Bacon's Rebellion

  • 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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    by

    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…)

  • A โ€˜Joy Bombโ€™ Going Off In Your Heart

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    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 regionโ€™s most important non-profits โ€”ย 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.

    โ€œThere’s nothing that the low literacy doesn’t impact,โ€ย Corrigan said.ย โ€œIf 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.

    (more…)

  • $1,900 an Hour to Close the Kids’ Wing

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    James A. Bacon

    by Joe Fitzgerald

    What can you do thatโ€™s worth $1,900? Can you do it in an hour?

    Iโ€™d have to be paid $4 a word to make that much from this post, but Iโ€™m a fast writer. And then Iโ€™d 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 Sentaraโ€™s chief executive. All I know about him โ€“ I couldnโ€™t 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. Thatโ€™s 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.

    (more…)

  • Haidt on Cell Phones and Teen Mental Illness

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    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

  • How UVA Holds Students “Accountable”

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    In the recent past, the University of Virginia Division of Student Affairs has dealt with two very different kinds of student-conduct cases. In one, the division probed charges against pro-Palestinian protesters who were arrested for trespassing during the tent-encampment fracas last May. In the other, Student Affairs investigated hazing activities of the Theta Chi fraternity.

    Student Affairs officers submitted formal complaints with the Student Judiciary against 11 protesters who refused orders to disband a tent encampment and were subsequently arrested. Local courts dropped the trespassing charges, and after a series of meetings with students, the UVA administration abandoned the code-of-conduct charges as well.

    The outcome of the hazing investigation turned out very differently. In the most serious charge against the fraternity, Theta Chi brothers compelled pledges to eat a “heinous” concoction that included habanero peppers, causing some to vomit. The university ordered the fraternity to cease all functions until 2028-29; the prohibition extended to organizing an “underground” fraternity or even an informal group of former Theta Chi brothers. Additionally, according to the hazing report, individual students accused of trying to obstruct the investigation would be referred to the University Judiciary Committee and the Honor Committee “as appropriate.”

    University officials insist that they followed standard procedures in dealing with the pro-Palestinian protesters. โ€œDespite the high profile of this case, the University followed the same disciplinary practices and processes we always do,” UVa spokesman Brian Coy told The Daily Progress.

    But people I’m in contact with strongly suspect that UVA has two sets of standards: leniency for left-wing student protesters and severity for fraternities. Indeed, there are widespread suspicions that the UVA administration is engaged in a sustained war against the Greek organizations.

    Those fears have been heightened by circulation of an audio recording by a Theta Chi member of an interrogation by Donovan Golich, assistant director of accountability with Student Affairs. In soliciting the student’s cooperation in the investigation, Golich threatened to report him to his ROTC commander, file Honor charges against him, and file obstruction charges with the student judiciary. The student could lose his ROTC scholarship and be temporarily banned from the Grounds, Golich warned. “I’m done with people like you,” he said at one point. “I don’t fuck around.”

    (more…)

  • Youngkin’s Quiet Successes in Government Transformation

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    It’s refreshing to see that legacy media are still capable of publishing articles about the nuts and bolts of good government, a topic that once was a preoccupation of local journalists but no longer seems to be. Michael Martz, an old-timer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, wrote an informative article today about Governor Glenn Youngkin’s record in making state government more efficient and more responsive to citizens.

    Early in his administration, Youngkin hired a “chief transformation officer” to tackle problems that needed tackling. Team Youngkin achieved several successes that, until Martz took note of them, have received little visibility.

    • The Department of Motor Vehicles has slashed average wait times from 37 minutes to 10 minutes;
    • The Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) has dug out from more than 1.3 million “work items,” including a backlog of 700,00 inherited from former Governor Ralph Northam after COVID-19 shutdowns threw hundreds of thousands of Virginians out of work;
    • The state has saved $106 million, about 75% of it from renegotiating IT contracts that were โ€œpoorly priced or structuredโ€ instead of allowing them to renew automatically;
    • The administration is reviewing 5,000 other state contracts, and Youngkin aspires to $200 million in annual savings.

    (more…)

  • Anti-Hydrocarbon Advocates Want It Both Ways on Local Control

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    The top 2025 legislative goal of Virginiaโ€™s Climate Catastrophe Democrats will be to override local zoning controls on wind, solar and energy storage projects.ย But for now, they are begging Chesterfield County residents to fight a proposed natural gas plant by appealing to that same local control.

    Whatโ€™s a little hypocrisy when you are trying to kill a hydrocarbon plant?

    This appeared in the email inbox, with the request that recipients forward it to one or more county supervisor:

    The residents of Chesterfield County deserve a hearing and a vote on Dominion Energyโ€™s dirty gas power plant.ย Dominion Energy has repeatedly stated that this gas plant is needed to serve the electricity demands of data centers mostly concentrated in Northern Virginia.ย Why should we see our electric bills increase to subsidize some of the richest and biggest tech firms in the world?ย As county leaders, you have an opportunity to keep our bills from rising and ensure Dominion doesn’t build this dirty gas plant in our backyard.

    The message was signed by Glen Besa, claiming the title of chairman of โ€œFriends of Chesterfield.โ€ He is also retired head of the highly anti-hydrocarbon, pro-wind Sierra Club in Virginia, and is still very active. His current employer cries out for a future post. When the bill for state override of zoning on some energy projects is pending, he will be a cheerleader.ย If an amendment is offered to make it easier to site a hydrocarbon plant, as well, expect his opposition.

    And that (giving away some free lobbying advice here) is how to kill that bill when it shows up.ย Insist that the state also take over control of the locations for natural gas and nuclear plants, supplanting local decisions.ย It should be a level field, right? At that point the idea becomes (pardon me, I couldnโ€™t help myself) radioactive.ย 

    (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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