Bacon's Rebellion

  • Same Old Ship of Fools

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    James A. Bacon

    Image credit: ChatGPT

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Iโ€™ve been asked a number of times why I rarely write about local matters anymore. Particularly, why I donโ€™t write much about Virginia Beach. After all, as a newspaper columnist I made my bones by skewering the corrupt and indescribably stupid โ€œdancing bearsโ€ on the city council.

    Iโ€™ve got to admit it was fun. They provided endless material.

    Why stop now?

    Hereโ€™s why: itโ€™s fruitless. Iโ€™m tired of it. Iโ€™ve thrown in the proverbial towel.

    The faces on the local government change, their party affiliations change,ย  but their feckless policies remain the same.

    This council, like the ones that went before, is a rudderless ship of fools. It matters not the political make-up of the members, they follow the same tax-and-waste path of their predecessors. They shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for worthless โ€œstudiesโ€ that simply confirm that spending more money will have marvelous results. Frequently a developer waves a shiny object in front of them, the obedient city staff canoodles with the developer before informing the politicians that the project is magnificent and will โ€œpay for itself.โ€ย 

    Next thing you know, the mindless members vote YES!

    Taxes go up, the project flames out and they blame miserly taxpayers for forcing them to cut corners on the cockamamie scheme. If only theyโ€™d sent more money, it would have been a smashing success.

    Continue reading.

     

  • Hey, Virginia Beach, Acknowledge THIS! — the Deep Dive Podcast

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    James A. Bacon

    Image credit: ChatGPT

    Lila Maverick and Jaxon Wilder, Bacon’s Rebellion’s AI-generated avatars courtesy of Google Notebook, conduct an amazing conversation based on my previous post, “Hey, Virginia Beach, Acknowledge THIS.” I hate to admit it, but their chat is better than the column it’s based on. All I can say is, Lila and Jaxon, please, please don’t take over my job! — JAB

  • Hey, Virginia Beach, Acknowledge THIS!

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    James A. Bacon

    This plaque, commissioned in 1901, commemorates the coordinated Indian attacks on March 22, 1622, that wiped out a third of the English settlers in Virginia. The bearded settler at center, sword in hand, motions to other Virginia colonists to flee. A woman attends to another settler lying injured on the ground. Image credit: Encyclopedia Virginia.

    by James A. Bacon

    The City of Virginia Beach is crafting a statement to “acknowledge” the Native Americans who lived there before the English settlers. Last week a draft presented to City Council proclaimed: “We, the City of Virginia Beach, acknowledge that the present-day land on which this city exists is situated on lands that have been inhabited by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial.โ€ So reports WHRO.

    You’d think City Council would have better things to worry about, like fixing public schools, making housing affordable, coping with rising sea levels, or making sure taxpayers aren’t ripped off by madcap development schemes. But, no, in modern-day America, such practical matters are of far less interest to educated elites than symbolic issues that will have no discernible impact on anyone’s life.

    So, here I go, rising to the bait, engaging in a symbolic issue of no use to anyone…

    The land acknowledgement plays into the grand narrative that “white settler colonists” displaced the local inhabitants. The implication is that the English presence in these lands was coercive and illegitimate, and by implication that the institutions erected by those who followed are tainted.

    The Native American population in Virginia in 1607 is estimated to have been around 50,000. Of those, 15,000 in the Tidewater region belonged to Algonquian tribes led by Chief Powhatan in what is called the Powhatan Confederation. The logical question is, who occupied the land before the Powhatan Confederation?

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  • Will Virginia Universities Stand up for Virginia History? Er… No.

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    James A. Bacon

    by Don Smith

    Image credit: ChatGPT

    Does America have state universities? Or does it have publicly funded universities that just happen to be located in a particular state? Theyโ€™re not the same thing.

    Regular Baconโ€™s Rebellion readers know that I have more than a passing interest in Confederate history and heritage. (Insert rolling-eyes emoji here). In January of 2023, Iโ€™d just read the report of the Naming Commission. The commission chose to opine on the overall worth of Confederate heritage within the Department of Defense, now and in the future. Americaโ€™s military is possibly its most respected institution. If the federal government takes actions or renders opinions that indicate that a certain segment of American society no longer warrants respect from our military, that echoes far beyond the confines of military bases and federal facilities. 

    The Naming Commissionโ€™s judgments on Confederate heritage, and the sweep and totality of their recommendations, are scathing and contemptuous toward former Confederates, their descendants and their communities. For example, its final report said that

    …during the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century, the South and much of the nation came to live under a mistaken understanding of the Civil War known as the โ€œLost Cause.โ€ As part of the โ€œLost Cause,โ€ across the nation, champions of that memory built monuments to Confederate leaders and to the Confederacy, including on many Department of Defense assets. In every instance and every aspect, these names and memorials have far more to do with the culture under which they were named than they have with any historical acts actually committed by their namesakes. [Emphasis added.]

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  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    James A. Bacon

  • NOVA School Districts Attack English Learner Civil Rights

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    James A. Bacon

    Photo credit: Grok

    by Todd Truitt

    The eight large Northern Virginia school board chairs have released a joint letter asking for a โ€œdelay of at least one yearโ€ on the new accountability system until a new governor is in office, claiming that a three-year development and implementation period is โ€œrushedโ€ (i.e., they may need five years or more). In fact, this development and implementation period is longer than for the last accountability system, which was implemented in less than nine months.

    The joint letter touts how these districts contain approximately 60% of the stateโ€™s English Learners, but then proceeds to attack 22+ year-old federal English Learner civil rights protections, describing such protections as โ€œunrealistic runways for English Language Learners (3 semesters for Mastery rather than the current Demonstration of Growth)โ€.ย 

    Notably, their resistance to such English Learner civil rights also puts these school systems in opposition to:

    1. Three major national civil rights groups, including two major Latino civil rights organizations, who provided a formal comment in July 2024 supporting Virginiaโ€™s accountability system change to include English Learners consistent with the 2015 U.S. Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
    2. Both major national teachers unions and 40+ national civil rights organizations who all reconfirmed their support this year for the inclusion of English Learners consistent with ESSA in accountability systems.

    As I previously detailed, the 22+ year-old federal civil rights protections include English Learners in school accountability systems after three semesters (vs. after 11 semesters in Virginiaโ€™s old state system). Last week, I also detailed how any further โ€œdelayโ€ of the new systemโ€™s implementation would prioritize the sensitivity to greater transparency of adults who run certain Virginia public school systems over the civil rights of Virginia communities, families and students.

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  • Release the Report, President Ryan

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Christopher Darnell Jones, Jr., has plead guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated malicious wounding, and five counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony in connection with the mass shooting at the University of Virginia two years ago.

    Now UVA officials should release the Attorney General’s report on the university actions leading up to the shooting, which resulted in the deaths of three UVA football players.

    That’s what UVA leadership promised. Now it’s time to make good on that promise.

    Initially, UVA officialdom declared that it would release the report to the public shortly after receiving it on Oct. 30, 2023. UVA Spokesperson Brian Coy was quoted by media as saying โ€œThe University will share the report publicly, with a goal of doing so by early November.โ€

    But President Jim Ryan and Rector Robert Hardie sang a different tune after having had time to digest the findings.

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  • RGGI is Back. Prepare to Pay.

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    The states that belong to RGGI? Or the states that voted for Kamala Harris? Works both ways.

    Grapevines sequester carbon dioxide, so Virginiaโ€™s climate alarmism activists are pulling corks without guilt today, after learning that a Virginia circuit court judge will order Virginia to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

    During the three years Virginia was part of the multi-state cap and tax compact, Virginia collected $827 million from electric power producers seeking permits to emit CO2.ย The largest of the payers in the state, Dominion Energy Virginia, simply passed its cost along to consumers dollar for dollar right on monthly bills.ย 

    The final order from the judge has not been produced, so the details of any relief he will order are not settled. But on Monday Floyd County Judge C. Randall Lowe circulated a letter stating he agreed with RGGIโ€™s boosters that only the Virginia General Assembly could pull the state out of the compact, based on his reading of 2020 legislation.

    It was the position of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin and Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares that the statute was permissive but not mandatory.ย Both issued brief statements today disagreeing with the judgeโ€™s order and promising to pursue an appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia. Presumably they will also ask the upper court to stay the order, but that motion could be denied.

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  • More “Food Insecurity” Blather

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    James A. Bacon

    Photo credit: Virginia Roadmap to End Hunger, 2024 Update

    by James A. Bacon

    We learn today courtesy of Radio IQ that Virginia’s Commission to End Hunger, which began meeting this year, has identified measures for legislators to consider in the 2025 General Assembly session. The one tangible initiative mentioned in the article was doing something to address food insecurity on college campuses.

    โ€œThere are a lot of college students going under the radar, who are food insecure, canโ€™t access food and are probably embarrassed to say so,โ€ Del. Rae Cousins, D-Richmond, told Radio IQ.

    Apparently, we’ll learn more about food insecurity in the Commonwealth when the Commission releases results of a survey, which is expected any time now. I’m not holding my breath in the expectation that we’ll learn anything useful.

    It is hardly original to observe that Americans’ problem with food is that they have too much of it, not too little. Obesity is a major social issue; malnutrition is not. Frankly, I’m struggling to understand the nature of the problem. Consider the multibillion-dollar programs we already have:

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  • End Federal Control of Our Schools

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    James A. Bacon

    by Derrick Max

    While the U.S. Department of Education is only a small fraction of total education spending โ€“ accounting for less than 10 percent of education spending in the United States (9 percent in Virginia) โ€“ it has a huge impact on how states and localities spend their own money on schools, on how teachers are educated and certified, and on the curriculum used in classrooms. Through regulation, accreditation, grant language, testing, and the force of law, the U.S. Department of Education literally steers how most education funds are spent in this country.ย 

    The Department of Educationโ€™s one size fits all, Washington-centered approach reduces efficiency, penalizes innovation, limits the ability of schools to respond to changes in student needs, pushes progressive cultural beliefs, and generally funds bloat and bureaucracy over teachers and classrooms.ย 

    While working for the Oversight and Investigationโ€™s Subcommittee of the Education and the Workforce Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, I was part of a team of Congressional staff that worked on Chairman Pete Hoekstraโ€™s โ€œEducation at a Crossroadsโ€ report (cited generously in the much-maligned Project 2025 education chapter by my friend, Dr. Lindsey Burke).ย Notably, our report found that only 65 to 70 cents of every dollar sent to local schools ever made it to the classroom.ย ย 

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  • Standing Up for T.J. … at UVA

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    James A. Bacon

    Want to learn about the whole Thomas Jefferson, not the slave-holding-rapist Jefferson taught at UVA? Go to Colonial Williamsburg and meet Jefferson reenactor Kurt Smith, urges Sidney Sebold, undergraduate winner of this year’s UVA Student Oratory Competition.

    Memorable quote: “My professors and fellow students taught me to hate founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson. ‘He was a good writer, but we must reject him and his ideals from this university as a misogynistic slave owner,’ my first-year English writing professor told my class on a required historical tour. Any attempts I witnessed to put Jefferson on a pedestal garnered social media hate, social exclusion, and hard-to-shake labels like bigot and white supremacist.”

    Many thanks to Think Again @ UVA and the Karsh Institute for hosting the event in partnership with Heterodox Academy at UVA and others. View The Jefferson Council’s full tweet here. — JAB

  • Something Smells at the UVA Medical Center

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    A half-dozen vendors have put the University of Virginia Health System on credit hold, interrupting supplies of important medical supplies and equipment, alleges a group calling itself the Concerned UVA Health Physicians & UVA School of Medicine Faculty.

    The vendors include Boston Scientific, a supplier of catheterization and electrophysiology supplies, which in June 2024 was owed $2 million with $700,000 overdue, states the group in a public letter published on the TheTruthAboutUVAHealth.com website.

    Also, Phillips, a supplier of intracardiac echocardiography supplies and lead extraction supplies, has placed at least two credit holds on UVA Health. The most recent was November 2024 with over $400,000 not paid, according to the doctors’ group.

    Meanwhile, Parrhesiastes, an allied website, says it knows of three “life-threatening incidents” in the past two months when dangerous situations unfolded after “suspicious odors” disrupted surgeries in Operating Rooms 25 and OR 33 at the UVA University Hospital.

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  • Did School Battles Hurt Dems in Liberal Strongholds?

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    James A. Bacon

    Did local school-board issues in Loudoun County boost turnout for Republicans and discourage Democratic Party turnout in the 2024 presidential election? A New York Times article explores that possibility. Money quote from Austin Levine, a Republican-leaning independent who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016:

    Mr. Levine said he remains disappointed by what he sees as a lack of accountability for Democratic-majority institutions, like the school system, that failed his family during the pandemic. He said his two sons learned โ€œnothingโ€ while Loudoun schools were largely shut down for more than a year, and the academic effects were still being felt by his younger child, now a high school junior.

    Normally, we hear about the issues in presidential races affecting down-ballot contests. This year, we may have seen the reverse: local issues affecting a national race. — JAB

  • The Great and the Awful per the Newย Framework

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    James A. Bacon

    by John Butcher

    The estimableย Dick Hall-Sizemoreย hasย commentedย on some results of the new accountability Framework. Through the magic of Excel, we can excavate a much larger trove of information.

    Some background: the new system will take effect with the 2025 school year. There is a summary of the system here.ย  As a warmup, VDOE hasย postedย the Frameworkโ€™s analysis of the 2024 data.

    The byzantine process produces four sub-scores: Mastery, Growth, Readiness, and Graduation. These are multiplied by weighting factors and summed to produce an Overall Framework Score. The ranges of those scores look like this (here and below on the 2024 data):

    In terms of the Overall scores, the top 36 schools (all that fit on my monitor) are these:

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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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