Bacon's Rebellion

  • Every School Gets a Participation Trophy — But Not For Long

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Eighty-five percent of Virginia’s public schools meet the state’s standards of quality and effectiveness under the current system for establishing accreditation, according to data released Monday by the Virginia Department of Education.

    Under the rating system, no school is denied accreditation. Rather, under-performers are tagged with the euphemism “accredited with conditions.”

    “Todayโ€™s accreditation certifications are a testament to the failure of Virginiaโ€™s current accreditation system to provide parents, educators, and communities timely, accurate and actionable insights into how well their students are actually performing academically,” Governor Glenn Youngkin said yesterday.

    “The issue couldnโ€™t be clearer: no schools are denied accreditation, and 85% of Virginiaโ€™s schools continue to receive the stateโ€™s highest ranking while 60.7% and 64.8% of Virginiaโ€™s students [in] 3-8 grades failed or are barely proficient in reading and math,” he said.ย ย 

    (more…)

  • Teacher Vacancies Easing – But Why?

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    New licensure pathways are increasing supply of teachers from non-traditional sources.

    Last week the Youngkin administration reported some good news about teacher vacancies in Virginia: they’re down from last year. The teacher shortage appears to be abating.

    The statewide vacancy rate stood at 3.4% at the beginning of the current school year, half a percentage point (0.5%) lower than last year. Today, according to a press release from Superintendent of Public Education Lisa Coons, 35 school districts have teacher shortfalls of one percent or less, and 64 of two percent or less.

    Not mentioned in the press release but available from the Excel spreadsheet it linked to: 11 school districts have vacancy rates of 10% or more. The rate in Southhampton County stands at a stupefying 27.9%.

    Still, Virginia’s public schools overall are moving in the right direction. The question is who or what deserves the credit? Has there been a shift in the job market? Are working conditions improving? Are the Youngkin administration’s efforts paying off?

    (more…)

  • There is News Outside of Richmond

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Flooding in town of Pembroke in Giles County. Photo credit–Cardinal News

    This past weekend, the remnants of hurricane Helene caused major flooding and damage in southwest Virginia. Two people died as a result of the storm.

    But you wouldnโ€™t know this if you just depended on the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Not a word in the digital or print editions, except for a brief mention in the wire service stories in section B.ย However, there were lots of stories and headlines about sports and food.

    Aftermath of flooding in town of Damascus, Washington County. Photo credit–Cardinal News

    It is at times like these when I wonder why I even bother with the RTD.ย  The paper will cover state political news and some happenings in Richmond city hall. But thatโ€™s about it.ย Very little coverage of state government; Henrico and Chesterfield counties and the rest of the state may as well be foreign countries.

    If one wants to know what is happening in Southside and Southwest Virginia, the best source is the non-profit Cardinal News. It is running several stories today on the storm.

    The irony is that we are in an era when we have more information than ever at our fingertips, yet our sources of news have become so fragmented.

    rwh

  • 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

  • Ceasefire Virginia Sounds Great. But Does It Work?

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Attorney General Jason Miyares has released a video about his Ceasefire Virginia initiative, a collaboration between the AG’s office and local police to reduce violent crime.

    The video caught my attention because its production values are slicker than anything that I recall coming out of the AG’s office before. Some of the testimonies are striking. But the video could be far more effective. It starts with a documentary-like feel but peters out with a series of interview clips strung together to no particular effect.

    Ceasefire Virginia provides a potentially powerful crime-fighting alternative to leftist bafflegab about addressing the “social causes” of crime. It tackles gun violence head-on through the common-sense expedients of (1) enforcing existing gun laws; (2) punishing people who use guns in crimes; and (3) targeting repeat offenders who account for a disproportionate share of violent crimes.

    None of this is explained in the video. I like what Miyares is doing, but Ceasefire Virginia needs better PR.

    (more…)

  • The Costliest Floods in Interior Virginia Since 1969

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    sherlockj

    Car in tree in Nelson County after Camille

    by James C. Sherlock

    Updated September 27, 2024 ย 

    Ahead of Helene, I recommend re-reading this story.

    I offer this survey of Virginiaโ€™s biggest interior floods since 1969, mostly courtesy of the National Weather Service, as equal time for my reporting on coastal flooding in Virginia.

    The interior is where the most deaths have occurred in Virginia floods, not the coast.

    The deaths reach those levels in interior Virginia through a combination of:

    • topography, especially where rain runs off the mountains;
    • sometimes relatively short notice alerts compared to coastal weather forecasting; and
    • the historic practice of building in “hollers” in the mountains and bottom lands adjacent to rivers.

    Rainwater surging down mountains into rivers can be catastrophic at every point in its flow.

    This will provide both a photo remembrance and a brief written record of each of those four storms. (more…)

  • A Transparent Effort to Prevent SCC Approval of Hydrocarbons

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Any doubt that some members of the Virginia General Assemblyโ€™s reconstituted electricity regulation commission intend on taking full control of our energy economy was dispelled at its second meeting Wednesday. With that control, the goal is to then impose a full anti-hydrocarbon energy agenda.   

    Senator Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, Chair of the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation.

    Three proposed legislative initiatives were floated.  None were voted on, and opposition quickly surfaced from some other panel members and in comments, especially from the stateโ€™s dominant electric utility. The three proposals (also available on the groupโ€™s state website under materials) were: 

    • A draft bill that would dictate a 13-point checklist of factors the regulatory State Corporation Commission would have to use in evaluating any application where it has the power to decide what is or is not in the public interest. Anti-hydrocarbon fuel provisions were prominent among the new elements. 
    • A staff white paper on a complete revision of the integrated resource plan process now in state law. One proposal was to override an SCC requirement that those plans offer an option that illustrates the lowest cost for meeting the energy needs, which invariably is a lower consumer cost than the plans which comply with the Virginia Clean Economy Act. It also proposed bringing transmission and distribution issues into what would be an โ€œintegrated system planโ€ and again adding emphasis on ending hydrocarbon energy.   
    • A draft bill to change of the groupโ€™s name from the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation to the Virginia Energy Commission, with an expansion of its oversight authority to the entirety of the stateโ€™s energy policy, which envisions ending the use of hydrocarbons in Virginia agriculture, transportation and new buildings along with electricity.   
    (more…)

  • Looks Like a Horse Race

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    For political junkies, opinion polls are intellectual junk food: nutritionally worthless but hard to resist. My colleague Steve Haner, who is far better informed on such matters than I, dismisses college polls as total… er… garbage. Regardless, the latest poll of Virginians by Mary Washington University does make interesting reading.

    Top of line finding: Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Winsome Sears are tied with 39% support each from 1,000 Virginia residents polled in a gubernatorial match-up.

    Also: 47% of likely voters would cast their presidential ballot for Kamala Harris and 46% for Donald Trump (with a 4.1% margin of error). More evidence that Virginia, once thought to be a gimme for Democrats, is in play.

    You can take those results to the bank… if you happen to believe that the Virginians responding to the poll are a representative sample of the electorate: 34% Republican and 32% Democrat.

    (more…)

  • America’s “Great Cultural Revolution”

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Xi Van Fleet grew up in communist China. She was a schoolgirl in the late 1960s when Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution shook the nation. She had family members who were persecuted. She experienced the indoctrination that passed for schooling. As a teen, she was torn from her mother and father and assigned to work in a remote village. Throughout it all, she witnessed the wholesale destruction of the “Four Olds” — old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas.

    She survived the hellscape of Mao’s China, during which 20 million people lost their lives, and managed to emigrate to the United States. She married an American, got a steady job, and settled into a comfortable middle-class life in Loudoun County. Then to her dismay, Van Fleet saw history repeating itself. “I have lived through two cultural revolutions,” she told a rapt audience Wednesday at the Glen Allen Cultural Center in an event organized by the Virginia Forum.

    One day in 2020 she spoke out at a Loudoun County School Board meeting, and her message went viral. She appeared on Fox News and interview requests poured in. Vowing to dedicate herself to raising the alarm, she recounted the parallels between communist China and contemporary America in a book, Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning.

    The United States is not ruled by a totalitarian dictator, but in what Van Fleet sees as a raw quest for power, American cultural elites have unleashed a similar assault on traditional institutions, values and thought. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is too small to escape criticism.

    (more…)

  • How’s Your Hurricane Box?

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Quick. Call the cops. Seems I’ve been robbed.

    Yup, sometime during the past year or two a prowler must have slipped into my house and made off with my valuables.

    Once inside, he cleverly went past the stuff we’d miss right away, the TV, the pickleball paddles. This bandit took batteries – dozens of them – and cans of tuna. He pocketed peanut butter and duct tape. He absconded with flashlights, paper plates and wooden matches. Even our Band-Aids.

    Gone. All gone.

    I made this startling discovery Wednesday after seeing the front page of the paper.

    โ€œYoungkin Declares State Of Emergency Ahead Of Hurricane Helene,โ€ it screamed.

    Chances are weโ€™ll be fine here in our little cul de sac by the sea. Due west of us? Not so much,

    Thatโ€™s when I thought about all of those procrastinators in Richmond who were headed to hardware stores, to fight over that last roll of duct tape and that last sheet of plywood.

    I smiled smugly.

    That will never be me. I know a thing or two about storms. I have a well-stocked hurricane kit..

    Or so I thought. Read the whole thing.

  • MS-13 Gang Member Welcome at Loudoun County High School

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Lord knows, we tried to warn the good people of Loudoun County. We told them that Aaron Spence — formerly the Virginia Beach schools chief — was not a great hireย 

    Pity they didnโ€™t listen.

    Emmy-award winning TV journalist Nick Minock is now reporting that Loudoun schools will allow a student to attend a public high school despite his ties to the violent street gang, MS-13.

    Worse, this student was arrested in spring of 2023 for carrying a loaded gun after threatening a middle school student.

    Heโ€™s now in high school.

    If I had a child in Loudoun Valley High School — where heโ€™s reportedly a student — Iโ€™d remove him or her TODAY. And Iโ€™d keep my kid home until the alleged gang member is gone. Loudoun County Public School policy #8220 requires his suspension, according to Minock.

    Read the whole thing.

     

  • The Snowflake Factory

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    On Feb. 15, 2022, the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity at the University of Virginia instructed its pledges to show up blindfolded at the frat house at precisely 10:28 p.m. After being led to the basement, the newbies were ordered to race one another in consuming various combinations of milk, bananas, Sprite, mayonnaise, and broccoli. One pledge vomited.

    Then the blindfolded inductees were commanded to engage in “wall sits” on the basement wall. Against the backdrop of loud music, FIJI brothers began throwing eggs against the ceiling and walls around the pledges. One egg struck a pledge in the eye.

    “Multiple witnesses confirm that the victim was in pain and asked to go to the hospital,” summarizes the resulting Hazing Misconduct Report. “No effort was made to call 911 or secure immediate medical assistance.”

    In the administrative proceeding that followed, Phi Delta Gamma’s operating agreement with the University was terminated and five students were referred to the Student Judiciary Committee. The chapter would have to wait four years before being permitted to reconstitute itself at UVA.

    A generation ago, the egg-throwing incident would have been a non-event. Most likely, the pledge would have gotten over the momentary pain, he would have been inducted into the fraternity, and as an upperclassman,  he would have plotted ways to torment the next class of pledges. No longer. These days anyone discomfited by a fraternity initiation rite is encouraged to submit an anonymous report, the Department of Student Affairs aggressively investigates the complaint, and fraternities can be shut down.

    This is how snowflakes are made.

    (more…)

  • A Rational Medical Care System?

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    I had cataract surgery last month. Of course, that procedure involved administration of some anesthesia. I just got the insurance statement. The total doctor/facility charges listed for the anesthetist was $1,826.40. The Medicare discounts total was $1,711.80, about 94 percent. The total amount the doctors’ group got was $114.60. Can anyone explain to me how this even approaches a rational way to do business?

    RWH

  • Free “The Cadet”

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    James A. Bacon

    Letter from Thomas M. Neale, chair of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, to John Adams, president of the Virginia Military Institute Board of Visitors, dated Sept. 20, 2024.

    Dear Mr. Adams:

    I am the President of The Jefferson Council for the University of Virginia
    as well as the Chair of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance. TJCโ€™s core mission is to โ€œPreserve Thomas Jeffersonโ€™s Legacy of Freedom and Excellenceโ€ while fighting for a return to a culture of civil dialogue, intellectual diversity, and the free exchange of competing ideas at UVA. AFSA is a 501ยฉ3 comprised of 27 like-minded alternative alumni groups pursuing the same goals at their alma maters.

    In my role as AFSA Chair, I have been in close contact with VMIโ€™s AFSA group The Cadet Foundation since its inception. Therefore, I am conversant with the events on the VMI campus and the issues TCF is confronting. I am writing you since I just became aware of the request from the staff of The Cadet to obtain their permit. These exemplary cadets have won numerous Virginia Press Association (VPA) awards, including being the only student newspaper in its history to win the VPAโ€™s highest award for Journalistic Integrity and Community Service. I also know that The Cadet recently won multiple national awards competing against professional journalists across the country. They are an outstanding group of young men and women and should be a source of pride for everyone affiliated with VMI.

    (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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