The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that juveniles and people with intellectual disabilities should not be executed due to their diminished culpability. However, it remains legal to execute people who suffered from severe mental illness (SMI) at the time of the offense. While our understanding of mental illness improves every...
Based on the increase in stock prices since the election, investors believe the Trump administration is going to usher in faster economic growth. Are they being too optimistic? Tax cuts for individuals and corporations, which is a key component of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promises, should support economic growth. Since...
Many liberals went into denial, outrage and riot mode after November 8. Now they’re having meltdown over President-Elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees with climate and environmental responsibilities: Former Texas Governor Rick Perry at Energy, Oklahoma AG Scott Pruitt for EPA, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, ExxonMobil CEO Rex...
(This is part XI of this series on energy. We hope it helps the reader better understand the issues facing our country and our state as we endeavor to tackle the problem of providing our citizens and our businesses with their energy needs.) Taxes * From 2007 to 2012, companies...
The Virginia Plan for Higher Education, the strategic plan for Virginia’s public colleges and universities, has set a bold objective: to make Virginia the best-educated state in the nation by 2030. To accomplish this goal, the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) plans to increase the number of...
The recent demand by nearly 500 faculty members and students that University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan stop quoting UVa founder Thomas Jefferson in her emails reminds us that, when ignorance and arrogance join hands, the results are seldom pretty. To her credit, President Sullivan did not succumb to...
Since the November 8th election, a flurry of media attention has been devoted to the “Trump infrastructure plan.” As I pointed out in my column in the November Public Works Financing, three separate proposals have been made by people involved with the campaign or the transition: a $550 billion number...
On Nov. 21, 2016, EPA won an important case for American farmers. EPA defended farmers’ rights to plant seeds coated with neonicotinoids – a class of insecticides that kill insects by affecting central nervous system. Coated seeds will continue to be exempt from EPA regulation under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide,...
(This is part X of this series on energy. We hope it helps the reader better understand the issues facing our country and our state as we endeavor to tackle the problem of providing our citizens and our businesses with their energy needs.) COMPETING OBJECTIVES * Choosing between different forms...
Taxes are a funny thing. They can’t be relied on to produce the amount of money governments hope to collect from those who pay. Over and over again, it has become reality that in most cases the more government taxes something, the less that government receives in the long-run from...
