A gunman opened fire at a Fourth of July parade in Monday in a Chicago suburb, killing at least five people and wounding several others.
The suspect remains at large, and police are reportedly patrolling the area.
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The Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association has launched a new dashboard showing inpatient psychiatric admissions at both state-run and private hospitals in Virginia.
“As we work to strengthen and enhance the behavioral health care system, while also confronting workforce shortages and strong demand for psychiatric treatment services being experienced by public and private Virginia hospitals, having verified and reliable data is critical to the process of evaluating potential policy solutions and next steps,” VHHA CEO Sean Connaughton said in a press release.
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Without sufficient support in Congress and state legislatures to pass sweeping green energy measures, environmentalists are now targeting the oil and gas industry through a financial movement that pressures companies to support liberal policies, according to critics.
“ESG promotes and implements policies through private businesses that could be adopted through a legislative process,” said Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks. “The Green New Deal didn’t make it through Congress, so its proponents shifted the battlefield to the capital markets.”
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U.S. Marine Carl Spurlin Dekel, who turned 100 years old on June 29, mourned the decline of America in a Fox 13 News interview, tearfully lamenting, “Our country’s going to hell!”
“People don’t realize what they have,” Dekel said. “They bitch about it. And, then, nowadays, I am so upset that the things we did, things we fought for, and the boys that died for it, it’s all going down the drain.”
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Virginia ranks 43 — in the bottom ten — in the 2022 State Campaign Finance Index, which ranks the 50 states plus Washington, D.C., based on state laws around campaign finance and funding transparency for state legislative and executive races.
“How these races are financed and how much transparency is required are key to curbing the influence of money in our political system and enhancing trust that politicians are not representing only wealthy special interests. A state’s score does not necessarily mean its politicians are more or less corrupt than another, but it does reflect the willingness of the state’s politicians to favor special interests and lessen the appearance that politicians are beholden to donors who write the biggest checks,” the Coalition for Integrity said in a June 21 press release announcing the results.
Virginia earned 55.48 percent out of a possible 100 percent; Washington took first place with 83.99 percent.
The index is based on 10 principles, including the presence of an independent agency with wide power to enforce campaign finance laws; meaningful sanctions if there are violations; contribution limits to campaigns and parties; bans on contributions from unions and corporations; comprehensive disclosure of independent expenditures; and easily accessible campaign finance data on a state agency website.
In Virginia, the Department of Elections oversees campaign finance law, but according to the index scoring chart, the agency doesn’t have power to conduct its own investigations, hold public hearings, issue subpoenas, issue sanctions, only partial ability to issue late filing fines, and no ability to issue other fines.
Virginia does properly protect its oversight officials from removal without cause.
The Commonwealth performed poorly on questions about campaign finance contribution limits — it’s one of only five states that have no contribution limits.
“As financing political campaigns remains the best way to buy influence in policy decisions, the amount spent dramatically increases from year to year. In the 2020 election cycle, contributions to gubernatorial and state legislative candidates set new records with contributions nearing $1.9 billion, up from nearly $1.6 billion in the 2016 race. The trend continued in 2021. In Virginia, which has no limits on campaign contributions, the candidates for Governor raised over $130 million – Terry McAuliffe (D) received just over $54.2 million in contributions, while Glen Youngkin (R) received roughly $65.7 million,” the report states.
On transparency, Virginia earns mediocre scores. Contributors to independent spenders must be reported, but not the owners or funders of LLCs or 501(c) nonprofits that contribute to independent spenders. Virginia earned full marks on disclosure of advertisers. Virginia does allow reports to be filed online with the Department of Elections, but they’re not easily available on the DOE website. Instead, Virginians rely on the nonprofit Virginia Public Access Project to provide that data.
Virginia has a poor reputation on campaign finance law.
Former Governor Bob McDonnell was convicted of corruption-related charges in 2014, although the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that in a 2016 decision.
“Is Virginia Americas Most Corrupt State?” conservative blog Bacon’s Rebellion asked in 2014.
In 2016, the AP reviewed Virginia campaign donations and expenditures and found that politicians are spending donated funds on fancy restaurants, hotels, and personal bills, with some appearing to use campaign finances as personal income.
“Virginia Is for Corruption,” The Cato Institute reported in 2019.
In 2021, the Democratic-controlled Senate blocked passage of a law to largely ban personal use of campaign funds. In 2022, a Republican-controlled House committee killed a similar bill, and the General Assembly instead opted to continue a campaign finance reform study committee begun in 2021.
Senator John Bell (D-Loudoun) sponsored the 2022 bill, based on the study committee’s work in 2021.
Bell told a House Privileges and Elections subcommittee in March, “Over the years, I know we’ve had many bills in this subject area, frankly, by members of both parties. This is a really tough area to go into, I want to just say to the committee as we get into it. And we took the bill that started off, we heard testimony, and we worked with stakeholders again and worked with members of both parties, and we dialed the bill back in a few areas.”
“This isn’t a perfect bill. It doesn’t hit every area of campaign finance. It’s a start. I think if we tried to do a perfect bill, we’re going to end up with more problems than we want,” he said.
Delegate Margaret Ransone (R-Westmoreland) told Bell, “I’ve heard you say a couple of times, this is a start, this is a beginning. I personally am uncomfortable putting something in code that’s a start.”
“Putting something in code that’s not perfect, that’s not just right, I feel like is wrong. We established a work group. My understanding is that the work group never came to a consensus together collectively on legislation and voted collectively as a majority,” she said.
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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
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As those of us who are not leftist ingrates celebrate Independence Day, it is important to remember and thank our men and women of the armed services for the sacrifices they make to keep us safe. Yet, it is well to remember and thank another crucial group of uniformed individuals. who also sacrifice to keep us safe—America’s police officers.
Recently, I had the chance to visit with members of one of my home state’s police organizations. It has been a rough couple of years for them. While the radical chic of attacking the police and demanding they be defunded has somewhat abated, my friends reminded me that dangers wrought by this injurious policy have only managed to dent, not end, its advocacy.
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Robert E. Lee’s smashing victory against Major General Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville in May 1863 provided the Confederacy with three strategic options: shift resources from Virginia to Mississippi in order to revive Vicksburg, the Rebel redoubt on the Mississippi River; reinforce Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee, enabling him to reprise his 1862 invasion of Kentucky and maneuver the Union Army of the Cumberland under William Rosecrans out of its position in central Tennessee; or invade Pennsylvania.
But after Chancellorsville, it was probably too late to affect the outcome at Vicksburg, because the siege was already under way. (Vicksburg would fall on the Fourth of July.) And it didn’t make sense to detach forces from the Confederacy’s only successful field army, the Army of Northern Virginia, under its only successful general, Lee, and send them to other generals whose competence was questionable. In the end, Lee effectively made the case to Confederate president Jefferson Davis that the best use of limited Confederate resources was to invade Pennsylvania. As he had done in the fall of 1862, Lee intended to effect a strategic turning movement, draw the Yankees out of Virginia, and annihilate a Federal army on Union soil, forcing Lincoln to sue for peace.
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Buying a used car in the Midwest got a little more affordable in May over the previous month.
The good news is that year-over-year price increases in used vehicles in May dropped seven percentage points from the year-over-year April price increases, from April’s 23.9% to May’s 16.9%. The bad news is a used car and truck in May 2022 still cost 16.9% more than a comparable used vehicle cost in May 2021.
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America is currently in the midst of a broader political realignment. The political Left, which once upon a time purported to stand for the forgotten “little guy” against the titans of Big Business, has in recent years decided that Big Business is actually an ally of convenience in its long Gramsci-an “march” through the institutions. Chris Rufo has perhaps demonstrated this trend better than anyone else.
And the political Right, whose once-instinctive neoliberal proclivities made it a convenient ally for Big Business, is currently rethinking its approach to political economy in general, as well as its specific relationship to culturally leftist multinational corporations. The most tangible recent expression of this rethinking has been Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crippling punishment of The Walt Disney Company for its coming out on behalf of sexually grooming innocent children in the Sunshine State.
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If you plan on holding a July 4 cookout this weekend, expect to pay a lot more than what you paid for last year’s meal.
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation marketbasket survey, the overall cost for the Independence Day cookout is up 17%, or about $10 from last year. Ongoing supply chain disruptions, inflation tied in part to increased government spending, and the war in Ukraine are being blamed for the price hikes.
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White House economic adviser Brian Deese on Thursday told CNN that high gas prices were a necessary inconvenience to preserve the “future of the liberal world order,” amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The average price of gas exceeded $5 per gallon for the first time in U.S. history in early June.
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Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz has introduced a bill to disarm the Internal Revenue Service.
Along with fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Jeff Duncan (S.C.), and Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Gaetz is pushing the “Disarm the IRS Act,” which would prohibit the IRS from acquiring (by purchase or otherwise) any ammunition.
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The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its partners agreed to boost oil production on Thursday, backing a plan released earlier this month, ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia in mid-July.
In their fifth meeting since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, which sent oil prices skyrocketing to above $100 a barrel for the first time in eight years, OPEC and a group of Russian-led non-OPEC members agreed to raise their collective production by 648,000 barrels a day.
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Cornell University recently admitted to removing both a bust of President Abraham Lincoln and a plaque of the Gettysburg Address from its library after a student anonymously complained about the display, presumably due to so-called “racism.”
Fox News reports that biology professor Randy Wayne gave a very brief statement on the matter, simply saying “someone complained, and it was gone.” Wayne said that he first noticed the missing display several weeks earlier and asked the librarians what had happened, to which he was told that the school had received some kind of complaint; the librarians refused to provide any specific details on the nature of the complaint.
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Israel is in consultations with Middle Eastern countries to install Israeli-made defense systems on their territory, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.
Several countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have reportedly negotiated with Israel to obtain a network of sensors that will combat the potential missile threat from Iran, according to Breaking Defense. A shared communications network would theoretically allow participating states to alert others when incoming missiles trigger the sensors, Breaking Defense reported, citing Israeli officials.
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The Biden administration’s messaging on immigration has created “confusion” that human smugglers and traffickers have exploited, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.
Giammattei said smugglers know it’s easier to get people into the U.S. illegally under the Biden administration as a family, and that smugglers have used children, whether biological or not, in order to get their clients across the border. He mentioned the Biden administration’s effort to codify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which prevents migrants brought to the U.S. as children from being immediately deported, as exacerbating the problem.
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After this month’s historic special election win in South Texas, Republican strategists nationwide are asking themselves: how can we replicate now-Congresswoman Mayra Flores’s success in flipping an 84% Hispanic district to the GOP? Meantime, Democrats are burying their heads in the South Texas sand as Hispanic voters flee their party.
It’s not rocket science to appeal to Hispanic voters and persuade them to vote Republican. My firm’s work with the Hispanic Republican Coalition of Pennsylvania shows how to do it.
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Many California parents are celebrating wins this week after a controversial school district superintendent was fired for making comments about Asian students and the state’s proposed equitable math program has been postponed from being implemented.
At the same time, a new framework for civics was launched nationally. Advocates are praising the education reform initiatives that have already begun in Florida and Louisiana.
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