“I’m not going to get into it unless anybody wants me to.” So said Kristin Collins, policy development director for the Virginia Department of Taxation, as she neared the end of her November 19 slide presentation on federal tax conformity and its impact on Virginia state taxes. The final handful...
In the wake of the November 6th election results, there is renewed talk of a national infrastructure bill. The day after the election, likely House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) announced that major infrastructure legislation will be high on the Democrats’ 2019 agenda. She was seconded by the expected chairman...
Environmental groups are again suing EPA over its decision that air emissions from Concentrated Animal feeding operations (CAFOs) do not need to be reported to the public under federal statute. EPA’s Emergency Preparedness and Community Right-To-Know Act (EPCRA) requires that air emissions (toxic & hazardous) of a certain quantity be...
Thanksgiving is a good time to express our sincere gratitude that we no longer “enjoy” the “simpler life of yesteryear.” As my grandmother said, “The only good thing about the good old days is that they’re gone.” For countless millennia, mankind lived on a precipice, in hunter-gatherer, subsistence farmer and...
Over the next two years, Virginia taxpayers will pay more than $1.2 billion in added state tax taxes … unless the General Assembly acts to reform our tax code when it conforms to federal changes. The Thomas Jefferson Institute solution is simple: Double the state standard deduction, helping nearly 2.8...
Is the company that makes ladders legally responsible if you fall off of one? Or if you cut yourself picking up broken glass, is the maker of that glass legally liable? You probably think such lawsuits would be “silly” and should be tossed from the courts immediately. And then again,...
Health may be correlated with income and Virginia may have the ninth-highest average household income among the 50 states, but the Old Dominion ranks 23rd in the nation for the incidence of diabetes, according to a Gallup-Sharecare report based on 2017 data. The incidence of diabetes has increased from 10.6%...
(Editor’s note: As Virginia plans for future road construction, expansion and possible High Occupancy Toll lanes, this article is important to that discussion.) Big-data firm INRIX last month released its 2017 Global Traffic Scorecard. It reports data on the extent of traffic congestion in 1,360 metro areas worldwide. Of the...
On October 22, 2018 a Superior Court of California in San Francisco denied Monsanto’s motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict for $289 million verdict in the glyphosate trial (a request for a trial judge to reverse the verdict for lack of fact or law.) The Superior Court judge conditionally...
(Editor’s note: Criminal Justice Reform is an important issue which crosses the red and blue political lines and brings significant parts of the conservative and liberal communities together for the good of our society. The First Step Act highlighted by Governor Huckabee will be voted on in the U.S. Senate...
