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Sunday, March 13, 2022

Your March 13th Sunday Summary ...

Dear Friend of TJI,

“The (U.S. Senate Democrats’) windfall-tax proposal shows that Democrats don’t want U.S. companies to produce more oil so gasoline prices fall. They want higher gas prices so reluctant consumers buy more electric vehicles. They can’t say this directly because it would be politically suicidal in an election year with the average gas price above $4 a gallon, so they do it indirectly via taxes and regulation.”

-- Wall Street Journal editorial

March 12, 2022

Meanwhile ...

1.) Matters are no better in the Old Dominion, where Senior Fellow Steve Haner explores the defeated efforts to roll back expensive rate cost increases imposed by last year’s legislature, concluding “The Green New Deal Still Rules” (here).

2.) The one hope, as he wrote the piece Friday morning, was that the Virginia State Senate would see its way clear to prohibiting local governments from using building codes and local regulation to make Virginia look like San Francisco (here). No such luck. While the final version of HB1257 will protect the customers of municipal gas companies in Charlottesville, Richmond and Danville from being cut off, localities like Fairfax County and others are free to go down the road of passing local ordinances to grab your gas (here).

3.) The parade towards unreliable solar and wind does hit occasional speedbumps in some jurisdictions, as Surry County rejects a solar farm (here) and a judge sends a wind farm back for review in Botetourt (here). Over at Virginia Commonwealth University, a new study demonstrates that creating solar farms means ... well, cutting down thousands of acres of trees (here) – something environmentalists apparently did not think about but which was anticipated by the campaign to repeal the Virginia Clean Economy Act (here) and noted by Michael Shellenberger at the Thomas Jefferson Institute’s September Energy Conference (here).

4.) While the General Assembly has adjourned, leaving about two dozen bills to be completed in a special session, the budget remains an open question as the House fights in conference committee for higher tax reductions and the Senate seeks more spending. A recent Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association poll, which Senate leadership seemingly has not seen, showed 68 percent of Virginians wanted the money back (here). With a $16.7 billion surplus, the issue is graphically summed up in our graph here, demonstrating more than enough left to protect taxpayers from the Northam Administration’s tax increases (here). Jefferson Institute social media advertising has reached nearly 200,000 Virginians urging they contact legislators with a clear message: Enact true tax reform (not just one-year rebates) by doubling the standard deduction and supporting the House budget. You can find your legislator and send your message by clicking here.

5.) In what Senator Adam Ebbin maturely called “teaching the House a lesson,” Senate Democrats rejected Governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointees to the Virginia Parole Board, unintentionally highlighting the parole board scandal under former Governor Northam (here) and rejecting three women, including one who survived being shot in the head while serving as a police officer, a Latina advocate for sexual and domestic violence survivors and a Black female law professor. By the standards of the Left, their vote was “anti-female, anti-Latina and anti-Black.” This leaves the Parole Board unable to operate or parole anyone. The action drew immediate criticism from the current Parole Board Chair Chadwick Dotson (here), ridicule from the Right (here), and bewilderment from the Center (here).

6.) After having its new race-driven admissions policies for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) rejected by a federal court (here), Fairfax County Public Schools asked for a stay of the judge’s order. Judge Claude Hilton rejected the request, ruling that the school system has been aware for months that its process could be in jeopardy (here).

7.) The TJHSST admissions saga, along with actions in Loudoun County, helped to spark much of the parent pushback against school shutdowns and use of critical race theory to inform instruction. Leading the way in both has been Asra Nomani, a Muslim Democrat who became an unexpected anti-woke education activist with Parents Defending Education (here). Nomani recently appeared before Congress (here) at a hearing in which Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee met her match (here). Nomani has a new book coming out later this year, and we anticipate having her as a guest speaker at a Jefferson Institute Federal Policy Dinner soon after.

8.) President Joe Biden has correctly announced an overdue embargo of Russian oil, liquified natural gas and coal (here). Two days later, it was announced that inflation has now hit the highest level in four decades (here). We suspect that the embargo will now become a Biden excuse for inflation growth and that, in his own mind, they are connected (here). The causes of inflation were long ago baked in, as the American Enterprise Institute’s Desmond Lachman (here), our friend Steve Moore (here), and The Wall Street Journal make clear (here). Conservatives should not let the Left get away with "doing the right thing" becoming an excuse for the consequences of all the wrong things they’ve done.

9.) Would Americans respond to an invasion of their country the way Ukrainians have responded to the invasion of theirs? A Quinnipiac University poll (here) provides an answer and the response was not exactly Red Dawn (here). Fifty-five percent of Americans say they would stay and fight: 68 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of Independents, and 40 percent of Democrats (here). Two generations of Americans have absorbed an education and a culture defining America in terms suggesting a moral equivalency with other forms of government. It is not unfair to submit that this is the consequence.

Finally ... 34 years ago, we were warned.

Happy Sunday, Everyone.

Let those conversations begin.

Cordially,

Chris Braunlich

President

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Sunday, March 6, 2022

Your March 6th Sunday Summary ...

Dear Friend of TJI,

“We shall not flag or fail,” said another nation’s leader, in another time, as waves of tanks and armaments rolled across Europe. “We shall go on to the end ... we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” The free citizens of Ukraine are doing just that, against the overwhelming remnants of what Ronald Reagan once called “an Evil Empire.” We pray that this, too, some thousand years from now, will be known by the heirs of freedom as their finest hour.

Meanwhile ...

1.) It is out of our normal wheelhouse, but the world changed two weeks ago and will affect us all. Last Thursday, the Thomas Jefferson Institute hosted the former Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (better known in Virginia as “Governor”) Jim Gilmore for an expansive and extraordinarily informative webinar dissecting events in Ukraine and what he termed the start of a global struggle with authoritarianism. If you missed it or want to review it again, you can click here. The progressive Virginia Mercury covered it, with fair-handed reporting we wish we saw on all issues in all news media, here.

2.) The Institute continues to push for doubling the standard deduction, but Democrats in the State Senate are having no part of it so far, calling for a “study” that would delay consideration of it until after the General Assembly has spent the $16.7 billion surplus (here). Hope lies in conference committee negotiations, where the size of the surplus and the differences between the House and Senate budgets are being graphically highlighted by the Jefferson Institute (here) in our Facebook advertising. If you haven’t already, you can dig deeper into the issue with Senior Fellow Steve Haner’s commentary here. And if you haven’t already, you can write your Delegate and Senator and insist on doubling the standard deduction and a higher tax break. Find out your legislator and their contact information here.

3.) Governor Glen Youngkin, meanwhile, reminded budget conferees of his priority to return a larger portion of the surplus to Virginia taxpayers (here), and made clear his willingness to keep the General Assembly in “overtime” to get it right (here.) Former Delegate Jim LeMunyon shares our argument that, in the long run, we shouldn’t stop there (here).

4.) Following actions in Richmond (here), the House of Delegates wanted to pass a law prohibiting local governments from looking like San Francisco (here). But the State Senate amended the legislation to carve out businesses – residential customers would still be on the hook and potentially have to retrofit their homes to the tune of $26,000. Haner, again, has the story here, and also uncovered that Fairfax County is opening the door to a natural gas ban, too (here). An Institute Facebook ad campaign is alerting and educating the public. You can write your own legislator by clicking here.

5.) The Left’s solution to cleaning up the environment is to tax and ban legal products consumers need. Our preferred solution is different, and the Thomas Jefferson Institute is part of a coalition to encourage new technologies making recycling more viable. Brett Vassey, president of the Virginia Manufacturers Association, makes the case for that approach here.

6.) The Institute welcomes new Visiting Fellow Barbara Hollingsworth. Sharp-eyed observers will recognize Barbara from her years as editorial page editor at the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, the Northern Virginia Journals, and the Washington Beacon. We hope to offer her an expansive opportunity to speak extensively on the issues, not subject to the space limitations of the newspaper world. Her maiden piece for us, on the need to limit powers of the executive branch is here.

7.) Youngkin’s hand in Richmond may be strengthened by a pair of polls indicating considerably more approval than in the one issued by Christopher Newport University. The Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association shows his favorability at 49 percent (here), and Roanoke College puts it at 50 percent (here), considerably outpacing President Joe Biden.

8.) While stacked Senate committees have thwarted much of Youngkin’s agenda, bipartisanship reigned in a number of important issues. One of them is Senator David Suetterlein’s SB5, making votes of the Parole Board on the record. This comes too late to stop the scandals of last year, in which the parole board violated law and policy by not properly notifying police and victims about parole releases. Board Chair Adrianne Bennett, later rewarded with a judgeship, was at the center of the controversy, and has been on “extended leave” since May of last year (right around the time things got hot). The State Supreme Court has now sealed its reason for closing records filed by Bennett. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has the story here.

9.) After senior aides to Governor Ralph Northam interfered with the Inspector General’s investigation of the Parole Board scandal, Delegate Les Adams introduced legislation to prohibit such interference. This, too, is headed towards passage in the General Assembly (here).

10.) Other parts of the Youngkin agenda are moving forward as well: Parents will now have a say whether their children are assigned in school to read sexually explicit material (here). A bill removing the permitting power of citizen boards, the decisions of which often exceeded the recommendation of the Department of Environmental Quality and have been shutting down pipelines supplying energy to Virginians, is headed to the Governor’s desk (here).

11.) And, with the support of several Democrats, the Senate Education and Health Committee moved forward a bill banning a Governor’s school’s admissions process from discriminating “on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin,” likely ensuring its passage in the Senate. (here) This came just days after federal judge Claude Hilton ruled that Fairfax County school officials violated the law by changing admissions requirements at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology to deliberately reduce the number of Asian-American students enrolled there (here and here). Philosophically, all in tune with the aims of Education Secretary Aimee Guidera (here).

Finally ... drive carefully in Northern Virginia this weekend, because you might run into this.