Virginia ended Fiscal Year 2021 with a $2.6 billion surplus, the largest in Virginia’s history, with a 14.5 percent revenue growth over FY 2020.
“We have effectively managed Virginia’s finances through the pandemic, and now we are seeing the results—record-breaking revenue gains, a recovery that has outpaced the nation, and recognition as the best place to do business,” Governor Ralph Northam said in a press release.
Read More
How often during the last year of woke, have middle- and lower-class Americans listened to multimillionaires of all races and genders lecture them on their various pathologies and oppressions?
Million-dollar-a year university presidents virtue signal on the cheap their own sort of “unearned white privilege.”
Read More
The push to create “equity” and more “social justice” in public schools in America’s largest state rests on this basic premise: “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents,” declares the current draft of the California Math Framework, which also states that it rejects “the cult of genius.”
Informed by that fundamental idea, the 800-page Framework calls for the elimination of accelerated classes and gifted programs for high-achieving students until at least the 11th grade.
Read More
The 10 Republican members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee signed a letter Wednesday calling on President Joe Biden to withdraw his nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management in a letter Wednesday over her involvement in a 1989 eco-terrorism incident.
Read More
Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa sent a letter to the Justice Department Wednesday asking for more information regarding missing phones used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team during the Russian collusion investigation.
Read More
Republicans have argued for months that federal unemployment benefits are keeping Americans from going back to work, and a new survey seems to support that claim.
The survey from Morning Consult released Wednesday found that 1.8 million Americans have turned down jobs even though they were unemployed saying, “I receive enough unemployment benefits without having to work.”
Read More
Millions of American families will begin to receive monthly cash payments Thursday as part of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that President Joe Biden signed into law in March.
The payments are an expansion of the Child Tax Credit, and will continue for a year before requiring congressional renewal. As many as 90% of American families are eligible to receive hundreds of dollars a month for each child they have, and some experts believe that the policy could ultimately cut child poverty in half.
Read More
The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims decreased to 360,000 last week as the economy continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented a slight increase in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending July 3, when 386,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised up from the 373,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.
Read More
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted nine to one to ask staff to draft an ordinance for a five-cent single-use plastic bag tax for presentation to the board in September; part of the drafting process includes a period of public outreach.
Supervisor James Walkinshaw introduced the proposal on Tuesday. He said, “There was an environmental survey of the Chesapeake Bay done several years ago and they discovered that the floor of the Chesapeake Bay is littered with plastic bags which is disrupting the habitat and ecosystem of the floor of the Chesapeake Bay, not to mention the micro-particles that come from torn plastic bags that unfortunately make their way into the food supply and the water supply and that all of us are ingesting.”
Read More
Gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin will not participate in the Virginia Bar Association’s upcoming debate due to a conflict of interest presented by the moderator.
The Virginia Star reported last week that Youngkin’s campaign was considering sitting out of the debate if PBS’ Judy Woodruff was named the moderator. Woodruff customarily moderates the Virginia Bar Association’s gubernatorial debate.
Read More