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Recent Posts
- Wind Project Sued Over Claimed Threat to Whales
- Marriage Promotes ‘White Supremacy,’ George Mason Professor Says
- Complex Digital Sales Tax Worthy of Veto
- Jeanine’s Memes
- Can the Governor Veto RGGI?
- Bacon Meme of the Week
- Prison Population Down, Crime Up in 2022. Coincidence?
- Jefferson Institute Lists Bills Youngkin Should Veto
- War on Fossil Fuels Reaches Court of Appeals
- Governor’s Budget Transformed
- Correction: SMR Bills Cover Both Utilities
- San Francisco’s “Algebra for None” Policy and How Virginia Avoided a Similar Fate
- The Sausage Factory Taxes the Digital Economy
- Another City Hall Fiasco in RVA
- Jeanine’s Memes
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Prison Population Down, Crime Up in 2022. Coincidence?
The population of Virginia’s state and federal prisons posted a 10.5% decline between 2021 and 2022 — the largest drop of any state, according to new Department of Justice data. Oregon saw the second largest decline at 5.2%. Many states saw increases in their prison populations, as reported by WRIC news.
The total prison population for Virginia in 2022 was 27,162. The numbers do not include inmates of local jails.
The fall-off in prison population was especially marked among females — 18%. The DOJ report did not break down state-by-state prison populations by race.
With the exception of drug offenses, which declined, the crime rate per 100,000 population increased in almost all categories in 2022, according to the Virginia State Police “2022 Crime in Virginia” report.
— JAB
Another City Hall Fiasco in RVA
by Jon Baliles
City Hall suffered another self-inflicted artillery wound last week when within a span of four days they were sued for allegedly violating state Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws, pledged a stout defense against the claims, and then announced they would be changing the way City Hall handles FOIA requests.
Translated, the city will pivot back towards the old FOIA system they replaced just last year with their new “centralized” system that has been so successful it has led to numerous violations (or just ignoring) FOIA requests, multiple media stories detailing the failures, and several lawsuits that had to be filed in order to get information that should be easily available.
Call it Meals Tax Fiasco, Part Deux. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
New Admissions Policy for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Will Stand
The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear the appeal of the Coalition for Thomas Jefferson challenging the decision of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the changes in the admissions policy for the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. The result is that the changes in the school’s admission policy adopted by the Fairfax County School Board in 2020 will stand. Justices Thomas and Alito dissented from the decision not to grant certiorari. (Their dissents begin on page 30 of the linked document.)
This issue has been discussed extensively on this blog. For some background, see here.
Posted in Culture wars, Education (K-12), Uncategorized
Democrats Lose Concerns About Taxing the Poor
By Steve Haner
A piece of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s tax package has survived after all, but only the part that increases the sales tax base to collect about $1 billion or so more per year from citizens. Democrats who recently complained that sales tax increases were unfair to the poor are suddenly embracing them.
On Sunday, both the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates budget committees approved Youngkin’s budget language to impose the sales tax on a host of digital products and services, adding 6% or more to the prices of downloads, streaming services, and online data storage. The full range of newly taxed transactions is not yet clear.
The Senate then increased the gain to the treasury by making sure the new taxes will also cover business-to-business transactions, something the governor sought to exempt and something which is just passed along in higher prices.
The risk of including that tax policy initiative inside Youngkin’s introduced budget bill was obvious from the start, and General Assembly Democrats have now pounced on the opportunity to capture that revenue. The tax increase is now wrapped in with all the state spending for two years, a hard bill to vote against. Continue reading
Posted in Budgets, Business and Economy, General Assembly, Taxes, Uncategorized
Tagged Stephen D. Haner
Moving the Goalposts (for Banning Books)
by Joe Fitzgerald
Everybody probably already knew what moving the goalposts meant, but with Taylor bringing in a new set of football fans, the sports-related metaphors can probably be used more widely.
Moving the goalposts is of course a reference to changing the standards in the middle of a process. Latest example: the Rockingham County School Board’s half-assed approach to banning books.
We all know the things wrong with their approach. Some of the books aren’t in the library; they haven’t read them; they can’t substantiate their claims of parental complaints; they’ve over-ruled a policy they didn’t know existed; and they’ve interfered in an educational process in which they have no training.
Two writers in The Harrisonburg Citizen have recently suggested that there are two sides to the issue or that the problem is not the book-banning but the way it’s being discussed. Giving the Fahrenheit 451 crowd this benefit of the doubt moves the goalposts toward censorship and religious domination of public discussion. There’s a reason the First Amendment is the first one, and there’s a reason its first clause says the nation won’t give special respect to an establishment of religion. Continue reading
Checking up on Steve Descano
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
Contributors and many readers of this blog have been highly critical of Steve Descano, the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Fairfax County. They belittle him as being a Soros-backed, “woke” prosecutor, soft on crime. They seem to have missed Descano’s involvement in a recent high-profile case.
As described by The Washington Post, the defendant in the case had agreed to allow his home to serve as a delivery point for marijuana that was going to be sold by the victim. There had been a dispute between the defendant and the victim. When the victim knocked on the door of the defendant’s apartment, he sneaked out the back door, retrieved an AR-15 -style rifle from his car, and opened fire on the victim, killing him, and spraying bullets into adjacent occupied apartments. Continue reading
Didn’t We Settle This Divisive Concept Long Ago?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
Governor Glenn Youngkin has signed on to a constitutional position that Virginia and other Southern states used to justify secession from the United States over 170 years ago.
Here, in a nutshell, are the events that led to this situation:
- Greg Abbott ordered razor wire placed in the Rio Grande River to deter immigrants from crossing;
- U.S. Border Patrol agents tried to remove the wire but were prevented from doing so by the Texas State Patrol and the Texas National Guard;
- The United States sued;
- A lower court ordered the Border Patrol not to attempt to remove the razor wire;
- In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the lower court order. There were no written opinions accompanying the decision;
- Despite the Supreme Court decision, Gov. Abbot still refuses to allow the Border Patrol access to certain crossing points, thereby denying that federal authority supersedes the state;
- Almost all the Republican governors issued a statement saying that because the federal government “has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states,” Texas has the right to exert control over the international border in order to defend itself;
- Governor Glenn Youngkin was one of the signatories.
Shades of John C. Calhoun! This compact theory and nullification were put to rest at Appomattox in 1865.
If, as Gov. Youngkin believes, a governor can defy the Supreme Court regarding immigration, what is to stop a future Democratic Virginia governor and legislature from ignoring Supreme Court rulings and enacting strict gun control measures on the grounds that the national government has broken its compact to ensure public safety?
For more analysis and commentary on this development see here and here. For a more measured analysis, see here.
A Doggone Tale
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
A recent special election in Southside Virginia is a stark illustration of how a small special interest group can exercise out-sized power.
In mid-December, long-time state Sen. Frank Ruff (R-Mecklenburg), announced he was resigning from the Senate, shortly after having been re-elected to a seventh term. He had received a diagnosis of cancer in October and was facing a strict regimen of treatment. Gov. Glenn Youngkin set Jan. 9 as the date for a special election to fill the seat.
Ruff’s announcement caught most people by surprise. According to the reporting of David Poole in the Mecklenburg Sun , two people who were not surprised by the announcement were Tammy Mulchi, Ruff’s legislative aide, whom he endorsed in his resignation announcement, and Kirby Burch, the leader of the Virginia Hunting Dog Alliance. Both got advance notice from Ruff of his impending resignation announcement. Continue reading
Posted in Elections, General Assembly, Politics, Uncategorized
Tagged Dick Hall-Sizemore