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Jeanine’s Memes
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Ballot Includes a Constitutional Question Adding a Tax Exemption
They could have voted early! Most early voters are probably surprised to find that they also have a proposed constitutional amendment to consider on the Virginia 2024 ballot. As happens often in Virginia, the proposal has received no serious attention from the (dying) news media, and the state itself makes no real effort to inform people about it.
It is one more reason the lines will form and move slowly on November 5 and another good reason to find your way to your local early voting location, which will be far less crowded than your main precinct.
The ballot question involves expanding an existing tax exemption from paying local real property (home and land) taxes. Right now the surviving spouse of a member of the armed forces gets the exemption if their spouse is killed in action. If this passes, the exemption would be available after death from another cause which is determined by the U.S. government to be “in the line of duty.”
The underlying legislation passed during the 2023 and 2024 sessions, sponsored by Senator Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William. The bills did not receive any financial impact analyses which might inform voters how many additional exemptions would be authorized, and how much they would reduce local tax revenue. The exemption applies only to a “principal place of residence” owned and occupied by the spouse and expires if they remarry.
Election officers will get plenty of questions about it, but in general will know no more about the fine points of Article X than the voters do. It will be a long, long day, especially in locations with contested local elections on top of the federal contests.
Early voting is not proving as popular as it did in 2020, at least not so far, which is fascinating because the evidence indicates more Republicans are doing it this time. Please vote early.
— SDH
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Bacon Meme of the Week
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Data Shows Murder Drop in Virginia Ceasefire Cities
by James A. Bacon
In a column last month, I asked if Virginia Ceasefire, a collaboration between the Attorney General’s office and 14 urban police departments, had succeeded in combatting violent crime. I was responding at the time to a gauzy video and vacuous website highlighting the program but providing no hard data demonstrating the program’s effectiveness.
Well, today, on the two-year anniversary of the initiative, AG Jason Miyares has some answers. He says Virginia Ceasefire deserves a big share of the credit for a 30% statewide drop in homicides so far this year compared to last year, and an 11% reduction in overall violent crime.
There have been 116 fewer murders in Virginia through August than during the same period last year. Ceasefire cities, representing 19.4% of all offenses in the Commonwealth, saw 77 fewer murders, accounting for 66% of the reduction.
“Ceasefire Virginia’s targeted actions to dismantle networks of violent crime [are] working,” said Attorney General Jason Miyares in the press release. “By focusing on the small percentage of individuals committing a disproportionate share of serious violence, our message is clear: if you endanger Virginians’ lives and terrorize our neighborhoods with violence, the Commonwealth of Virginia will ensure you face the full force of justice. There is no escaping the consequences.”
In reviewing the data, I think it’s probably fair to say that Virginia Ceasefire deserves some credit for the decline, although deeper analysis is called for. More than half the reduction in the number of homicides occurred in just two cities — Hampton and Newport News — which raises the possibility that local factors unrelated to Virginia Ceasefire might have come into play.
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Want Energy Both “Green” and Reliable? Send Natural Gas and Money
By Steve Haner
With the release of its latest 15-year plan to expand energy generation in the Commonwealth, Dominion Energy Virginia has increased the projected cost of residential electricity in 2035 to almost $216 per 1,000 kilowatt hours, a 24% increase over the same projection in its 2023 planning document.
If the $216 comes to pass, it will represent about $100 per megawatt hour more (up 86%) than the same residential customer was paying in 2020, just before the implementation of the Virginia Clean Economy Act. If 1,000 kilowatt hours is the monthly average usage, the annual bill will be up about $1,200. Many customers, of course, use much more power than that per month.
The comparable projection in the plan introduced last year was $174 for 1,000 kilowatt hours of juice in 2035. The current price is about $143 for that much residential electricity. Another projected future price in the analysis, using assumptions dictated by regulators but resisted by the utility, sets the new 2035 price at $277 and puts the 2039 price at $315 — more than three Benjamins for one modest monthly power bill.
This analysis also includes, for the first time, a projected future cost for Dominion’s thousands of customers in northeastern North Carolina. With different state laws and regulators, Dominion reports North Carolinians will pay $127 for that 1,000 kWh by the end of this year and only $202 by 2035. Somewhere in the 406-page document, the difference might be explained.
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Performance Problems at TJ?
by John Butcher
The excellent Jim Bacon recently posted two discussions (here and here) of a recent decline in the ranking of TJ (aka, Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology). The excellent Dick Hall-Sizemore has penned a rejoinder.
Jim points out declines from 2019 (i.e. pre-pandemic) to 2024 in math and science SOL pass rates; and the change in percentage of Asian-American students; and the decrease in TJ’s US News ranking; and changes in the Advanced pass rates of math and science SOLs. He relates those to the 2021 change in admissions standards. Dick argues that the US News ranking change is based on data that pre-dated the change in admission standards. He does not address the other changes.
The SOL data on the VDOE Web site paint a complicated and interesting picture.
Notes: the 2021 (“2020-2021” in the database) testing was voluntary so that year’s data probably are not reliable measures. The “Pass/Advanced” descriptor indicates a score at or above 500 on the 600 point scale; “Pass/Proficient” indicates a score above the minimum level of 400. The change in admission scoring at TJ first took effect with the 2021-2022 entering class. We would expect any effect of that change to show first in the ‘22 data, and to increase in each of the next three years.
The Big Three for accreditation are reading, math, and science. Let’s start with reading.
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Election Obstructionism Comes to Virgina
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
Two Republican members of the Waynesboro Electoral Board, a majority, have asked a court to declare the use of voting machines a violation of the Virginia Constitution and of state law.
The constitutional complaint is based on the provision in the constitution that votes shall not be counted in secret. The electoral board members assert that, because they and members of the public do not have access to the programming of the computer that enables it to determine how many votes to assign to each candidate, the counting is being done in secret. Virginia law requires electoral boards to declare which candidate got the most votes and to issue a certificate of election to that person. The plaintiffs say that they cannot do that in good conscience because they do not know whether the computer is programmed to count the votes accurately and to do so would be a violation of their oath of office. The only remedy would be a hand count. In case the court cannot hear and reach a decision before election day, the plaintiffs have asked for a temporary injunction. (These arguments are the same made earlier by the Hanover Republican party, which did not pursue them in court.)
Aside from the suggestion of a complex conspiracy to program the voting machines to produce false results, there are two curious aspects to this situation. The first is that Donald Trump, who consistently questions the validity of elections and accuses the Democrats of plotting to steal the upcoming election from him, handily was the top vote-getter in Waynesboro in the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections.
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Tools of Bureaucratic Repression
Image credit: Chat GBT by James A. Bacon
The biggest controversy roiling the University of Virginia today swirls around accusations leveled by 128+ letter signatories against leaders of the UVA Health System and School of Medicine for using the tools of bureaucratic repression to create a culture of fear and intimidation. The accusers have yet to release any specifics to the public. But outsiders can get a glimmering of what they might be talking about by reading a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court filed in September by Kieran Bhattacharya, a medical student who ran afoul of UVA’s administrative apparatus in 2018 after daring to question the academic premises behind microaggression theory.
It is important to note that the incidents described in the petition occurred before Craig Kent became CEO of the health system and Melina Kibbe joined as dean of the Medical School. The two key figures in the current controversy played no role in the Bhattacharya case. However, evidence surfaced by the Bhattacharya proceedings reveals the nature of the medical bureaucracy that Kent and Kibbe inherited. What they did with the system they were bequeathed is beyond the matters I discuss here.
Multiple tools of control play prominently in the Bhattacharya court pleadings. One is the anonymous system for filing complaints. Another is a system for filing “professionalism concern cards.” Another is the existence of a tribunal exercising the powers of investigator, judge, and jury to administer complaints. Another is the ability of university officials to order mental health evaluations and commit people against their will to psychiatric hospitals. And finally, there is the ability to expel people from the university by means of No Trespass Orders (NTOs).
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New School Accountability System Needs New Funding Approach
By Chris Braunlich
Braunlich When the Virginia State Board of Education approved a new state accountability system, it predictably drew attacks from the usual sources.
The new system places greater emphasis on student mastery of subject information (50-65%) over student growth (20-25%). But while growth is critical and should be recognized, under the process approved during the McAuliffe-Northam Administrations, a school could be accredited even if its students never reached the goal of actually learning the material. Youngkin’s appointees sought to correct this.
It also brought Virginia state accreditation into alignment with long-standing federal requirements that English Learners (ELs) be included in school ratings after three semesters (previously, Virginia did so only after 11 semesters). This was deemed unfair by the Virginia education establishment. On first glance, three semesters seems unrealistic to many.
However, as Todd Truitt, an Arlington education parent leader and active Democrat points out, civil rights groups have long supported including English Learners in school accountability systems. Truitt notes Education Trust’s observation that, by delaying their inclusion up to five and a half years, “generations of students — particularly students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, and multilingual learners — have been systematically denied equitable access to … educational opportunities.”
By including such students earlier in Virginia’s accreditation process, as is the case in other states, the ability of school systems to hide English Learner performance is made more difficult. Perhaps that transparency is why, in the National Assessment for Educational Progress – an assessment separate from state accreditation — 30 percent of Florida Hispanic students score at the Proficient level, while only 18 percent of Virginia Hispanic students do.
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Hampton Roads Military Bases Swarmed By Drones
by Kerry Dougherty
It’s not clear why we are just now learning that dozens of drones buzzed local military installations night after night for more than two weeks last December.
Neither is it clear why military brass just stood there, sucking their thumbs and staring at the sky, while these airborne spy machines made repeated passes through restricted air space over Langley Air Force Base, Naval Station Norfolk and Dam Neck.
The news broke over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal in a story headlined “Mystery Drones Swarmed A U.S. Military Base For 17 Days. The Pentagon Is Stumped.”
For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the U.S. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told (US Air Force General Mark) Kelly.
The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.
The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port.
Alarming.
Yet government officials scratched their heads, trying to decide if this was the work of mischievous drone enthusiasts or foreign enemies. (They eventually ruled out hobbyists.) The White House was briefed on the drones and a series of high-level meetings were held with members of the administration, the FBI, Defense Department and the Pentagon’s UFO department.
Why didn’t the military simply shoot the drones out of the air. Continue reading.
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More Nitwittery at UVA
Ben Doherty. Photo credit: The Daily Progress by James A. Bacon
Ben Doherty, a librarian for the University of Virginia School of Law, was arrested in May during the break-up of the pro-Palestinian encampment, one of 26 detained after defying repeated orders to disband. The trespassing charges against him were dropped, and he suffered no administrative sanction from UVA itself. But he’s still posing as a victim.
Doherty’s beef: the law school sent him a “letter of counseling” saying that “future conduct of this kind … will very likely result in disciplinary action up to and including termination.”
UVA insisted to The Daily Progress that the letter was not a disciplinary action. Indeed, it detailed no consequences for anything Doherty had done, but gave him fair warning of potential consequences for what he might do in the future.
Still, Doherty interpreted the letter as an effort to “chill” his freedom to protest. “To me, it’s a written threat of termination for participating in a protest,” he told the newspaper. “It feels pretty material to me. I think they are using the idea that it’s not a disciplinary action to get away with not following the law.”
Doherty felt his rights so threatened that he and some 30 others marched with impunity down the Lawn last week toward Madison Hall, site of President Jim Ryan’s office, proclaiming loudly, “Pro… test is a right! That is why we have to fight!”
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Jeanine’s Memes
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FOIA Fighter
by James A. Bacon
Walter Smith at the Henrico County courts building It was a quiet Monday afternoon in the Henrico County General District Court, and Walter Smith thought he might have the University of Virginia on the ropes. Smith, an attorney and retired insurance industry executive, had spent much of the previous three years using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), trying to pry open documents lending insight into UVA decision making. He had been stymied repeatedly on various grounds, including the assertion that the records he sought were exempt presidential “working papers.” But this case was different.
This time Smith had asked for text messages between University police chief Tim Longo to the Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingely regarding a meeting President Jim Ryan had asked Longo to set up with the local prosecutor. The purpose: to discuss an April press release explaining why the University was withholding release of an independent report into the slaying of three football players in 2022. The local newspaper, The Daily Progress, had obtained the text messages through a FOIA request and published some of them, and Smith wanted to see the complete records. By the time he filed his request, however, he was told they no longer existed — even though, according to UVA’s records-retention policy, the University was supposed to keep text and email messages for three years.
UVA attorney Robert M. Tyler took on the awkward task of explaining to Judge B. Craig Dunkum why the texts were deleted: Longo’s phone, set on Apple’s default setting, auto-deleted them. There were no sanctions in the state code spelling out a penalty for such an occurrence.
Dunkum accepted Tyler’s argument that the deletions were not deliberate, but he pronounced himself “troubled.” “If you can delete the records … somehow, that doesn’t seem right to me,” he said. “It rewards bad behavior.”
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Bacon Meme of the Week
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Spanberger Bill Brings Looming Social Security Shortfall Closer
By Andrew Biggs
Virginia Rep. Abagail Spanberger, (D) Over 300 members of Congress from both parties, including Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rep. Abigail Spanberger, are pushing for legislation that would grant a nearly $200 billion Social Security benefits windfall to a group that neither paid for these benefits nor truly needs them. (She advocated it in the Richmond Times-Dispatch this morning.) That legislation, called the Social Security Fairness Act, is actually anything but. As costly as this bill is, the topic is so complex that many people have little idea what is happening. Here I’ll explain the issues.
Social Security’s benefit formula works more or less as follows. When a person goes to claim benefits, Social Security’s computers look back at the earnings the person received under jobs that were covered by Social Security. The computer adds these earnings up, and divides by 35 to produce an annual average, which is then converted to a monthly average. Those Average Indexed Monthly Earnings are then run through a progressive formula in which Social Security benefits are paid equal to 90 percent of the first xx on monthly earnings, 32 percent of earnings between x and y, and 15 percent of earnings between y and the maximum amount of that’s subject to payroll taxes.
Because of the progressivity of the benefit formula, Americans with low average earnings receive a higher “replacement rate” than those with higher average earnings. For instance, imagine a middle-income employee who earned the national average wage each year throughout their career. At retirement, they would receive a Social Security benefit equal to about 43% of their pre-retirement earnings.
Now imagine a much lower-income worker who earned just 25% of the national average wage throughout their career. They would receive a Social Security benefit equal to about 80% of their pre-retirement earnings. In other words, the lowest earners receive about twice as much benefit per dollar contributed as does a middle-income worker.
There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s how Social Security was designed.
