Author: James A. Bacon
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Where Is the Trump Donor Money Going?
The Virginia Public Access Project has done an interesting bit of data sleuthing. It identified 360 Trump donors who have given to Republicans battling for the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination through the end of March. Trump in Heels Amanda Chase is dominating in the number of contributions, but average size of most her donations is small.…
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Virginia Hospitals Rank High in Safety
Half of all Virginia acute-care hospitals scored a “safety rating” of A, the fourth highest percentage of the 50 states, according to the latest Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade rating. Leapfrog bases the rating on 27 performance measures, some developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and some from supplemental data sources. These…
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Virginia Voters Tilt Mildly Right — Why Can’t Conservatives Win More Elections?
by James A. Bacon Virginia voters describe themselves as ideologically moderate, leaning conservative, according to a new poll by the Wason Center for Civic Leadership at Christopher Newport University. Asked to place themselves on a 0-10 scale (liberal to conservative) with 5.0 being middle of the road, the 1,008 voters polled rated themselves 5.83 on…
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“Virginia Students Will Never Get This Year Back”
by James A. Bacon I have no inkling whether Former House Speaker Kirk Cox will win the Republican gubernatorial nomination, but I do think he just latched on to a good issue and framed it just the right way. The headline of a press release issued today says, “Virginia Students Will Never Get This Year…
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Only You Can Prevent Mega Fires
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s environmentalists seem determined to out-California California when it comes to fighting global warming and pushing for a zero-carbon economy. But they do seem unlikely to repeat the colossal error that has made the Golden State a cauldron of forest fire infernos. Rather than let understory vegetation grow out of control,…
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Michael Saylor: Prophet or Charlatan?
by James A. Bacon Great cover story in Virginia Business magazine this month: MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor’s $2 billion gamble on bitcoin. I’m glad to see this story. First, it represents a return to the kind of business journalism Virginia Business did when I was editor and publisher many eons ago, when we wrote about…
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An Achievable Dream Is an Asset to Henrico County
by Aubrey L. Layne Jr. My first experience with An Achievable Dream Academy is one that I never will forget. I remember shaking hands with Newport News elementary school children and seeing the excitement in their eyes. Every encounter since further solidifies my belief in the value of this program for our community, and for…
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Union Bosses Bullied the CDC to Keep Schools Closed
by Kerry Dougherty Anyone remember when Donald Trump was pummeled for putting pressure on the CDC over COVID? Wonder what those critics are saying now that we learn union bosses from the American Federation of Teachers essentially wrote public policy for the agency that kept children locked out of schools last winter. It’s an astonishing,…
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Ball of Confusion
by James A. Bacon Virginians are still suffering from massive confusion about what the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is proposing for its controversial Virginia Mathematics Pathways Initiative. The befuddlement arises from the use of various words that are seeming synonyms but have precise, different meanings when used by educators. Two columns appearing in my…
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Maskless in Mississippi
by Kerry Dougherty There’s so much news we could discuss today. But it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’m here to be a little ray of Monday morning sunshine. I want to assure you that a lifetime of living as a free American can’t be wiped out by 14 months of living under the thumb…
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Chase Aide Pulls Gun in Self Defense
by James A. Bacon Sometimes Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, goes out looking for trouble. Sometimes trouble comes looking for Amanda Chase. Yesterday the Washington Post published an account of an incident in which Chase’s aide brandished an AR-15 pistol at a man whom Chase said threatened them during a road rage incident. My immediate reaction…
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VPM and the ACLU Descend into Madness
by James A. Bacon Only one Richmond news outlet, Virginia Public Media, has written about the controversy engendered by the hateful online language of Taylor Maloney, president of the Virginia Commonwealth University student government. No surprise, the angle of the VPM report was not how Taylor tweeted, “i hate white people so much its not…
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VMPI Would Eliminate Tracked Courses
by James A. Bacon Yes, Virginia, it looks like the Virginia Mathematics Pathway Initiative (VMPI) does seek to do away with “tracked” courses in which quicker and slower learners attend separate classes geared to their abilities. Gifted students would be given “extension topics” that would allow them to explore concepts that would not otherwise be…