Bacon's Rebellion

  • Mayoral Non-Endorsement & a Self-Serving ($50K) Kumbaya Study

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    City workers singing kumbaya. Image created by ChatGPT

    by Jon Baliles

    Today is Election Day and a free issue for all RVA 5×5 subscribers! If you haven’t voted, be sure to get out and do so!

    Speaking of voting, today’s issue is about Mayor Stoney’s press conference last week in which he released a city-funded study to prove everything is fine at City Hall and claimed none of the candidates running to succeed him are audacious enough.

    As people go to the polls today to vote for a new mayor, it is worth looking back at last week’s press conference held by Mayor Stoney at which he simultaneously said none of the candidates on the ballot have the vision to earn his endorsement while he also talked up a month-old report conducted by a hired consultant that found (after being paid $49,500) City Hall was running like a Swiss watch and that no one should be fired or replaced when the new mayor takes office in January.

    The message that Stoney, who is term-limited from running again, wanted to put forward was that people are concerned about real issues and do not include the functioning of City Hall as a serious concern, even though all five candidates for the office have said repeatedly they will work hard to fix City Hall. All five candidates have said that they are going to work on listening to the people and employees and find ways to improve processes. None of the five have attacked Stoney directly, but none of them have said they would continue the great work of the Stoney Administration (or identified what that has been) or said they would be a third term. In fact, all five have said they would replace Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Lincoln Saunders, who is Stoney’s best friend and was appointed CAO despite lacking any experience running a municipality, organization, or business.

    (more…)

  • Mail-in Voting as Entitlement

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    Mail-in voting delays the count, opens up elections to suspicion and conspiracies, and undermines those elected to serve. But it’s become another government entitlement.

    by Ken Reid

    Counting mail-in ballots. Image created by Chat GBT

    FALLS CHURCH – I’m sitting in a conference room in Falls Church City Hall,  joined by another election officer (she the Democrat; me the Republican), opening up hundreds of envelopes containing mail-in ballots.

    Our job is to look at the declaration form on the inner envelope containing the ballot, and if the voter required assistance to fill out the ballot or to show identification, we have to make sure the form is in there. If not, the city elections board will call the voter to get the ballot “cured” – a process the city was doing all along before state law required it.

    About half the ballots were mailed, the other half dropped in drop boxes at City Hall. The one in the parking lot seems secure, locked down; the one in the lobby, well, it can be easily opened in the back, but I am assured security cameras are rolling—as they are on us handling these ballots.

    Once we confirm the declaration, and at times having to check the voter rolls, we open the ballot and drop it in one of those big US Mail bins. We then count the ballots to be sure they equal the envelopes, and this is recorded in ink on a paper sheet. Each outer envelope and declaration gets numbered, too – but not the ballot itself.

    While there is a political party observer watching, the key thing is what happens AFTER we leave.

    (more…)

  • Donations to Local Races in Virginia – The Public Union Effect

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    sherlockj

    Pictured: Bobby Dyer, incumbent and candidate for mayor of Virginia Beach.   Courtesy Bobby Dyer for Mayor.

    James C. Sherlock

    It is always interesting, at least to me, to see who is investing in local political campaigns in Virginia and what they might expect for their money.  I have used VPAP to examine donations from all years/all filing periods and for this year’s race as applicable to let readers follow some of the money.

    Statewide

    The six donors who have given the largest amount of money to local candidates in Virginia in 2024 are all of the left side of the political spectrum. The left makes local candidates a bigger priority than any other political funding operation.  

    • New Virginia Majority (Alexandria): donated $361,498, most of that ($214,378) to Harrison Roday for Richmond Mayor. Roday is endorsed by city workers’ unions. Seems a relatively cheap investment given the financial stakes for the unions;
    • Lucas for Senate (Portsmouth): donated $306,803, most of that ($295,803) to Louise Lucas’ daughter, Lisa Lucas-Burke, who is running for mayor of Portsmouth. Ms. Lucas-Burke has been on her mother’s payroll at Lucas Lodge for 25 years and has been Vice-Mayor of Portsmouth since 2016;
    • Workers Vote (New York): $240,832, all of it to elect candidates for Alexandria mayor and city council who will support union-friendly changes to the city’s collective bargaining ordinance and support higher pay and benefits for city workers. One again, seems a bargain given the financial stakes for the unions;
    • Thomas J. McInerny (Genworth Financial – Henrico): $160,000, most of that ($125,000) to Harrison Roday for Richmond Mayor;
    • Amy Jackson (Alexandria): $119,111, self-funding campaign for mayor of Alexandria. She lost in a Democratic primary. Alyia Gaskins is running unopposed for mayor in the general election;
    • Lisa Roday (Henrico): 103,403, Harrison Roday for Richmond Mayor.
    (more…)

  • A Voter Suppression Narrative in Which a Voter Scandalously… Er… Got to Vote

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    Liza Burrell-Aldana displays her “I Voted” sticker in a selfie.

    Liza Burrell-Aldana, a Fairfax County school teacher, went to an early voting site last week and showed her driver’s license. The poll worker asked if she was a citizen. Burrell-Aldana, a Colombian immigrant who has been a citizen since 2011, said that she was. The poll worker asked for proof of citizenship. “Why would I carry that with me?” she replied.

    So begins a Washington Post article in today’s news feed. Then the Post goes on to say:

    The incident played out as Donald Trump and many Republicans have falsely claimed that waves of noncitizens are voting, stoking fears. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has embraced the issue, pushing for a daily scrub of voter rolls. Voting rights activists throughout the country, meanwhile, are worried that this rhetoric will lead to eligible voters being harassed or afraid to cast their ballots.

    See what’s going on here? The article slides from Donald Trump making false claims about noncitizens voting to Governor Glenn Youngkin “embracing the issue” by pushing for a daily scrub of voter rolls. There’s no quote of Youngkin making false claims, just an insinuation that he’s in the same camp as Trump and his stop-the-steal allies.

    (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Fighting to Save Women’s Sports

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Roanoke College women’s swim team. Photo credit: Scott Dreyer

    by Scott Dreyer

    The women’s swim team at Roanoke College made national headlines October 5, 2023 when as a group they stood together to insist they only compete against other biological women. They told their stories in a press conference at the Hotel Roanoke. Their accounts are summarized in Parts One, Two, Three, and Four.

    Instead of lauding them for their stance, however, three male Democrats on Roanoke City Council blasted the women. Showing they had not even heard the women yet, the three co-signed a letter, also dated October 5, but actually released before the women had spoken. Moreover, none of the three attended the press conference. Showing their displeasure, their letter was entitled “Hate Has No Place in Roanoke, Virginia,” implying that all the women swimmers plus their families and allies are haters. One of the three, Joe Cobb, is currently vice mayor of Roanoke and is running to be mayor.

    This saga may seem to be a modern-day rendition of Jesus’ words, “a prophet is without honor in his hometown.” In contrast to the animosity and hostility from Cobb and some other Roanoke City politicians, the lady swimmers are gaining a following that reaches across the continent.

    (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

  • Virginia’s Fertility Rate — Nothing to Write Home About

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Map source: National Center for Health Statistics

    Following up on yesterday’s post showing the variation in birth rates by Virginia locality… the National Center for Health Statistics map above provides a breakdown of fertility rates by state. Virginia falls in the middle of the pack (but bottom half) with a fertility rate for women aged 15–44 with 55.3 births per 1,000. It ranks 29th in the country. Meh.

    University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox (a rare conservative at UVA) puts his spin on the data in this article published by the Institute for Family Studies (a rare conservative nonprofit headquartered in Charlottesville).

    The 10 states with the highest birth rates are red while the 10 states with the lowest birth rates are blue. The birth rate for deep-red South Dakota is 2.01 births per woman. The birth rate for deep-blue Vermont is 1.3.

    Wilcox argues that left-of-center policies to encourage fertility — government incentives and subsidies — don’t work very well. Families with children are moving out of blue states into red states. What matters more, he suggests, are job opportunities, cost of living (especially housing) and family-friendly culture.

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  • Billing, Upcoding and Hospital Revenues

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    James A. Bacon

    Image credit: Bing Image Creator

    by James A. Bacon

    As the investigation into alleged management abuses at the University of Virginia Health System and School of Medicine gathers momentum, several physicians have detailed their allegations to The Daily Progress. Perhaps the most damning charge is that senior Medical Center executives pressured physicians into “upcoding” procedures to overcharge patients and their insurers.

    Upcoding is fraud. Sadly, the practice is widespread in the healthcare industry. Whether it occurred at UVA remains an open question. The Jefferson Council trusts the Board of Visitors investigation to appraise the validity of the charges leveled by 128 UVA Medical Center professionals over the past several months.

    But I was curious about the business context in which upcoding might have occurred. Might financial pressures have incentivized senior management to take a more aggressive approach to billing? Such background information would be useful to the investigation.

    Several major events have roiled the UVA Health System since 2020 when Craig Kent became CEO and 2021 when Melina Kibbe took the helm as dean of the medical school: the COVID epidemic, the jettisoning of litigious debt-collection practices, and accounting misstatements stemming from the acquisition of three community hospitals.

    After a close review of Medical Center finances, here is my bottom line: allegations that UVA began billing more aggressively two to three years ago coincide with a surge in revenue per patient beginning in fiscal 2022. But many factors affect hospital revenues, so I am reluctant to draw any conclusion beyond suggesting that accusations of upcoding warrant a closer look.

    (more…)

  • Virginia’s New Blue Collar Boom Town

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Don’t take this Chat GBT-generated image as an accurate rendering of what submarine construction looks like. But it’s more dramatic than a real photo.

    The Hampton Roads region will need 40,000 skilled workers over the next six years to support growth of the maritime and offshore wind industries, says Hampton Roads Workforce Council President and CEO Shawn Avery. Most of those jobs will require blue-collar skills now in short supply.

    Newport News Shipbuilding will need workers to build two Virginia-class submarines annually and make modular components for Columbia-class submarines, reports Virginia Business magazine. That doesn’t include thousands more needed to build the USS John F. Kennedy and USS Enterprise aircraft carriers or workers needed for the region’s naval shipyards that do repair and maintenance for the fleet.

    Then there’s the offshore wind industry. The wind-turbine building boom for Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project will support an estimated 900 jobs, and when construction subsides, the wind farm will continue to support 1,100 direct and indirect jobs. Plus, there are signs that the regional effort to make Hampton Roads a major East Coast center of the wind-farm supply chain, including manufacturing, is paying off with more corporate investment and more jobs.

    It’s not clear from the article if the 40,000 figure represents total maritime/wind jobs or net new jobs. Either way, it looks like a significant gain for an economically moribund region that has been a drag on Virginia’s economic performance for many years.

    (more…)

  • Random Stats of the Day: Birth Rates

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    James A. Bacon

    For the edification of Bacon’s Rebellion readers, I’m presenting some data compiled by Jim Weigand, our Lynchburg correspondent, on birth rates in Virginia. The table above shows the 10 localities with the highest birth rates. The thing that stands out: they’re all cities.

    What’s with the City of Fairfax, by the way? The birth rate in surrounding Fairfax County is only 11.59.

    Here are the localities with the lowest birth rates:

    (more…)

  • Factoid of the Day: Toughest Driver Tests

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia has the toughest written driving tests in the country, according to a study by the Whitley Law Firm, a personal injury firm, and Journo Research. States the press release:

    Virginia is the state where it’s hardest to pass the written driving test, with an index score of 21.39 out of 100. To pass the 35-question exam, one must score at least 86%, meaning examinees must answer at least 30 questions correctly. In addition, there needs to be a 15-day gap between one test and the next if participants were unsuccessful the first time around. 

    New York has the easiest written test, according to the study.

     

  • Youngkin on Clean Election Rolls

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    Governor Glenn Youngkin released the following statement after the Supreme Court ruling upholding his executive order to keep non-citizens off Virginia’s voter rolls (my bold):

    We are pleased by the Supreme Court’s order today. This is a victory for commonsense and election fairness. I am grateful for the work of Attorney General Jason Miyares on this critical fight to protect the fundamental rights of U.S. citizens. Clean voter rolls are one important part of a comprehensive approach we are taking to ensure the fairness of our elections. Virginians also know that we have paper ballots, counting machines not connected to the internet, a strong chain of custody process, signature verification, monitored and secured drop boxes, and a ‘triple check’ vote counting process to tabulate results. Virginians can cast their ballots on Election Day knowing that Virginia’s elections are fair, secure, and free from politically-motivated interference.

    I can’t speak for the other states in the union, but I’m confident that Virginia has a rigorous system for preserving election integrity. Voting fraud on a scale sufficient to alter an election outcome is impossible. Time to focus on getting out the vote. — JAB

     

  • Bacon Bits: Good, Bad, and Ugly

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    All it took was picking up the phone. Radio IQ profiles Rina Shaw, a Central Virginia resident who was expunged along with 1,600 other Virginia residents from the voter rolls as part of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s purge of non-citizen voters. Shaw tells Radio IQ she accidentally marked “non-citizen” on her DMV paperwork and was disenrolled. After being informed of the fact, she tried unsuccessfully to correct her error by means of “mailed-in paperwork.” Youngkin’s action has been challenged legally and seems destined to a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court. Here’s what’s ignored in most articles I’ve read: Youngkin’s order requires the state to notify those whose registrations are flagged… as evidently happened in Shaw’s case. And the order gives them 14 days to provide proof of citizenship… which Shaw managed to do. Radio IQ notes toward the bottom of its story that she “was reenrolled after a call to her registrar’s office.” 

    Update: Minutes ago the Supreme Court upheld Youngkin’s executive order.

    History is complicated. Colonial Williamsburg hopes to open a new attraction next year: the Bray School, which is touted as the oldest surviving school for Black children in America. A school roster from 1760 shows that three free Black children were enrolled and 27 were slaves. Historians are understandably delighted in revealing an aspect of Black history in Virginia that had been buried for so long. And I agree. We should tell the history of all Americans. In its article about the school, The Washington Post asks, who were the children? What did they do with their education? Good questions. But I’d like to know also… who built the school? Who paid its ongoing expenses? What were their motivations? Weren’t there laws against educating Blacks? The institution of slavery, I suspect, was far more variegated in practice than commonly depicted.

    Image credit: Inside NoVa

    Sign of the times. To someone like me who attended school in the 1960s, images like the one above at Lake Ridge Middle School in Prince William County, are beyond bizarre. Requiring students to pass through metal detectors before entering school is an idea that literally never occurred to anyone back in the day. Now it’s hailed as a victory in the effort to keep students safe.

    (more…)

  • Decked Out

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A lame duck councilman’s race card doesn’t trump anything.

    Councilman Chris Jones

    by Joe Fitzgerald

    Imagine that you’re Harrisonburg City Councilman Chris Jones, perhaps without his driving record or his tax bills, but with his animosity toward the school system. You’re at the end of ten years on the council after coming in dead last in the Democratic primary. Is it time to rebuild bridges with the school system or to double down?

    Maybe this offer by Jones concerning his final two months in office will help define what he chose: “If we want to bring financial comfort or pain to the school system, then bring that to me.”

    Ten minutes into the latest School Board/City Council Liaison Committee meeting, Jones had already identified himself as a Black male twice. He’s in a room with nine city and school officials. Five of them are people of color and one is Jewish. Only two are White males and one of them has an adopted Black child. And Jones, speaking to two Black people, is demanding to know whether White people are deciding who’s on the Superintendent’s Task Force for Support of African American Students.

    “I want to make sure we’re not being tokenized,” he says, with a straight face. “I don’t know who’s on your task force.”

    (more…)

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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