Category: Federal issues
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CDC Chicanery
by Kerry Dougherty Looks like the jig is up for the CDC. Someone needs to tell the secretive political animals running the agency that when you’ve lost The New York Times, you’re done. On Sunday, The Times published a story criticizing the Centers for Disease Control for hiding massive amounts of data from the public.…
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Infrastructure Bill, Meet Richmond’s United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
by James C. Sherlock The President and members of Congress have celebrated the enactment of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act into law. In Virginia and the other states (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia) of the federal Fourth Circuit, good luck with that. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit just published two…
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Boomergeddon Watch: We’re Right on Track
by James A. Bacon The U.S. national debt has passed a symbolically important milestone of $30 trillion. That’s up from the $13-$14 trillion when I wrote my book, “Boomergeddon,” in 2010 warning that the U.S. government was heading to functional insolvency by the late 2020’s or early 2030’s. I argued that higher deficits and debt…
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Infrastructure Vote? Oh No, That’s Their Bill
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There has long been a consensus that America needs to pay more attention to its infrastructure. Last week, the House of Representatives passed President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure package and sent it to the President for his signature. Of the total amount, $550 billion was new money; the remainder was funding normally…
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Federal Contracting in Northern Virginia Reaches $60 Billion Annually
by James C. Sherlock The Washington Business Journal (WBJ) reported today that annual federal contracting in Northern Virginia has reached $60 billion. That compares to federal contracting there of $33.7 billion in 2000 (2020 dollars). As a reference points, I consulted St. Louis Fed data for Virginia GDP in those same years and converted the…
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Senator Warner Embraces Legislative Flim-Flam
by Emilio Jaksetic On August 1, 2021, a bipartisan group of senators, including Senator Mark Warner, D-Va, issued a brief: “Senators’ Statement on the Finalized Bipartisan Infrastructure Agreement Legislative Text.” The statement contains a hypertext link to a draft bill that is 2,702 pages long. As a matter of common sense, it is not plausible…
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Virginia Pols Call for Passage of George Floyd Act
by Hans Bader After the murder conviction of the policeman who killed George Floyd, Virginia’s progressive politicians are calling for passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would allow police departments to be sued when police stops aren’t racially and sexually balanced. Congressman Bobby Scott (VA-03) said, “This verdict is a start,…
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Congress to Kill Right To Work, Since GA Didn’t?
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. One key goal for many of Virginia’s new progressive Democrats has been repeal of Virginia’s venerable Right To Work Law, and in 2020 they crossed one milestone by passing repeal in a key committee. But the Democratic leadership, perhaps wary of…
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We Pay For All the COVID Funerals, Too?
by Steve Haner Per the Centers for Disease Control’s tracking, more than 4 million death certificates have been recorded in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. Only 520,000 of them (those recorded so far) listed COVID as primary or contributing cause of death. The survivors of those individuals are eligible for 100% compensation for funeral…
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Holding Richmond Public Schools Accountable — Part I
by James C. Sherlock We have discussed here the failures of the City of Richmond Public Schools (RPS) in educating its economically disadvantaged children, as well as the abysmal performance of Black children in its schools. I intend to help readers understand how it manages to fail repeatedly even with major federal funding as…
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Basic Child Literacy Cannot Be too Much to Ask of Richmond City Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock Half of Black 4th graders in Richmond public schools couldn’t read in 2019. That is not OK. It is way past time to demand both better performance and accountability. Clearly neither the city of Richmond nor the Commonwealth has done that effectively. So I have filed formal complaints with the federal…
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The Mythology of Robert E. Lee
By Peter Galuszka With excellent timing, the former head of the history department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has come out with a book about the mythology of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and much of the White “Southern” culture. Retired U.S. Army Gen. Ty Seidule, a former paratrooper, has deep Virginia…
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The U.S. As Banana Republic
I’m breaking a cardinal rule of Bacon’s Rebellion that restricts commentary to Virginia public policy. The events occurring at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., right now are so unprecedented and so indicative of the political polarization in this country that I’m opening up this post to general commentary. — JAB
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Mark Herring’s Worst Thanksgiving – Conspiracy Against EVMS may lead to Federal Involvement
by James C. Sherlock Scandals are sometimes overrated. Not this one. I have reported here before on the strange case of the EVMS-ODU merger. I posted here on Nov 1, Nov 2 and Nov 3 with my own concerns on the subject. Many of my assessments came to fruition. On November 13 and 20, the Checks…
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Stewart Gets Last-Minute Gift From Trump
Peter Galuszka Corey A. Stewart, a conservative firebrand from Prince William County, is getting a last-minute going-away present from President Donald Trump. As Trump’s administration comes to an end, Trump has created a position on trade at the U.S. Commerce Department that is just for him. In 2016, Stewart headed Trump’s Virginia election campaign before…