Month: November 2020
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COVID Accelerates the National Dumbing Down
by James A. Bacon Drawing upon testing of 5.3 million students in all 50 states this fall, the Renaissance testing service found that students in some grades had fallen 7 weeks behind expectations for reading and as many as 12 weeks behind for math.
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Bacon Bits: A Shout Out to Virginia’s Indy News Outlets
Here is a shout-out to three small publications that are covering important Virginia news stories while the commercial media continues to shrink into impotence, irrelevance, or in the case of the Washington Post, malevolence. — JAB Give credit where credit is due. The Virginia Mercury is a left-of-center publication, but it is hammering the Northam…
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Bad Student Loan Debt: $435 Billion and Counting
by James A. Bacon “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money,” Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen said many years ago. With the passage of time and inflation, we might need to update the quote to “a hundred billion here, a hundred billion there…” But even by the debased standards of…
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Thanksgiving Secrets
by Kerry Dougherty It’s a little like Mao’s Cultural Revolution, with cranberry sauce. I’m talking about Americans and their secret plans for Thanksgiving. Everywhere I go I bump into people whispering about where they’ll be and who they’ll be with this Thursday. Thanks to despotic governors and other meddling government officials, Thanksgiving shaming is a…
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Race, COVID and the Washington Post
by James A. Bacon Ever alert to signs of racism everywhere, the Washington Post published this morning a lengthy article about COVID-19 and race. “Racial, ethnic minorities reel from higher covid-19 death rates,” proclaims the headline. “A Post analysis shows that communities of color continue to die from the coronavirus at much higher rates than…
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Mark Herring’s Worst Thanksgiving – Conspiracy Against EVMS may lead to Federal Involvement
by James C. Sherlock Scandals are sometimes overrated. Not this one. I have reported here before on the strange case of the EVMS-ODU merger. I posted here on Nov 1, Nov 2 and Nov 3 with my own concerns on the subject. Many of my assessments came to fruition. On November 13 and 20, the Checks…
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Governor Northam: Do You Believe in Miracles?
by DJ Rippert Come out with your masks on, we’ve got you surrounded. COVID-19 new cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise in Virginia. However, the situation is not as dire in Virginia as elsewhere in the United States (see graphic above). At 229 new cases per million people Virginia is well below all neighboring jurisdictions.…
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Reopen Public Schools or Provide Education Choice
by Vicky Manning When I was elected to serve on the Virginia Beach School Board in 2016, I never imagined there would be a time when I would have to fight to keep our school doors open. However, that is what I have been doing for the last 6 months. The last day of in-person…
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Solar Mega-Project Proposed for Pulaski County
by James A. Bacon Developers of solar energy projects in Virginia often encounter resistance from rural communities where residents worry about the impact of vast solar farms on viewsheds, the tax base and the rural way of life. In Pulaski County, Hecate Energy LLC is dangling a new incentive to make its project palatable —…
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Public School Accountability Compromised Again
by James A. Bacon Having scrapped the Standards of Learning (SOL) exams for Virginia public school students during the COVID-19 spike last spring, the Virginia Department of Education plans to relax its standardized testing requirements again this spring. In addition, school divisions will be given “greater flexibility” in awarding students credits towards graduation. “The waivers…
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Stewart Gets Last-Minute Gift From Trump
Peter Galuszka Corey A. Stewart, a conservative firebrand from Prince William County, is getting a last-minute going-away present from President Donald Trump. As Trump’s administration comes to an end, Trump has created a position on trade at the U.S. Commerce Department that is just for him. In 2016, Stewart headed Trump’s Virginia election campaign before…
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TCI: Taxing the Poor to Benefit the Rich
By Steve Haner “I think TCI is just taxing poor people so that we can subsidize rich people’s electric cars.” So said New Jersey’s Maria Lopez-Nuñez, Deputy Director, Organizing and Advocacy for the Ironbound Community Corporation. She was speaking during an online seminar September 29 organized by Transportation and Climate Initiative advocates. That particular comment…
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AG Mark Herring Takes Aim at Gun Show
by Kerry Dougherty Mark Herring is so proud of himself that he took to Twitter yesterday to do a little preening. Virginia’s attorney general even put those silly flashing light icons at the top of his post so you’d know this was really big news. Yep, Herring’s chuffed because he successfully stopped Virginians from buying…
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Teacher Suspended for George Floyd Reference in Chemistry Question
by Hans Bader A high-school teacher in Arlington is under investigation and has been “relieved of classroom duties” after posting a chemistry question that referred to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. “George Floyd couldn’t breathe because a police officer put his _____ George’s neck,” the question read. The answer is “neon,” an…
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The Failure of University Governance
by James A. Bacon In his new book co-authored with Richard J. Cebula, “Runaway College Costs,” James V. Koch goes beyond the usual lamentations about how out-of-control costs are making colleges and universities increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible to millions of Americans. He describes how higher-ed governing boards have largely failed in their fiduciary duty to…