint in his pocket. At the same time, the leading proponents of Project Exile, such as Richmond’s then Commonwealth’s Attorney and Chief Oliver are also African-Americans.

Programs like these lose their relevancy in the case of mass shootings of the Virginia Tech or Sandy Hook type which involve legally-bought guns and shooters with distinct mental illnesses. Oliver told me that in many of those cases, the shooter often doesn’t care if he gets caught because he may well intend to kill himself in the fray.

What helps is keeping a federal registry with lists of names of people considered ill enough with mental issues to make themselves dangerous if they have guns. This goes on a National Instant Criminal Background Check System that licensed gun dealers need to check before selling a firearm.

The Wall Street Journal reports that many states don’t bother supplying the system with much data. But guess which state supplies the most? Virginia.

That’s right. The Old Dominion, led by former Gov. Time Kaine and then Atty. Gen. Robert F. McDonnell (bipartisanship anyone?) actually made sure that lots of names made the list after the Virginia Tech horrors.

Of course, the list is useless at gun shows where sellers and buyers don’t have a legal requirement to check someone’s background before selling a gun. That will be addressed by President Barack Obama’s reform proposals.

Virginia’s efforts are sensible measures to ensure safety with guns. You wouldn’t know by looking at the General Assembly where legislators are ripping apart any proposal for reform. As for shooters, they are cleaning out the ammo stores. What amazes me is they’re even making a run at .22 caliber Long Rifle rounds. They can be deadly but they are the type of bullet I used to use to hunt squirrels with using my bolt-action, single shot rifle when I was 11 years old. Go figure.

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Posted in Consumer protection, Courts and law, Crime and corrections, Demographics, Disaster planning, Gun rights, Health care, Media, Politics

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