The High Stakes in Virginia’s Very Close Nov. 7 Election
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33 responses to “The High Stakes in Virginia’s Very Close Nov. 7 Election”
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“The election results may determine whether Virginia cuts taxes or instead raises government spending at a rapid clip”
Really? If Dems take both legislative bodies, Youngkin will sign off on raising “government spending at a rapid clip”?
That is quite a new thing to hear…
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What is Virginia spending too much money on?
I think I read somewhere that the $7500 EV tax credit is proposed to be applied at the time of purchase not later at tax time AND it only applies to cars that cost $25K or less.
might be interesting…. how many would buy an EV that was less than 20K out of pocket?
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I believe EV credit was changed by Biden last week or so to be paid at purchase, believe we are waiting for final rule how that works. But your $25k thing is not correct, price limits were set a while back, much higher than that. But yes, with the enormous tax credits for EV’s there are some deals out there, especially some blue states (not Va.) heap on add’l tax credits. Virginia we have the car tax which is more like a huge anti-new-car tax penalty.
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I believe EV credit was changed by Biden last week or so to be paid at purchase, believe we are waiting for final rule how that works. But your $25k thing is not correct, price limits were set a while back, much higher than that. But yes, with the enormous tax credits for EV’s there are some deals out there, especially some blue states (not Va.) heap on add’l tax credits. Virginia we have the car tax which is more like a huge anti-new-car tax penalty.
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Switching to electric vehicles would also put a strain on the electric grid, according to CNBC and the Wall Street Journal:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/01/why-the-ev-boom-could-put-a-major-strain-on-our-power-grid.html
The electric grid is already aging and prone to blackouts in parts of the country. The large amount of additional power needed to charge electric vehicles might be more than the grid can handle.-
I dunno.. there are other articles:
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/electric-vehicles-myths-misconceptions
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That may not be true of America, as opposed to the United Kingdom, whose energy needs are far lower and falling.
The article you cite discusses the situation in the United Kingdom, where the economy shrank a lot more in 2020 than in the U.S., reducing energy use there, and people are willing to sacrifice to achieve energy efficiency.
But is it true of the U.S., where the economy is growing, and NEPA makes it harder to build transmission lines to carry the needed energy? England doesn’t have NEPA as an impediment.
It looks like the U.S. already faces potential blackouts due to closures of power plants (including nuclear power plants, which produce no greenhouse gas emissions, and thus should have been kept operating):
https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/summer-blackouts-could-hit-these-us-states-regulators-warn/
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don’t you think many EV owners will charge their vehicles at night when the grid has much
lower demand?Dominion in Va thinks they can do it but it might take more gas plants.
EVs won’t suddenly become the primary car on roads. It will take years, perhaps decades.
In the end, internal combustion vehicles are going to be like 60’s hot rods.. most folks will
have them for their “city/suburban” cars especially folks that are two-car families. One will
be an EV. -
“It looks like the U.S. already faces potential blackouts due to closures of power plants (including nuclear power plants, which produce no greenhouse gas emissions, and thus should have been kept operating)”
The energy blackouts of late were largely due to the failure of fossil fuel generation not renewables.
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The problem with the grid is large-scale users like data centers…
“PJM’s long-term load forecast predicts estimated load growth of 0.8% per year for summer peaks, 1% for winter peaks and 1.4% for net energy over a 10-year planning horizon starting in 2023.
Rising energy demand by data centers, mostly in Virginia and Maryland, is a chief driver of this increased energy use.”
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an argument can be made that data centers SAVE energy!
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I haven’t seen a study on that but given that the DMV energy use is increasing dramatically over baseline growth expectations due to these large-scale users, it doesn’t appear to be true.
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DNV energy use?
think about simple things like getting GPS directions… and you get the most efficient route…
Or a zoom meeting with 20 people who are NOT driving to a central place…
The internet is all about saving time and energy and boosting productivity..
and that is based on computing power…
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Not saying there aren’t energy savings because of data centers but there does not appear to be a NET energy saving because of data centers. In fact, the opposite appears to be true… but open to any study examining that aspect of the issue.
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I’ll work on it.
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That’s because of the cloud business model that DCs support – largely Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Back in the day software was installed and run locally with one time license fees. Now you have to pay subscriptions monthly or annually. Developers can fix their sloppy bugs quicker and they can charge the consumer more. You’ll own nothing and be happy…
Of course, all this is possible with the tax-payer subsidized infrastructure available by DCs…
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Many companies, especially smaller ones and new ones will buy packaged computing services like AWS so instead of having servers on-site, they are remote and centralized for many.
They are subsidized because some localities see them as net tax revenue as opposed to building houses or apts on the same parcel.
The reality is that if someone uses a laptop or tablet or phone, they are being supported by a data center.
Harder to prove so far is that they actually save energy by reduce physical trips and increase productivity – which means less labor/fuel/other resource use to produce something.
It makes little sense in my mind to think that data centers use MORE power for no good reason and people are willing to pay for it to boot!
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Yes because it saves the developers money, not the consumer. That’s my point.
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developer money also for homes and apartments?
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No i mean the developers that make applications that use the cloud. Basically big corporations benefit at the expense of the consumer. There’s nothing ground breaking about cloud computing. It’s just economies of scale.
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I would think economies of scale would benefit consumers… no?
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Is Microsoft Word cheaper than it used to be? No.
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how about chromebooks?
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What do they have to do with cloud computing? lol
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everything? 😉
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“One Liberty Unyielding blogger has a 2007 Hyundai that he drives only to the grocery store most months. It has only about 30,000 miles on it, most of the way through its lifespan”
Huh?
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A 2007 Hyundai is 16 years old. Perhaps they aren’t expected to last much longer than that?
I don’t know who is behind Liberty Unyielding , but whoever it is needs to do better analysis and research. The polls comparing how many Democrat and how many Republicans plan to vote and for whom are fairly meaningless. There are numerous uncontested districts, such as mine. What matters is who will be voting in the heavily contested districts.
The authors make this astounding statement:
‘The Democratic-controlled Senate has blocked most of the governor’s proposed tax cuts, but it did grudgingly agree to repeal most of the state sales tax on groceries, reducing it from 2.5% to 1%. Governor Youngkin and Republicans would like to fully eliminatethe grocery tax, while Democrats want to keep the tax so they can spend more taxpayer money.”
Comments:
1. Cutting the state’s 2.5 percent sales tax on groceries was in the biennial budget that Governor Northam proposed. Therefore, the Democrats’ support of this idea was hardly “grudging”.
2. The additional 1 percent is the localities’ share. Therefore, it is not Democrats in the state legislature that are spending that revenue, it is local governments, many of which are controlled by Republicans.
3. Governor Youngkin did not include the repeal of the remaining one percent in his 2023 budget proposal, nor has he advocated it for 2024. The link in the article purporting to document this claim is two years old.
Most of the article is obviously devoted to opposition to electric vehicles. I agree that Virginia should not tie its policy on EV to California’s. In addition, many of the objections to EVs have some merit. However, opposition to EVs at this point is like spitting in the wind. The automakers are putting big money into transitioning to EVs. Even if Virginia does emulate California and ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles after 2035, one can always go to North Carolina to buy one if does not want to change to an EV. Heck, you could probably order a new gas-powered car online and have it delivered. My son-in-law did that with a used car several years ago.
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…one can always go to North Carolina to buy one if does not want to change to an EV.
Not if Virginia refuses to allow owners to register new gasoline powered vehicles, which is likely if they are going to ban the sale of such vehicles
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big “IF”… it’s a goal rather than a drop-dead date… subject to future actions of a GA , even a Dem one!
It’s just same-old, same-old boogeyman politics.
Even if that was the express intent… the way they’d implement it is with higher registration fees – like with gas guzzlers , Cadillac taxes and such… notice the gas guzzler tax was instituted in 1978!
more relevant to Virginia:
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I predict Va. Repubs lose due women objecting to abortion restrictions.
We need EV mandate like a hole-in-the-head but Dems have worked themselves up into an anti-fossil-fuel frenzy. For those with memories, California was given control over Feds on auto-emissions to allow Ca. to solve its unique smog issue (with the mountains holding in the stale air)….not to mandate EV’s just for political reasons of hatred of fossil fuels. So the intellectual basis, true need for EV in Ca. no longer exists, and certainly has no merit for Virginia.
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People don’t believe the conservative hype about EVs but they DO believe conservatives own words about abortion…
The GOP ads in the Fburg area are pathetic IMO… all about law & order… and not much else ….
Conservatives NEED to present an optimistic view of what they will do moving into the future.
They can’t keep looking back and playing boogeyman and grievance politics… AND they NEED to show that they are willing to compromise – even among their own party!
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