Category Archives: Entrepreneurialism

The Virginia NAACP Has Proven Itself an Obstacle to Improving the Educations of Black Children in Virginia Public Schools

Posted on May 23, 2023 by | 45 comments

Courtesy Northern Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce

by James C. Sherlock

I just read that the NAACP has issued a warning against traveling to Florida.

Which must have come as a surprise to the 3.5 million Black citizens of that state.

It did not surprise the NAACP board of directors chairman Leon W. Russell, who lives in the Tampa area. His defense: “We haven’t told anybody to leave.”

I decided to check the Virginia NAACP agenda for education.

I checked to see what they advocate to change the lives of the tens of thousands of Virginia Black public school students who can neither read nor perform math at grade level. Some of these public schools in inner cities have not provided a basic education to Black students for generations.

Certainly the NAACP must be pushing hard for basic changes. Not just pressing for more funding, but also for measures to ensure that children go to school and giving parents alternatives to schools that have failed them and their children.

Right?

Wrong. Continue reading →

45 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Children and families, Culture wars, DEI, Education (K-12), Entrepreneurialism, Excellence and grace

An Utterly Inspiring Woman

Posted on May 21, 2023 by | 3 comments

By James C. Sherlock

Lance and Cheri Shores courtesy Virginian Pilot

Cheri Shores died Saturday, May 13.

She was simply one of the most gracious, generous, skilled and inspiring people I have ever met.

Cheri and her husband Lance in 2006 opened their first Citrus restaurant in Virginia Beach a couple of blocks from where my late wife and I lived.

Jo Ann was limited in her mobility, but it was close enough for us to go together.  We came to know Cheri, who was always there, like a neighbor.

Our first visit to that restaurant the week it opened was a revelation – a breakfast and lunch place that served gourmet quality meals at a blue-collar price.

The signature home made chicken salad at the center of a plate of fresh citrus was an inspiration.

A welcoming presence, and an absolute delight, was Cheri Shores.

She was the designer of the restaurant, the source of many of the very special menu items, a co-owner, the manager, the accountant, and a teacher and confidant to her staff

She was the soul of that place.

She and her husband came up with the idea of a breakfast and lunch restaurant, she once told me, so they and their employees could spend time with their kids.

Those employees were devoted to her.  And she and Lance to them.

Before her very untimely death from pancreatic cancer, after supporting them all through COVID, she and Lance retired and gave their two, constantly-packed restaurants to their employees.

That is not a surprise if you knew them.

The Virginian-Pilot has written a touching and fitting tribute.

Read it and be moved.

3 Comments

Posted in Entrepreneurialism, Ethics, Excellence and grace

Virginia’s Community Banks, Under Stress, are Crucial to the Economy, Small Business and Small Communities

Posted on March 24, 2023 by | 81 comments

Back of America locations in Virginia

by James C. Sherlock

In general, I do not write enough about Virginia small businesses.

Small business is both the heart and soul of the Virginia economy.

I have no personal financial interest in Virginia’s community banks, but all of us need them to be healthy.

Because community banks disproportionately fund small business.

The Federal Reserve reported in its 2023 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2022 Small Business Credit Survey

As pandemic-related funding programs ended, the data show an accompanying rise in the share of firms that sought traditional financing in the form of loans, lines of credit, or merchant cash advances. The share of these applicants that were fully approved rose year-over-year but lags prepandemic levels.

But the banking industry, trying to reestablish itself as the economy’s primary funding agent after the COVID federal money tsunami receded, is under stress not seen in 2022.

The Fed’s rapid rise in interest rates to combat inflation, driven by federal spending, has lowered the value of banks’ fixed rate collateral.

Community banks, not the source of the problem, are bearing the brunt of the reaction.

Depositors need to understand how important Virginia’s 42 community banks are to Virginia’s economy — and many of their own jobs. Continue reading →

81 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Consumer protection, Economic development, Entrepreneurialism, Insurance

Tagged

Will McDonald’s Be Leaving Virginia? Not This year, But…

Posted on February 3, 2023 by | 40 comments

by Chris Saxman

I wish the headline of today’s column was just click bait. It originates from a headline that was pushed across my phone that read “Will McDonald’s be leaving California?”

That immediately made me think that McDonald’s corporate offices might be considering moving their headquarters from California to another state. Given the exodus of companies that have left the Golden State it would be just another news story about another company leaving California.

Quickly remembering that McDonald’s was based in Chicago, not California, I clicked on the article. The president of McDonald’s USA, John Erlinger, had written an open letter dated January 25th in which he lamented the legislative and regulatory reality of California:

Last fall, the legislature passed a bill – AB257, or the FAST Act – almost entirely at the behest of organized labor’s firm grip on many of the state’s lawmakers. It makes it all but impossible to run small business restaurants, but the impacts are far beyond that. Under the FAST Act, an unelected council of political insiders, not local business owners and their teams, would make big decisions about crucial elements of running a business, fracturing the economy in the process. [Emphasis added.]

Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Economic development, Elections, Entrepreneurialism, Finance (government), Labor & workforce, Regulation, Taxes, Uncategorized

Tagged

The Greens, Their Quiet Partners, and Trains

Posted on October 2, 2022 by | 39 comments

by James C. Sherlock

I love trains. Always have.

Took my first train ride at a very young age with my mother and brother from D.C. to Birmingham to visit mom’s family.

After the Navy, my private sector work was based in McLean. I had regular business in New York  I took Amtrak whenever feasible.

Trains on the eastern corridor of Amtrak are powered by electricity currently provided by gas-fired power plants. There is a faltering and breathtakingly expensive attempt in California to create a high-speed electric rail system. That is pretty much it for electric trains other than short-haul commuters.

But the freight rail locomotives that transport 43% of America’s long-haul freight and Amtrak passenger locomotives outside Amtrak’s Northeast corridor are powered by diesel. Lots of it.

Axios reported in August that “High-speed rail remains a faraway dream in Virginia.” In dreamy progressive fashion, that article reported “costs” of overseas high-speed train trips as if they included only the costs of the passenger tickets.

Nice try.

The damn-the-torpedoes greens, and the commercial interests that hope to get unimaginably wealthy feeding their obsessions, will leave no stone unturned or dollar unspent to transform trains to electric.

Virginia, of course, has its own “not-for-profit” pushing the profitable part of that agenda. Continue reading →

39 Comments

Posted in Entrepreneurialism, Environment, Transportation

Tagged

Sorry, Lefties, But Racists Don’t Invest In Black Enterprise

Posted on September 9, 2022 by | 55 comments


by James A. Bacon

The broadsides against Bert Ellis are going national. Inside Higher Education, the higher-ed trade publication, has published an article highlighting the growing controversy over Ellis’ appointment to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors. The article quotes Eva Surovell, editor-in-chief of The Cavalier Daily, whose articles sparked the furor, as saying that developments at UVa reflect the larger campus culture wars across the country.

That observation is true enough. Unfortunately, Surovell goes on to say this: “We’re just not unique in that really conservative voices are nostalgic for a time when women, when Black people and when other people of color were either banned or much less of a population here at UVA.”

Translation: Ellis and his alumni allies are reactionary racists and sexists.

I’ve got news for Ms. Surovell: Bert Ellis is CEO of Johnson Energy Storage, a developer of solid-state energy storage solutions founded by African American inventor Lonnie Johnson. Racists don’t invest in minority-owned enterprises. Racists don’t serve as CEOs of companies founded by minority entrepreneurs. Continue reading →

55 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Entrepreneurialism

Tagged , ,

Regulations and the Costs of Doing Business in Virginia

Posted on July 14, 2022 by | 6 comments

Courtesy of Mercatus Center George Mason University

by James C. Sherlock

About the only category I found interesting in the “Top States for Business” rankings by CNBC, other than the progressive metrics that are featured in many of the categories, is “Cost of Doing Business.”

Virginia’s worst score among the six categories of metrics is that one. The methodology used for costs of doing business is defined, but vaguely:

As inflation ravages company balance sheets, we measure the strength of each state’s business tax climate. We also measure wage and utility costs, as well as the cost of office and industrial space. And we consider incentives and tax breaks that states offer to reduce business costs, with special emphasis on incentives targeted toward development in disadvantaged communities.

So, in this category, CNBC is grading government-imposed taxes and incentives as well as market-driven costs.

On the government side, the rating favors lower taxes and higher incentives. The “special emphasis” item may skew the results, but we do not know how much.

Lower taxes are conservative priorities. Government incentives which skew market forces and reward both politically trendy operations and big donors are not. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Economic development, Entrepreneurialism, Freedom, Governance, Regulation

Tagged

Irish-Americans in Northern Virginia Caught in COVID Fraud

Posted on June 6, 2022 by | 30 comments

National Flag of Ireland

by James C. Sherlock

I am of Irish heritage. Grandparents and great grandparents on both sides immigrated to America in the 19th century.

Imagine my shame when I read a recent news release from the Department of Justice.

My people have taken entrepreneurialism a step too far. Continue reading →

30 Comments

Posted in Entrepreneurialism, Scandals

Tagged

Masters of Hype and Puffery

Posted on November 2, 2021 by | 7 comments

Former President Clinton at the GreenTech “pilot plant” in July 2012.

This is the fifth in a series of articles about Terry McAuliffe and GreenTech.

by James A. Bacon and Carol J. Bova

On July 6, 2012, GreenTech Automotive launched the rollout of the “all-American” MyCar electric vehicle at a ceremony attended by former President Bill Clinton, the governor of Mississippi, the assistant secretary of Homeland Security and, as described by local media, “an overflow crowd.”

It was a festive occasion. Clinton lauded company chairman Terry McAuliffe and former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a Republican, who was also in attendance, for overcoming their political rivalries and delivering a tremendous manufacturing project for the state of Mississippi. 

McAuliffe, too, was upbeat. “For too long, America has been inventing products here and sending the production jobs overseas,” he said. “But … we’re proud to bring manufacturing jobs back and prove that the U.S. is still the world leader in technological innovation and manufacturing.”

The day before, McAuliffe had told the New York Times that he thought the company could produce 10,000 cars in 2013. He quoted an $18,000 price tag for a top-of-the-line MyCar, with less capable versions selling for less, implying potential revenues in the realm of $150 million. During the ceremony itself, he announced big news: Domino’s Pizza Inc. would exclusively use the MyCar to deliver pizzas in 10,000 locations across the U.S.

Photographers snapped pictures of a grinning Clinton toodling around the cement floor of the pilot plant in a MyCar decked out with the Domino’s Pizza logo. Other photographs showed GreenTech employees industriously working on an assembly line of MyCars. Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Entrepreneurialism, Scandals

Tagged ,

Shearing the Sheep

Posted on November 1, 2021 by | 11 comments

This is the fourth in a series of posts about Terry McAuliffe and GreenTech Automotive.

by James A. Bacon and Carol J. Bova

The Chinese citizens who lost $500,000 each from investing in GreenTech Automotive were not happy with their setback. While they had ponied up their money as part of a scheme to get a U.S. visa under the EB-5 program, many thought they would get their money back. When they didn’t, they felt cheated. Twenty-seven of them banded together and filed suit against Xiaolin “Charles” Wang, Anthony Rodham and Terry McAuliffe, the principals of GreenTech and its allied fund-raising arm Gulf Coast Management.

The outcome of the case, Xia Bi vs. McAuliffe, hinged on matters of law. Boasting, exaggeration and hype regarding future events, referred to as “puffery,” which the defendants indisputably engaged in, do not constitute fraud. Although some of the Chinese plaintiffs’ allegations did describe misstatements of fact, said federal appeals court judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III in a 2009 ruling, they failed to show that they had based their investment decisions upon those misstatements. Accordingly, he upheld a lower court order to dismiss the case.

Nevertheless, Xia Bi vs. McAuliffe provides insight into how the GreenTech fund-raising operation worked. It is abundantly clear why the Chinese investors felt cheated, even if they could not win their case in court. As Wilkinson wrote, “There are no laurels in this case, no accolades to be bestowed.” Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Entrepreneurialism, Scandals, Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

Dreams from the Opium Den

Posted on October 31, 2021 by | 6 comments

This is the third article in a series about Terry McAuliffe and GreenTech.

by James A. Bacon and Carol J. Bova

When partners Xiaolin “Charlie” Wang, Anthony Rodham, and Terry McAuliffe banded together in 2009 to finance and build an electric vehicle enterprise known as GreenTech Automotive, they thought big. Very big. In a 2009 offering memorandum pitched to Chinese investors, they stated they aimed to grow their flimsily financed start-up into an automotive behemoth eventually capable of generating up to $33 billion in revenue.

“If full production of one million vehicles is realized,” elaborated the document, GreenTech’s manufacturing facility in Tunica County, Miss., would be “one of the largest automobile manufacturing plants in the world.”

In retrospect — after GreenTech went bankrupt having produced only a handful of cars, burned through more than $140 million, and left barely $6 million behind for investors and creditors in the bankruptcy settlement — such aspirations seem wildly disconnected from reality. Whether McAuliffe and his partners believed such targets were remotely realistic is a question only they can answer.

Looking at GreenTech from the outside, some described the business as a scheme to snooker millions of dollars from naive Chinese investors. A more charitable explanation is that the GreenTech partners genuinely believed their own hype, hoping they could bootstrap one fund-raising effort into enough progress in building the enterprise that they could make it to the next fund-raising round with a better story, raise some more money, make more progress, and hook the next round of investors. In other words, in such a view, their business plan was fake until you make it.

Whatever the thought process, it was an abject failure. Chinese investors lost almost everything, they felt cheated, and the three principals opened themselves to accusations of fraud. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Entrepreneurialism, Scandals

Tagged , ,

A Handshake Deal Gone Bad

Posted on October 28, 2021 by | 4 comments

This is the second in a series of articles about Terry McAuliffe and Greentech.

by James A. Bacon and Carol J. Bova

Fourteen  years ago, Benjamin Yeung was a Chinese entrepreneur whose companies manufactured and sold minibuses, passenger cars and business vehicles in China. In 2007 he launched a venture with the idea of building small hybrid cars in the United States. What made the plan unusual was the source of financing: Chinese investors willing to invest $500,000 in the U.S. in order to get a green card under a new U.S. initiative, the EB-5 Investor Pilot Program.

Although he needed an interpreter, Yeung was comfortable doing business in the United States. His wife, Rhea, was an American citizen, and he owned a residence in California. According to the account he gave in a court affidavit, he set up a holding company, Hybrid Kinetic Automotive Holdings, Inc. (HK Holdings), and an operating subsidiary, Hybrid Kinetic Automotive Corporation (HKAC).

Yeung said he made wife Rhea the sole shareholder of HK Automotive Holdings. But to run the venture in its start-up phase, he brought on a young Chinese man living in Northern Virginia, Xia0lin “Charlie” Wang. Wang was highly credentialed. He had earned an undergraduate law degree from Xiangtan University, an M.A. degree in development studies from Ohio University, and a degree in international law from Duke University. On his resume, he listed experience as a capital markets partner in the Washington, D.C., office of a prominent New York law firm. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Entrepreneurialism, Scandals

Tagged , ,

Where Did $140 Million in GreenTech Money Go?

Posted on October 27, 2021 by | 27 comments

This is the first in a series of articles about Terry McAuliffe and GreenTech Automotive.

by James A. Bacon and Carol J. Bova

In September 2016, the Office of the State Auditor (OSA) of the state of Mississippi began undertaking a review of the contracts signed by the state’s economic development authority. The goal was to see if the corporations benefiting from state incentive money had made good on the capital investment and job creation they had promised. Several companies were targeted for a closer look.

One of those was Greentech Automotive Inc., a Virginia company whose chairman in 2011 when the Memorandum of Understanding was signed was Terry McAuliffe.

GreenTech had announced ambitious plans for a multibillion-dollar business by designing and manufacturing hybrid and electric vehicles. Between 2009 and 2013 the company raised a total of $141.5 million from Chinese investors under the EB-5 program, which gave foreigners a U.S. green card in exchange for a $500,000 investment in the United States. Incentive financing from the state of Mississippi and Tunica County, Miss., amounted to another $6 million. All told, GreenTech raised at least $147.5 million in funding.

Despite a GreenTech commitment to invest $60 million in the manufacturing plant, very few cars ever rolled off the assembly line… assuming there even was an assembly line. The Mississippi auditor’s report could find documentation for only $3.4 million spent on automotive assembly equipment and parts. Further, despite promises to create 350 full-time jobs, the auditors determined that the company had never supported more than 94 active, full-time jobs in Mississippi at a time. GreenTech made only a single $150,000 payment to the state.

Despite having scrimped on manufacturing expenditures, the company listed minimal assets when it filed for bankruptcy in 2017. In a final settlement, agreed to last year, investors and creditors recovered only $6.6 million. Mississippi and Tunica County recovered only $575,000.

What happened to the other $140 million? Continue reading →

27 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Entrepreneurialism, Scandals, Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

Sidney, We’ll Miss You

Posted on October 26, 2021 by | 11 comments

Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

by James A. Bacon

Sidney Gunst, who died last week, was best known as the pioneering developer of the Innsbrook office park in Henrico County — the biggest employment center in the Richmond metropolitan area outside of downtown Richmond. The Richmond Times Dispatch’s Greg Gilligan did a fine job on short notice of capturing Sidney’s inimitable spirit in an article published yesterday. But to those of us who knew and loved him — and we are many — there is so much more to say. God broke the mold when he made Sidney. Everybody has a story to tell about him. I’ll tell just a few of mine.

The thing I loved most about Sidney, aside from his irrepressible sense of humor, is that he was a man of great enthusiasms. He joked about still being ADHD at the age of 70, and there was probably some truth to his self-diagnosis. He was endlessly curious, and he had an incredibly wide range of interests. But he didn’t dabble. When he got involved in a project, he threw himself into it wholeheartedly.

On this blog, I have written about Sidney’s crusade to redevelop the Innsbrook office park for the 21st century. Innsbrook was designed for the autocentric age of the 1980s and 1990s, but the world had changed. Energy was flowing back into the central cities, and he knew that Innsbrook had to change with the times. He spearheaded the effort, which is finally beginning to show results, of converting the vast tract of scattered office buildings and parking lots into a vibrant, around-the-clock, mixed-use community.

But business was only one of his interests. Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Entrepreneurialism, Uncategorized

Tagged

310 Virginia Companies in the Inc 5000 This Year

Posted on August 18, 2021 by | 14 comments

Charis Jones, CEO of Sassy Jones, No. 75 in the Inc. 5000

And now for a bit of good news. Virginia’s entrepreneurial economy is faring very well, thank you. This year 310 Virginia companies are ranked in the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing privately held companies. Five were ranked in the Top 100.

How does that compare nationally? In very rough numbers, Virginia accounts for one out of every 40 Americans and one out of every 40 dollars of U.S. GDP. But one out of 16 private fast-growth companies is located here.

As always, the entrepreneurial ferment is concentrated in Northern Virginia, which has the best developed venture capital network, the most highly educated workforce, and a deep reservoir of IT talent. Nearly 75% of Virginia’s Inc. 5000 — 227 companies — reside in the Virginia portion of the Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The Richmond metro (44 companies) and Charlottesville metro (6 companies) also punch above their weight. Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Entrepreneurialism