Wealth Redistribution as a Condition for Doing Business

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The Progressive-Democrat Abigail Spanberger ran as a centrist moderate for, and won, the governorship of Virginia. Then, in typical Progressive-Democrat duplicity, she began governing from the Far Left. (In truth, it’s also understandable and predictable, since the Far Left has become the Party’s center.) Spanberger’s latest example is her demand for NextEra and Dominion Energy to agree to redistribute their wealth as a condition for approving their proposed merger. The one is the world’s largest solar and wind producer and the other is a major electricity utility, and their merger would provide large synergies while spurring innovation.

Spanberger’s conditions:

  • freeze residential base electric rates for six years,
  • provide ratepayers a $29 monthly “credit” for four years
  • agree not to cut off customers who don’t pay their bills “due to financial hardship,” however that is defined
  • provide discounted rates to customers with electric vehicles and heat pumps
  • remove the cap on the state’s net-metering program

These, of course, eliminate those synergies of combination by forcing the new company to pay out all of those otherwise realizable cost reductions to those entities favored by the Progressive-Democrat, instead of committing those cost reductions to innovation and real future benefits to customers.

There is an obvious solution to Spanberger’s extremist demands: NextEra and Dominion should go through with the merger and go out from Virginia altogether. Since Spanberger isn’t serious about business in Virginia, there’s no reason for businesses to be serious about Virginia.

Time to Start Swatting Down Recalcitrant Judges

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The house editorial opened with this:

This is getting old. Three times in the past decade the Supreme Court has vindicated religious schools excluded from state programs. Colorado still needs a remedial lesson.

The latest misbehavior is the State’s—through those State judges who think they’re above Federal law—position that Supreme Court rulings don’t apply to it, or them.  The state’s “universal” pre-K plan lets religious schools participate only if they agree to enroll families who oppose them on sex and gender.

The Supreme Court has an opportunity to deliver that lesson via St Mary Catholic Parish v Roy. Colorado’s pre-school program

pays for 15 hours of preschool a week, about $6,300 a year. Providers are subject to what the state calls “equal-opportunity requirements,” including enrollment without regard to religious affiliation, gender identity or sexual orientation. Two Catholic parishes, two parents, and the Denver archdiocese argue they’re being denied funds “solely on account of their religious exercise.”

Colorado’s argument that

it doesn’t target religion explicitly. Its program has included “more than forty faith-based providers,” and schools “may continue to teach and shape their curricula according to their faith.”

Nonsense. It doesn’t matter that the State is applying its demand for religious State-defined neutrality to all belief systems: it’s applying that demand and denying each of those systems, Catholicism in the present case, their right to select their students based on adherence to their religious strictures.

It’s time the Court reinforced the lesson with several sharp raps on the State judges’ knuckles with a ruler.

Foolish

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And contradictory. The Trump administration wants Europe to go back to buying Russian natural gas, only do it through the pipelines running through Ukraine (and relying on Russia to deposit the proceeds in an escrow account run by a third party pending the end of it war on Ukraine). The thinking, such is it might be, is that by doing so, Ukraine and Russia can be persuaded to stop attacking each other’s energy infrastructure, which would, supposedly, also lead to a reduction in global energy prices.

There are at least two things wrong with this foolishness.

One is that the move would put more money into Russian coffers with which to pursue its barbaric invasion and potential conquering of Ukraine.

Another is that Ukraine needs to heavily damage, if not destroy, Russia’s ability to produce the fuels its invading hordes need to move weapons, ammunition, fuel, food, soldiers, etc. from their origins through staging points to the front so that the barbarians don’t have the wherewithal with which to continue their assault, or even to hold on to what they’ve occupied.

Astute readers likely can come up with more avenues of the foolishness of this ploy.

This is an idea (I use that term loosely) that needs to die promptly.

I Have a Question

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In his article centered on the right-next-door-to-a coup d’etat playing out in Poland and by extension in Europe, the news writer likened both situations to the 11th century Investiture Controversy, a kerfuffle over who got to appoint Bishops in the Catholic Church, the Pope as head of the Church, or the Holy Roman Empire’s Emperor, as the guy with the armies. In the modern case, instead of letting the Poles deal with its internal dispute without external molestation, the EU has chosen to butt in and demand that the Polish supreme court, however populated, comport itself with EU law.

The analogy isn’t exact, but it’s extremely close. With the EU’s active interference, the argument is over

who has the authority to judge laws and constitutions in member states.

The Investiture Controversy, played out, left Europe in very weakened straits, with the Turks baying at their eastern marches and the Saracens hounding up from the south. Today, with the EU demanding unquestioned authority over the sovereign member states, the continent will be left just as weakened and divided with barbarian Russia howling at the continent’s eastern ramparts and a freshening flood of illegal aliens pouring up from the south.

Which brings me to my question, an old one, but still current: how many divisions does the European Union have?

Go Vote

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I said this a bit ago, and it bears repeating. It’s important that all of you—each of us—go vote regardless of which candidates or party you favor.

It’s not only our individual civic duty. Keep in mind that not voting at all leaves a vote for the other side unanswered.

Go vote.