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Jeanine’s Memes
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Bacon Meme of the Week
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Ceasefire Virginia Sounds Great. But Does It Work?
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.
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The Costliest Floods in Interior Virginia Since 1969
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 Virginiaโs 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…)
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A Transparent Effort to Prevent SCC Approval of Hydrocarbons
By Steve Haner
Any doubt that some members of the Virginia General Assemblyโs 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 stateโs dominant electric utility. The three proposals (also available on the groupโs 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 โintegrated system planโ and again adding emphasis on ending hydrocarbon energy.
- A draft bill to change of the groupโs 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 stateโs energy policy, which envisions ending the use of hydrocarbons in Virginia agriculture, transportation and new buildings along with electricity.
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Looks Like a Horse Race
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.
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America’s “Great Cultural Revolution”
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.
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How’s Your Hurricane Box?
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.
โYoungkin Declares State Of Emergency Ahead Of Hurricane Helene,โ it screamed.
Chances are weโll be fine here in our little cul de sac by the sea. Due west of us? Not so much,
Thatโs 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.
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MS-13 Gang Member Welcome at Loudoun County High School
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 didnโt listen.
Worse, this student was arrested in spring of 2023 for carrying a loaded gun after threatening a middle school student.
Heโs now in high school.
If I had a child in Loudoun Valley High School — where heโs reportedly a student — Iโd remove him or her TODAY. And Iโd keep my kid home until the alleged gang member is gone. Loudoun County Public School policy #8220 requires his suspension, according to Minock.
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The Snowflake Factory
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.
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A Rational Medical Care System?
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
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Free “The Cadet”
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:
(more…)
I am the President of The Jefferson Council for the University of Virginia
as well as the Chair of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance. TJCโs core mission is to โPreserve Thomas Jeffersonโs 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 VMIโs 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 VPAโs 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.
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A โJoy Bombโ Going Off In Your Heart
by John Baliles
The READ Center provides classroom instruction, one-to-one tutoring, and community programs to adults who want to improve their reading, writing, basic math and digital skills.
Jake Burns at CBS6 reported last weekย about the 40th Anniversary of one of our regionโs most important non-profits โย the READ Center, which has been helping improve adult literacy for tens of thousands. READ Center Executive Director Ryan Corrigan is exactly right when he says it is hard to believe that more than 90,000 adults in our region are considered “low literacy,” meaning they read below a third grade level.
โThere’s nothing that the low literacy doesn’t impact,โย Corrigan said.ย โIf you’re looking at poverty, if you’re looking at crime, if you’re looking at health, if you’re looking at workforce development, this touches everything.โ
Corrigan points out how vital literacy is for what many people might consider to be the most mundane of tasks.
“To read their prescriptions, to take a driver’s license test, to fill out a job application, to read their book of faith, to read a homework assignment with their children or grandchildren,” Corrigan said.
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$1,900 an Hour to Close the Kids’ Wing
by Joe Fitzgerald
What can you do thatโs worth $1,900? Can you do it in an hour?
Iโd have to be paid $4 a word to make that much from this post, but Iโm a fast writer. And then Iโd have to write several thousand posts a year to make as much as a hospital administrator, which is what this column is about.
I have no idea what the schedule is for Sentaraโs chief executive. All I know about him โ I couldnโt tell you his name on a bet โ is that he makes close to $5.8 million a year. Suppose or imagine that he works 60 hours a week and has two weeks off. Those 3,000 hours are worth somewhere north of $1,900 each to somebody, presumably the Sentara board.
But Sentara is closing the pediatrics wing at what used to be Rockingham Memorial Hospital. It costs too much.
As state Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, has pointed out this week, parents of children needing hospitalization will have to deal with the logistics of travel to Charlottesville. Thatโs just one of the drawbacks. I agree with Mark on this one. That should be a clue to how bad it is. Anyone with even a surface knowledge of Valley politics in the last quarter century knows that if he and I are on the same page, then either one of us has lost his mind or the situation is dire.
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Haidt on Cell Phones and Teen Mental Illness
You can gain insight into the Youngkin administration’s thinking behind its recommended bell-to-bell cell-phone restrictions in Virginia public schools by watching this video.
Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera and Secretary of Health and Human Services Janet Kelly make introductory remarks. First lady Suzanne Youngkin follows with a Q&A with former University of Virginia professor (now at NYU) Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation.
Haidt, who has done more than anyone else to raise the alarm about the relationship between cell phone usage, social media, and the decline in teen mental health, says the Virginia model for addressing the challenge of cell phones in schools is one of the best in the nation.
I was fortunate to meet Haidt when he came as a guest of The Jefferson Council to speak at UVA, and I’ve read The Anxious Generation. Anything he has to say is worth hearing. — JAB
