The Jefferson Journal

Commentary

David Wojick
August 24, 2022

A funny thing happened on the way to the Senate. It is all about the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which really should be named the Inflation Act. Only Democrats can believe that raising taxes reduces inflation. The Democrats writing the IRA decided that since tax credit subsidies do a...

Stephen D. Haner
August 22, 2022

Does last week’s glowing report on Virginia’s state tax collections presage additional tax relief for struggling families? The first question is, was the news really glowing? Less than 18 months ago, in April 2021, the Virginia General Assembly and then Governor Ralph Northam (D) agreed upon a set of revenue...

Stephen D. Haner
August 8, 2022
Rejecting an agreement that its own staff reached with Dominion Energy Virginia, the State Corporation Commission has imposed at least some level of financial risk on the utility’s shareholders should its $10 billion offshore wind project fail to match the company’s promised performance....
Stephen D. Haner
August 5, 2022

And now, from our “I’ll believe it when I see it” department, comes the expectation that passage of President Joe Biden’s new corporate tax hike and green energy incentives package will be followed by a smooth path to completion for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) for natural gas. The topic...

Barbara Hollingsworth
July 26, 2022

Virginia lost about 2,000 acres of productive farmland per week in 2021, according to data released in February by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There are many reasons why farmers sell off their land, including development pressures, lack of interest by younger members of farming families, and the difficulties of...

Stephen D. Haner
July 22, 2022

Researchers at the University of Virginia are part of an ongoing effort to redesign wind turbines to be both more efficient and better protected from storm-scale winds, as described in this video you can find on a university website. What is the problem to be addressed? Says one of the engineers: As...

Gerard Robinson
July 20, 2022

There is more to love about education in Virginia thanks to the budget Governor Glenn Youngkin signed into law on June 22, 2022. It contains the largest education budget in Virginia history at $3.2 billion, $900 million for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, a 10 percent teacher raise, and a statewide literacy...

Christian Braunlich
July 1, 2022

One of the challenges in public education – in any bureaucracy, public or private — is the tendency to establish an “echo chamber” of ideas. In public schools, this reinforces the loudest voices and makes it hard for creative educators or an informed citizenry to burst through with new ideas....

Stephen D. Haner
June 30, 2022

In promoting its proposed Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project, Dominion Energy Virginia has made many specific projections about its costs and performance.   The State Corporation Commission is now being advised to convert one or more of them into binding promises, with financial consequences for the utility and its shareholders...

Stephen D. Haner
June 29, 2022

First of Two ArticlesBy Stephen D. Haner Virginia’s State Corporation Commission has now received a series of legal briefs offering opinions on what steps, under the law, it can take to protect Dominion Energy Virginia consumers from the massive risks facing its proposed offshore wind facility.  Those risks range from...