Author: James A. Bacon
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Gas Shortages: Deja Vu All Over Again
by Kerry Dougherty It’s like old times. 1979 to be exact. Just 3 1/2 months into the Biden administration and we’ve gone from energy independence to gas lines. What’s next, 18% percent mortgages? Or will Joe borrow Jimmy Carter’s old cardigan and urge us all to turn down the thermostats? Yep, everywhere I went yesterday…
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Combating the Great Awokening
by James A. Bacon Outside of the People’s Republic of Charlottesville, Northern Virginia is the most lopsidedly Democratic region of Virginia. It is also the most woke, and it is pushing the so-called “equity” agenda in schools more aggressively than anywhere else in the state. But the educrats have over-reached, pushing too far, too fast,…
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GOP Is Dead Serious About Retaking Governor’s Mansion
by Kerry Dougherty Wow. They’re serious. The Republicans really want to win in November and they set aside their predictable losing behavior to do it by nominating outsider multi-millionaire Glenn Youngkin to be the next governor of Virginia. This gambit might not work, but in an unusual election year, it could. The Democrats and Gov.…
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Our Deranged Economic Policy
by James A. Bacon Back during the Great Depression, critics of President Roosevelt’s economic policies equated them with paying unemployed workers to dig holes and fill them back up. As loony as that sounds, it’s better than what government does today. At least the idea of paying people to dig holes honored the age-old connection…
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We’re Mothers, Not Birthing People
by Kerry Dougherty So much to talk about this Monday morning. So what’ll it be: The furious tabulation of ranked-voting ballots in the Republican nominating process? Elon Musk on Saturday Night Live? Fauci-the-Insane suggesting that seasonal masking might be the way to whip the flu in the future? Or the continuing bastardization of our language…
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VDOE Equity Director Improperly Used State Resources to Establish a Consulting Business
On Sept. 10, 2019, the Office of the State Inspector General (OSIG) received a hotline complaint. The complaint alleged that the Virginia Department of Education’s director of equity and community engagement, Leah Dozier-Walker, was “using state resources to establish a consulting company” performing “many of the same job functions” she performed for her job, according…
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The Ballad Merger V: the Pandemic
by Carol J. Bova The nursing shortage was a top issue for Ballad Health from the moment the health system was created in 2018 from a merger of Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health System. The new health system, which served far Southwest Virginia and neighboring parts of Tennessee, laid out a plan in…
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Has COVID-19 Killed the Urban Renaissance?
by James A. Bacon If you’re looking for a good Sunday read, consider an article by Tim Sablik, “Has the Pandemic Changed Cities Forever?“, in the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank’s Econ Focus. Sablik does a fine job of sketching out the big issues identified by the nation’s leading urbanologists as they ponder the impact of…
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The New Racism: Fairfax Schools Edition
I spoke from my heart to the @fcpsnews school board. Watch board chair Ricardy Anderson rage at me. Didn’t she get the memo that watching the clock is “white supremacy”? She reveals the board’s true anti-Asian animus. @ricardy4Mason, YOUR time has expired. #recallFCPS pic.twitter.com/YSbrVWtO8N — Asra Nomani (@AsraNomani) May 7, 2021 In impassioned remarks at…
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Ballad Merger IV: Has Quality Improved?
by Carol J. Bova As a condition of the merger between Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health System in 2018, the combined entity, Ballad Health System is required to periodically update Virginia regulators on health metrics for its far Southwest Virginia service territory. Those quality measures and actual performance must be accessible to the…
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From Talk-Talk to Spend-Spend
by James A. Bacon It looks like Fairfax County Public Schools are moving beyond talking about an “anti-racist” agenda and into the implementation stage — and they’re forking out the big bucks to develop “culturally sensitive leadership capacity” among senior executives, principals and staff. A contract with the NYC Leadership Academy provides for “culturally competent”…
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Could Southlake Happen in Virginia?
by James A. Bacon If you ever doubted that school board politics can be a potent electoral issue, look no farther than what happened a few days ago in the Dallas suburb of Southlake. Voters delivered a “resounding victory” — about 70% of the vote — to a slate of school board and City Council…
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Youngkin: Liberal Wolf or Reaganesque Happy Warrior?
Virginia Republicans embark today upon their bizarre, COVID-safe, convention-like proceedings to select candidates for statewide office. Bruce Majors, an active Republican, writes how he has experienced the run-up to this unorthodox event. — JAB by Bruce Majors Back in March, I listened to Virginia conservative talk radio from John Reid’s excellent morning show in Richmond…
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The Ballad Merger III: Reshuffling, Reconstruction and Repurposing
by Carol J. Bova When Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont Health System merged to create Ballad Health in 2018, the healthcare companies justified the consolidation with the argument that the ability to cut costs and rationalize delivery of health services would yield tangible benefits to patients in Southwest Virginia and Northeastern Tennessee. The previous…