This says it all – from J. Miles Coleman, at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball. I saw it this morning on The Bull Elephant, which focuses on Loudoun. Would Virginia Beach and Henrico look the same? If you have any doubts the Trump era has produced a true realignment, dispel them. SDH
From Blue Virginia at the end. Without dispute, he is best Democratic turnout generator in history.
By Steve Haner
You know Virginia has changed when being labeled a socialist by your opponent is less damaging than being labeled a Republican.
That’s the opening line for my short essay on what happened November 5, which as far as I can tell has already been analyzed 345 other times in various publications, including several times here on Bacon’s Rebellion. Most of the authors have never written or executed a campaign plan. But I said I’d share my thoughts.
The bottom line is Democrats had a message about what their election would mean for Virginia. Republicans then ran against that message, amplifying it substantially, and thereby assured a huge turnout of the most liberal Democrats. At the same time, Republicans offered no message to turn out their own less-motivated supporters or excite their potential donors, state or national. They certainly offered no vision to woo swing voters. Continue reading
By Steve Haner
“Do you actively support efforts to reduce corruption in government?”
Of course, any candidate presented with that question will reply yes. What do you expect? “No, I’m quite passive about corruption in government. Live and let live.”
That was one of the softball questions on the Clean Virginia candidate survey form, which will be taking on added significance given the number of Clean Virginia-funded and endorsed candidates who were successful Tuesday. You can read the full questionnaire here, and potential 2021 candidates are advised to print it out and start a file on coming roll call votes. Continue reading
Posted in Elections, Energy, General Assembly, Money in politics, Politics
Tagged Stephen D. Haner
Orsted’s Hornsea 1 wind farm off the coast of England. Source: Orsted
By Steve Haner
The company that will partner with Dominion Energy Virginia to build a massive offshore wind farm off our coast has just cut the energy production forecasts for its own facilities, sufficient to lower its profit margins and drop its stock values.
“Our models weren’t sophisticated enough,” Orsted’s chief financial officer is quoted in one energy industry outlet. Bloomberg’s article, one of many based on the company’s open discussion of the issue yesterday, described the problem this way:
The tests show that the company’s current production forecasts underestimate the negative impact from the so-called blockage effect, which arises when the wind slows down as it approaches turbines. It also underestimated the negative effect of the so-called wake effect, in which wind speeds drop between wind parks, it said.
The change will drop what’s called the lifetime load factor to 48%, down from a range of 48%-50%. That figure represents an estimate of how much electricity the machines produce divided by the potential capacity of the turbines. Since the wind doesn’t always blow strongly enough to turn the wind turbine blades, the load factor is always lower than capacity.
The number seems small, but for a giant windfarm like Orsted’s Hornsea One off the east coast of England, a change could shift income by 10s of millions of dollars every year, according to an analysis by BloombergNEF.
“2% is a big deal,” said Tom Edwards, an analyst at Cornwall Insight. “Over the lifetime that’s a lot of energy.”
Money (And Hypocrisy) In Politics
By Steve Haner
The following is one of my “revise and extend” follow-up posts, this one adding detail to an exploration of the raging attacks on Republican efforts to offer alternative health insurance plans. You can read the original post on the Jefferson Policy Journal.
Not many months ago, it was a safe bet that by late October the campaign attack ads would focus on utility contributions. There is still time for that to appear. Dominion Energy clearly expected that, as evidenced by a full page, very defensive advertisement in Wednesday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch. Then there is its most cloying television ad yet.
You’ve seen it, of course – the lovely young lady whose Daddy is a deployed Dominion employee. Instead of wearing a U.S. Army or Blue Star cap, she sleeps and poses for school pictures in his Dominion Energy hat. Now, how could a company engendering that kind of love and loyalty be misbehaving?
Posted in Elections, Health Care, Insurance, Money in politics, Politics
Tagged Stephen D. Haner
By Steve Haner
Governor Ralph Northam is quoted in a Standard and Poor’s Market Intelligence news article Friday as opposing any efforts to change Virginia’s electricity regulations, which presumably would include the 2020 retail choice proposal gathering steam in the background.
Reporter Michael Copley wrote about Friday’s state solar and wind power purchase agreements and added this near the bottom, under the heading “No changes seen to Va. utility regulation”:
To advance its clean energy initiatives, the Northam administration is partnering with a utility company (Dominion Energy Virginia) that is facing a backlash over perceptions that it uses political donations to wield outsized influence in Virginia. In August, Virginia utility regulators said Dominion Energy Virginia earned $277.3 million above its authorized return on equity in 2018.
Some lawmakers in the Southeast U.S. have called for breaking up monopoly utility businesses such as Dominion’s, arguing that customers would benefit from more competition.
Northam said he does not plan to overhaul utility regulation in Virginia. “I think right now as we move forward, we’re going to work with the system that we have,” he told S&P Global Market Intelligence. “That doesn’t mean it’s a perfect system, but it is a system that we can work with.”
Source: JLARC October 7 report on state spending over time, in this case a decade of sustained economic growth with no recession.
By Steve Haner
Every year, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission issues a report looking at ten years of state spending, sliced and diced various ways. In recent years, the headline results have largely been surprisingly consistent and the 2019 report issued Monday fit the pattern. As seen before:
Posted in Budgets, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Entitlements, Transportation
Tagged Medicaid, Stephen D. Haner
By Steve Haner
What Was Lost Is Found Again. Couldn’t they wait at least another few weeks? Anybody foolish enough to believe that Dominion Energy Virginia and the Virginia Democratic Party establishment have really parted ways (as Jim Bacon seemed to think a while back), take note of this from today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch: Governor Ralph Northam’s new communications director, Grant Neely, is totally plugged into the Dominion Energy/Richmond’s Navy Hill/Mark Warner and Bob Blue nexus. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but certain Democrats just about any time you want.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
The P in PJM Now Joining RGGI. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has signed an executive order that his state should be the next to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. According to this from The Philadelphia Inquirer, the executive order route comes after being rebuffed by the legislature. It is a strong first step but not a done deal, with litigation one possible route for opponents. Virginia’s on-hold membership will likely be determined by the General Assembly elected next month.
Posted in Elections, Energy, Health Care, Politics, Poverty & income gap
Tagged Stephen D. Haner
“You Only Pay For What You Need”
By Steve Haner
As the state campaign debate rages about health insurance plan which are short term or less comprehensive than the Affordable Care Act, two on-going national ad campaigns may cross-pollinate the debate. They are bolstering the Republican position nicely.
The first are the spots with people saying they are worried about the various Medicare for All proposals. They express concerns about a more expensive one-size-fits-all approach. Well, isn’t that exactly what Democrats like Senate candidate Debra Rodman and other others are demanding in Virginia? One size fits all? In several districts they are attacking Republicans who voted to allow lower cost alternatives that didn’t offer all ACA features. Continue reading
Posted in Elections, General Assembly, Health Care, Insurance, Politics
Tagged Stephen D. Haner
By Steve Haner
In this politically sensitive moment, they don’t call it “cap and tax” but instead “cap and invest.” Yet, the recently released draft Transportation and Climate Initiative proposal fits a Bacon’s Rebellion prediction in March that next they would be coming to tax your SUV.
Reducing CO2 emissions from electric power plants with a cap and tax scheme is not enough, of course. More of those dread emissions (you and I call it exhaling) come from vehicles, despite rapid improvements in engine efficiency and alternatives to fossil fuel combustion. The Northam Administration has Virginia fully engaged. Legislation to require General Assembly approval for this regional compact was vetoed.
AP Photo
By Steve Haner
I love this photo, for some reason. The lieutenant in the background is President Carter, 95 today. Our last WWII vet president, but I very much hope not our last military veteran president. There are veterans in the Democratic field. This is an AP photo now appearing on the Richmond Times-Dispatch webpage, where you can read the story behind it. It was 1952, and the boat was the USS Barracuda. Now, Barracuda was not a Newport News ship, sadly, nor was Carter’s last assignment, the nuclear USS Seawolf. It is always a mark in someone’s favor that Admiral Rickover personally selected them for the nuke Navy. That took the right stuff, too.
The death of his father ended his Navy career soon after. That other company in New England we shall not mention also built this one. There is no higher honor than a ship of the line in the world’s finest navy named for a living person. We now return you to your regular programming. (Note: If you read this when I first posted it, I had the wrong “Seawolf” linked…and it wasn’t built by NNS…fixed that.)
“Reported” entertainment events for the 2018-2019 cycle, a fraction of the actual number due to loopholes in Virginia law. Click for larger view.
By Steve Haner
‘Our friends at the Virginia Public Access Project are a bit later this year with their data and visuals on Virginia’s embarrassingly weak and intentionally vague lobbyist entertainment reporting. It is still nothing but a sham, exactly how the legislators and lobbyists want it.
The 2018 VPAP coverage was subject of a May 2018 Bacon’s Rebellion report, but this time we are five weeks away from tight elections in both bodies. Voters are not short of things to get outraged about, but we can add this to the list.
The basic 2019 report is little changed from VPAP’s 2018 data. Last year 109 of the 140 legislators admitted accepting at least one entertainment event, and this year it appears 111 did. The number who report accepting five or more has dropped. The key word in that sentence is “reporting”.
UPDATE: VPAP has now added this year’s graphic on the high number of lobbyist disclosures that simply ignore the directive to be specific about the “matters” that get their attention. A few well placed $100 fines and red faces would fix that, but of course, the point is to PRETEND to disclose….
Posted in Money in politics, Open Government, Politics, Transparency
Tagged Stephen D. Haner
Cover art from 2014 JLARC report on Virginia’s array of workforce training programs. Another state report notes almost 860,000 served in 2017.
By Steve Haner
To Republicans who supported the 2018 decision to expand Medicaid services to more Virginians – and encouraged yes votes from reluctant colleagues — the promise to couple those benefits with pathways toward gainful employment was a key reason. The compromise has worked in other states as well. Continue reading
Posted in Entitlements, General Assembly, Health Care, Politics
Tagged Medicaid, Stephen D. Haner
By Steve Haner
All the signs point to trouble. The next state budget, a two-year plan to be proposed in December, adopted by March and implemented in July, may be caught between stagnant revenue and soaring spending. The spending charge will be led once again by Medicaid.
Just how much the decision to expand Medicaid will cost in the future remains elusive.
The state’s fiscal prospects were explained to the General Assembly’s money committees September 16 and 17 by Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne. The highlights are summarized in this article for the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, using the image of a strand of worry beads. The article is being distributed today. Continue reading
Posted in Budgets, Entitlements, General Assembly, Health Care
Tagged Medicaid, Stephen D. Haner
Source: Rachel Carson Council, cited by Cindy Elmore in RTD. Click for larger view.
by Steve Haner
In parts of Virginia, conservation groups are being paid by California to preserve forest land because trees capture the CO2 considered the culprit in global warming. In other parts of Virginia, large swaths of trees are being cut to convert into biomass fuel for European power plants, based on a claim that is a way to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.
It would be so much easier to accept the climate crisis doomsday scenario if the proponents were not so contradictory and hypocritical. In both cases, the Californians and Europeans are doing this so they can keep pumping CO2-rich emissions into their atmosphere. They obviously don’t really fear CO2. Continue reading