Bacon's Rebellion

  • Academic Excellence Slipping at T.J.

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Source: Virginia Department of Education Build-a-Table database

    In 2021 the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology changed its standards with the goal of admitting more “marginalized” minorities. Scrapping its rigorous admissions test, Fairfax County imposed wholistic criteria which, according to the school’s Wikipedia page, incorporate “grade point average, a math- or science-related problem-solving essay, a student portrait sheet demonstrating skills and character, and details about a student’s socio-economic background….”

    The immediate result was a decline in the percentage of Asian-American students from 73% to 54%.

    A secondary result was a tumble in T.J.’s national ranking from the No. 1 high school in the country to No. 14.

    Perhaps the most disturbing result has been a fall-off in academic excellence. The number of semifinalists recognized by the National Merit Scholarship plummeted from 157 in 2020 to 81 for the 2025 award, according to the UnHerd blog.

    The same slide in performance is captured in the percentage of T.J. Students who scored “Advanced” on their math and science Standards of Learning (SOL) scores from around 90% pre-COVID to the mid-40s in 2023-24, the most recent academic year for which the SOLs were tested. (See the table atop this post.)

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  • The Local Car Tax: Still Hated, Still a Target for Repeal

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    Steve Haner

    By Kimberly Pinter and Callahan Burton

    Governor Gilmore was right. His โ€œNo Car Taxโ€ slogan resonated with all Virginia vehicle owners and catapulted him to the Virginia Governorโ€™s mansion in 1997 with 56% of the vote.

    The tax is universally hated and perceived as unfair. You pay good money for a car (plus sales tax!), more to insure it and fill up the tank, and even more to maintain it (and perform mostly unnecessary annual inspections). And then youโ€™re hit with an annual tax for the pleasure of owning the vehicle. Worse, Virginians pay the highest car tax rate in the country, with an average effective rate of 4.05% and average annual bill of $1,011. No wonder young people are moving out of the commonwealth.

    Car Tax Day for commonwealth residents has similar significance as April 15 does to all Americans nationwide. It is a day that every Virginia car owner dreads. It is the day when the locality where you live demands its pound of flesh simply because you own a car.

    Why, in 2024, are we still paying this tax? What happened to Governor Gilmoreโ€™s promise?

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  • Availability of Surgery in Virginia Jeopardized by Reforms in Neighboring States

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    sherlockj

    Availability of Surgery in Virginia Jeopardized by Reforms in Neighboring States

    By James C. Sherlock

    The essential debate on COPN (Certificate of Public Need law) in Virginia has boiled down to imaging and ambulatory surgery centers, and whether those services should be regulated under the program

                                     Kate Masters, Virginia Mercury, 2020

    Fast forward to last week. Your author visited his orthopedic surgeon to begin a process he had been putting off – the replacement of his left knee.

    That surgeonโ€™s orthopedic group is located in a very large facility in Virginia Beach near the Norfolk boundary.

    • Because of COPN, that practice does not even have MRI capability. They must send patients elsewhere, and patients must schedule yet another appointment for MRIs in order for the surgeons to complete their diagnoses;
    • They conduct their surgeries in Sentara facilities. For the entirely compelling reason that, thanks to COPN, there is nowhere else to do them.

    Old news, you may say.

    But repealing the imaging and ambulatory surgery center provisions of COPN just got more urgent. Four more southeastern states, including neighboring North Carolina and Tennessee, are doing so. Maryland already has.

    Surgeons, like all of us, will go where they are welcome.

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  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • B.R. Readers, Help Us Cut Through the Spin About the Disaster in Carolina

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Relief supplies in North Carolina. Image credit: Reuters

    by James A. Bacon

    It turns out that the “October surprise” of the 2024 election wasn’t some political machination but an act of nature — Hurricane Helene. Unprecedented flooding in the mountains of North Carolina and neighboring states (including Virginia on the margins) have created a Hurricane Katrina-scale disaster. Paralleling the political fallout from Katrina, the response of federal authorities is fast becoming a hot political issue.

    When it comes to forming narratives, there are three important differences this time. First, the victims in New Orleans were overwhelmingly poor and Black; in the mountains of Appalachia they are overwhelmingly poor and White. Second, the president of the United States in 2005 was George Bush, a Republican. This time a Democrat, Joe Biden, is running the country. Third, the mainstream media monopolized the narrative in 2005; today, given the power of social media, it cannot.

    Two things are predictable. The Mainstream Media will play a very different role than it did in Katrina. Back then it blamed the horrors of the hurricane aftermath on systemic racism, and it relentlessly criticized the response of the Bush administration. This time around, most victims are MAGA sympathizers, which will create cognitive dissonance in the MSM: what’s happening to those mountain people is tragic… but they’re not a “marginalized minority” so the disaster cannot be framed as a social-justice issue. Furthermore, the MSM can’t allow the horrors unfolding in North Carolina to harm Kamala Harris’ bid for the presidency, so the gut instinct is to quash critical “disinformation” and defend the Biden administration.

    On the flip side, western North Carolina is red-state country. The users of social media have every political incentive to blame the horrors on FEMA and the inadequate response on federal authorities and senile Joe Biden. Take a look at social media, and that’s exactly what many are doing.

    The truth is likely to be the first casualty.

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  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    James A. Bacon

  • Cuccinelli Takes a Stand for Prosecutorial Integrity

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Ken Cuccinelli Photo credit: New York Times

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Ken Cuccinelli, a former Virginia state senator, Attorney General and candidate for governor, has long been the bแป‡te noire of Democrats.ย Nevertheless, he deserves a lot of credit for his recent stand.

    In a guest essay in yesterdayโ€™s New York Times, he reminds us of a legal concept that is often forgotten. In 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the interest of the prosecution in a criminal case โ€œis not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.โ€ย The Court went on to elaborate that, although the prosecutor โ€œmay strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.โ€

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  • Response to Kerry: You Are Wrong

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    FEMA responding in Swannanoa, N.C. photo credit: Madeline Cook, FEMA

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    This whole story about FEMA being broke and, consequently, not being able to assist Helene victims, is another lie propagated by Trump.

    First, the Secretary of Homeland Security was referring to the possibility of having enough funding to cover the costs of another major storm this season. Congress just appropriated an additional $20 billion for FEMA in the recently-enacted continuing resolution. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/us/politics/fema-funding-shortfall-hurricane-season.html; https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/04/no-biden-didnt-take-fema-relief-money-use-migrants-trump-did/

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  • FEMA To Helene Victims: Tough Luck. Weโ€™re Broke.

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Perhaps you heard. FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency – is broke.

    Thatโ€™s right. Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas stood up this week and figuratively turned his pockets inside out, showing nothing but lint.

    You see, while you werenโ€™t looking Joe Biden and Kamala Harris quietly transformed FEMA into a giant illegal alien resettlement program.

    Now that American citizens are facing an unprecedented emergency, the result of this bait and switch have been revealed.

    “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season,โ€ Mayorkas told reporters on Air Force One Wednesday, with hurricane season running from June 1 through Nov. 30, according to The Federalist.

    โ€œWe are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,โ€ he said, after Hurricane Helene brought devastation to the southeastern United States.โ€

    Meeting the immediate needs? Not even close. Anecdotal reports from those on the ground in Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee , Virginia and especially in western North Carolina, are that FEMA is virtually invisible.

    Itโ€™s been charities and private individuals who first rushed in to the devastated areas to save lives and offer aid and comfort to those without water and electricity and who are trapped due to crumbled infrastructure.

    From all appearances, FEMA – like the president and vice president – took the weekend off .ย 

    When President George W. Bush bungled the Katrina recovery, he was skewered in the press. He never fully recovered from that costly blunder.

    So far, Biden and Harris are skating with the legacy media. As usual.

    So where did FEMAโ€™s funds go?ย 

    To illegal aliens. Where else? Continue reading.

     

  • The Misguided Controversy over English Language Learners

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    James A. Bacon

    by Todd Truitt

    Many Virginia school administrators, public officials and activists have been up in arms about the fact that the new Virginia school accountability system will include the academic achievement scores of English Language Learners (ELs) after one year of entering school in the United States. One activist group called it a โ€œradical expectation.โ€ In fact, itโ€™s a 20+ year-old federal legal protection ardently supported by civil rights groups.

    EL Inclusion in New Virginia School Accountability System

    The Virginia Board of Education’s (VBOE) recent approval of a revamped accountability system is a substantial step toward greater transparency by providing clearer data on academic performance. This new framework is set to take full effect in the upcoming school year, and clearly separates federal accountability reporting standards from state accreditation reporting standards. As The Education Trust articulated, the federal accountability measures are designed to illuminate disparities and enable targeted support for struggling schools.

    Despite the clarity offered by federal accountability standards, confusion remains among some Virginia school leaders and the press regarding the rationale for including ELs in the new accountability system after just one year. This misunderstanding demonstrates the significant shortcomings of the previous system.

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  • Teachers Behaving Badly

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Palestinians and Israelis may be locked in a death struggle in the Middle East, but that’s no excuse for their sympathizers to behave poorly in the United States. People — and that includes teachers — need to get a grip. No matter how passionate your views, you don’t have the right to use your position of authority to indoctrinate students. And you don’t have the right to destroy the expression of ideas you find reprehensible.

    Shayma Al-Hanooti, an Arlington County English teacher, has inserted the Israel-Palestine conflict into her classroom, requiring students to watch the pro-Palestinian documentary Born in Gaza and asking them to expose the “logical fallacies” in pro-Israeli arguments, according to emails obtained by Parents Defending Education.

    Al-Hanooti has the right to express her opinions inside the classroom and out, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with exposing logical fallacies — that’s an English teacher’s job. But students should be asked to sort through a range of competing facts, arguments and perspectives on a contentious issue. If Al-Hanooti wants to conduct her patently one-sided exercises in a voluntarily attended outside forum, she should be free to do so. But in a public school setting, she should not be structuring her class assignments to preordain rhetorical outcomes.

    Meanwhile, over in Loudoun County, teacher Andrea Weiskopf obliterated a map of Israel painted by a Stone Bridge High School student in his school parking space on the grounds that it constituted “hate speech.”

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  • Stealing From the Poor

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Thereโ€™s a special place in Hell for those who steal from the poor.

    Thatโ€™s what happened this week when thieves broke into a Habitat for Humanity van and stole $5,000 worth of tools. 

    Ironically, this hit the news on October 1. Former President Jimmy Carterโ€™s 100th birthday.

    Carter, the second worst president in American history (after Biden), redeemed himself in his post-presidency years by regularly volunteering with this charity that builds and rehabs homes for the poor. 

    According to a report in The Virginian-Pilot:

    โ€œA celebration had been planned for Tuesday in Chesapeake to celebrate the birthday of former President Jimmy Carter, who spent years working with Habitat for Humanity to create housing for Americans across the country. Several volunteers were planned to work at a 44-year-old home on Transylvania Avenue, rehabbing it with all new rooms, walls, plumbing, wiring, fixtures and furnishings.โ€

    โ€œHowever, celebration plans were called off after staff discovered the theft. The nonprofit reported that someone had broken through the fence of the Tidewater Drive headquarters and broken into the organizationโ€™s construction truck planned for the project. A police report has been filed.โ€

    That home was earmarked for a single mother and her teenaged daughter.

    As we all know, a home of oneโ€™s own is a life-changing event. Now the charity will need to raise funds to replace the pilfered tools before going back to work.

    For shame. Keep on reading.

  • More Crime Than They Said

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Photo credit: Style Weekly

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    It turns out that the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) campus is not as safe as itย  purports to be.

    Federal law requires institutions of higher education to publish the number of crimes committed on, and adjacent to, campus.ย The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports today that the university has discovered that it has been significantly under-reporting the number of crimes.

    For example, in 2022, there were 287 reported acts of dating violence, yet the universityโ€™s published report lists only 12.ย There were similar discrepancies in other categories, although the dating violence category was the one most seriously out of whack.

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  • Do We Want a Color-Blind Society or Not?

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    A University of Virginia mentorship program for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) students discriminates against White people on the basis of race, contends a complaint filed Tuesday by the Equal Protection Project.

    The BIPOC Alumni-Student Mentoring Program provides up to 25 UVA students in the School of Education and Human Development with individualized guidance from alumni educators. Its goal, according to its web page, is to โ€œimprove BIPOC undergraduatesโ€™ program experiences, career opportunities, and retention through pairing these learners with alumni mentors.โ€

    โ€œJust as it would be a violation of the universityโ€™s rules to have a whites-only mentoring program, itโ€™s a violation of the rules to have a non-whites-only program,โ€ said William A. Jacobson, founder of the Equal Opportunity Project, reports WVIR. โ€œThe university needs to be race-neutral in its educational and related programming.โ€

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  • No, RTD, Hurricane Helene Not Proof of “Climate Change”

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    The Richmond Times-Dispatch no longer has a climate alarmist on staff, so today it fell to one of its liberal political columnists (it still has two of those; they will be the last employees out the door) to blame Hurricane Helene on โ€œclimate change.โ€

    It was a terrible storm, no question. But it wasnโ€™t the first terrible storm, and it was no worse than plenty of storms from decades or even a century ago. See for example The [Raleigh] News and Observer front page reporting a very similar storm in Asheville and the rest of North Carolina in 1916. That 1916 storm caused havoc on the entire East Coast, more territory than Helene just did (because it stalled over the mountains).ย 

    Michael Paul Williams’ column is quite honest about the history of similar storms, including Camille, that devastated Nelson and Albemarle Counties in 1969 and Agnes that caused major Virginia flooding in 1972. The algorithm that substitutes for human editors at the โ€œnewspaperโ€ added after the on-line column a series of photos from Agnes, 52 years ago, when CO2 levels were far lower than they are today.

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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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