Steve Descano. Commonwralth’s Attorney, Fairfax. Photo credit: WTOP
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. (more…)
New Jersey just agreed to two ocean wind projects with astronomical guaranteed power prices. The price demanded and received by independent competitive suppliers shows there is at least some upside to the utility-owned, captive ratepayer-financed model behind Dominion Energy Virginia’s massive offshore wind facility.
In late 2023 the news was full of reports that independent wind developers were pulling out of various projects along the East Coast because the projects were no longer economically viable. Those who thought the future of the industry was in jeopardy were wrong. (more…)
I’ve frequently made the observation that Virginia has been leaking population through domestic migration. However, as recent data published by Old Dominion University’s Strome College of Business make clear, the loss of population through domestic migration is more than offset by net international migration. Between April 1, 2020, and June 30, 2022, Virginia lost nearly 30,000 people through domestic migration, but gained nearly 53,000 through international migration.
That data (shown in the table above) and more can be found in ODU’s 2023 State of the Commonwealth report on Virginia’s economy.
Perhaps the most interesting data tell us the states where people are coming from and the states where Virginians are going to. As can be seen in the tables below, people moving to Virginia in 2021 came mainly from the northeast — New Jersey is at the top of the list — and they’re moving mainly to southern states. (more…)
Borrowing a methodology from a Harvard computer science prof, Jay Greene and Mike Gonzales with The Heritage Foundation have calculated a wokeness ranking for Virginia’s public universities: the number of times “social justice” appears in a university’s course catalog.
Measured by the absolute number of “social justice” mentions, James Madison University is the most woke (72 references), followed by George Mason University (59), and Virginia Commonwealth University (53).
Some universities offer far more courses than others, however, so Greene and Gonzalez introduce another measure: a ratio of courses that mention “social justice” versus courses that mention “Constitution.” (more…)
Virginia Democrats are audacious. You’ve got to give them that.
During the lawless McAuliffe-Northam years, Virginia’s Parole Board was headed by bleeding hearts, who specialized in releasing criminals.
They were rewarded for their soft-hearted approach with judgeships. Because that’s how Democrats roll.
You’d think the party that favors criminals over victims wouldn’t want to remind the public of its own terrible record.
But they can’t help themselves.
Now that Gov. Glenn Youngkin has named Patricia West, a tough, super-qualified retired Virginia Beach judge to the same position, they’re trying to block her confirmation. They fear she’ll be too tough on criminals.
You’d think Democrats would be so embarrassed by what they did when they controlled the board they wouldn’t want to remind the public of their own terrible record. (more…)
Population growth patterns are shifting within Virginia. So far during the current decade, Virginia’s two largest metropolitan areas — Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads — have been losing population due to net migration (more people moving out than moving in). The trend, evident before the Covid epidemic, became more pronounced during and after.
Meanwhile, Richmond has emerged as the state’s new in- migration growth leader. And in an encouraging turnabout, Virginia’s smaller metros (collectively) and rural localities (collectively) have been gaining population through in-migration as well, according to analysis by Hamilton Lombard at the Demographics Research Group of the University of Virginia. (more…)
From tiny acorns grow the mighty oaks of government.
By Steve Haner
The Democrats now running Virginia’s General Assembly are not just more progressive, but far more ambitious than their predecessors. To fully understand how ambitious you must compile the entire list of progressive bills advancing in the 2024 session and consider their total impact on the cost of living and cost of doing business in the commonwealth. Individual news stories miss the big picture.
The push to radically regulate Virginia’s energy future discussed earlier is being mimicked with equally aggressive legislation throughout the rest of our economy. None of the ideas below are new, and most are already in law in places like California, New York or other more liberal states. What has changed is that when proposed in the past, they usually were rejected in Virginia on a bipartisan basis. Democrats now march in lockstep.
The Assembly is still in its first phase and adjournment is set for early March. Which of the following will pass remains to be seen, and in many cases, amendments are already appearing. Most may also face gubernatorial veto or amendment, but that just underscores that Virginia is only one election of one official away from total transformation.
In the case of the bills to increase the minimum wage (here and here), Democrats are simply building upon what they did during their last period of control. But if they succeed in setting future wage increases to automatically grow with inflation, the impact just builds and builds. Classes of employees reasonably exempted from the law currently, such as farm workers, may now be covered, as well.
Likewise, the previous Democratic majority also took the first steps toward collective bargaining for limited groups of local employees, but only after elected local officials gave a green light to negotiate a contract. This year’s bill expands the right to bargain to almost all local and now most state employees, with no vote needed by a school board or city council. It was revealed that the most recent version does conveniently exempt employees of the General Assembly, however.(more…)
Day two and we have more questions than answers about what happened Saturday morning on the 14th Street pier in Virginia Beach.
Yes, we know an SUV drove through two barriers and off the end of the pier. We learned that strong ocean currents and murky water are creating problems for those trying to haul it to the surface.
But get a load of what the police will say when they know the local news media don’t know how to ask follow up questions. (This is from the local newspaper):
Police have not determined who was operating the vehicle, nor do they know if anyone else was inside, according to Virginia Beach police spokesman Jude Brenya. While authorities have identified the type of vehicle, an SUV, police are not releasing the make or model to avoid causing “a panic,” he said.
A PANIC? Seriously?
What the heck are they talking about? What kind of panic? Is this some sort of alien craft? A self-driving Tesla? A Chinese spy SUV? (more…)
Ben Cline, the Commonwealth’s Republican member of the U.S House of Representatives from the 6th District, is very upset about the level of federal spending and the state of the federal deficit.
Cline is chairman of the Republican Study Committee’s Budget and Spending Task Force. In a press release last year, he lamented the trillions in new spending authorized by the Democrats in recent years and the $31.92 trillion in national debt. (He does not mention the trillions in debt rung up during the Trump years.) The study committee has a proposal that would “balance the budget in just seven years, cut spending by $16.3 trillion over 10 years and reduce Americans’ taxes by $5.1 trillion over 10 years.”
As part of that overall plan, Cline’s task force produced an alternative budget for 2024. I have to give Cline and the task force some credit. Usually, when conservatives call for spending cuts, they refuse to say what specific items should be cut or eliminated. That is not the case with this document. It has over 120 pages listing specific programs for elimination or reduced funding. After dealing with Social Security, Medicare, and defense, the budget has about 30 pages of specific mandatory and discretionary spending programs it recommends eliminating or reducing. (more…)
Warning: I’m a tad grouchy today. You see, I’m a hyperactive gym rat who hasn’t worked out since last Tuesday and has been slowed down by surgery. That happened Wednesday, by the way, when a skilled orthopedic surgeon sawed off part of my leg.
In other words, I’ve had way too much time to brood.
So, I’m starting the week with a litany of irritants that have totally ticked me off.
Number one: I’m sick of feminists protesting that Margot Robbie was cheated out of an Oscar while her male Barbie co-star Ryan Gosling got one.
How many of these same women protested when Riley Gaines was cheated out of her place on a podium by a man, Lia Thomas?
If that’s you, just shut up. No one wants to hear from you.
Plus, I actually watched Barbie on HBO Saturday night.
That may be the worst movie I’ve ever seen. The absolute worst. Worse even than Oppenheimer which was a total yawn, although many people pretend they liked it because it’s about a smart guy and lasted three hours. They think raving about this bore makes them appear intelligent.
Legislation to allow rent control ordinances has passed a committee in Virginia’s House of Delegates. On a party-line, 11-to-9 vote. The Committee on Counties, Cities and Towns passed HB 721, which defines rent gouging to include raising rent to keep up with inflation, if inflation exceeds 7 percent.
This vote reflects the leftward movement of the Democratic Party. Rent control has historically been prohibited not merely in Republican states, but even in many Democratic states. Massachusetts, for example, banned rent control in a 1994 referendum, even as it was electing Democrats to nearly fourth-fifths of the seats in its state legislature, and even as it elected Democrats to eight of its ten seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. When Georgia still had a Democratic-controlled legislature and a Democratic governor, it banned rent control in 1984.
Yet, all Democrats on the committee voted for HB 721.
The legislation states that once a local government has adopted “anti-rent gouging provisions,” it “shall prohibit any rent increase … of more than the locality’s annual anti-rent gouging allowance,” defined as the “percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index...or seven percent, whichever is less.” So if inflation is 9% — as it was from March 2021 to March 2022 — the landlord can only raise rent by 7%, at most. And the landlord might not be allowed any inflation adjustment at all, because under the legislation, a local government “may” — not must — “allow rent increases” to compensate for inflation.
So landlords will become poorer and poorer due to inflation under these “anti-rent gouging” ordinances. (more…)
Former SCC Commissioner Mark Christie communicated his enthusiasm for Kelsey Bagot’s election with this photo on X.
By Steve Haner
The General Assembly has now filled the two open seats at the State Corporation Commission (SCC), ending two years of gridlock. Unfortunately, the same legislators, on both sides of the aisle, are still working overtime to dictate and micromanage the state’s energy policy, reducing the discretion and authority of the independent, non-partisan regulators.
Samuel T. Towell, elected to the SCC last week, fits the expected mold for such positions. His legal career has been inside and outside the Virginia government, with his term as the civil litigation deputy under Attorney General Mark Herring (D) as the highlight of his resume. In that role he supervised the consumer counsel functions under Herring, participating in SCC matters. Since then, he has been working for Smithfield Foods.
Breaking the mold is Kelsey Bagot, only a decade out of Harvard Law and with no real Virginia-specific experience. She spent much of her career so far at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), working part of that time for former SCC Chairman Mark Christie. Christie’s expressed enthusiasm for her qualifications makes her about as close to a bipartisan choice as was possible.
They join current Commissioner Jehmal Hudson, also a veteran of FERC, who has been serving by himself for more than a year. Towell and Hudson, less than 20 years out of law school, and the younger Bagot form a trio that could be in office together for decades. That had to be on the minds of the legislators (all Democrats) who made these choices.
Fully qualified and engaged judges are still bound to follow the law. Virginia’s headlong rush into an economically foolish war on fossil fuels is being directed by the bills flowing from the General Assembly, not by rogue judges. If the last two sessions controlled by Democrats, 2020 and 2021, were a two-alarm EV battery fire, the 2024 session could be the equivalent of the Maui apocalypse. (more…)
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.
The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….
This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.
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