Author: James A. Bacon
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A Victory for Transparency
The Richmonder wins FOIA lawsuit against School Board over redacted documents. From The Richmonder: The Richmond School Board improperly redacted documents related to an investigation into alleged misconduct by a school division employee, a Richmond Circuit Court judge ruled Wednesday. The documents are related to the departure earlier this year of Ronald “Bobby” Hathaway, the…
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Debunking Data Center Myths
by Jeff Reynolds You’ve heard the stories. Data centers are loud, water-guzzling monsters chewing up rural landscapes. They promise jobs but deliver none. They’ll suck the grid dry, jack up everyone’s electric bill, overload the power grid, and leave abandoned warehouses when the AI bubble bursts. Opponents paint them as the latest corporate scam, with…
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Let’s Be Honest: Virginia’s Budget Is Racist
by Kerry Dougherty Are black tourists having trouble coming to Virginia? How about “indigenous” visitors? Hispanics? I only ask because buried on page 122 of the hastily assembled 600-page budget Democrats finally finished on Friday – 100 days late – is this intriguing item: “$1,500,000 the first year and $1,500,000 the second year out of…
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Virginia’s Return to RGGI: Another Ratepayer Rip-Off in the Making
Governor Spanberger just made every Virginian’s household more expensive. by Jeff Reynolds Virginia has jumped back into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and residential ratepayers will feel the pain—again. The last time the state was in the program, under the last Democratic governor, it cost Virginians more than $600 million over three years. Every…
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Virginia Democrats Inject Race into Tourism
by Virginia Grace McKinnon The Virginia House of Delegates just released its final draft of the 2026 budget. Buried in a civil war on data centers, lifting marijuana restrictions, and giving themselves a 150% pay raise, Democrats are also seeking to spend millions on DEI tourism. Virginia legislators are busy working out the 2026 budget. After months of…
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Amazon Data Centers Now Use Less Water
Plus, in Virginia they spawn tax cuts for homeowners. by Hans Bader Amazon’s data centers are using water more efficiently than in the past. A company report shows that “Amazon’s data centers used just 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt-hour of compute in 2025, about one-seventh of the industry average and less than half of Amazon’s rate…
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Spanberger’s Slow Start
by Rich Tucker Imagine for a moment that you’re at a Donald Trump rally. As you approach the event, you come across a Republican protester wearing an anti-Trump mask and carrying a “No more wars” sign. Perhaps the person is also accusing the president of being too cozy with corporations. Does that sound unlikely? Well, outside a…
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If We Ban the AR-15, Perhaps We Should Restrict Hands and Feet As Well
by Ken Stiles “We have finally reached a place where we have a critical mass of legislators who are willing to vote for bills that save lives – not that you hope will save lives, but bills that are written based on data and evidence, and empirically we know they save lives,” So said Governor…
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DEI by Any Other Name Is Just as Noxious
Did UVA eliminate DEI or merely rebrand it? by the Jefferson Council For over a decade, successive UVA administrations spent millions of dollars building one of the most extensive Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies in American higher education. A 2021 survey ranked UVA second among major universities in the number of DEI employees, and…
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Don’t Let Data Centers Force a Virginia Government Shutdown
by David J. Toscano [FLASH: Rumors are now circulating that House and Senate negotiators may be close to a budget deal. That is good news, but it still must pass both bodies and be signed by the governor by June 30] Want a good example of the “tail wagging the dog?” Look no further that…
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On the Table: Deleting Christmas as a Student Holiday in Fairfax Schools
Students in Fairfax County are in the classroom five days a week for less than half the school year. Instead of eliminating the administrative throwaway days that have created this problem, district leaders asked families whether they could eliminate Christmas and other holidays instead. by Stephanie Lundquist-AroraRepublished with permission from IWFeatures This year, fewer than…
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DPU Billing Mess: You Can’t Thrive Without Crossing the “T”
by Jon Baliles The city’s Department of Public Utilities had perhaps their worst week since the January 2025 water crisis this past week (the May boil water advisory is close) and, like the big crisis, it may last a while and require an after action report to figure out just what happened to keep it…