America’s abysmal 0.7% economic growth during the fourth quarter of 2015 meant the annual growth rate was an anemic 2.4% … and average annual growth for the six-year Obama era is only 2.2 percent. This is “dead last compared to six other recession recoveries since 1960,” Heritage Foundation economist Stephen...
Dear Fellow Virginian, As a former Fairfax County School Board Member and Immediate Past President of the Virginia State Board of Education, I’ve learned a simple fact: While Virginia has a great system of public schools that largely serve children well, no one can deny that there are huge pockets...
Senator Mark Obenshain and Delegate Rob Bell have proposed a Virginia constitutional amendment permitting the State Board of Education to authorize public charter schools. If passed this year by the General Assembly, it goes to the voters for approval in November. Because charter schools are relatively unknown in Virginia, it’s...
By Mark Obenshain and Kirk Cox “We who live in free-market societies believe that growth, prosperity and, ultimately, human fulfillment are created from the bottom up, not the government down.” President Ronald Reagan uttered these words more than three decades ago, but they are especially relevant today as Virginia grapples...
Step aside Medicaid expansion. The big uproar in the General Assembly this year is over who gets the final say over the shape of Virginia’s Clean Power Plan: General Assembly Republicans or Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe. At stake is the future of Virginia’s electric grid. Democrats and their allies are pushing for...
Modest economic growth? Get used to it, according to the latest 10-year projection from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the annual pace of employment growth much slower in this expansion than it was in previous decades, it is easy to continue to cast blame on the severity of the...
Dangerous manmade global cooling, global warming, climate change and extreme weather claims continue to justify what has become a $1.5-trillion-per-year industry: tens of billions spent annually on one-sided research and hundreds of billions sent to crony corporatists to subsidize replacing dependable, affordable carbon-based fuels with unreliable, expensive “renewable” energy. Some...
Thomas Jefferson Institute President Michael Thompson offered testimony February 4 to encourage dramatic reform of Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need law, an outdated provision that is raising the cost of health care in Virginia.
... In 2014-2015, the Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit offered nearly 1,400 low and moderate income students the opportunity for a better educational placement. At the same time, it saved the Commonwealth of Virginia nearly $3 million in Standards of Quality funding as those students left the public system to attend...
Jefferson Journal: Time to Reform State Hospital Regulations
Virginia lives under an out-of-date Certificate of Public Need (COPN) law originally enacted at the urging of the federal government in an effort to contain health care costs. The federal requirement was repealed in 1987. It’s time to take it off Virginia’s books, too.
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