Category: Disasters and Disaster Preparedness
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An Important Challenge to Employees of the Commonwealth
by James C. Sherlock I ask the employees of the Commonwealth of Virginia to be agents for its positive change. I will address you directly. The issue is state readiness, or rather lack of it, for the COVID epidemic. You are in the best position to know that your agency was surprised and overwhelmed when COVID…
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Fire State Officials Who Failed Us in COVID
by James C. Sherlock If senior members of the state bureaucracies escape accountability for their failures before and during COVID, the agency cultures won’t change and it will happen again. I am going to review below the extent of their written responsibilities for pandemic planning and the high quality planning support they were given…
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Virginia’s Covid Vaccination Plan – Nothing to Exercise
by James C. Sherlock I have read a lot of speculation here on who is responsible for the mess that has been the distribution and administration of COVID vaccines. I will try offer some clarification. On a day-to-day basis, people get flu shots or shingles shots or whatever from a lot of different providers. The…
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Virginia Pandemic Emergency Plan Was Never Exercised
by James C. Sherlock As we suspected, Virginia did not exercise its Pandemic Emergency Plan from the time it was published in 2012 until COVID-19 struck. I received the following response today to a FOIA request I sent to the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Emergency Management: The Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) received your…
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Buy Bacon’s Book
By Peter Galuszka This is a shameless advertisement. Jim has written an excellent book and you should buy it and review it. While some of Jim’s focus is at odds with a similar book I wrote eight years ago, “Maverick Miner” is a really well put together effort at research and writing. In my reporting,…
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What Texas’s Crisis Means for Virginia
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in Blogs and Blog Administration, Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Corruption and Scandals, Culture wars, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Political Influence, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technologyby Peter Galuszka The Texas freeze and ensuing energy disaster has clear lessons for Virginia as it sorts out its energy future. Yet much of the media coverage in Virginia and certainly on Bacon’s Rebellion conveniently leaves out pertinent observations. The statewide freeze in Texas completely fouled up the entire energy infrastructure as natural gas…
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All According to Plan – the Biggest Government Scandal in Virginia History
by James C. Sherlock The Virginia Mercury published an excellent article on the difficulties being encountered in Virginia in scheduling COVID shots. But who could have anticipated the need? Who indeed. This story is part of the single biggest government scandal in Virginia history and the press is either ignorant of the underlying issue or…
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Dysfunction Exposed in COVID Demands Overhaul of Virginia’s Government
by James C. Sherlock We all like to discuss the politics of things. That in many instances is appropriate. But political leadership is neither the problem nor the solution I will discuss here today. We will spend every day between now and November’s election debating how the politicians responded to COVID. And we should. But…
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Virginia’s State Health System Will Continue to Kill its Citizens If We Let It
by James C. Sherlock Virginians of every political stripe have grown very tired of watching the Northam administration obfuscate repeated, very public failures to carry out its role in protecting the health of its citizens since the onset of COVID. But that is an effect, not a cause, of the massive and continuing failures at…
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A New Fad: Bashing Offshore Wind Turbines
By Peter Galuszka Offshore wind power is becoming a whipping boy even as the technology involved becomes more advanced and its costs go down. Northwestern Europe is offshore wind headquarters globally and countries such as the United Kingdom have wholeheartedly embraced it. Yet some critics, some of whom are supported financially by the fossil fuel…
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NoPlan Northam Readies Random Restrictions
By DJ Rippert Here we go again. The Richmond Times Dispatch is reporting that Governor Ralph “NoPlan” Northam signaled a possible increase in COVID-19 restrictions during an interview with CNBC yesterday (Dec 7). Northam is quoted as saying, “We’re actively discussing on how to mitigate the numbers, and we’ll take further measures if we need…
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Where Does Ralph Northam Go From Here with COVID-19?
by DJ Rippert Marcel Marceau. Ralph “The COVID Mime” Northam dropped a bevy of increased Coronavirus restrictions on the state last Friday. Those new restrictions on Friday followed another rambling COVID press conference held by Northam the prior Tuesday. Anybody watching the Tuesday news conference could be forgiven for being shocked by The COVID Mime’s…
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Northam’s Non-COVID Non-Update
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4eTqh-1pTU&w=480&h=315] Note: video starts at 4:50 by DJ Rippert Northam fiddles. As a resurgence of COVID-19 spreads across Europe and the United States, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam held a press conference ostensibly to discuss the pandemic. The presser provided little new information about the coronavirus or Virginia’s plans to combat the disease. Northam did…
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Shellenberger’s “Apocalypse Never” Lessons for VA
“Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem.” By Steve Haner That statement opens the dust jacket summary for “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All” by Michael Shellenberger, once named “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine. It remains the…
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Does Northam Have a Plan to Battle a COVID Resurgence in Virginia?
by DJ Rippert The second (or third) time around. America’s polarized political situation has all eyes on the upcoming presidential election. Millions are voting early and millions more will vote by mail. There is a good chance that the final results will not be known on the morning after Election Day. If true, America’s attention…