Author: Bob Rayner
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Why Virginia Democrats Should Support the New School Accountability System
by Todd Truitt In 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin was able to flip the education issue on Democrats to pull off a victory. In 2025, Democrats need to reclaim the education issue to flip the Governor’s mansion back. One way of doing that is by supporting the new statewide public school accountability system, which furthers core…
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Footloose Aaron Spence. Having Fun On Loudoun County’s Dime
Republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed and Unedited. by Kerry Dougherty Let’s just admit it. Those of us who thought Aaron Spence was a disaster as Virginia Beach School Superintendent are experiencing a shameless bout of schadenfreude. Yep, we’re enjoying the misfortune of others. Those “others” would be Loudoun County parents and taxpayers. Aaron Spence…
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Education and Remembrance on the Banks of the James
by Jon Baliles The Virginia War Memorial sits solemnly upon the edge of Oregon Hill overlooking the city and the James River and honors the 12,000+ Virginia names of those who have fallen in service of our country since 1956. But in recent decades, it has become a place of education as well as of…
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Factors Impacting Teacher Vacancies
by Matt Hurt Last week Jim Bacon published an article about the fact that our teacher vacancy rate problem is not all about salary, and I agree that other factors also contribute to this problem. Jim also posited that “It’s caused by teachers dropping out of the profession because they think their jobs suck,” and…
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EVs More Likely to Kill Pedestrians, Damage Roads and Bridges
by Hans Bader “A recent study published by the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that drivers of electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids are twice as likely to hit pedestrians compared to those driving traditional gas-powered cars, potentially leading to more fatal accidents. This conclusion came from a review of British road accidents. The study…
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Two-Mile Moonscape in Virginia Beach: Thanks, Bureaucrats!
by Kerry Dougherty Virginia Beach politicians are doing their happy dance. Earlier this week state officials gave them good news: they’re “near the finish line” on the Laskin Road project. Oh, please. We’ve seen this movie before. Let’s review, shall we? In 2019 construction began on the two-mile-long road widening project through the heavily traveled…
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Amnesty: Governor Youngkin Has No Power at VMI
Introduction: For those unfamiliar with the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), disciplinary actions against Cadets include “demerits” recorded in their records, confinement to barracks, and “penalty tours” (PT) or a combination of those for misconduct ranging from minor infractions (uniform violations, dirty rooms) to major (drinking in barracks, disrespect to cadet officers, breaking VMI regulations). Cadets…
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Lack of Credit, RVA Edition
by Jon Baliles City Hall has spent the last few months trying to fix the meals tax fiasco where they were charging restaurants thousands and tens of thousands of dollars in penalties and interest which accrued that the restaurants never knew about and about which the city never made any attempt to contact them, so…
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Riley Gaines: Role Model
by Kerry Dougherty We live in a world hungry for role models for our young children. Especially girls. I met one yesterday. Twenty-four year old Riley Gaines. Champion athlete and accidental feminist. Poised, proud and witty. Listen to her speak for an hour and you’ll be convinced this smart and attractive dynamo can accomplish almost…
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No, Virginia Beach Did NOT Cut Taxes
by Kerry Dougherty I don’t normally link to Virginian-Pilot stories. Today is an exception. Find the fiction in this one: “Virginia Beach Adopts $2.6 Billion Budget, Cutting Taxes and Increasing City Worker Pay.” Once again, the press joins the city in spreading a fantasy. This time it’s that when the city council lowered the property…
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Virginia Beach Budget Will Lower Your Standard of Living
When Councilman John Moss narrowly lost his seat on City Council in a 2022 three-way race, Virginia Beach lost the lone elected official who actually understood municipal budgeting. Moss could be counted on to make city budgeteers squirm as he peppered them with intelligent questions about why they continually funded vacant city jobs and then…
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Frosted Fame in Chesterfield
by Jon Baliles The Chesterfield County weekly newsletter featured a great story last week about Bailey Sheetz, a 13-year old Chester resident who is now on a first-name basis with Jerry Seinfeld and Melissa McCarthy in Hollywood. Sheetz made his movie debut in Seinfeld’s new Netflix movie Unfrosted, the satirical comedy about the launch of…
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Mother’s Day in Virginia
by Kerry Dougherty It all began in 2020. Our annual Mother’s Day escape. Four years ago Ralph Northam’s reign of Covid despotism was underway and we were desperate to shake off the suffocating restrictions he imposed on a weekly basis. (The governor’s Thursday press conferences were a source of stress and dread for many of…
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Spying in Salem
by Scott Dreyer On March 9, 2010, in the heated struggle to approve the controversial “Obamacare” legislation (aka “Affordable Care Act”), then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) made national headlines when she tried to support the bill and remarked, “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in…
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Parking Decks, Debt, & Trap Doors
by Jon Baliles On Wednesday afternoon at 3:00pm in City Council chambers, City Council will vote and approve the plan presented by the Mayor and Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) to allow Richmond to issue $170 million in bonds to pay for the new baseball stadium on ten acres that will be surrounded by about 57…