Bacon's Rebellion

by EM Risse



Want better education for Virginia’s children? Then help change the size, location and funding of our schools.



Transportation is “the canary in the mine field” of scattered, low-density and unbalanced development. Typically, traffic gridlock is the first symptom of profoundly dysfunctional land use. Education is a close second as an indicator. Few factors affect the quality of education more than the size and location of school facilities, both of which are influenced by prevailing land use patterns. More.

by Trip Pollard



Public-private “partnerships” for transportation projects raise little private equity capital and undermine normal planning processes. The enabling legislation desperately needs to be updated.



Virginians need and deserve innovative solutions to their transportation problems. A more balanced and efficient approach is required to address gridlock and longer commutes, as well as the heavy toll that road-building and accompanying sprawl takes on our pocketbooks, health, farmland, and environment. More.

by Patrick McSweeney



The architectural standards of Virginia’s capital area have gone downhill ever since Thomas Jefferson designed the state capitol. It’s time to give the public more involved in planning.

The only thing uglier than some of the modern structures clustered around the Capitol in Richmond is the decision-making process that led to their approval.

As with most ugly practices, the decision-making about what will be demolished and what will take its place at the seat of government is carried out, for the most part, in secrecy–or at least beyond the view of average citizens and taxpayers. It’s time to let a little sunshine in. More.

by Patrick McSweeney



Steve Baril’s proposal to crank up borrowing and spending to build more roads would saddle Virginians with untold debt and do nothing to improve traffic congestion.



This is not the time or place to take sides in one of the Republican statewide nomination contests, but a recent proposal by Steve Baril, a candidate for attorney general, warrants a strong response. Baril’s Marshall Plan for Transportation is so ill-conceived that it should be buried without delay. More.

by Douglas Koelemay



Virginians like spending the tax revenues generated by Northern Virginia’s booming economy. But if they don’t invest in the region’s prosperity, the cash cow may run dry.

Correcting an overdependence on federal dollars and underinvestment in boomtown Northern Virginia are twin challenges for the Virginia economy in 2005.

Much attention this time of year is focused on the General Assembly meeting in Richmond through February 26 and rightly so. State government will enjoy double-digit growth in tax revenues in these first months of 2005 compared to 2004. The state budget won’t be nearly as penurious as in recent years past. Unfortunately, these positive developments hide vulnerabilities the Virginia economy faces in the years ahead, including the growing dependence of the state’s economy on federal government spending, and Virginia’s continuing under-investment in the Northern Virginia economy. More.

by Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman



Chartered status at Virginia’s elite universities will broaden access to higher education. Although general tuitions will rise, schools will set aside more money for financial aid for the needy.



The Virginia General Assembly has taken up the “chartered university” proposal that could restructure the relationship between the state and its public colleges and universities. Chartered universities would be able to make many important decisions on campus instead of waiting for decisions in Richmond. Most importantly, chartered institutions would control tuition. More.

by Barnie Day



Bill Howell can’t get traction on any of his other issues, so he’s trotted out a frightful oldie–completing the phase-out of the car tax.

In what has to be the most desperate reach for political relevance in recent memory, the House Republican leadership on Wednesday rolled out… (drumroll, please)… the car tax issue!

For real. I’m not making this up

This one is the policy equivalent of a blow-up doll. Let’s call her “Gilmore’s Ghost.” What’s she look like? Well, that depends on the lighting. Frightful, even scary, in the daylight. Not bad in the dark. A little long in the tooth, and so lame she’s reduced now to crutches, still, a wig, a little lipstick and… Whatayaknow!… Bill Howell’s finally got an issue he can squire about in public! More.

by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

Elvis was born far from the hills of southwestern Virginia in Tupelo, Miss. But researcher Brent Kennedy, a college administrator in Wise, theorizes that the King, as well as Abraham Lincoln and Ava Gardner, might trace their ancestors to the mysterious Melungeons. These dark-skinned, blue-eyed people were first documented in Virginia’s Blue Ridge in the late 1700s. Over the years, various myths about their origin arose. Some believed they were either survivors from the Lost Colony of Roanoke or Portuguese shipwrecks. Others suggested they were descendents of one of the lost tribes of Israel or of early Carthaginian or Phoenician seamen. More.

by James A. Bacon



Richmond’s creative class is hot, hot, hot. Pioneering new ways to collaborate and inspire one another, commercial artists are becoming a driving economic force in the region.



Were it not for the “Euro” décor of polished metal and sleek furniture, the corporate culture of Rainmaker Studios would seem only one step removed from that of a college dormitory. Musicians leave electric guitars propped against the sofa. Take-out pizzas are delivered with the pepperonis arranged in four-letter words. Pranksters play bizarre music tracks — Iranian gangsta rap, or Harry Connick Jr.-style crooning of the Red Hot Chili Peppers — to phone callers stuck on hold. More.

by James A. Bacon



Bacon’s Rebellion is extending its digital reach to the blogosphere. May heresies prosper and dangerous ideas proliferate.



When I launched Bacon’s Rebellion two-and-a-half years ago as a website/electronic newsletter, the technology was fairly edgy. Although websites were old hat, electronic newsletters still had that fresh, new-car smell. Certainly, no one else had launched a opinion newsletter with an exclusive focus on Virginia politics, public policy and economic development. But the Internet kept evolving, and I soon found myself eating ether. More.

Today’s Charlottesville Daily Progress brings news of survey results from Orange County. A questionnaire on development issues was sent to 16,679 county households and 3,349 responded–a 20% rate, twice what was expected.

Almost 51% of respondents found the current county growth rate “about right” while 34% believe growth is too fast.

A whopping 74% said that growth should be directed to certain areas of the county.

Orange County is considering a subdivision ordinance to help manage growth:

A proposed change to the subdivision ordinance would allow Orange’s agricultural landowners to divide their property three times every 10 years, a decrease from the current rule of four times every four years.

Opponents say the measure would decrease the amount of land for sale, driving up prices and hurting small businesses that rely on the homebuilding industry. Some residents simply find the idea an infringement on their rights as landowners.

Proponents, however, trumpet the proposal as a way to control residential sprawl, one that dovetails with the Comprehensive Plan’s focus on directing growth to designated areas.

Jim, you christened this blog with a commentary on growth in the Fredericksburg area. This comment from one Orange citizen who was surveyed should warm your heart: “If we don’t prepare, it will be a mess just like Frederickburg.”

“Squirming in Virginia” written by Lee Hockstader was published in the Washington Post on Friday, Jan 28, 2005. There is really nothing new in this article other than the fact that Hockstader puts things in a rather blunt perspective.

The article makes the often heard arguments about Tim Kaine having a problem because of his beliefs against capital punishment, while Jerry Kilgore is conflicted on the tax issue, because he supported the anti-tax contingent of the Republican Party during last year’s legislative debacle, while he is now endorsing the re-election of the 19 Delegates who voted for the tax increase.

Hockstader fails to mention that Kilgore’s support against the tax increase was lukewarm and rather muted. He only found his voice after Sen. George Allen and former Gov. Doug Wilder spoke out loudly against the folly of tax increases. In that regard, Kilgore ended up alienating the anti-tax contingent of his Party—the same folks he was ostensibly supporting when he spoke out against the tax increases.

However, what’s really an eye opener is the liberal slant in Hockstader’s column. This sentence says it all: “Forced to choose sides, Kilgore went with the anti-tax true believers over the budgetary pragmatists.”

Apparently, to Mr. Hockstader the largest tax increase in the history of our state that has resulted in a $1+ billion surplus is the stuff that materialized out of “budgetary pragmatism.” In the liberal thinking tax increases are always good, no matter how unnecessary or misleading.

It is this sort of liberal bias that has made the mainstream media’s news coverage totally unreliable. As long as they continue down the same approach, they will continue becoming more and more irrelevant.

Following my Nov. 29, 2004, column in Bacon’s Rebellion on the “Warrenton Miracle” and the potential candidacy of Mayor George Fitch for the Republican nomination for Governor, I have been inundated with messages from a number of people.



Predictably, the Republican establishment is unhappy at the thought of an intra-Party challenge. Such contests are expensive and the conventional thinking is that they drain the campaign resources of the leading candidates. That sort of thinking only looks at one side of the equation, however.

In reality, intra-Party contests cause a healthy discussion of the issues and force the Party to reassess its priorities and direction. Just going through the motions of picking the candidate that’s been campaigning the longest is no different than holding a coronation.

Here’s is a quote from a message I recently received about the direction of the Kilgore campaign: “Jerry Kilgore’s campaign manager has him following the Mark Earley strategy and if changes are not made, Kilgore will suffer the same sort of defeat that Mark Earley did.” This sort of sentiment is pretty representative in the email messages I get and what I hear from the folks I talk to.

I’m given to understand that George Fitch plans to kick off his campaign on February 8, 2004. Given his economic track record on cutting spending—and taxes—in Warrenton, his candidacy should rejuvenate the dialog as to the direction our Government has taken given the recent double-digit spending increases in the State budget.

Political correctness has struck the Virginia Military Institute. Eight cadets are under investigation for wearing inappropriate attire to a Halloween costume ball. Two cadets dressed in pink as winged fairies, one painted himself black and wore a loincloth, and three–the ones who evidently stirred the greatest response–donned swastika armbands and gave the Nazi salute. Now student investigators are pondering punishments ranging from verbal admonishments to grueling solo marches. (See the story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.)

Let me make it very clear: I don’t find anything remotely amusing about Nazis. War crimes and genocide are not funny. Neither do I find anything amusing about poking fun at half-naked, South Sea savages, or gays (assuming that’s who the cadets dressed as fairies had in mind).

But do tasteless adolescent pranks really require institutional chastisement? It’s one thing to have actually committed war crimes as a servant of the Third Reich. It’s another thing to wear a Nazi armband and espouse the Nazi ideology–acts that, as offensive as they are to most Americans, are protected by the right to free speech. It’s another thing entirely to wear a swastika to a costume party and pretend to be a Nazi. Juvenile? Sure. Insensitive? No question. But was the act so egregious to warrant a punishment more serious than the social opprobrium of the offenders’ fellow students?

I don’t think so. The people we should worry about aren’t adolescent cadets with a lousy sense of humor. It’s the scolds–the true heirs of the totalitarian Nazis–who would convert expressions of undesirable thought into punishable offenses.