Gov. Ralph Northam’s press conferences are weird, unsettling events. They’re free of the fireworks and drama that are a regular feature of the president’s wild pressers. But there’s a sense of quiet despair and dictatorial impulses about them. Northam is frequently befuddled on these occasions, as he was last week...
The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) and the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) were defeated again, as was all of American agriculture, by the state of California defending its Proposition 12 laws on animal housing. NPPC and AFBF filed an action for declaratory and injunctive relief in U.S. district court...
The 2020 General Assembly, with its new progressive Democratic majority, passed nearly two dozen changes in Virginia tax laws that will begin to hit individuals and businesses in a few weeks on July 1. Here’s a list of what’s coming.
... Just as COVID-19 was starting its destruction of the world’s economy in early March, the Virginia General Assembly took final action on an exuberant two-year state budget within shouting distance of $140 billion. Six weeks later at Reconvened Session, with the economic damage obvious but not yet measured, the Assembly...
Virginia and our nation are facing one of the greatest challenges of our lifetime. The lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans are now at stake from an invisible enemy: the coronavirus and COVID-19. But it’s a false choice to say we can only save lives or save livelihoods. That’s...
America’s and Virginia’s unemployment insurance program – born of the Great Depression and the Social Security Act of 1935 – may be another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus has mutated unemployment insurance into a form not financially sustainable. Each state has its own unemployment insurance trust fund, financed...
COVID-19 has caused most transit agencies to enter crisis mode. Ridership, understandably, has declined between 50 and 95 percent in most major cities during the shutdown. Transit agencies are also spending more resources sanitizing buses and trains. And to protect drivers many transit operators are boarding bus passengers through the...
In February 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals 9th Circuit held that sewage pollutants at the County of Maui, Hawaii, were traceable to wells which discharge into groundwater. That is a violation of the Clean Water Act. In September 2018, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the Clean...
America’s and Virginia’s unemployment insurance program — born of the Great Depression and the Social Security Act of 1935 — may be another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus has mutated unemployment insurance into a form not financially sustainable.
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The revolution has merely been postponed, not cancelled. Governor Ralph Northam has asked the General Assembly to put off until May 1, 2021 the implementation of several key pro-union changes in Virginia’s labor and employment laws, including a 31 percent increase in the minimum wage. Saturday, April 11 was the...
