You may not be following Virginia’s legislative elections, which will occur on November 5. But left-wing billionaires across the country are. They are spending millions to help progressives take control of the Virginia legislature. Heaps of money are flowing into Virginia political campaigns, giving Democrats a big edge. (RELATED: Election forecast: For first time in U.S. history, progressive Democrats likely to control a legislature in the South)
As John Massoud notes, a left-wing hedge fund manager and his wife have given $3 million to Democratic candidates. This is to elect a legislature that imposes California-style alternative-energy rules. Such rules enrich investors in alternative-energy schemes by requiring utilities (and their customers) to pay for them. Massoud notes that such schemes are not “able to power a modern day economy. If allowed to have their way, we will soon be having the same blackouts that California is having.” PBS reports that 1.5 million people lost power in the latest round of California blackouts.
A group called Beyond Carbon is funded by an out-of-state liberal billionaire. It is spending $335,000 this week alone on TV ads to defeat a single Republican member of the House of Delegates, Delegate Chris Stolle of Virginia Beach. On first glance, Stolle may seem like an odd choice as a target, given that Stolle backed legislation to mitigate the effects of climate change, and is a relatively moderate legislator.
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But Beyond Carbon wants Stolle’s progressive challenger to win so the legislature will impose alternative-energy mandates similar to California’s. Such mandates could increase the price of electricity a lot — electricity is much more expensive in California than Virginia.
California-style mandates reduce the reliability of a state’s power supply. Due to widespread blackouts in California, many people there are currently without power.
The Wall Street Journal says alternative-energy mandates harmed citizens who use electricity, by contributing to the recent blackouts in California that left many without power for long periods of time. As a result of such mandates, California’s biggest electric company was forced to spend money on alternative energy that should have been spent instead on grid maintenance, safety, and fire prevention.
Trying to achieve alternative-energy goals can come with a substantial cost. The Virginia “Green New Deal” backed by progressives could easily double Virginians’ electric bills. In Germany, an ambitious alternative-energy program has doubled citizens’ electric bills, yet greenhouse gas emissions still rose in three of the last four years.
Progressives are favored to take control of both houses of the state legislature, in next week’s election, especially the state senate. But many races are very close. It will likely be the first time in history that progressives control a southern legislature, boasts Arlington Delegate Patrick Hope.
In Virginia, the legislature is very powerful. It even selects the state’s judges.
A progressive takeover of the legislature is likely to lead to major tax increases. That is both because of the size of the new state spending they support, and because their labor policies will shrink the size of the state’s economy, eliminating at least 100,000 jobs. That will result in a large shortfall in revenue. (A detailed explanation is at this link).
