It Doesn’t End With Electing ‘The Right Candidate’

Posted on October 24, 2024 by Christian Braunlich
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It’s all too easy to conflate the roles of political parties with those of public policy “think tanks.”  Both gravitate around policy ideas falling along conservative or progressive lines, and their supporters tend to divide along those same lines, as well.  Advocacy of progressive ideas is usually driven by Democratic elected officials, while those backing conservative solutions tend to be Republicans.

But there are differences between political parties and think tanks, especially during election season.

Once nominations are over, political parties support their candidates regardless of the ideas espoused by those candidates.  Public policy organizations support good ideas, regardless of what candidate advocates them.

Political parties put their focus on getting supporters to vote by the first Tuesday in November.  Policy organizations try to persuade the public in order to have a lasting impact on public policy. They play the long game, working to shift public opinion so ideas become acceptably within the Overton window of opportunity.

Unfortunately, candidates and their political parties are often focused on slapping together platforms that give away candy, ice cream and unicorns in the pursuit of votes.  But policy organizations are in the business of putting together coherent ideas that work and align with their philosophy of governing.

Finally, political parties expect supporters to “circle the wagons,” whatever a candidate’s deficiencies.  Perhaps that’s understandable, given the binary nature of Election Day.

But what happens if a bad idea takes hold?  Sometimes that means calling out wrong ideas, even if they’re coming from a candidate on your side of the electoral divide.

Both of this year’s presidential candidates have worked overtime creating giveaways that would rival a certain Oprah Winfrey show.  It’s all great politics and great show … but lousy policy.

Kamala Harris, of the party more practiced in the art of giveaways, offers new and bigger entitlements (child care, preschool, long term care, and paid leave), price controls (she will decide what grocery prices are too high), more student loan forgiveness (your auto mechanic gets to underwrite your lawyer’s college tuition), and more housing subsidies (which, of course, incentivizes higher housing prices), among other things.

As much as she’s tried to walk back positions she took when first running for president, her platform still appears guided by the words of FDR’s advisor Harry Hopkins:  “We shall tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect.”

Donald Trump is more targeted.  Instead of new programs he offers new tax proposals, aimed not at stimulating growth, as his first term plans did, but targeting key constituencies.  Among them are eliminating taxes on tips (appealing to tipped workers in the key state of Nevada), ending taxes on Social Security (older Americans), creating a deduction for auto loan interest (Michigan auto workers), ending the limit on the state and local tax deduction (upper middle class and blue state voters), and eliminating the tax on overtime pay (union workers).  There’s little pro-growth rationale for a package like this.

While Trump would retain much of his successful Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (much of which Harris would repeal), his newer proposals move away from pro-growth tax reform.  Trump proposes a 20 percent tariff on everything imported into the United States (Chinese products would pay 60 percent).  But the history of tariffs (here and here) suggests this would merely result in higher prices for the Americans who buy the goods.

As Thomas Jefferson Institute President Derrick Max has pointed out, anything that would suppress trade is bad for America and would have a particularly bad impact on Virginia’s economy, where one in five jobs are trade related and the Port of Virginia contributes $92 billion to the state’s economy.

Still, while the Tax Foundation notes that the tariffs would offset much of the economic benefit of strategic tax reduction, the organization still scores President Trump’s tax proposals as offering positive long-run GDP, wages and jobs.  Vice President Harris’ tax proposals create a net loss in all three categories.  Both could do better.

Left unspoken is what the candidates will do about the two fiscal “Swords of Damocles” hanging over our children, our grandchildren and the American economy:  By 2034, the federal debt will reach $50.7 trillion, and federal spending is already a quarter of the American economy.  That’s unsustainable, leaving a tremendous burden on generations to come.  Equally urgent is the fact that the Social Security trust fund will be empty in 2035, while Medicare’s trust fund will be gone just a year later – together forcing a 17 percent cut in benefits to future retirees, rising to a 27 percent reduction Either that, or American workers will see a massive increase in their payroll taxes.

Not only have the candidates been silent, but some of their ideas – if left unaltered – would exacerbate the problem.

There is a tendency on the part of activists to believe that all they need do is elect “their guy” and all will be well.  It rarely is and it doesn’t end there.  Once in office, elected officials feel the push and pull of constituencies that supported them, those that opposed them, and those that could be gained or lost.  That often results in bad policies or, more likely from friends, ineffective policies.

And that means – from the start – laying down markers defining what good policy … and bad policy … looks like.

An America that grows and prospers happens when the right people do the right things.  Campaigns need to elect the right people.  Policy think tanks need to focus on defining and creating a climate that will sustain the right things.

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Senator Surovell: The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative would have no impact on hurricanes or hurricane preparedness — to say otherwise is pure politics.

Posted on October 18, 2024 by Derrick A. Max
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Was Senator Scott Surovell’s recent article in the Richmond Times Dispatch, “Helene sends a message: Virginia must rejoin RGGI,” an honest misunderstanding about hurricanes and about how the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) works (or doesn’t work) or was it a blatant use of a serious weather tragedy to score political points against a popular Governor — all while communities were still suffering and rescue efforts were still underway? In either case, Virginia deserves better from the Senate Democrat Majority Leader.

Here are the facts. First, there is no evidence that hurricanes have increased in number or intensity. The National Hurricane Center chart below shows the number of major hurricanes since 1851 and breaks out category 3,4, and 5 hurricanes to measure intense hurricanes over time. As you can see there does not appear to be an upward trend in overall hurricanes or in high intensity hurricanes. Recency bias cannot even explain the climate hysteria evident in current hurricane reporting.   

Second, there is strong evidence that the wide fluctuation in hurricanes and intensity over time is not related to global warming, but to an ocean surface temperature pattern known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). If you overlap AMO patterns with hurricane activity, you can see that the variation in hurricane numbers closely align with this naturally occurring surface temperature pattern. You will also see that we are in a more active phase due to the current state of the AMO.

Setting aside the fact that there is little evidence that hurricanes have gotten worse, or that man-made carbon emissions have had any impact on the number or intensity of hurricanes, the more important point is that membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has not reduced carbon emissions. In fact, according to a recent report by Thomas Jefferson Institute’s Steve Haner, in the first two years of RGGI membership, CO2 emissions actually grew by 3.7 million tons. Virginia’s membership in RGGI is having the exact opposite effect than was expected.

As per Senator Surovell’s argument that the use of the $800 million in revenue collected under RGGI’s significant tax structure over the last three years could have mitigated this flooding, he clearly misunderstands how this money was spent. Fifty percent of RGGI funds were used for energy efficiency spending on low-income homes. Does anyone believe that Energy Efficient (EE compliant) refrigerators or greater insulation in the homes of lower income families would have mitigated the impact of Hurricane Helene? Of course not.

In fact, our own study showed that the Energy Efficiency program as approved by the General Assembly and run by Dominion Energy Virginia, increases energy use by either replacing zero carbon producing broken appliances with carbon using working appliances, or families keeping their older appliances as a “backup” while taking advantage of the EE program to buy a second more efficient appliance. Think of moving your old refrigerator into a basement or garage, after you replace it with the government subsidized EE refrigerator.

Another 45 percent of RGGI funds were used for “flood preparedness,” which may be where Senator Surovell got confused. But this was not the kind of “preparedness” that would have prevented the massive flooding we saw from hurricane Helene.  Setting aside that a lot of this funding was used for “planning and education” — the actual flood prevention and protection projects were spent on creating “Living Shorelines” by using natural elements like vegetation and oyster reefs to stabilize shorelines and reduce erosion, providing a more sustainable and resilient alternative to traditional hardened structures like seawalls. The City of Hampton received funding for living shoreline projects along the Chesapeake Bay. Would any of this prevent damage from a category 3 hurricane? Of course not. Hardened structures may have been a better alternative.

Other RGGI funded projects included “Tidal Marsh Restoration” to restore degraded tidal marshes to help absorb floodwaters and protect coastal communities from storm surges as was done in the Town of Chincoteague on the Eastern Shore. There was also “Stormwater Management Infrastructure” spending used to upgrade stormwater systems to handle increased rainfall and reduce flooding in urban areas. The City of Norfolk, for instance, received funding to improve its stormwater infrastructure, as did both Fairfax and Alexandria. Again, such systems are important, and surely useful to prevent damage from more casual storms or minor increases in sea levels but are meaningless in the face of a category 3 hurricane.

There was a small amount of funding for “Inland Communities” like the ones that did suffer damage from hurricane Helene here in Southwest Virginia. Some of this funding went to improve drainage systems and constructing barriers in high-risk areas. But again, all such efforts were overrun by the massive amount of rain from this high intensity hurricane.

The remaining 5% ($40 million) of RGGI revenue was spent on the administrative costs of implementing and managing this program. These are administrative costs separate from the planning and educational spending mentioned earlier. Again, a large expenditure with no real added benefit and of no use against hurricanes, obviously.

Senator Surovell should know that weather disasters are a sad fact of life. In 1957 President Eisenhower declared 28 Appalachian counties disaster areas due to the massive flooding in Southwest Virginia, Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. A flood in 1870 started in Charlottesville and destroyed entire towns and farms throughout the Shenandoah Valley. In 1969 Hurricane Camille hit Virginia and caused inland flooding and mudslides that killed over 150 people. The list of floods and devastation is long and troubling but are acts of God unrelated to carbon emissions and government programs. Their occurrences are random and happened before and after the age of man-made carbon emissions.

Senator Surovell surely knows that Virginia doesn’t need to be in RGGI to fund flood mitigation projects. Instead of playing politics over the disastrous Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, he should be sitting down with the Governor and local leaders to see what could have been done, if anything, to prevent damage from this or other hurricanes or other weather events. That is the Virginia way.

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Education Funding Reform Needs to Build Accountability to Help Those Who Need It

Posted on October 16, 2024 by Christian Braunlich
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When the Virginia State Board of Education approved a new state accountability system, it predictably drew attacks from the usual sources.

The new system places greater emphasis on student mastery of subject information (50-65%) over student growth (20-25%).  But while growth is critical and should be recognized, under the process approved during the McAuliffe-Northam Administrations, a school could be accredited even if its students never reached the goal of actually learning the material.  Youngkin’s appointees sought to correct this.

It also brought Virginia state accreditation into alignment with long-standing federal requirements that English Learners (ELs) be included in school ratings after three semesters (previously, Virginia did so only after 11 semesters).  This was deemed unfair by the Virginia education establishment.  On first glance, three semesters seems unrealistic to many.

However, as Todd Truitt, an Arlington education parent leader and active Democrat points out, civil rights groups have long supported including English Learners in school accountability systems. Truitt notes Education Trust’s observation that, by delaying their inclusion up to five and a half years, “generations of students — particularly students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, and multilingual learners — have been systematically denied equitable access to … educational opportunities.”

By including such students earlier in Virginia’s accreditation process, as is the case in other states, the ability of school systems to hide English Learner performance is made more difficult.  Perhaps that transparency is why, in the National Assessment for Educational Progress – an assessment separate from state accreditation —  30 percent of Florida Hispanic students score at the Proficient level, while only 18 percent  Virginia Hispanic students do.

The new accreditation system creates a focus on underperforming students, not merely sweeping them under the rug.

But that’s only step one.  We’ve long argued that truly addressing the needs requires changing Virginia’s funding formula as well and using it to build in accountability.

Last year’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission report underscored the inadequacies of the Commonwealth’s current system, which funds education as if schools were populated by the middle class cast of Ozzie and Harriett rather than serving a student population that is 43.5 percent disadvantaged, 10.9 percent English Learners, and 14.3 percent special education – all of whom are demonstrably harder and more expensive to teach.

Instead, Virginia funds systems, determining Basic Aid with little relevance to reality.  Indeed, special education students may cost upwards of $50,000 to teach, but in the last ten years, state funding for special education students has actually decreased to about $3,700 per student.  The rest is left for localities to fund.

In a study for the Thomas Jefferson Institute, Johns Hopkins professor Dr. Susan L. Aud summarized Virginia’s education funding formula this way:  “To determine the Basic Aid associated with each student in a school division, the maximum number of teachers the state will fund for each grade level in each division is calculated, based on the ADM (Average Daily Membership) and pre-determined guidelines for the minimum and maximum number of students per type of teacher.  The average salary for each type of position is then multiplied by the number of positions required by the enrollment to arrive at a total allowable salary cost.  This number is divided by the number of students to derive an average Basic Aid dollar amount per ADM, known as the Basic Aid PPA.”

While no one doubts the greater difficulty of educating low-income, highly mobile, Limited English Proficient or disabled students, Virginia’s funding system fails to recognize that harder (and more expensive) task.  Education dollars flow, not on the basis of students, but on the basis of staffing ratios, special program formulas, and the political savvy of individual school district and school leaders.

Under a Weighted Student Funding system, schools would receive an additional weight for each harder-to-teach student they have.  Schools with special challenges (say, a rural school with harder to gain economies of scale) might also receive added funds.  This is the sort of reform put in place in a growing number of states and school districts, most recently Tennessee.  Indeed, Virginia is one of only nine states using a staffing-based formula; 34 others have switched to a student-based formula.

Importantly, such a switch can build accountability into the system.  Currently, school leaders (whether principals or superintendents) frequently have no control over how to spend funds. Virginia is filled with arbitrary and restrictive provisions limiting the discretion of local school leaders to make effective resource allocations best meeting student needs.

If a school determines that the most valuable thing to do is to fund English Language instruction so that students are able to read the history on which they will be tested, or if their first goal – based on student performance in their school – is to intensify math instruction, their staffing is all too often locked in by decisions made at the state level – not by the “boots on the ground.”

While principals and teachers may putatively be “held accountable” for results, in reality they have little control over how money is used at their school or in their classroom.  How school dollars are spent is decided elsewhere, using complex budgets and allocations that leave educators, parents, and taxpayers in the dark.

Weighted Student Funding seeks to drive dollars into the classroom to improve outcomes for all students.  This is the part of funding reform too often ignored by the Left, as they sing “Mo’ Money Blues,” focusing on merely demands for more state.  Conservatives, meanwhile, focus too hard on any added costs rather than the potential for effective reform.  Compromise is needed.

The General Assembly has already appointed a Joint Subcommittee to commence building new funding process, and it’s a task more important to get done right than to get done by a date certain.  It requires a long period of public engagement to inform and secure “buy-in” by the public, strong guardrails to ensure targeted funding reaches targeted students at the school level, and a sense of bipartisan commitment to reform.
But the current Virginia system, as JLAC so clearly outlined, is not working for the 21st century.  Nearly a quarter-century into that century, it’s time for reform.

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No, RTD, Hurricane Helene Not Proof of ‘Climate Change’

Posted on October 3, 2024 by Stephen D. Haner
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The Richmond Times-Dispatch no longer has a climate alarmist on staff, so today it fell to one of its liberal political columnists (it still has two of those, they will be the last employees out the door) to blame Hurricane Helene on “climate change.”

It was a terrible storm, no question. But it wasn’t the first terrible storm, and it was no worse than plenty of storms from decades or even a century ago. See for example the Raleigh News and Observer front page reporting a very similar storm in Asheville and the rest of North Carolina in 1916. That 1916 storm caused havoc on the entire East Coast, more territory than Helene just did (because it stalled over the mountains).

Michael Paul Williams’ column is quite honest about the history of similar storms, including Camille that devastated Nelson and Albemarle Counties in 1969 and Agnes that caused major Virginia flooding in 1972. The algorithm that substitutes for human editors at the “newspaper” added after the on-line column a series of photos from Agnes, 52 years ago, when CO2 levels were far lower than they are today.

Yet Williams implies, as has every major media voice in the Climate Alarmist Consortium, that we just need to buy EVs and put solar on our houses, and all will be well. Riiiight. He adds the political angle to blame “voters” who “deny” the obvious truth that climate change is worsening such storms.

It isn’t about the CO2. It never has been. The actual global data below (and only trust the count since satellites began tracking all storms) shows no clear trend line. Look below. It doesn’t. That chart ends with 2023, and 2024 is still underway, but predictions of a record year in the Atlantic so far are not panning out. But this one very bad storm is sufficient to feed the narrative that “climate change” is to blame for all bad weather. Were there no storms in 2024, somebody would also spin that as resulting from “climate change.”

Such storms happen, always have and always will, and as more people move to and build more buildings and parking lots in coastal surge zones and 100-year flood plains, creating more impermeable surfaces and structures to be wiped out, the flooding will just get worse. Asheville and the other damaged cities and towns are far more developed today than 108 years ago, which had to add to the water height. Be prepared.

One paragraph in Williams’ column that is 100% true, emphasis added:

“For years, towns like Asheville had been listed as ‘climate havens’ by some sources, seemingly because its winter climate is less harsh than the rest of the mountains and its summer climate is milder than areas farther east,” said Corey Davis, the assistant state climatologist for North Carolina. “This latest event absolutely exposes the current reality that almost nowhere is safe from extreme weather.”

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A Transparent Effort to Increase General Assembly Authority to Eliminate Hydrocarbon Fuels

Posted on September 26, 2024 by Stephen D. Haner
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Any doubt that some members of the Virginia General Assembly’s reconstituted electricity regulation commission intend on taking full control of our energy economy was dispelled at its second meeting Wednesday.  With that control, the goal is to then impose a full anti-hydrocarbon energy agenda.

Three proposed legislative initiatives were floated.  None were voted on, and opposition quickly surfaced from some other panel members and in comments, especially from the state’s dominant electric utility. The three proposals (also available on the group’s state website) were:

·    A draft bill that would dictate a 13-point checklist of factors the regulatory State Corporation Commission would have to use in evaluating any application where it has the power to decide what is or is not in the public interest. Anti-hydrocarbon fuel provisions were prominent among the new elements.

·    A staff white paper on a complete revision of the integrated resource plan process now in state law. One proposal was to override an SCC requirement that those plans offer an option that illustrates the lowest cost for meeting the energy needs, which invariably is a lower consumer cost than the plans which comply with the Virginia Clean Economy Act. It also proposed bringing transmission and distribution issues into what would be an “integrated system plan” and again adding emphasis on ending hydrocarbon energy.

·    A draft bill to change of the group’s name from the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation to the Virginia Energy Commission, with an expansion of its oversight authority to the entirety of the state’s energy policy, which envisions ending the use of hydrocarbons in Virginia agriculture, transportation and new buildings along with electricity.

Chairman Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, argued the proposal on “in the public interest” determinations was simply an effort to promote more transparency from the State Corporation Commission. “Transparency” was his go to word often in the meeting, but to those in the room familiar with the current SCC practices, the intent to force radical change was what was most “transparent.”

But the draft was immediately challenged by Senator Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, who noted the General Assembly made some major reforms in the SCC’s processes just two sessions ago and has finally appointed a full panel of SCC judges. “A lot of us have said for years we need to just let the SCC do its job.”

Dominion brought its main lawyer on SCC cases, Joseph K. Reid III of McGuireWoods, to challenge that proposal. “We don’t believe the Commission’s process is broken,” he told the legislators and public members. “I’m not sure what problem this bill is trying to fix.”

Most of the elements enumerated in the bills, some of them quite vague, are the issues the SCC process examines, and any party to the case can introduce just about any issue it wants to advocate.  While SCC final orders seldom delve into all of them, before the final order there is a long hearing process, and a hearing officer does write a longer report that usually touches on every issue raised.

What the current process doesn’t do is require the SCC to explicitly accept or reject and reveal how much weight it gave to every single argument or fact. And if required to do so – as a lawyer with Surovell’s ability knows – it will create innumerable new opportunities for disappointed parties to appeal.

The current process puts great weight on the traditional question when considering a new power plant or new transmission line. Is it needed, is the plan proposed reasonable and prudent, were alternatives considered, what will be the short term and long-term cost to consumer, has it received the needed environmental permits? To that the proposed bill would add, arguably with equal weight to prudent cost and necessity:

·    All positive and negative effects on public health, public safety, and the environment, including the proposal’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, transportation, or buildings. (Buildings? They contemplate “in the public interest” decisions on buildings at the SCC?)

·    The effect of the proposal on a utility’s ability to meet the goals of the renewable energy portfolio standard program.

·    The social cost of carbon, as a benefit or a cost, whichever is appropriate.

The “social cost of carbon” is the most important proposed new element. The dollar value used is subjective, controversial, and some believe it is imaginary. Determining that number and applying it to a cost-benefit formula will kill any future hydrocarbon proposal or transmission designed to serve a hydrocarbon plant and put a fat thumb on the scale in favor of wind, solar or battery projects. It might be neutral on a nuclear proposal.

But as Dominion’s Reid pointed out, only hydrocarbon or nuclear proposals would face these tests. The draft bill concluded with a carve out for any project “where the relevant statutes expressly provide a standard for such determination or declare a project to be in the public interest.”  That means all the solar, wind and battery projects already declared “in the public interest” by the Virginia Clean Economy Act need not be subjected to these new tests.

Could the effort be more transparent? Surovell himself noted that the carve-out seemed a bit unfair and said it might change in a future draft. By the end of the meeting, Surovell was adding the bill might not be ready for the 2025 session at all.

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