Bacon's Rebellion

  • Perhaps the Governor Can Lead Campaign Finance Reform

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Perhaps the Governor Can Lead Campaign Finance Reform

    by James C. Sherlock

    Organizing for Virginia Seniors, a pop-up PAC formed by New Jersey nursing home chain owners with uniformly awful facilities in Virginia, gave Gov. Spanberger $100,000 with a check written to her “Inaugural Committee” the day before the General Assembly met.  

    This author wrote about that donation in January and asked that she return it because of its source. Good luck with that.

    It appears that Virginians are inoculated against outrage at corruption among our state politicians. The politicians are, in turn, inoculated against caring what we think. They believe that campaign finance reform is for losers. Losers don’t get to have Inaugural Committees.

    November 4 was election day. Spanberger Inaugural Committee 2026 was established on November 5.  

    Once everyone knew who had won, the biggest donors to the Inaugural Committee were a different group from the biggest donors to Spanberger for Governor. The newcomers clearly felt the need to back a winner and correctly figured there was a list somewhere that they needed to be on.

    (more…)

  • Fairfax Schools’ Pricey Legal Advice Disguised as ‘Independent Investigation’

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora

    Foggy view of the Fairfax County Public Schools Administration Center with flags in front.
    Fairfax County Public Schools main office. Image credit: Grok

    Earlier this year, 13 girls attending Fairfax High School told school administrators that Israel Flores Ortiz, a 19-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador attending the school as a junior, groped their genitals in the hallway as they were transitioning between classes.

    In April, Ortiz was sentenced to 360 days in jail for multiple counts of assault and battery. 

    Following Ortiz’s arrest and the U.S. Department of Education’s announcement of a Title IX investigation into the district, Fairfax County Public Schools leaders hired McGuireWoods to conduct a comprehensive review of this matter. As the district signed a contract with the law firm agreeing to pay lawyers up to $1,850 per hour, Superintendent Michelle Reid—who earns $445,353 this year—told the public that the district retained “an independent outside law firm to conduct a comprehensive review of this matter.”  

    The district’s contract with McGuireWoods, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, suggests that the investigation is not “independent” nor for the purposes of public accountability.

    (more…)

  • Spanberger Administration Wants Your Energy Input

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    The Spanberger Administration is preparing to draft the state energy policy required by law and has created a public survey form to seek your individual or corporate input. You will find the survey form here. It is five pages, with not a lot of depth, but there are plenty of open panels to provide comments on the many issues not directly mentioned, such as the Virginia Clean Economy Act and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative carbon tax.

    The news release on the process is here. The text below is from that release:

    Because energy touches every part of state government, the 2026 VEP is being developed in coordination with secretariats across the administration:

    (more…)

  • A White Elephant, Perhaps. But Not the Ratepayers’ White Elephant.

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Actually, ratepayers are not at risk for Charybdis — Dominion shareholders are. The ship was funded by Blue Ocean Energy Marine, a non-regulated utility. Dominion investors have every reason to question the business decision to build the vessel. Ratepayers should focus on the offshore wind farms Dominion is building and wants to build. Ratepayers will be on the hook for those. – JAB

  • DSA Fighting “Fascism” in the Bluest City in Virginia

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Translations for the uninitiated: DSA – Democratic Socialists of America.

    Read Stu Smith’s deep dive on DSA radicalism.

  • The Cultural Purge Continues

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    We can be grateful, I suppose, that this action won’t melt down the statues and recast them into disfigured artifacts for anti-colonialist museum exhibits.

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Quote by Isabel Paterson on the extent of arbitrary power in education and parental rights.

    View more memes at The Bull Elephant.

  • Why NextEra Wants to Buy Dominion, What it Gets

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    Scott Hempling

    Dominion Energy Virginia and NextEra Energy are expected to file the necessary Virginia application for the sale of Dominion to the Florida company soon, probably in early July. Under present Virginia law, the State Corporation Commission will have six months to say yea or nay.

    Readers should first understand this is an acquisition more than a merger. Dominion is being sold to the larger entity. It is a voluntary sale, assuming Dominion’s stockholders approve it.  

    Last week the legislative Energy Commission of Virginia got a briefing on the proposal from Dominion President Ed Bain, who basically stuck to data slides and talking points already on the record. Then it heard from a veteran lawyer and economist with deep experience in this kind of proposal. If you have any real interest in what his coming, read these notes he shared. They are less than a dozen pages in bullet format, easy to follow. (Links to the company sales pitch were included in this earlier post.)

    Scott Hempling is an attorney and economist now teaching at Georgetown University after a long career in the power generation industry. He served for a while as an administrative law judge for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and has been an expert witness or consultant on a host of previous merger or acquisition debates.

    The six-month statutory deadline for a decision by the SCC is also causing quite a bit of angst in many circles. That would have the case be decided before the General Assembly is back for the 2027 session, assuming Dominion files in early July. To its credit, the SCC is not waiting for the application and is already hitting the companies with questions. 

    (more…)

  • Widespread Inaccuracies of Records on Autism Treatment Providers

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Widespread Inaccuracies of Records on Autism Treatment Providers

    By James C. Sherlock

    The author has completed a detailed survey of individual Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) providers in New Jersey licensed by Virginia Medicaid to provide services to children with autism.  He picked New Jersey for reasons familiar to readers of his work on nursing home chains. The survey revealed that most of those providers live in Lakewood and surrounding Ocean County.

    In this case, record-keeping, the fundamental building block of government business, and oversight have failed to meet even this skeptic’s low expectations.  

    The overall implication of the survey is that licensing out-of-state providers located far from Virginia’s borders to deliver ABA services in Virginia may not be worth the risk.  The other major failing shown by the full survey is that, while neither government tracks nor oversees ABA companies, they must do so.  While individual providers make errors in submissions, companies that employ them have been proven to be the primary source of fraud.

    The implications of the full survey will be discussed in two parts: records and out-of-state providers.  This is about the effects of record inaccuracy.

    (more…)

  • Memphis Pork with Attitude

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A vibrant neon sign featuring a cartoon pig wearing sunglasses, with the text 'PIG' on top and 'PORK WITH AN ATTITUDE!' below, set against a brick building background.
    As seen on Beale Street
    A plate of crispy cooked bacon strips placed on a black countertop.
    Bacon served in giant stacks at a wedding party. But that’s nothing. You should see the breakfast buffets!

    I spent the last weekend attending wedding celebrations in Memphis, Tenn. The city sells itself as the birthplace of the blues, an honorific to which it has a justifiable claim. The biggest tourist attractions are Graceland (Elvis’ abode), Beale Street (where BB King and other blues musicians played in nightclubs), the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel (where Martin Luther King was assassinated), and the duck march at the Peabody Hotel.

    Memphis has another attribute for which it could be famous if it played its cards right: bacon.

    Memphians are proud of their pork barbecue, which is excellent but not unparalleled. By contrast, the bacon is the crispiest and most delicious I’ve tasted anywhere. Trust me, I play close attention. Moreover, the rashers are served in bountiful quantities unseen anywhere else on the planet.

    I’ve seen Graceland, the Lorraine Hotel and the duck march. Been there, done that. But I’d go back any time for the bacon. — JAB

  • The Budget “Talks” Are Heating UP

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    As reported by the Virginia Political Newsletter, Sen. Lucas and Gov. Spanberger have been engaging in public responses to the House budget conference proposal and to each other. Neither is backing down, although Lucas seems to have dropped her demand that the sales tax exemption for data center equipment be repealed.  Instead, she is now calling for “tiered state impact fees on data centers,” that are estimated to generate $1.7 billion in revenue.  In a social media post, she outlines what she would like to do with that money.

    Spanberger responded, saying, in essence, that it was a welcome development to finally get some details from Lucas.  But, she went on to say, “There is no budget language associated with that tweet, and when there is, I’ll certainly do a more thorough review of it, but we cannot govern just by tweets.”

    The full texts of the exchanges can be found here.

  • House Takes Initiative in Budget Battle

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Del. Luke Torian (D-Prince William), Chair, House Appropriations Committee

    The House of Delegates Appropriations Committee has taken the offensive in the budget impasse in the General Assembly. 

    The committee has released its version of a budget conference bill.  Based on the new revenue forecasts, the committee has proposed significant appropriation increases for education, social services, and other priorities of the legislature.  The proposal includes funding for numerous Senate initiatives that that body had included in its earlier budget amendments.

    Missing from this proposal is the repeal of the sales tax exemption for data centers that the Senate has been insisting on.  However, there is a provision requiring the establishment of a Virginia Commission on Data Center Accountability, comprised of legislators, members of the Executive Branch, and gubernatorial appointees.  The role of the commission would be to develop  “a comprehensive strategy for the future of data center development in the Commonwealth.”

    Governor Spanberger has endorsed the House version.

    (more…)

  • Virginia Data Centers Pay $1 Billion+ in Taxes…

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    even with tax breaks

  • A Q&A on the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit

    Posted on

    by

    Todd Truitt

    by Josh Cowen

    Publisher’s Note by Todd Truitt

    Image Credit: Created by Grok

    As Virginians await Governor Abigail Spanberger’s decision regarding continued participation in the new federal scholarship tax credit program—originally opted into by former Governor Glenn Youngkin in early 2026—Josh Cowen’s Q&A below offers an overview of how the program functions. Cowen, a longtime critic of traditional private school vouchers, notes that this federal initiative does not draw funds from local public education budgets or state resources. Instead, it operates through federal tax credits for donations to scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs), which can direct resources toward tutoring, afterschool programs, enrichment activities, and other supports for public school families and districts.

    This federal program connects to the issues discussed in our earlier reporting on the interplay with it and Virginia’s Education Improvement Scholarships Tax Credits (EISTC) program, which is scheduled to sunset after 2027. The federal approach provides an option for supporting families up to 300% of local median income without using state funds directly.

    Also relevant to Virginia communities is that Cowen emphasizes that local school districts and communities can begin preparing now by exploring partnerships with existing 501(c)(3) organizations—such as district foundations or community foundations—to serve as SGOs. He outlines potential models for offering enhanced services like fee-based afterschool programming, tutoring, or enrichment activities that eligible public school families could access via scholarships. These steps could allow public districts to generate additional revenue streams.

    Josh Cowen: Public school families and public school districts can benefit from a new national program, and it’s important to explain how.

    (more…)

  • Rebating Spanberger’s RGGI Tax Won’t Erase RGGI’s Cost Impact

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) owns this RGGI mess 100%.

    Virginia’s return to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) will produce such an explosion of new tax revenue and will cause such major increases in consumer electricity costs, a political feeding frenzy is beginning to erupt over the money. 

    A legislative study panel heavily controlled by Democrats who voted for Virginia’s return to RGGI decided earlier this week to consider finding a way to rebate the money back to energy consumers. This came after Dominion Energy Virginia, the company most vulnerable to RGGI, asked to raise electricity prices by more than 7 percent to recover RGGI expenses.   

    The same Democrats and their leader Governor Abigail Spanberger assured voters that returning to RGGI would not increase electricity costs and would instead lower them. The only way to meet that false promise now is to give all the money back.  

    To really make a dent in the rising electricity costs, the legislature must rebate to homeowners more money than the RGGI taxes will add to residential bills. People will only come out even or ahead if the state also takes the RGGI revenues from commercial and industrial users and transfers those dollars to residential users, too.   

    That is because the money the utilities pay for carbon allowances, the carbon tax, is only one way that being in RGGI raises Virginia electric bills. Being in RGGI also drives down the operating tempo of Virginia generation using coal or natural gas, causing the state to import more power from other states in the PJM Interconnection market which are not in RGGI. Ratepayers are covering the capital costs of plants which are idle more often than without RGGI. 

    (more…)

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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