Month: October 2019
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Will “One Fairfax” Become “One Virginia”?
by Tom Pafford You may have heard the Commonwealth is close to succumbing to the -control of the Democratic Party and its bullying Progressive (read Socialist) agenda. As the Democratic apparatchiks working at BlueVirginia put it, “With 3 1/2 Weeks to Go, ‘Things Aren’t Looking Good for the Virginia GOP’.” Yep, the outlook looks bleak!…
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Dominion Goes Whole Hog for Waste-to-Energy
by James A. Bacon Dominion Energy and Smithfield Foods are investing a half billion dollars to capture methane from hog farms and convert it to “renewable natural gas.” The partnership aims to become the “largest renewable natural gas supplier in the U.S.,” according to a press release issued Wednesday. A few days ago, I noted…
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Disorderly-Conduct Complaints in Schools Surge 45% in Past Five Years
by James A. Bacon Who possibly could have predicted this? After years of “racial equity” and “restorative justice” disciplinary policies in Virginia school districts, discipline in schools has gotten worse, at least as measured by the number of disorderly conduct charges filed by school resource officers. The number of disorderly cases filed increased from 360…
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Want Better Schools? Get Parents Involved.
by Brian Glass My first career was as a Junior High School teacher in New York City. I taught in Brownsville Brooklyn (African-American), the South Bronx (Puerto Rican), and Astoria Queens (a mini U.N.). In all three schools there was no truancy problem, lack of a desire to learn or major discipline problems. I never…
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How to Integrate Richmond Schools: More Charters
by James A. Bacon The Richmond Public Schools school board is desperate to get more diversity in its schools, meaning it wants more white kids in schools dominated by African-Americans. The board has been considering a proposal to smear the cream, so to speak: spread the limited supply of white kids, concentrated in two elementary…
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The Radioactive Donors In 2019? Healthcare
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…
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Taxes Likely to Go up in Virginia
by Hans Bader Taxes are likely to increase in Virginia after the Democrats take control of its state legislature this fall. Democratic spending proposals would add at least a billion dollars annually to the state budget. These costly proposals can’t be paid for without raising taxes, because the cost of existing state programs is already…
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Maybe the GOP Has a Prayer After All
With elections two week away, a Virginia Commonwealth University poll released today finds that Virginians are evenly split in their preference for Democrats and Republicans to control the General Assembly. Forty-seven percent of the 800 adults queried said they wanted to see Democratic Party control while 47% favored Republicans. Self-described Democrats and Republicans gave near-unanimous…
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Today’s Matchup: Clown Versus Clown
By Peter Galuszka It’s a sign of the times. Today’s Clown versus Clown matchup is Donald Trump, president of the United States, against Alec Baldwin, Saturday Night Live. The latter has been canvassing in seven electoral districts around the state, including Fairfax and Stafford Counties and in Chesterfield, where Baldwin went door-to-door this week in…
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University Faculties: Cesspools of Sexual Misconduct?
by James A. Bacon As Glenn Reynolds often asks on the Instapundit blog, why are liberal institutions such cesspools of racism and sexism? His provocative gag line comes to mind after perusing the 2019 Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct by the Association of American Universities. The survey, based on polling from 33…
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Virginia Cheap with Incentives… Back in 2012
by James A. Bacon According to an in-depth study based on 2012 data, Virginia dedicated a lower percentage of its GDP to economic-development incentives than all but three of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The Old Dominion’s $57 million in incentives that year amounted to a measly .0133% of the state’s economy…
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More SOQ Money
The other shoe has dropped on the budget requests for K-12. The Department of Education has told the Senate Finance Committee that it will cost approximately $300 million per year over the next biennium to “rebenchmark” the Standards of Quality. This amount would be in addition to the $950 million needed annually to finance the…
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The Role of Union Money in the 2019 Elections
by James A. Bacon Organized labor may not be the biggest source of campaign contributions in Virginia, but it is one of the most consistently reliable supporters of Democratic candidates. Virginia Public Access Project data shows that labor unions have contributed $4.8 million in the current electoral cycle, favoring Democrats over Republicans by a 200-to-1…
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Bacon Bits: Of DNA and Electrons….
Getting 39,999 right out of 40,000 not too shabby. After 18 years the Virginia Forensic Science Board has wound up its review of 530,000 cases in which DNA evidence was available. The effort identified 13 men who were wrongfully convicted, including the highly publicized cases of Earl Washington Jr., and Thomas Haynesworth, reports the Richmond…
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Virginia May Repeal Right-to-Work Law
by Hans Bader Twenty-seven states have “right-to-work” laws. These laws protect workers against being forced to join a union and against being forced to pay dues or fees to a union as a condition of employment. But right-to-work laws may soon be repealed — starting in Virginia, which passed one of the earliest right-to-work laws,…