Nuclear Politics, Marijuana Amendments, and Predatory Towing

IN THE NEWS:

High Times: When session ended their session last month, the General Assembly sent the governor a bill to crack down on the kind of products with THC available at smoke shops and gas stations. One of the Governor's recent amendments seems aimed at making sure CBD products were not excluded in the process.

Radioactive Politics: With all the talk of renewable energy in recent years, the General Assembly is now considering a clean source of energy that is not renewable: nuclear energy. While small modular reactors are still in the research phase, they could represent a promising energy future as long as nuclear waste is accounted for.

Towing the Line: Governor Youngkin is signing a bill that will help people whose cars have been towed. Currently some operators prohibit people from having access to the stuff that's in the car without paying a fee--things like laptops, car seats, and even life-saving medicine. That new bill will go into effect on July 1.

At the Watercooler:

- Former Governor Terry McAuliffe is endorsing Destiny Bolling for the House District 80 seat recently vacated by Lamont Bagby.
- Some interesting races for Commonwealth's Attorney in Fairfax and Loudoun, as incumbents in both counties are facing primary challengers.

Trivia: In which foreign country did Transition Virginia first chart?

Episode Transcript

Michael Pope: I'm Michael Pope.

Thomas Bowman: I'm Tom Bowman.

Michael Pope: And this is Pod Virginia, a podcast that's facing a really big deadline this week.

Thomas Bowman: Thursday, April 6th, at the deadline for candidates to file. So they're on the ballot for the June 20th primary, and that's only 11 weeks away.

Michael Pope: Woo. 11 weeks away from the primary, so gosh, 2023 is really hitting us very fast. And this week, we're really gonna have a sense of all the races in 2023, who's gonna be on the ballot, at least for the primary. And this doesn't apply to convention people who get their nomination at a convention, of course, but people who have primaries will have a sense of who's running and also who's not running. Thomas, are we expecting more resignations, do you think?

Thomas Bowman: I would not be surprised to see more resignations or retirement. But I'm not aware of any further discussions along those lines. Put it that way.

Michael Pope: Okay, let's get to the news.

When they ended their general assembly session last month, lawmakers sent the governor a bill to crack down on the kind of products with T H C, often available at smoke shops and gas stations. JM Pedini at Virginia Normal says one of the governor's amendments seemed to be aimed at making sure C B D products were not excluded in the process.

JM Pedini: While these proposed amendments would remove synthetic marijuana-like products from store shelves, they would not completely remove products that contain THC in amounts that might be intoxicating to the consumer.

Thomas Bowman: Jason Amatucci at the Virginia Hemp Coalition says the governor's amendments make what he considers a horrible bill. A little better, but not much.

Jason Amatucci: Everybody needs to understand, like, what the politicians are actually doing here, not to let them spin it to act, oh, we did something. Yeah, you sure did something. You actually killed the hemp industry. And you killed jobs in Virginia, and you killed small businesses. You killed minority-owned businesses and women who owned businesses.

Michael Pope: So yeah, this bill's not really making anybody happy. So Amatucci is looking at this industry and saying his members are really threatened by this. If you think about this, the products that are available on store shelves right now, the products that the governor and many Republicans wanna crack down on, it's; basically, You can get high taking this stuff, right? And so they want to reduce the amount of those products that are, that are available. The bill, the lawmaker said the governor was very restrictive, but it would, would've taken most of the products off of the shelves. The governor amended it in a way that would allow some of them to remain by creating a ratio like a CBD to THC ratio. So that's an interesting development from the governor. The other really big thing is something Thomas that you'll remember when we talked about the bittering agent. So the original bill had this requirement that hand lotion had to have a bittering agent so people didn't drink the hand lotion to get high. Of course, there is no evidence that would have ever happened, and it would've really complicated life for especially the big business retailers, big box retailers like Target and Walmart, and stuff like that. The governor and his people must have been listening to Pod Virginia because they took out that part about the bittering agent.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah. As a matter of fact, here's a clip we had from Dylan Bishop when he was on the podcast just a few weeks ago.

Dylan Bishop: Now, this is a product that's not intended for human consumption. There's no indication that it possesses any intoxicating level of whatever Delta THC you're talking about. So yes, even your hand lotions that you can find at Walmart or Target.

Virginia may very well find itself out of those distribution chains because those products wouldn't meet these standards.

Thomas Bowman: So Michael, the bidding agent, got amended. So what does this look like now?

Michael Pope: Now it's, it, of course, back in the hands of lawmakers, and they are gonna consider it when they come back into town for their veto session. They're gonna consider these amendments from the governor. Most of them are pretty technical. The bittering agent thing. It was controversial, so you know, the governor has taken it out. I'm sure there are lots of businesses and business interests. We were very happy with the governor's amendment on the Bittering agent. There's also a carve-out on legal liability for wholesalers. A bunch of other stuff. The real big thing here is the ratio. That is the real big development. So yeah, the lawmakers will be taking a look at that. CBD to THC ratio, which sounds like alphabet soup, but it's actually really important if you sell these products.

Thomas Bowman: But where does that ratio idea come from, Michael? The governor's office, so there's not an existing industry standard. Is this just something that the governor just made up?

Michael Pope: It could be an industry standard. I'm not exactly sure where the governor's people got ahold of this idea. I don't know.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah, that'd be really interesting. One thing that happens in Virginia politics a lot is industry lobbyists workshop these bills, these policies. Craft a lot of the language and take it to the governor, and that includes not just the bills that get drafted in the legislature but also some of these governors' amendments themselves.

And It would be really interesting to see this idea chain here, to figure out where this standard came from. And also, it'd be really interesting to hear from the industry what they think about these amendments.

Michael Pope: I talked to Jason Mucci. So the, in, in terms of the interests that might benefit from this, the original standard was a milligram per package, so it was, by weight. And so, changing it from weight to percentages of CBD and THC will allow more products to legally be on the shelves. So there was definitely a business interest in moving from the weight-based milligram way of looking at this to the ratio part of this.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah. But the important question that's not answered is whose products.

Michael Pope: I'm sure we'll get to that. Let's move on to our next story.

Recent years have seen a lot of discussion about renewable sources of energy, especially wind power and solar power. But now members of the General Assembly are considering a clean source of energy that is not renewable, nuclear energy. Harry Godfrey at Advanced Energy United says the latest research into advanced nuclear power has a focus on something. Small nuclear reactors or SMRs.

Harry Godfrey: The idea is to make the core nuclear reactor smaller. It generates less electricity, but it can be manufactured in a factory, and then it's portable. Let's be clear, though; this technology is still very much in the research and development phase. It's not commercially viable yet.

Michael Pope: Not commercially viable, and maybe even potentially radioactive.

Tim Cywinski: What's the plan to do with waste? Nuclear waste? What is the plan?

Michael Pope: What is the plan?

Tim Cywinski: There isn't one.

Michael Pope: that's Tim Cywinski, who worries about communities that might get stuck with nuclear waste.

Tim Cywinski: We know where those end up going. Poor communities, black and brown communities in particular, they're already overburdened with pollution. And we know that the way the energy system's been developed beforehand, that things like nuclear waste and over-polluting projects, they're the ones who have suffered the greatest.

Michael Pope: So Thomas Tim Cywinski at the Sierra Club is really concerned about these minority communities possibly being stuck with the nuclear waste. So the rods, once they are out of the nuclear reactor, they are radioactive. In the past, you've had to bury them or ship them outta state or maybe even ship them out of the country, and they end up in communities that get stuck with these things. But isn't it possible that the technology here might be changing this a little?

Thomas Bowman: We obviously agree. Everybody agrees with that. Any waste with nuclear material shouldn't be stored in poor communities or communities of color. And by the way, the United States government also agrees, and the Department of Energy specifically controls what happens with that nuclear waste. And there are, there are mountains in Colorado and Utah that these things get buried under sometimes in New Mexico. And they are already preexisting nuclear waste storage facilities, any waste that comes from this material and process. Go into those facilities. But what is currently happening is when let's say, the Lake Anna reactor, for example, is ready to replace a fuel rod, and it's got some waste that is not being harnessed. This is still. Viable as a fuel source, but not in the function it was originally designed. So what these SMRs do is actually create a layer so they can be fabricated and fueled in a factory. They're sealed, transported to those sites for power, generation, or heat, and then returned to the factory for refueling at the end of their life cycle. And those life cycles depend on the. Specific design. And there are globally over 50 designs for SMRs around the world. And there are some actually already in operation in some countries, specifically Russia. And the approach to constructing these things and refueling them in a closed process helps to minimize the transportation and handling of that nuclear material. And Respectfully say to our friends at the Sierra Club that they're putting the cart before the horse. There are absolutely valid concerns related to SMRs, and I think a big one is that these kinds of promising new technologies are often used as an excuse to slow down technologies like renewable energy that are further along in development. And. I'm certainly suspicious of what the American Petroleum Institute or organization like Oil is trying to do to push some of these things. But I would say, relating to Dominion's efforts here to SMRs, Dominion is already a plurality nuclear power generator company anyway, so they have a lot of advanced experience with nuclear energy as it is, so they're a pretty natural as far as all of the utility companies around the country go. They're a pretty natural evolution for that company and the process specifically, and there are, of course, open questions as to factory designs and what those would actually look like. And people are concerned about the price tag for specifically creating this infrastructure, which, to be clear, is very expensive to start and does need to get built out. But one of the advantages here is; once that SMR, the Small Modular Reactor, needs to be de-fueled. You can take that and put it into a smaller modular reactor and keep going and working your way down and down until it's in something, powering your watch or powering your phone. And that's theoretically possible. I'm not saying that technology exists at this moment, but what it does is it keeps those nuclear fuel rods. Out of those waste sites for a lot longer.

Michael Pope: Yeah. The way you describe that, I'm, in my mind, I'm thinking about those Russian nesting dolls. Like when you open one up, and there's a smaller nesting doll, and you open it up, and so like you could put this, the fuel rod in continually smaller units until it's no longer radioactive. That seems like a promising technology to look at, but that's, it is futurism at this point, right?

Thomas Bowman: Actually, no, cause, so to be clear, My knowledge on this is an item of personal interest, not professional interest for me, an item of personal interest for me specifically. And that's not entirely the concern in this case. One big limitation of renewable energies is always physics. So math often gets in the way. For example, I think I wanna say it's one megawatt of power takes one square meter or something like that, which is the equivalent of one horsepower. It takes something like one square meter of sunlight, for example, to get one horsepower and one megawatt; is it even a megawatt of energy? And so what, when you look at what you need to do with solar in order to replace major components of the grid, an electric generation, you actually need a lot of land, and a lot of you just need a lot of square footage in real estate in order to have the same electric generation effect as one of these small modular reactors. Because another advantage to them, Michael, is you can cite them on brownfield construction sites. So imagine you're looking at an abandoned mall, and you've got not just the mall structure but all of that space with the parking lot in it. That's actually perfect. Site for one of these SMRs, and it's gonna be in that community already, and it can power that local community. How far about 300 megawatts gets you really determined or is determined by some of that density. So that power, that the power you generate will go a lot further in, like a less dense rural area like Bristol, for example. I think that's where they're talking about building it. Then it would necessarily be in Northern Virginia. And so a lot of the criticism about this specific item with SMRs where it's 30 billion for one SMR. I think the more valid criticism there is that it's not big enough at scale, like $30 billion for one SMR. Why? When the advantage is that you are gonna be the physics, the intention of the physics behind this is you're gonna be putting these everywhere, and it's a semi-decentralized microgrid.

Michael Pope: Setting the science aside here and talking about the politics for a second. You raised actually an interesting point, which is the discussion of whether nuclear energy could be used to delay the movement of wind power and solar power. The governor is on record as supporting this idea. Virginia is a hub for nuclear energy; he would be in a difficult spot if he were trying to embrace wind powers. Like I, I don't get a sense that his political supporters would like these wind turbines. He would be in a very difficult spot if he wanted to support solar power. I don't think his supporters would like all the panels that would be needed in Southwest Virginia. So from the governor's perspective, nuclear is probably good politics, and it might even have. A somewhat cynical influence here of delaying movement toward wind and solar, right?

Thomas Bowman: That is certainly one possible take, and that depends on how much you trust the governor to be an honest broker of the energy transition. So it's certainly valid to be skeptical if you look. His supporters were financial. You can just look up VPAP, and you're seeing big ticket donations for Glenn Youngkin in the campaign from American Petroleum Institute. Oil companies, Coal companies specifically, and actually Dominion Energy lined up with Terry McCauliffe. So what this one way to look at that whole, or one way to analyze that exchange, was that renewable energy versus dirty climate, fossil fuel, energy, and unfortunately fossil fuel, dirty API money, and energy won in the 2020 election. That is who gets to drive this narrative for the next two years.

Michael Pope: Let's move on to our next story.

Towing the line. Governor Glenn Youngkin is signing a bill that will help people whose cars have been towed now currently. Some operators prohibit people from having access to the stuff that's in their car without paying a fee. Jay Speer, the Virginia Poverty Law Center, says he often hears from people in this situation.

Jay Speer: Unless you pay the fee, which is usually around 150 to $200, you can't get your stuff outta the car. And you, what happens is sometimes people don't have the fee right away, but they need the stuff that's in the car.

Thomas Bowman: Stuff like car seats, medicine, cell phones, and laptops. Erin Witte is the Director of Consumer Protection for the Consumer Federation of America.

Erin Witte: There are also many situations where a tow truck operator will take your car when they shouldn't have. They may not have had a legal justification to do it. So the consumers are in a really tough spot when they then find out that their car was towed.

Sometimes by having to call the police because they think that it is. And then they go to the tow truck lot. The tow company tells them, you have to pay us before we even let you access your own vehicle.

Thomas Bowman: Now that the bill's been signed, that's gonna become a new law on July One.

Michael Pope: Governor Glenn Youngkin is signing a bill here that will help people like undoubtedly help people who find themselves in this position. People don't plan to have their cars towed. Usually, it happens, and it's unexpected, so a lot of people store stuff in their cars, and you might have your laptop in there, or I think the original impetus of this bill actually was a constituent who had an EpiPen and the car and did not have access to the EpiPen without paying this ridiculous fee to the person. This tow truck operator may or may not have legally towed the car, right? People can really find themselves in horrible situations being hit up for money by predatory towing operators. And this bill, this new law, cuts down on that.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah. And Michael, look, I know I can be one of Glenn Youngkin's consistently vociferous critics here, so I want to give him credit where credit is due, and I'm very glad and thankful that he signed this bill into law. And this is a great example of a bipartisan initiative just to do the right thing for people.

Michael Pope: One coda to this, a bill that the governor did not sign and the General Assembly did not pass, was an Alfonso Lopez bill that would give individuals a right, a cause of action, to sue. Currently, that's the Attorney General's job. But then, then you have to be dependent on the attorney general to bring some sort of lawsuit for damages. Alfonso Lopez says the individual should be able to sue these predatory tow truck drivers for damages which right now they don't have the legal authority to do; that's probably something that future General Assemblies should be looking at.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah, I agree. And that's gonna be a theme for reforms generally, is to create more private causes of action. And I actually had to deal with this back when I was a staffer on a separate wage bill creating a private cause of action for wage theft. And one of the things that we learned is that, of course, lawyers love private rights of action cuz that's how they can eat. So you generally have trial lawyers very supportive of anything that involves a private right of action but weirdly, not weirdly when you understand the details, but what might be strange to some. Listeners, that the court systems and the clerks and those entities can often, if not publicly, privately, line up against bills that create private rights of action because their dockets are so stretched already they don't have full funding for courts. And so when you create new private causes of action, You just add to court delays, and nobody is happy because they do not have their cases heard and resolved necessarily in a timely manner when you just add more things for them to have to do. And that's obviously a values question versus practical. Problems question. And so, in order to create more private causes of action, you actually end up needing to backfill and fully fund all the courts and maybe even create new funding streams for these courts.

Michael Pope: Thomas, I don't know about you, but I'm gonna need a minute before we move on.

Thomas Bowman: All right. Let's take a quick break cuz when we come back; we're gonna head over to the water cooler. We're gonna check our mail, and of course, we're gonna play some trivia.

Alfonso Lopez: Hi, this is Delegate Lopez. You are listening to Pod Virginia with Tom Bowman and Michael Pope, the best podcast about Virginia politics in the history of mankind and podcasts. And we're back on Pod Virginia, and it's time to play a round of trivia. So last week we asked.

What was the former Vice President? This is the Vice President of the United States, who was the former Vice President who was indicted and charged with treason.

Thomas Bowman: Tried for treason?!?? Wow, this is crazy and timely. So who was it, Michael?

Michael Pope: It's actually a very crazy story.

The answer is Aaron Burr.

This is very early in the history of the United States. Former Vice President Aaron Burr went out west, and he tried to basically create a rival government to the United States. That, and the purpose of creating a rival government, was to. Eventually dominates, what had formerly been the United States of America. Thomas Jefferson, President Thomas Jefferson personally indicted the former vice president. So Thomas Jefferson said, we don't need a grand jury. I'm not gonna impanel a grand jury. I don't even think I, as President of the United States, I, Thomas Jefferson, have the authority to indict Aaron Burr. So I'm going to do that. A power grabs for Jefferson. I think people actually associate Jefferson with being a small government guy. This is not a small government. Thomas Jefferson. This is Thomas Jefferson seeking revenge on Aaron Burr.

Thomas Bowman: Jefferson has a reputation for being a practitioner of do What I say and not what I do.

Michael Pope: Yeah, it's also worth noting. This trial, the trial of Aaron Burr, happened in Richmond. This is the trial of the century for the early 18 hundreds. And this is a thoroughly Virginia story. That was the Virginia trial of Aaron Burr. That's fascinating. And perhaps we could devote an episode to the trial for treason here. The former vice president was indicted for treason.

Thomas Bowman:  And Michael, we've got another winner. So, Jackie Gary posted on Twitter that this was her first time playing Pod Virginia trivia and correctly identified Aaron Burr as the Vice President, arrested and charged with treason.

Michael Pope: So congratulations, Jackie Gary, but she was not alone. Jay Spear at the Virginia Poverty Law Center also correctly identified Aaron Burr as the VP who was charged with treason. He didn't post it on social media, but he told me when I called him up to talk about the tow truck drivers.

Thomas Bowman: Ah, we'll allow it, but you don't get credit as the winner.

Michael Pope: Yeah, you have to put it on social media to win the game. However, I'm not really sure what they win, other than the shout-out.

Thomas Bowman: Yeah. And this would've also been fun to do. Wrong answers only Michael; also, Aaron Burr, of course, is not the only time that a political figure has been arrested. In fact, we've even had a president get arrested before.

Michael Pope: Yeah. We didn't put that as a trivia question, but when Ulysses Grant was president of the United States, so this was shortly after the Civil War. He was arrested for speeding in a horse and buggy. Washington at the time, this particular part of Washington, DC, had a problem with speeding horses, people driving their horses and buggies way too fast, dangerously fast. And there was, there came a time when a woman and her child had been run over by one of these speeding horses and buggies. And so the policemen were like out on the streets looking for speeders. So here comes President Grant speeding down the street with this horse and buggy. And so the officer, the Washington DC police officer, initially gives a warning to the president of the United States, Hey buddy, slow down; we've had problems in this neighborhood, so you don't wanna drive so fast. Then the next day, here comes President Grant speeding again. So this Washington DC police officer arrests the president of the United States of America and charges him with speeding.

Thomas Bowman: So clearly, that should have solved any jurisdictional questions ahead of the big news from last week, which is, of course, that Donald Trump got indicted. We'll just go ahead and acknowledge it and move on cuz this is Pod Virginia.

Michael Pope: All right, so our trivia question for next week has to do with an early episode of this podcast, which used to be called Transition Virginia. In one of those early episodes, we were celebrating that the demographics our data that we receive, were receiving about our podcast showed that we were charting. In a country, a foreign country. And so we celebrated that by playing the anthem of the country and welcoming our new listeners from that country. So this is our trivia question for next week. We were celebrating in the early episode of this podcast where we were charting as having listeners in this country. What was that foreign?

Thomas Bowman: I love a good self-referential trivia question, Michael. Hopefully, some of you are gonna be diving into our past episodes.

Michael Pope: Yeah, and I would be willing to bet that we've got some longtime listeners that actually remember that and might have even had a chuckle about it when we did it all those many years ago. Alright, let's head over to the water cooler.

Thomas, what's the latest you hear around the water? Michael, it's the Return of the Mac.

Thomas Bowman: Former Terry

Michael Pope: I wish we could play the song.

Thomas Bowman: I know. Darn you. Copyright laws. So former governor Terry McCullough's making a big endorsement in the House District 80 Race vacated by Lamont Bagby. T MAC endorsed Destiny Bowling, who is the current communications director for the Virginia AFL-CIO. And there's also another candidate who has run before, a guy named John Dansler.

Michael Pope: For these new freshmen here who are gonna show up basically after all the action has taken place. So like you, you're filling the unexpired term for Lamont Bagby, and you don't actually take office until

not only after the general assembly session but after the veto session. So they're really only going to be around for any special session that might happen. And, of course, constituent services are needed. So the downside is you're an elected official that doesn't really get to do anything. The upside is That you're gonna be way ahead of the next freshman class in terms of seniority. So there's a huge benefit, actually, in terms of seniority to being elected right before this giant class that's gonna be coming around next year.

Thomas Bowman: Michael, you framed it as a drawback, but I don't know. What I heard was a feature and not a flaw. Getting to be an elected official and not have to do anything. That sounds wonderful. All right, what about you, Michael? What do you hear around the water cooler?

Michael Pope: Also election-related. There, I'm interested in looking at some races for Commonwealth's attorneys.

So we are, of course, on this podcast really focused on the general assembly elections, but there are all kinds of other elections happening this year, including, For your local prosecutors to be elected, and there are two really controversial ones in Fairfax County and Loudoun County where we've got, these are progressive prosecutors for justice. In Fairfax, we've got Steve Descanno, and then in Loudoun, we've got Buddha Bidrat, and they are lightning rods for controversy. They attract a lot of supporters and also a lot of detractors, so they both have primary challengers. Ed Nuttall is challenging. Steve Descano and Elizabeth Lancaster are challenging Buddha Bibraji. So I think we're definitely gonna see some politics involving elected prosecutors in this election cycle. That will definitely be worth taking a look at.

Thomas Bowman: It'll be interesting, too, to see. Terry McAuliffe comes and defends those Commonwealth Attorneys in that race because they're there. Cuz he endorsed them in the first place. Because of who the incumbents were. Some of the only Democrats to sign on to the letter opposing, or I think it might have even been an amicus brief, but I don't wanna say that for sure cause I can't really recall opposing the automatic restoration of rights that Terry was doing and so that person. Theo Stamos in Arlington was one of them. Patty Tafti is there now, and Michael Fry, I believe, in Fairfax. Of course, Steve Diano is there now. And the Commonwealth Attorney being Buta. And Loudon, excuse me, the Loudon Commonwealth attorney being Buta. So I'm curious to know what's gonna happen cuz there are Democrats who are not necessarily happy with them, and there are lawyers from prosecutor and defense, not entirely thrilled with the way that they're running their offices, and I can't really speak to whether or not those criticisms are valid. I don't really know that area of politics, Michael.

Michael Pope: Yeah, that area of politics is a dusty corner that doesn't have a lot of sunlight on it because a lot of people don't even realize that we elect prosecutors, right? These particular prosecutors have just attracted so much attention, positive and negative, lots of. Don't like these particular prosecutors. And we've heard lots of anti-Semitic rhetoric around Soros-funded prosecutors. I think that's not gonna be part of the primary, of course, but I think in this campaign cycle, we're probably going to hear a lot of that for prosecutors that are on the ballot this year; I guess we'll have to watch.

Thomas, go ahead and open up that Pod Virginia Mailbag. What are our listeners talking about?

Thomas Bowman: I love this segment, Michael. So Sam Shirazi commented on our recent podcast with Marcus Schmidt of Cardinal News, saying that Delegate Matt Ferris might have a hard time getting the nomination in a convention rather than a primary.

Michael Pope: Yeah. As it turns out, Matt Ferris doesn't have to worry about a convention or a primary because he has withdrawn from the race, giving the Republican nomination to Eric Zher, who has it to himself unless somebody else. Enters the race this week. So we also heard from Holly Seabold, who loved our episode with Jess Brown to the competitive Commonwealth Fund, saying the episode featured three of her favorite people. One of those people is Jess Brown to the competitive Commonwealth Fund. Thomas, I guess the other two people she's talking about there, she's talking about you and me.

Thomas Bowman: That's great. Also, we're gonna file that one in the compliments drawer too. I guess it's getting more crowded in there. I'm gonna need to switch to a bigger drawer, Michael. Yeah. All right. Jordan Miles thanked us for talking about the dysfunction at his local registrar's office, where everybody quit and left the place. Empty. So he also did update us that the Department of Elections has sent in reinforcement, so I guess they're also listening to Pod Virginia. Michael.

Michael Pope: I was about to say, yeah, like earlier, we were talking about the governors. People heard our discussion about the bittering agent and made that amendment to the marijuana law. Now we've got potential Pod Virginia listeners hearing this. This problem in Buckingham County and having the Department of Elections sent in reinforcement. Hopefully, they'll get their issues straightened out there in Buckingham County. Alright, we also had some feedback from the episode we did about the history of the right-to-work law. S L F N at Salvan said this quote, right to work is fancy corporate speak for having the right to fire you and leave you destitute on the street whenever they feel like it's convenient to save a.

Thomas Bowman: That's right. It was also when it was invented in the 1940s, was invented as a way to keep white workers and black workers from having to work together in the same factories and on the same job sites.

Michael Pope: Four more on the creation of Virginia's Right to Work law. You can check out a book called, The Bryd Machine in Virginia, available online and wherever fine books are sold.

Thomas Bowman: We should also link the old previous episode we did with Lee Carter and Jason Parker of the Virginia Building Trades on whether or not Democrats should be repealing the right to work. And this was, of course, several years ago, I think back when Democrats still had the majority.

Michael Pope: Yeah, we did that episode in 2020. In fact, I think we posted it on social media, and that comment that we just read from S L F N was a reaction to the Twitter post about that old 2020.

Thomas Bowman: So, Michael, what are we celebrating this week?

Michael Pope: We got some birthdays on the calendar. Wednesday, April 5th. This is the birthday of Senator Dave Marsden of Fairfax County. Thursday, April 6th, is the birthday of Delegate Joe McNamara of Roanoke. And Saturday, April 8th is the birthday of house clerk Paulo. So Happy birthday, all.

Thomas Bowman: And Michael, it's also worth pointing out that Thursday, April 6th is the filing deadline for candidates to be on the ballot for the June primary quick status update. Jess Brown of CF, the competitive Commonwealth Fund, who was talking about it on our show, mentioned that they're going to pay the filing fees for any Democrats who want to run in a seat that doesn't currently have a candidate.

Michael Pope: They'll pick up the filing fee. Wow. So if you are listening to this podcast and you are on the fence about whether or not you want to run for office, Jess Brown of the competitive Commonwealth Fund is offering to write a check.

Thomas Bowman: Just to get you on the ballot. And Michael, those can be really expensive filing fees. I think there's at least one county democratic committee that wanted to charge $1,500 just to get somebody on the.

Michael Pope: Democracy ain't cheap.

Thomas Bowman: No. Okay, look, that's it for this week's episode of Pod Virginia cuz we could just keep going and going. So check out our website, and follow us on social media for more. We'll see you next time on Pod Virginia. Pod Virginia