CAUTION: Foul language in the following post. Don’t blame me. Blame Democrat consultant Ben Tribbett who unleashed a vile verbal attack on Virginia schoolchildren. There is no way to report this without repeating his vulgarity.
If you had any doubt that Virginia’s increasingly unhinged Democrats were suffering from Youngkin Derangement Syndrome, take a gander at the Twitter account of one of their leading consultants, reacting to the governor’s executive order that ends forced masking of schoolchildren.
Ben Tribbett is the founder of a Northern Virginia Democratic consulting firm called Pocket Aces Consulting:
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 were inevitable as Republicans and Democrats in Congress followed the path of least political resistance — more spending and lower taxes. The U.S. is careening toward certain fiscal crisis by 2033, when the trust fund for the Social Security system runs dry and payments to retirees are slashed to 76% of promised benefits.
One thing I did not take sufficiently into account in Boomergeddon was the resurgence in inflation caused by monetization of the debt. I thought the political class had learned its lesson from the 1970’s era of stagflation (stagnant growth + inflation), and would hold inflation in check. Higher inflation allowed government to repay its debt with cheaper dollars for a time, but investors demanded higher interest rates to offset that erosion plus they added a premium for uncertainty. The inflation rate in 1980 hit 13.5% and the federal funds rate peaked at 20%. Forty years later, it appears that those lessons have been forgotten. The Consumer Price Index rose 7% last year. And while it could subside, it will remain far higher than the 2% targeted by the Federal Reserve Bank.
It is not wise to chip away at local government revenue without an integrated plan to ensure they are funded to carry out the things we need them to do.
However, two key ways in which we raise local revenue, property taxes and sales taxes, are both regressive and highly exposed to inflation.
Those are taxes that with high inflation, without any increase in rates, hit everyone. They hit the poor, persons on fixed incomes, the middle class and small businesses the hardest.
What to do? I believe that Sen. Emmett Hangar and others have it right. He suggests a joint subcommittee on taxation and a complete study so that next year the General Assembly can enact tax reforms.
Studies disappear into the ether, you say. I honestly don’t think this one would.
Virginians will have had way more than enough of inflation-driven tax increases by this time next year. (more…)
Love him or hate him, Senator Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond, is hands down the most colorful politician in Virginia. The list of his transgressions against ethics and law is too long belabor here. I refer you to his Wikipedia biography, specifically the sections on “Reprimand, suspensions and first law license revocation,” “Conviction for delinquency of a minor,” and “Second law license revocation” for the details.
Now local NAACP activist Lafayette Jefferson is charging Morrissey with threatening him with violence. During a meeting about casino legislation, Morrissey reportedly told Jefferson, “I’ll rip your heart out of your chest.”
I will concede that such inflamed rhetoric may be described fairly as intemperate. But I will rise to Morrissey’s defense. From the account provided in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Jefferson had it coming. (more…)
In case you’re wondering how Glenn Youngkin came to be elected in Virginia perhaps it’s because the Northam regime ensured that you could drop your son off at school where he could duck into the girls’ room, slap on lipstick and demand everyone address him as “She/Her.”
And you’d be the last to know.
That’s right. Parents aren’t automatically notified if their kid is trans in Virginia thanks to the nutty wokesters in the last administration.
California is one of the five bluest states in the Union. Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature and a sometimes-masked Democratic governor.
It can’t pass single-payer healthcare. It has not even been able to get a bill to the floor of the Assembly (lower house). It failed again today.
An object lesson for California politicians. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, refused to bring a single-payer bill to a vote in 2017.
[That year]… after Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon pulled the single-payer bill, [California Nurses Association President RoseAnn] DeMoro tweeted a picture of the iconic California grizzly bear being stabbed in the back with a knife emblazoned with Rendon’s name. The legislator — a Democrat — said he was besieged by death threats after that.
He is now a supporter.
There is a lesson for Virginia Democrats in the saga of single-payer in California. (more…)
A General Assembly-ordered study has published its findings for making housing more affordable and accessible for lower-income Virginians and minorities. One can only pray that the report is relegated to one of those proverbial shelves that collects dust, and is never to be seen again. Its recommendations, if followed, would steer resources into government programs while doing nothing to address the underlying cause of the ever-escalating cost of housing: the shortfall in new construction.
It’s not as if the authors of the Statewide Housing Study are ignorant of the laws of supply and demand. The research section of the study notes that roughly 30,000 new homes are built in Virginia each year, about half the annual production of the mid-2000’s. Virginia’s population has increased 10.2% since 2008, while housing supply has grown only 8.7%. Moreover, the housing type is out of whack. More than two-thirds of all new homes are detached, single-family dwellings, as opposed to less-expensive townhouses and apartments. By 2021, the imbalance of supply and demand pushed up the average cost of a single-family home by 30% over five years.
The report’s narrative also alludes briefly to the supply-demand equation. “The lack of inventory remains the biggest impediment to homeownership opportunities for Virginians,” it says in one place. And in another, it acknowledges, “Market conditions and local land use consistently put constraints on the availability and timing of new [rental] supply.” (more…)
Learning can only happen in an appropriate learning environment.
How to establish and maintain that learning environment is one of the most consequential debates in public education. In a lot of schools in Virginia, what we are doing now is not working.
Laura Meckler, writing in The Washington Post about a national problem, observed:
Test scores are down, and violence is up. Parents are screaming at school boards, and children are crying on the couches of social workers. Anger is rising. Patience is falling.
Public education is facing a crisis unlike anything in decades, and it reaches into almost everything that educators do: from teaching math, to counseling anxious children, to managing the building.[Emphasis added]
Teaching, counseling and discipline. In a functioning school, that is a virtuous circle. In many schools, it is a vicious circle. Where to start to fix the broken schools?
My own answer is to do first what can be done most quickly. Establish classroom discipline. (more…)
Rather than allowing teachers to expose students to ideas that challenge long-held beliefs and perhaps teaching those students to think critically, Governor Youngkin would prohibit teachers from raising ideas that make some people uncomfortable.
When he first directed the Superintendent of Public Instruction to delete departmental policies and guidance to local school divisions that promoted or made reference to “inherently divisive concepts,” I was not too concerned. My attitude was, basically, “OK. He won the election. He can tell his appointed Superintendent what to do. The “inherently divisive concepts” are fairly narrowly defined. It’s their website; they can do whatever they want to on it. Local teachers will probably ignore most of it anyway.”
But, he has gone further. He has established a tip line (e-mail address) and encouraged parents to use it to report “where there are inherently divisive practices in their schools.” He has proposed a budget amendment requiring each school division to ensure that no instruction in their schools includes “inherently divisive concepts.” He is also backing legislation (SB 570 and HB 1068) that would codify this directive in state law. (more…)
Not good enough, Virginia Department of Taxation. Not even close.
It’s not enough to apologize and tell the roughly 15,000 Virginia Beach taxpayers whose personal tax information on their 1099G forms was sent to the wrong address to simply hold tight until the correct document finds its way to them.
Those forms contain names and addresses, the last four digits of the taxpayers’s Social Security number plus the amount of his or her tax refund or overpayment last year.
News flash: Many of us are scrupulous about deterring identity theft. We shred invitations to open credit cards, insurance policies and bank accounts. We destroy bills with our names and account numbers on them. Heck, I black out personal details on plastic prescription bottles before tossing the empty container in the recycling. (more…)
Megan Darling, a 33-year-old George Mason University business school student, received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine in March and April and came down with a case of COVID-19 in December 2021, from which she acquired natural immunity as well. Like other students, she has been informed that she must get the booster shot if she wants to continue her studies at GMU.
(As a student, Darling is not affected by Governor Glenn Youngkin’s ban on vaccination mandates for state and public university employees. Attorney General Jason Miyares has issued an advisory opinion stating that public colleges and universities do not have the legal authority to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for students, but there is no indication yet whether GMU will accept his interpretation.)
Darling, a former army medic, is the mother of a three-year-old child and plans to have more children. She experienced menstrual changes after receiving the Pfizer doses, and she’s concerned by the lack of data surrounding the effects of the booster on women’s reproductive systems. She wants to make her own decisions about her medical care.
Robert Fellner is a 37-year-old student at GMU’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He was double-vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine. On the basis of his personal research, he does not believe that a booster is in his best interests — young men are at modest risk of myocarditis — and he strongly objects to being coerced into receiving one.
Both have appealed to the GMU administration to no effect. (more…)
In February of 2021 University of Virginia President Jim Ryan appointed a committee to articulate the university’s commitment to free speech and free inquiry. With great fanfare, the Board of Visitors “unequivocally” endorsed the tepid, politically correct statement on June 4, 2021.
On June 7, 2021, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to see all documents used by, or submitted to, the Committee on Free Expression and Free Inquiry. “I would expect this to include, without limitation, submissions from faculty and students, the agendas and minutes from the meetings of the Committee, any submissions from Committee members and any outside groups,” I specified. “Essentially, if any document was before the Committee, from any source, I would like it produced.”
To make a long story short, it is nearly eight months later and I have seen only a fraction of the documents. UVa has withheld them on the grounds that, even though Ryan was not a member of the Committee, they are the president’s “working papers.” (more…)
The excellent education reporter Laura Meckler has written a terrific article in The Washington Post titled “Public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions“. Indeed.
Test scores are down, and violence is up. Parents are screaming at school boards, and children are crying on the couches of social workers. Anger is rising. Patience is falling.
For public schools, the numbers are all going in the wrong direction. Enrollment is down. Absenteeism is up. There aren’t enough teachers, substitutes or bus drivers. Each phase of the pandemic brings new logistics to manage, and Republicans are planning political campaigns this year aimed squarely at failings of public schools.
Public education is facing a crisis unlike anything in decades, and it reaches into almost everything that educators do: from teaching math, to counseling anxious children, to managing the building.
She wrote about the nation as a whole, but the same crises plague public education in Virginia.
Virginia, led by its Governor and General Assembly, must deal with it.
While we must improve every school over time, the most immediate approach for poor kids stuck in an underperforming school is school choice. Parents understandably don’t want to wait. (more…)
Atif Qarni, Virginia’s recently- departed secretary of education, has penned an opinion piece for The Washington Post that raises an important question (and I’m not being hyperbolic here): Is the man who oversaw Virginia K-12 and higher-education system for four years under Governor Ralph Northam totally disconnected from reality?
The thesis of Qarni’s piece is that Governor Glenn Youngkin has “declared war on Virginia’s public education system.”
I could shred literally every line in the piece, but it would be tedious to do so. Rather, I’ll focus on the most egregious claim, one that is a common talking point on the Left: the assertion that Youngkin “expressed concern over White students feeling uncomfortable about history lessons involving discussions about race.”
It is true that Youngkin objects to schools, as a matter of school policy, teaching White kids that their race makes them “oppressors,” and that they are “racist” if they fail to acknowledge their White privilege. But he has always insisted that the full history of Virginia be taught in classrooms: the good, the bad, and the ugly. (more…)
During an annual consultation with the University of Virginia organ transplant team in January, Shamgar Connors met with a social worker as part of a “psychosocial assessment.” The 42-year-old Stafford County resident, who was undergoing kidney dialysis 12 hours a day, was on the waiting list for a donor kidney. Hospital policy required him to get vaccinated for COVID. If he refused, he would be taken off the wait list. According to the progress notes recorded by the social worker, he stated he was “never going to take” the vaccine.
UVa Health referred Connors to a nephrologist, Dr. Karen Warburton, whose conversation I recounted in the previous installment of this series. According to her notes, she found him difficult to converse with on the phone. “He demonstrated hostility and a very closed approach to discussion around this issue,” she wrote. I listened to the recording, and I would describe his attitude as terse and defensive — not surprising, given that he’d been told he’d be taken off the wait list — but not hostile. Be that as it may, Warburton went on to write:
He first cited concerns based on his research of the science, then tried to claim a religious exemption…. I would want to explore his candidacy from a psychosocial standpoint with our Transplant Social Work team before we activate him on the list, even if/when he is medically ready.
Transplant surgeons have reasonable grounds (even if the science is conflicting and continually evolving) for asking patients to get vaccinated. Donor kidneys are in short supply, dialysis patients are dying every day because they can’t get them, and doctors want to ensure that those who do get them have the greatest possible odds of long-term (10-year) survival, which runs roughly 50%. COVID vaccinations, they say, improve those odds. But should the vaccinations be required for every patient regardless of circumstances? (more…)
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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