Category: Disasters and Disaster Preparedness
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McKinsey & Company Has You Covered
by James C. Sherlock Ever feel not only disconnected from, but ignored by central planners? Do you run a shoe store in Sterling or work for a hospital in Richmond? Use natural gas in your home or work? Teach in a public school in Wise County? Drive a gas-or diesel-powered vehicle? In other words, do…
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The Big Christmas Chill Was a Wakeup Call
by Bill O’Keefe As temperatures dropped dramatically over the Christmas weekend, Dominion Energy’s advice to its customers — those who still had power — was to turn down their thermostats. Virginia was not alone. PJM, the regional grid management organization covering 13 states and the District of Columbia, made the same request because its gas…
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Motoring Mariners
by Kerry Dougherty I was surprised when my granddaughter excitedly phoned last night to tell me that due to flooding, school was cancelled today. I was reminded of the time area schools closed prematurely for snow and not a flake fell from the sky. But then I checked the forecast: High tide today could be…
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Electric Vehicles in a Hurricane?
by Kerry Dougherty While hurricane season technically began two months ago, it isn’t until August — or even September — that most of us pay attention to those pesky tropical depressions off the coast of Africa. My favorite parlor game is the annual will-we-evacuate-if-a-hurricane-is-headed-our-way debate. My family’s answer, so far, has always been no. There’s…
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Hurricanes: Dominion’s Big Bet With Our Money
By David Wojick My regular readers know that I have been fussing about the threat of hurricanes destroying proposed Atlantic coast offshore wind arrays. The issue arises because the offshore wind industry is based in Europe, which does not get hurricanes. My focus has been Dominion’s massive project off Virginia, but the whole East Coast…
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The Spirit of Norfolk: Vessel Lost, Lives Saved
by Kerry Dougherty Every city with a decent harbor seems to have one: a vessel that takes passengers out for short lunch, dinner or party cruises. If you’ve lived in Tidewater for more than a decade, chances are you found yourself at one time or another on board The Spirit of Norfolk. Since it arrived…
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Youngkin Signs Bill to Limit His Own Power
by Kerry Dougherty I was at dinner earlier this week with a cousin from out-of-state. We passed a pleasant night without talking politics, but he did want to know what I liked about Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Where to start? I pointed out that the new governor of Virginia is serious about getting the commonwealth’s public…
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Storm-Related Flood Mitigation – A Louisiana Example for Virginia
by James C. Sherlock I have worked for at least ten years — many of those with now-Attorney General Miyares when he was my delegate — to get Virginia to step up to the Louisiana model for flood control. Louisiana. The Louisiana model is a state-federal partnership in which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers…
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Fix One Thing — School Physical and Electronic Security
by James C. Sherlock I offer an apolitical suggestion. We know how to begin to fix school security. Do it. Step 1. Every school division has a security instruction. How many of them monitor whether that guidance is being followed? I will let them answer that. Step 2. The more complete solution is deployment of…
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Fix the Virginia Department of Health
by James C. Sherlock Governor Youngkin and his new administration have an opportunity to fix crucial problems in the Department of Health that have been festering for decades. The issues: How can Virginia regulate effectively its state-created healthcare monopolies? In a directly related matter, how can we fix the failures, famously demonstrated during COVID, of…
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Et Tu Miyares — Prosecuting “Price Gougers”?
by James A. Bacon What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I lambasted former Attorney General Mark Herring for touting his prosecution of gas station owners for “price gouging” — raising prices in the wake of the Colonial Pipeline shutdown. Now the AG’s office under Jason Miyares has issued a press release…
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A Perfect Storm
by James A. Bacon On January 3 and 4 of this year, a winter storm descended upon the Fredericksburg area and closed a large stretch of Interstate 95, trapping hundreds of motorists in freezing conditions for many long hours. The failure of the Virginia Department of Transportation, Virginia State Police and other state agencies to…
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Governing by Edict
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Although the issue of school mask mandates is now behind us, it is instructive to examine the legal arguments advanced by Attorney General Jason Miyares in a court case seeking to overturn the mask mandates instituted by the Loudoun County School Board (“school board”). Not only does Miyares advocate judicial activism and…
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COPN’s Regional Monopolies Helped Boost Virginia Hospitals’ Operating Margins to more than 3x National Median in 2020
by James C. Sherlock Virginians have been assured forever by the hospital lobby that the non-profit regional monopolies established and protected by COPN nearly everywhere but Richmond: are benign public servants with a charitable mission; certainly don’t drive up costs; that competition does not matter; that the State Medical Facilities Plan on which COPN is…
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A Price of COPN — Sentara Pleads COVID Capacity Shortages
by James C. Sherlock Sentara Health, once described by The Washington Post as “playing COPN like a violin,” yesterday went statewide with an acknowledgment that its system is out of capacity for many who seek its help. On a Zoom press conference yesterday, Sentara reported seeing a huge surge in hospital admissions. Hospitalizations have more…