Killjoys versus GilJoy: Grievance Versus Opportunity

Posted on March 7, 2019 by matt ohern
Share this article on:

Gilbert Bland, CEO of the GilJoy Group and the Urban League of Hampton Roads, sees opportunities everywhere.

Northern Virginia progressives opposed to subsidies for Amazon are grievance-mongering nihilists who have nothing to offer but spittle and bile. Far from helping the people they purport to speak for, if they were successful in scuttling the Amazon deal — the Arlington County Board still must vote on county subsidies — they would cause only harm.

Instead of trying to kill the deal, progressive whiners and complainers could be working to capture a share of the  influx of public and private monies for the benefit of Arlington’s poor. An example they could emulate, but never will, is Gilbert T. Bland, chairman of the GilJoy Group and CEO of the Urban League of Hampton Roads, who, according to Virginia Business magazine, is leading initiatives to improve housing, education, health and workforce development for the region’s African-Americans.

But working within the establishment is not how progressives roll. Listen to Roshan Abraham with Our Revolution Arlington, as quoted by NBC News:

“There has been no outreach to the low-income, working class, and black and brown communities of Arlington who will be most negatively impacted by Amazon’s arrival. A lot of people are really concerned about rising housing costs, Amazon’s anti-union stance and workplace practices.”

“People say a rising tide raises all ships. That only happens if you are above water. For a lot of people already drowning or under water, that rising tide only makes their life much worse,” he said, noting that the influx of high-earning tech workers will likely displace poorer communities of color by pricing them out of the housing market.”

Amazon foes do raise some legitimate issues. There is an endemic problem in the U.S. when hugely wealthy companies like Amazon can pit states and metros against one another to win hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks not available to other taxpayers. That practice has to stop, although I have yet to hear any good ideas on how to end it. Further, the influx of 25,000 Amazon employees earning an average of $150,000 a year likely will make the issue of housing affordability even more acute in Northern Virginia.

However, Amazon’s nihilist foes think only to fight the kill the project. Instead of seeing Amazon as a once-in-a-generation wealth-creating opportunity that can benefit everyone, they lapse into the rhetoric of grievance and outrage. They, like their peers in New York who spiked a similar Amazon project, illustrate what is so corrosively destructive about the progressive movement today.

The fact is, even with subsidies, Amazon will generate billions of dollars in additional state and local tax revenue. Further, as part of the deal, the state has committed to spending hundreds of millions of dollars on higher education and infrastructure, while Arlington and Alexandria are dedicating $150 million to affordable housing initiatives. Amazon will unleash consumer spending power that will create job opportunities for lower-income Northern Virginians in the service, retail, and construction sectors, pushing wages higher. As an important bonus, Amazon will diversify Northern Virginia’s economy, insulating the region from downturns in federal spending. If the nihilists don’t like prosperity, I can guarantee they’ll like economic decline even less.

By contrast, Gilbert Bland grew up in the Dahlgren area of King George County. His father attended school only through the 7th grade, and his mother, though a high school valedictorian, wound up in Jim Crow-era Virginia working as a maid all her life. But his parents taught him a can-do ethic. He played on a state champion high school basketball team. Then he worked his way through college, earning a B.A. degree in accounting and economics at James Madison University and an MBA from Atlanta University. He started his career as a commercial lending officer for a bank, and then went on to own and operate more than 70 Burger King and Pizza Hut restaurants. He has sold most of those restaurants, but still owns sites in Hampton Roads and supports a payroll of 60 employees.

Bland is well aware of Virginia’s racist past, but he does not dwell on historical grievances.  To the contrary. As Virginia Businessdescribes:

Every morning Gilbert Bland’s teenage sons see a sign on the wall over their beds proclaiming, “It’s opportunity time.”

The sign was inspired by the memoir of former Virginia Gov. Linwood Holton who greeted his children with that message every day.

“We put that up in the boys’ room,” Bland says. “When they wake up every morning, they see that ‘It’s opportunity time.’ What better way to approach life?”

Bland carries that philosophy to the Urban League, which works to empower the minority citizens of Hampton Roads, which has the 13th largest African-American population in America. Bland says he seeks “to empower through investment, through programs, through partnerships to ensure that these citizens, from pre-K to the elderly, have an opportunity to engage.”

One such partnership is with LISC (the Local Initiatives Support Corp.), headed by Maurice Jones, former Secretary of Commerce under Governor Terry McAuliffe, which provides financial counseling and coaching. As a member of the Sentara Healthcare board, Bland also wants to improve African-Americans’ health. “We believe that only 10 to 15 percent of the quality of life and lifespan is [affected by] medical intervention. The rest is lifestyle choices.” He also is working with the Hunton YMCA in Norfolk, which serves an African-American population. He aims to rebuild the Y’s finances and organizational structure, creating a home for more Urban League programs.

Just imagine what opportunities Bland would see in the Amazon deal. While Amazon foes whine about a lack of outreach to them, just imagine how Bland would initiate the outreach. Just imagine the partnerships he would forge and the good he would accomplish.

A version of this commentary first appeared in the February 26 edition of the online Bacon’s Rebellion.
bacon-90Email this author

Posted in Economic Development | 1 Comment

General Assembly Delivered on Issues That Mattered Most

Posted on March 7, 2019 by matt ohern
Share this article on:

The 2019 General Assembly session served as a stark reminder of an important lesson: Leadership matters. The controversies surrounding the executive branch brought chaos and embarrassment, while the steady leadership of the Republican-led General Assembly delivered meaningful results.
This session was marked by the scandals embroiling our governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. Regardless of your political views, the pain our commonwealth has felt over the past month seemed at times unbearable. 
But, even as Jefferson’s Capitol served as a home for dozens of reporters in search of the next big tip, the work of the oldest continuously elected legislative body in the New World proceeded without interruption. 
Committee meetings took place. Constituents were served. Legislation was heard, considered, and debated. Bills were passed. The budget was balanced. When the General Assembly adjourned last Sunday, it was clear the House and Senate brought stable leadership and delivered results on the issues that matter most at a time when the commonwealth needed it most.
That leadership starts with tax relief. The General Assembly passed, and the governor has now signed, a nearly $1 billion tax relief plan. Our plan increases the standard deduction by 50 percent, and provides rebate checks of up to $110 for individuals and $220 for married couples. Altogether, a typical family will see $393 in tax relief over the next two years. That is meaningful tax relief.
Providing tax relief meant unwinding more than $1 billion in new spending proposed by Governor Northam and the Democrats. Instead, the General Assembly balanced the budget without raising taxes. 
The budget includes funding for a 5 percent teacher pay raise and $85.7 million in new funding for public education, on top of more than $400 million in investments made last year. The budget also provides $19 million for broadband funding and $57 million to freeze tuition at our colleges and universities. We funded $12 million in new school safety initiatives that, when combined with the legislative reforms passed this year, will help make our kids safer in schools.
And, not to be forgotten, we are putting more than $565 million in our state savings accounts, bringing our total reserve funds to nearly $1.5 billion just three years after a major economic setback. This fiscally responsible leadership will protect our AAA bond rating and make sure we are well prepared for the next economic downturn. The many accomplishments of the 2019 General Assembly session don’t stop at budgeting and taxes.
We passed legislation to ensure that children and adults with autism have access to health insurance. We passed legislation to help end the teen use of tobacco products by raising the smoking age to 21. We stiffened penalties for human trafficking and adopted tougher sentences for those who commit capital murder. We passed legislation to clean up coal ash across Virginia in a way that keeps our water and environment safe.
Through a series of bills passed this year, Virginia is building out a massive “tech-talent pipeline” that will give our students the right skills to succeed in the high-tech jobs that companies like Amazon and Micron are bringing to Virginia. These transformative ideas will keep our economy growing, raising wages for everyone.
We also passed a package of legislation to lower health insurance costs, improve transparency in billing, and ensure better care. We know health care costs are important to small businesses, families, young people, and senior citizens.
I call these type of issues “kitchen table issues” because they are problems families talk about on a daily basis while sitting around the dinner table. They’re the issues I heard about while knocking on doors in my community just this past week. Families are looking to Richmond to make their lives just a little easier. That’s the kind of leadership they expect and deserve. 
Virginia has weathered 400 years of storms and the past two months remind us that in both the good and bad times, leadership matters. The General Assembly led this year, and succeeded despite the storm clouds swirling around the executive branch.
Voters going to the polls this fall will have a strong point of reference by which to judge their choices. Leadership matters. As long as Republicans continue to lead the General Assembly, the people of the commonwealth can count on steady hands to deliver on the issues they care about most.

 A version of this commentary first appeared in the March 2 issue of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

E-Mail this author

Posted in State Government | Comments Off on General Assembly Delivered on Issues That Mattered Most

Rampant grade inflation is harming vulnerable high schoolers

Posted on March 7, 2019 by matt ohern
Share this article on:

(Editor’s Note: In recent years Virginia teachers, parents and students have recited a mantra of “too many tests,” demanding their reduction or outright elimination. As a result, the Virginia General Assembly and Virginia State Board of Education have begun eliminating many standardized examinations. But that elimination can have severe consequences, particularly for students in school systems with a checkered record of excellence. This commentary by Brandon Wright, Editorial Director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, discusses a series published in the Boston Globe, outlining what those consequences have been for students in that system. There is much here for Virginia to learn about and contemplate.)
“Being valedictorian, it didn’t mean anything,” said Shanika Bridges-King about her time at Bryn Mawr to the Boston Globe last month, as part of a series of exposés. Reporters spent a year tracking down the city’s public high school valedictorians from the mid-2000s to learn how their lives had turned out. “I didn’t understand anything I read. I didn’t know how to write. I felt like I was disabled in this elite environment.”
Bridges-King graduated at the top of her class at The English High School in Boston. Her statement is upsetting, yet not really surprising, due to an all too common problem at low-income high schools nationwide: inflated grades that wrongly and harmfully signal to graduates—even valedictorians—that they’re ready for college.
“I felt like I wasn’t prepared to be there,” echoed Jose Barbosa, who attended Boston University after he finished at the top of his class at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School, also in Boston. “I was massively unprepared,” said Abadur Rahman, valedictorian of East Boston High School and recipient of a full scholarship to Northeastern University, who added, “Folks were at a different quintile than we were in terms of how much material they had [already] comprehended and internalized.” “I felt like Hyde Park High School did nothing, really, to prepare you for a school like Boston College,” said Michael Blackwood, valedictorian of The Engineering School in the Hyde Park Education Complex.
The fact that America’s high school education is broken is not new. Over the last year, stories have cast doubt on the stratospheric graduation rates reported in several states, including Alabama, California, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Pressure to boost those rates, often due to school accountability policies, plays a role—but so do complex motivations like empathy and concern for kids’ future well-being. It’s these latter impulses that lead folks to believe that easing expectations, at least for disadvantaged and struggling students, is a victimless, thoughtful, and maybe even noble act. Though it does young people no real good to be awarded unearned diplomas.
The harm done by lowered expectations doesn’t just befall the kids who are barely making it through high school. As illustrated by those profiled in the Globe, a disservice is being done to their high-achieving peers—not young people at risk of not graduating at all, but those who leave high school at the top of their class and under the impression that they’re fully ready for college, including elite schools like Bryn Mawr, B.U., and B.C. They discover—with surprise, pain, angst, embarrassment—that they’re nowhere near ready. The culprit is grade inflation, which occurs when subjective course grades exceed objective measures of performance.
According to a September 2018 Fordham study of the problem, “rising high school grade point averages have been accompanied by stagnant SAT, ACT, and NAEP scores.” That’s true just about everywhere in America. In North Carolina, the focus of the study, the median grade in affluent high schools in 2016 was a B; in less affluent schools, it was a slightly lower B-. In Kentucky, my colleague Adam Tyner found much the same thing using data compiled by the Bluegrass Institute: in 2016, the average GPA in rich schools was 2.95, and 2.93 at lower-income ones.
Standardized tests, however, indicate far wider gaps—and a much more dire situation for disadvantaged teens. More than seven out of ten affluent twelfth graders in North Carolina were proficient on statewide assessments, but barely four in ten of their low-income peers cleared that bar. ACT scores in Kentucky are considerably higher at richer schools than poorer ones. Back in Boston, the 53 percent proficiency rate on MCAS among tenth graders in the city’s public schools, most of which are low income, falls well short of the statewide rate of 74 percent. And this phenomenon isn’t new: A 1994 U.S. Department of Education study found that A students at high-poverty schools had the same average English and math scores on tests administered as part of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 as C and D students at affluent schools. These kids’ dreams are being killed by kindness.
Grade inflation causes many problems, but two are especially harmful. The first, aptly explained by Seth Gershenson, a professor at American University who conducted the Fordham Institute analysis, is complacency that stunts kids’ potential: “When a student thinks he has already mastered material that he has not, the student will not invest the extra effort and time necessary to truly learn it. Likewise, parents will not recognize the need to help their child catch up. In this case, the complacency is not due to lack of desire or ability, but rather faulty information about the student’s academic standing.”
The second problem is that inflated grades allow students to progress through high school and then into colleges for which they aren’t actually prepared—a problem known succinctly as “overmatching.”
When reality hits—especially if students are disadvantaged and therefore lack the familial safety net and support of their more privileged peers—this combination of faulty information and academic ill-preparedness can be devastating. Consider, again, the valedictorians featured in the Globe series. Jose Barbosa reported feeling disappointed in himself and withdrew from Boston University after three semesters, though he later graduated from Mount Ida College. Abadur Rahman got to a point where “Maybe you’re not who you think you are. Maybe you’re not good enough. Maybe you’re not meant to be in school.” He had to leave Northeastern’s honors program and switch to a less challenging major. Scariest of all is Telma Taveres, whose 4.76 GPA made her the 2005 valedictorian at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, one of the city’s three prestigious exam schools. In her third year at Smith College, one of America’s top liberal arts schools, she suffered a panic attack so severe that she ended up in a psychiatric ward and was told to take a year off. She never returned to Smith, though later was able to earn a degree at UMass Boston.
Of the ninety-three valedictorians the Globe checked in with, one in four failed to graduate with a college degree in six years. Forty percent earn less than $50,000 a year, while just one in seven has an annual income exceeding $100,000. One in four has an advanced degree. Four have been homeless.
If these are the outcomes of the top graduates of the city’s low-income high schools, one can’t help but wonder what hope students with a 3.5 GPA have of succeeding, let alone those with 3.0 or 2.5. Their schools are lying to them about what they’ve accomplished. This most harms the most vulnerable among them—and it needs to change.
Yet the policy winds are blowing the other way. The easiest way to check inflated grades is via external exams, but states are rushing to get rid of those—and colleges are pushing to make admissions SAT-optional. That might help the children of privileged parents who are pushing for their children to look even better to the admissions teams at the colleges from which they’ll almost surely graduate. But it won’t help poor and minority kids like those valedictorians in Boston.

This commentary was originally published in the February 13, 2019 edition of Education Gadfly Weekly, published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
E-Mail this author.

Posted in Education | Comments Off on Rampant grade inflation is harming vulnerable high schoolers

Carbon Tax on Track for Approval

Posted on February 20, 2019 by matt ohern
Share this article on:

Once again, both parties at the Virginia General Assembly has pushed forward doomed legislation on a proposed carbon cap and tax regime the state will soon impose on Virginia’s fossil fuel electric power plants, with the stalemate leaving Governor Ralph Northam free to move forward. It is like one of those choreographed fist fights in a movie where you can tell the actors have done this all before.

The Republicans in both House and Senate have pushed through on party line votes two bills to prevent the state from joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative without a vote of the legislature. As happened twice before, the Governor will veto them and be sustained. The requirement that any approval be by a two-thirds vote, as in House Bill 2611, seems excessive and makes a veto easier to justify.

Democrats in both House and Senate proposed bills to grab the revenue from the sale of carbon credits away from utility ratepayers and spend it on other things, confirming that one of the reasons behind this is just to tax Virginians. On the same party line votes, those bills died. The refusal to honestly estimate the amount of the carbon tax also makes opposition easier.

In the meantime, there is a March 6 deadline if you are burning with a desire to comment on the latest version of Virginia’s proposed RGGI regulation. If you liked the first version, subjected to comments in 2018, you’ll love this revision. If you hated the first version, you will see this one as worse.

It is very much the same, only more so – starting with the new beginning target for carbon dioxide emission from power plants of 28 million tons per year, down from the first proposal’s target of 33 million tons per year. During development of the regulation, it was predicted that emissions in 2019 would be close to 37 million tons. Can we drop that 20-25 percent by next year?

Try to muscle through the document and you find only a small priesthood understands this holy text. The Department of Environmental Quality has complied quite a bit of information on one web site, but it’s hard to find easy-to-understand information on what power plants are covered and which will run less or close completely as the state tightens the allowed emissions by 840,000 tons per year for twenty years.

Virginia’s membership in RGGI with the other Northeastern states is not mandated by federal law. It has been rejected by the General Assembly twice before, with the bills vetoed. Given that it is a one-state solution in the middle of a vigorous regional generation trading market, it likely will have only a minor impact on regional emissions and make a tiny dent in East Coast CO2 levels. As proposed, it will hardly be free, and only once implemented as its proponents intend will the real cost emerge.

Make no mistake, brilliant protests notwithstanding, the Air Pollution Control Board will vote for this revised regulation, which fills 35 tightly-packed pages in the most recent Virginia Register of Regulations. Governor Northam will most certainly sign off. Your electric bill will do down a little or go up a lot, depending on who you believe. The truth is probably in the middle, a noticeable but not crushing increase.

The State Corporation Commission, in a letter to a legislator, has entered a prediction of $3 billion to $6 billion over ten years of consumer costs on Dominion Energy Virginia, the company that is the main target of this effort. Virginia’s other investor-owned utility, Appalachian Power Company, runs only three natural gas generators in its territory, accounting for less than 200,000 tons of annual CO2 output.

Defenders of the proposal are sticking by their claims of minimal customer costs, mainly because as the regulation now reads, the utilities – not the state – will garner the revenue from the sale and purchase of carbon allocations and are expected to then pass the benefit along to their customers one way or the other, perhaps through the fuel charge. How that might work is not clear, and there remain concerns the utilities will just keep the money.

In its official comments to the 2018 version, Dominion stated that the various covered generating units (involving several owners, not just it and APCo) had emissions of more than 35 million tons of CO2 in 2016. If so, the target of 28 million for 2020 could prove onerous after all. The cap then shrinks 3 percent – 840,000 tons – per year for ten years, getting down below 20 million tons by 2030 and just above 11 million tons by 2040. Last year Dominion put the cost of RGGI compliance at just above $500 million over ten years.

If APCo’s three existing units account for less than 200,000 tons, which plants around Virginia must curtail operation or close entirely to drop output relentlessly by 840,000 tons per year? They will be Dominion facilities.

Despite their protests that they do not seek us economic harm, the advocates behind this want the gas and coal plants silent, closed, kaput, sayonara, but we ratepayers will remain on the hook for 100 percent of the capital investment. That adds credibility to the SCC estimate, which includes those stranded capital costs and the loss of revenue if those plants cannot sell power out of state.

A recent argument in the Virginia Mercury that costs of RGGI compliance will be minimal rest upon a couple of major assumptions. The first is that the allowances for carbon emission in Virginia will be “free.” The power plant operators will be handed allowances for 28 million tons, and then will enter the RGGI carbon auction to sell and buy with little or no net cost. The year after that, they get 27.16 million tons in allowances, and the year after that 26.32 million. The revenue continues to flow back to the customers.

But the environmental movement, many state legislators and the Governor do not want the proceeds to flow back to ratepayers. They have sought for several years to capture the money for other purposes, as is done in the other Northeastern states that belong to RGGI. In fact, the reason the proposal now calls for the money to flow back and forth to the utilities is the state Constitution prohibits a regulatory agency from creating and spending a tax.

Only the legislature can do that, and to understand how read House Bill 2735. It turns Virginia’s proposal into a true carbon tax, with the cash not being used to maintain electricity rates. It failed, but if the Democrats control a future legislature, expect a bill like that to pass. The SCC cost estimate, at the high end, assumes that a such real carbon tax comes soon.

For environmentalists to point to the “free” allowances in the pending regulation and argue that will protect us over time is a classic bait and switch. They want the real tax. They are blasting the Republicans who opposed the tax as planet-killers, and will do so in the coming election.

Another huge assumption? In a defense of RGGI membership an advocate in Virginia Mercury states: “Our nuclear plants, which provide a big chunk of Virginia’s electricity, are already operating at full capacity, and that’s not expected to change.” In 2030? Probably true. In 2040? Very, very doubtful, and expect the same environmentalists to be leading the charge to prevent any new licenses.

 

As with so many things in this arena, the big decisions are being made while the people who will bear the burden and pay the price are unaware.

A version of this column first appeared online in the February 7, 2019 edition of Bacon’s Rebellion.

E-Mail this author

 

Posted in Energy, Environment, Taxes | Comments Off on Carbon Tax on Track for Approval

Progressives Perpetuating Poverty

Posted on February 20, 2019 by matt ohern
Share this article on:

Amazon’s decision to scrap a $2.5 billion investment in New York City has emboldened far-left progressives in Northern Virginia to oppose the e-commerce giant’s plans for plans to build an East Coast headquarters in Arlington. Critics of HQ2 are targeting $23 million that Arlington County will contribute to the pot of incentives, reports the Washington Business Journal.

“The county should vote down the deal,” said Roshan Abraham, an organizer with Our Revolution Arlington in an anti-Amazon meeting Monday. One of the richest companies in the world does not need the county’s money, he said. “If Amazon chooses not to come to Arlington over $23 million, good riddance.”

A primary concern among leftist activists is rising rent. As 25,000 highly paid Amazon employees start working in Arlington, they will bid up housing prices. About 3,000 apartment units in Alexandria and Arlington between South Glebe and West Glebe roads could become unaffordable for the largely Latino community living there once Amazon moves in, say Amazon foes.

I sympathize to some degree with those who resent the incentives, including some $500 million in workforce grants from the state. Amazon is the world’s most valuable company, CEO Jeff Bezos is the world’s wealthiest man (at least until his divorce is settled), and the showering of massive tax breaks on Amazon is manifestly unfair. But the world is unfair, and the rational response is not to chase Amazon out of town but to craft a deal that is tax-flow positive for state and local government, and work to ameliorate negative impacts on housing and transportation. To do otherwise is to limit opportunity and perpetuate poverty.

Left-wing activists regard the deal as a zero-sum game. They see Amazon getting giant subsidies and giving back nothing in return. But that view is grievously flawed. While Amazon is unlikely to hire many lower-income Northern Virginians directly — not unless they somehow acquire advanced technology skills — it will inject billions of dollars into the regional consumer and service economy, creating jobs that lower-income workers can qualify for. In all likelihood, that stimulus will force employers in a low-unemployment labor market to bid up wages.
Many Amazonians will want to live near where they work — indeed, Amazon will encourage them to in order to limit stress on the regional transportation network. All other things being equal, those employees, earning an average of $150,000 a year, will push up the price of nearby housing. But all other things need not be equal. The law of supply and demand may be an alien concept to many lefties, but if Arlington and neighboring jurisdictions allow builders to increase the supply of housing in equal measure to the increasing population, higher prices can be contained.
Progressive activists could play a useful role by lobbying local governments to make it easier to build new housing and relax some of the regulations that make it so expensive. But that would force them to confront the trade-offs inherent in local government. More housing equals more households, which equals more school enrollment, more traffic congestion, more demand for government services, and a demand for more revenue. It is so much easier just to stoke grievances and block change.
It’s a good thing for poor people in Arlington to organize and make their concerns heard. Amazon will exercise tremendous clout in the county, and there needs to be a counter-weight. But replicating the strategy of New York leftists and running Amazon out of town won’t help Arlington’s poor. To the contrary, evicting Amazon would limit economic opportunity. Of course, leftist progressives are so addicted to grievance mongering that they are blind to the positives. If they got their way, the lives of everyone, poor and well-to-do alike, would be immeasurably worse.
– bacon-90Email this author

Posted in Economic Development, Economy | Comments Off on Progressives Perpetuating Poverty