Flood of progressive legislation may transform Virginia, adding dozens of taxes, releasing dangerous criminals, altering voting

“Democrats now control the legislature and Governor’s office in Virginia. Here are just a few of the bills they’ve introduced,” notes Greg Price:

– New 4.3% sales tax on Uber Eats, Amazon, etc deliveries.

– New sales tax on admissions to a wide variety of businesses.

– Create two new higher tax brackets of 8% and 10% on people making over $600K.

– A new 10% tax bracket for anyone making over $1M. – 3.8% investment tax on top of state income taxes.

– Raise the hotel tax.

– New personal property tax on landscaping equipment.

– Ban gas powered leaf blowers.

– Guarantee illegal aliens free education.

– Make it illegal to approach somebody at an abortion clinic.

– Extend the time absentee ballots can be received after election day to three days

– Allow people to cast their votes electronically through the internet.

– Expand ranked-choice voting.

– Extend the deadline for ballot curing to one week after election day.

– Redact the addresses of political candidates from FOIAs.

– Add Virginia to the National Popular Vote Compact for presidential electors.

– Make it illegal to hand count ballots.

– $500 sales tax on firearm suppressors .

– “Assault weapons” and large capacity magazine ban.

– 11% sales tax on all firearms and ammunition.

– Prohibit outdoor shooting of a firearm on land less than 5 acres.

– Lower the criminal penalties for robbery.

– Ban the arrest of illegal aliens in courthouses.

– Remove mandatory minimum sentences.

– Allow localities to install speed cameras.

– Replace Columbus Day with “Indigenous Peoples Day.”

Also, progressive legislators want to retroactively provide parole for criminals whose lawyers forgot (or chose not) to request a Fishback instruction (which has nothing to do with an inmate’s guilt, innocence, or culpability). Democratic legislators want to retroactively provide parole for criminals who committed their murder or other major crime before age 21. Democratic legislators want to force the parole board to release inmates by compelling the parole board to ignore “the nature of the offense” or factors outside the offender’s “demonstrated ability to control,” even if they show the offender is dangerous.

Democratic legislators also want to give local governments the ability to impose cumbersome rent controls on housing, rather than just allowing people to build more affordable rental housing, which state law fails to do (even though most of the public wants that). Loosening zoning creates more affordable housing, but rent control results in less apartment buildings being built, and rental housing becoming scarcer for people who need it.

Rent control killed multifamily housing construction in Maryland’s most populous county. Getting rid of rent control greatly expanded the amount of rental housing in Argentina, without raising rents (one of the many reasons that occurred is that people were more willing to rent out rooms in their house if they didn’t have to worry about being prevented by rent control from raising rents in the future to cover rising costs, such as the need to renovate or pay rising utility bills). Indeed, average rents actually fell in real terms in Argentina after the end of rent control. Around 93% of economists say rent control is bad, because it reduces the quantity and quality of housing.