Dear Friend of TJI, “We’ve ended up in a situation where white liberals are more left wing than Black and Hispanic Democrats on pretty much every issue: taxes, health care, policing, and even on racial issues …. So as white liberals increasingly define the party’s image and messaging, that’s going to turn off nonwhite conservative Democrats and push them against us…. And Black conservatives and Hispanic conservatives don’t actually buy into a lot of these intellectual theories of racism. They often have a very different conception of how to help the Black or Hispanic community than liberals do.” Liberal pollster David Shor in Meanwhile … 1.) Much of the General Assembly debate this year was over energy policy and the use of unreliable solar and wind as a substitute for natural gas. Jefferson Institute Senior Fellow Steve Haner puts forth another proposal here – the use of recycled nuclear fuel, which would have the added benefit of reducing the amount of fuel to be stored for hundreds of years and providing a source of energy for years to come. 2.) F. Vincent Vernuccio joins the Thomas Jefferson Institute team as a Visiting Fellow, focusing on labor policy while government unions ramp up efforts to impose collective bargaining (or, as we prefer, “monopoly union contracts”) on unsuspecting taxpayers and public employees. He looks at what’s happening in Alexandria (coming to your county soon) here. 3.) While we argue that collective bargaining will lead to repeal of Virginia’s Right To Work laws, Nancy Pelosi plans to cut out the middleman and just ban states from having RTW laws – and to gut the “gig economy” while slashing the freedom of independent contractors. Americans for Prosperity have a petition to Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner (both of whom previously promised to preserve Right To Work) you can sign here. 4.) The Parole Board cover-up continues apace, and a grand chronology of events is contained in editorials by the Virginian-Pilot and Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star here and here. After a draft of the Inspector General's report was leaked, Jennifer Moschetti was called into a sort of “star chamber” and interrogated by the Inspector General and Governor Northam’s Chief of Staff and Secretary of Public Safety. After she approached the General Assembly as a whistleblower, she was placed on pre-disciplinary leave. She has now sued the Inspector General, alleging retaliation. Both the conservative Virginia Star and progressive Virginia Mercury cover the story here and here, as does The Richmond Times-Dispatch here. 5.) The Virginia Star also has a splendid story here, using graphics from the Virginia Public Access Project (here), demonstrating that a quarter of bills passed in the last two years were on straight party-line votes – four times the number when Republicans controlled. The Left did not want to compromise, they did not, and now they “own” the bills they passed and should be held to account. 6.) Whether they are held to account depends partly on the integrity of voting in elections. The Middle Resolution and Virginia Voters Alliance are sponsoring a Virginia Election Integrity Summit on March 26-27. Speakers will include Congressman Bob Good, Washington Times opinion editor Charles Hurt, National Review National Affairs Reporter John Fund, Public Interest Legal Foundation President J. Christian Adams, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans Von Spakovsky, the Thomas More Society’s Amistad Project director Phil Kline, Virginia attorney Patrick McSweeney, and more. For further information, click here. 7.) While George H.W. Bush may have been elected in 1988 on the slogan of “No New Taxes”, the Left has now come up with their own we suspect may be less successful: “No New Tax Cuts.” The Wall Street Journal points out that the $1.9 trillion spending bill signed into law “explicitly bars states from cutting taxes. States ‘shall not use the funds,’ the bill says, ‘to either directly or indirectly (our emphasis) offset a reduction in the net tax revenue’ that results ‘from a change in law, regulation, or administrative interpretation during the covered period that reduces any tax (by providing for a reduction in a rate, a rebate, a deduction or otherwise) or delays the imposition of any tax or tax increase.’” Read the editorial here. 8.) The Journal’s Jason Reilly points out that only 7 percent of the $1.9 trillion price tag is directed at testing and contact tracing and only $16 billion is for vaccine distribution. “Most of the rest consists of state bailouts, student-debt relief and various income-redistribution schemes involving tax credits, health-insurance subsidies and unemployment benefits,” comparing the program to the Great Society and noting “History shows no government program has been able to match what people can do for themselves, and this applies equally to some of society’s most historically marginalized groups.” We note that the overreach of "The Great Society" led to a reversal of fortune for President Johnson's party. A good read here. 9.) And over here at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Strain warns of “the likelihood that this experiment in spending so much more than the economy needs will end in a mild recession caused by a backlash at the Federal Reserve. That outcome could deny low-wage workers the benefits of a longer economic expansion.” 10.) “I am half Mexican and Yaqui, an indigenous tribe native to the U.S.-Mexico border region, and half Jewish. I spent the first year of my life on a commune in Berkeley, Calif. Growing up, I was aware that I had darker skin than my mother and my classmates, but I was never taught to define my identity by the color of my skin.” So notes Bion Bartning, president of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, as he slices into the approach of his child’s private NYC grade school that “lumps people into simplistic racial groupings” instead of “emphasizing our common humanity” here. 11.) Mr. Bartning is not alone. In the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, Bari Weiss tells the tale of affluent parents, afraid of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their child’s private schools, organizing in secret (here). 12.) It is not, of course, just elite private schools facing these issues or the issue of history revisionism. For more than three decades, the American Enterprise Institute’s Lynne Cheney has forcefully written about American history, including several books aimed at inculcating our nation's past in young children. Her recent book, The Virginia Dynasty: Four Presidents and the Creation of the American Nation, will be the subject of her conversation with University of Virginia Professor James Ceaser at a Thomas Jefferson Institute webinar on April 13 – the 278th Anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birth. The event is free. You’re invited to join. Register by clicking here. Finally … The Richmond debate over energy reminds us that paying for "sustainable energy " is often treated a bit like Christmas. Happy Sunday, Everyone.
Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines.
Cordially, | |
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