Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Sunday, April 12.

*Obama: U.S. can ‘turn the page’ on history with Cuba (Obviously, most of us are not fans of the Cuban regime, but it’s long past time that we had diplomatic relations with Cuba, just as we do with many other countries we’re not big fans of.)

*Clinton campaign memo: No drama this time

*Barack Obama to John McCain: Back off John Kerry (Basically, John McCain says if you don’t agree with his super-hawkish views, then you are “delusional.” Uh, John? Look in the mirror!)

*Krugman: A Victory Against the Shadows (“There are two big lessons from GE’s announcement that it is planning to get out of the finance business. First, the much maligned Dodd-Frank financial reform is doing some real good. Second, Republicans have been talking nonsense on the subject.”)

*A New Phase in Anti-Obama Attacks (“If this insurrection is driven by something other than a blend of ideological extremism and personal animosity, it is not clear what that might be. But it is ugly, it deepens mistrust of government and it harms the office of the president, not just Mr. Obama.” Add in a dollop of racism to the noxious right-wing stew and you’ve got it!))

*Fight over law enforcement surveillance to highlight Wednesday’s veto session

*McAuliffe amendments on license plate readers, drones spark pushback

*Barrick: Faith community must respond to Mountain Valley pipeline (“The fossil fuel industry believes it has dominion over private property, and indeed the entire planet. Well, the industry is dead wrong.”)

*Fredericks: Virginia’s New Senator Stooge (“Outgoing Republican Sen. Ralph Smith has cynically rigged the system to brazenly ensure his hand-picked successor – tenderfoot legislative aide David Suetterlein – would have no formal GOP challenge for the nomination.” For once I agree with right winger John Fredericks…)

*Tight state funding hits local classrooms hard (“Money’s still tight for schools years after the Great Recession – and with state support for schools barely at pre-recession levels, despite a 9 percent rise in state government revenue since then, the bite is felt most deeply in classrooms.” So much for Republicans funding education adequately.)

*Former Sen. Jim Webb shares thoughts on veterans’ issues (Cool, how about Secretary of Veterans Affairs in the Clinton administration? :))

*HRT: Bus transit alternative to light rail would be costly

*Schapiro: Sweet Briar played by the rules – a half-century ago (“With the fight for Sweet Briar heading to court, the outcome could be guided by a legal dispute a half-century ago over the college’s whites-only rule.”)

*Fairfax jail inmate in Taser death was shackled (Absolutely outrageous, unacceptable, etc. Heads need to roll for this.)

*Tug-of-war for new Redskins stadium is complicated by name debate (“Virginia is pushing hard to land the next stadium, Maryland is playing catch-up, and D.C. is on the sidelines.” No more taxpayer-funded corporate welfare to billionaire Dan Snyder!)

*We want Virginia to stop spying

*Divided Fairfax County School Board Passes Salary Increase for 2016, to $32,000 from $20,000. (“Moon also cited the lower current salary as a deterrent for a wider spectrum of people deciding to run for a position on the School Board.” Agreed, that’s one of several strong reasons for paying public servants a reasonable salary.)

*Next generation of Metro train cars, built in Nebraska, to debut Tuesday

*Portsmouth councilmen: City attorney was pushed out

*More secrecy in conference center (“Since the Ikon building was hurriedly demolished in 2007, Norfolk has been racing to replace it with something shiny and new.”)

*Expect a Spectacular Sunday and pleasant weather for the work week

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Saturday, April 11. Also check out the weekly address, in which VP Biden describes “his and the President’s plan to make two years of community college free for responsible students.”

*Lauren Hill, gone at 19, but still an undying force (She was, and is, an inspiration…)

*RNC Releases “Stop Hillary” Ad Exclusively To Fox & Friends (Again, why do any Democrats go on this right-wing propaganda network?)

*What To Look For In Media Coverage Of Hillary Clinton

*Helicopter Video Captures Extreme Police Brutality In California

*Bloomberg News Falls for Fake Story About Nancy Reagan Endorsing Hillary Clinton (Soo….any “heads going to roll” at Bloomberg News, given the media’s high horse about the supposedly unique incompetence of Rolling Stone? Nope, didn’t think so.)

*Video Shows Rand Paul Walking Out Of Interview With Newspaper (Hothead. Nut. Wacko. Rand Paul 2016! LOL)

*NRA’s Clinton Derangement Syndrome: Hillary Clinton “Will Bring A Permanent Darkness Of Deceit And Despair” To America

*Kaine asserts Congress’s role in nuclear agreement with Iran (Yeah, I have a much dimmer view of Congress mucking around in foreign policy…)

*Kaine feeling optimistic Congress will get more done (Based on what? Congress hasn’t passed almost any significant legislation in five years or so…)

*Teens in Virginia, nation not using most effective birth control devices

*Dispute over bathroom in Virginia school district is a sad spectacle (“IT IS hard to say who has behaved most disgracefully in a Virginia school district’s dispute over which bathroom a transgender child should be allowed to use.” I vote for Susan Stimpson, absolutely disgusting demagoguery.)

*Aquaculture surges in the bay

*Va. Beach police investigating use of stun gun, pepper spray

*Will Loudoun Chairman Scott York and Sheriff Mike Chapman Make an Independent Team?

*Body found in Southampton County ID’d as AJ Hadsell

*Forecast: A breezy start to a mostly splendid stretch of spring weather

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Friday, April 10. Also, check out the NRA completely refuting its bull about “guns save lives.” Apparently, they themselves don’t really believe it.

*Krugman: Where Government Excels (“But true seriousness means looking at what works and what doesn’t. Privatized retirement schemes work very badly; Social Security works very well. And we should build on that success.”)

*Is Iran rational? (“There is no guarantee that its supreme leader will accept the trade-offs – as his recent tweets remind us – but the offer forces him to make a rational calculation and live with the consequences.”)

*Hillary Clinton expected to announce 2016 presidential campaign Sunday: source

*Feisty Bill Clinton takes on the NYT

*Robby Mook Just Took the Hardest Job in Politics: Saving the Clintons From Themselves

*“The GOP has scores of racists”: A former Bush official condemns modern Republican orthodoxy

*How Marco Rubio Abandoned Comprehensive Immigration Reform and Became a Typical GOPer

*The NRA’s open-carry clustermuck: How its annual convention highlights the hypocrisy of the pro-gun movement

*Rand Paul And The Nasty Campaign To Turn Pro-Choice Women Into Monsters (And this is the supposedly “libertarian” candidate in the Republican field? Hahahaha.)

*Media Should Remember: Rand Paul Has A Problem With Women’s Health, Not Just Female Journalists

*Tackling America’s Police Abuse Epidemic

*At Appomattox, Tim Kaine Calls for Unity

*Democrats Considering Female Comstock Challengers

*Draft state report: Oil train regs largely up to Feds

*Our view: Herring lowers the boom (“On Thursday, Herring filed what’s known as a ‘friend of the court’ brief in the suit that Amherst County’s county attorney had brought to stop the impending closure of the school.”)

*Courts miss the real problem with elections

*Sweet Briar closing the board’s decision, AG says

*Caddigan to Dumfries Mayor: I Don’t Trust You (Dumfries Mayor Jerry Foreman is the Republican who Scott Surovell is going to trounce this November. Go Scott!)

*Turning warm and potentially stormy today, but a beautiful weekend is ahead

This is great, courtesy of the Augusta County Alliance and the All Pain, No Gain Campaign. The video has a group of really cool middle school kids in the Staunton/Augusta County, Virginia area speaking out against Dominion’s proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The area these kids live in would be heavily impacted by the pipeline, and the kids were hearing a lot about it on the news. The topic also came up in their sixth-grade U.S. history class during a conversation about things going on in their community. They have attended pipeline-related events, and even spoke recently at the Augusta County Board of Supervisors’ public hearing about the impacts of the pipeline.

The kids decided that they wanted to learn more about the issue, so they contacted the Shomo family, whose century-old farm has about a mile of the proposed pipeline route running it. Three generations of the family (with a fourth already helping out!) currently operate the farm. These middle schoolers wanted to learn more about the pipeline’s impact on farms in Augusta County. Ultimately the kids wanted to get involved and took the initiative to perform a “rap” song about the pipeline. They also have some smart things to say, including that “this pipeline is a very bad idea….we need clean water to drink…if it does burst, then it will be a disaster…our drinking water could be contaminated…it’s something that needs to be reconsidered, because it doesn’t really benefit us at all.”

All true: this pipeline is a really bad idea, especially considering that alternatives already exist. First and foremost, that means energy efficiency, the cheapest form of energy by far (that you never have to produce in the first place). Second, it means solar power, both distributed and “utility scale,” both of which have seen their costs plummet in recent years, to the point that utility-scale solar in particular is competitive in many parts of the country with new fossil-fuel power plants. Finally, it means wind power, both onshore and offshore, which in Virginia is more than sufficient to power the entire state, particularly combined with energy efficiency and solar. Frankly, until ALL three of those things – energy efficiency, solar and wind – have been maxed out, there is no excuse whatsoever to be building new fossil fuel infrastructure. No matter what lame excuses we hear from Dominion Power and its bought-and-paid-for political pals.

While Republicans almost tanked ethics reform during the legislative session (see: blaming the media instead of taking the problem seriously), a watered-down version made its way to Governor McAuliffe's desk. In return, Governor McAuliffe has proposed real, common-sense amendments to the ethics bill, including a true $100 aggregate cap on gifts. And he's not going at it alone. There's widespread support for ethics reform in Virginia, from recent polling to opinion leaders across the Commonwealth.

• “Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) is on the right track in trying to correct its most egregious problems, and Virginians should pay close attention to what lawmakers do next.” – Washington Post editorial, March 30

• “Thanks to McAuliffe, the anemic ethics reform measure – passed after some politicians blamed the press corps for making them do it – is being fitted with dentures to give it some teeth.” Virginian-Pilot Op-Ed, March 29

• “When lawmakers return for their veto session April 15, they must decide whether to go along with McAuliffe’s modest suggestions or to further embarrass themselves by overriding his changes. This will be their third chance to get ethics reform right. Let’s hope they don’t strike out.” –Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial, March 31

• “Virginians should press lawmakers to have the courage to turn down gifts clearly designed to curry favor.” Virginian-Pilot editorial, April 1

Will Republicans in the General Assembly join McAuliffe and Virginians across the Commonwealth in making real progress on ethics reform, or protect their own interests once again?

Eliminating Electricity Imports at Same Time Would Double Job Gains

Mix of new temporary construction and permanent jobs would peak at 5,700 under basic scenario, but reach 12,600 jobs if investments also aim to keep utility spending in the state – a number nearly equal to employment in Virginia’s commercial construction sector.

[Richmond, VA, and Washington, D.C.] – A new report analyzing scenarios for Virginia’s compliance with the U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon emissions from the electric power sector shows that the Commonwealth could create thousands of permanent and temporary jobs by making investments to diversify its power sources with renewable energy, energy efficiency, and natural gas generating plants – and more than double the new jobs if the state pursued a long-sought goal of eliminating electricity imports from out of state.

The new report, Assessing Virginia’s Energy Future: Employment Impacts of Clean Power Plan Compliance Scenarios, was prepared by Meister Consultants Group for the Advanced Energy Economy Institute and the Virginia Advanced Energy Industries Coalition. The full report is available for download at http://info.aee.net/virginia-energy-future.

“This analysis shows the job creating value of putting advanced energy technologies to work in Virginia under the Clean Power Plan,” said Graham Richard, CEO of Advanced Energy Economy, a national business group, and the AEE Institute, its nonprofit educational affiliate. “Deploying these technologies in Virginia to also reduce imports creates even more jobs while keeping precious energy dollars in state supporting economic growth. This report should be a road map for Virginia’s energy future.” 

“We have an opportunity to significantly increase employment in Virginia while achieving a lower risk energy portfolio, greater grid resiliency, and satisfying the significant and growing demand for clean, advanced energy,” said Francis Hodsoll, Board President of Virginia Advanced Energy Industries Coalition, a business group representing a range of energy technologies.“Given these findings, political and business leaders in Virginia should demand that Virginia develop a prudent pro-growthimplementation strategy.”  

Under EPA’s draft Clean Power Plan, which is expected to become final this summer, Virginia would be required to reduce its carbon emissions rate from electricity generation from 1,438 pounds per megawatt-hour (lb/MWh) to 810 lb/MWh by 2030. EPA set that target based on the agency’s calculation of the state’s ability to take measures such as increasing the efficiency of existing coal-fired power plants, shifting generation to natural gas-fired plants with unused capacity, developing more renewable energy capacity (along with maintaining nuclear capacity), and increasing the efficiency of energy use.

In Assessing Virginia’s Energy Future, Meister Consultants Group analyzed two of the many scenarios under which Virginia could meet EPA’s 2030 emissions rate target, and found that both would result in significant employment gains for the state compared with a “business as usual” scenario. As net new jobs created between now and 2030 would be a mix of temporary construction jobs and permanent positions, the report follows the convention used by economists to express employment gains in “job-years,” with one job in existence for one year equal to one job-year.  Thus, a construction job that lasts for two years on a particular project would count as two job-years, while a permanent job created in 2021 and still in place in 2030 would count as nine job-years.

The Diversified Portfolio option, that achieves compliance by implementing changes already planned by utilities, most of the building block measures contemplated by EPA, some renewable energy, and greater energy efficiency, will result in more than 54,000 additional job-years by 2030. Net new jobs would peak in 2029, at 5,715 – a number approaching current employment in beverage and tobacco production in Virginia (6,800).

Job gains would more than double if the state chose to accomplish a frequently stated goal of keeping utility spending in the Virginia economy by eliminating electricity imports at the same time as it complied with the Clean Power Plan. Currently, Virginia gets a little less than 40 percent of its electricity from out of state. The state could reduce electricity imports to zero by 2030, as well as surpass EPA’s emissions target, with more renewable energy, energy efficiency, and natural gas resources.

Under the Import Reduction scenario, employment would get a boost of more than 120,000 job-years by 2030. Net new jobs under this scenario would peak in 2027, at 12,631 – nearly equal to existing jobs in commercial construction (14,000).

Job gains under both scenarios would be in addition to 7,964 job-years expected as a result of changes already planned by the state’s utilities (see Figure 1 attached). These include plans to retire or convert a substantial amount of coal-fired generation, implement some renewable energy and energy efficiency investments, and construct several high-efficiency natural gas combined cycle power plants. These changes reflect the changing economics of the electric power sector, and will also reduce Virginia’s emissions rate, helping the state reach its target under the CPP.

“After considering different compliance strategies, this report found that implementing the Clean Power Plan can lead to substantial direct job creation in Virginia,” said Wilson Rickerson, CEO of Meister Consultants Group, Inc., an independent international research firm. “These employment benefits will be greatly increased if the state adopts a compliance plan that aims to increase the state’s electricity independence.”

“Working with nearly 100 utilities across the nation and around the world, we have helped meet efficiency goals and lower costs to serve, while improving customer satisfaction,” said Richard Caperton, Director of National Policy & Partnerships atOpower, based in Arlington, Va. (NYSE: OPWR). “This report shows that innovative technology can help drive significant energy savings and create thousands of jobs for the state of Virginia.”