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Jeanine’s Memes
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No Dinosaurs Were Harmed in Fueling Your Car. It’s “Carbon Fuel.”
By Steve Haner
It is time to retire the term “fossil fuel.” Oil, coal and natural gas (oil is apparently the second most abundant liquid on Earth, after Miller Lite) have nothing to do with the bones of a tyrannosaurus rex or a stone impression of a trilobite. The generic term to describe the class should be carbon fuels.
I am no organic chemist, but my understanding is that the carbon in all of them is the element that provides the energy density and releases the steady heat when burned. So “carbon fuels.” I personally will use that term henceforth.
They were first called “fossil fuels” by a German chemist in the 18th Century, who applied the term mainly because the fuels are extracted from below ground. There is also a story out there that John D. Rockefeller promoted use of the term, as he built Standard Oil, to imply they were as scarce as dinosaur bones and thus justified higher prices.
Why retire this serviceable if incorrect term? Control the language and you are halfway to winning the argument.
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Dominion Energy Prices Spike 11% By Sept 1, Mostly Due to VCEA
By Steve Haner
Dominion Energy Virginia electricity bills rose August 1 and will rise again September 1, with many of the increases due to various aspects of the Virginia Clean Economy Act, especially ongoing construction of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.
Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch The net change is just over $14 more on that prototypical residential bill of 1,000 kilowatt hours per month. That is almost an 11% increase over the July 2024 charge of $129.31 for that amount of energy. As of September 1, that will be $143.36.
The numbers come from a presentation made by the State Corporation Commission staff to the Virginia Manufacturers Association energy summit on July 19. The SCC pointed to other possible increases and decreases from pending Dominion applications and projected the bill would drop back to $141.75 come spring.
That said, what Virginians pay the dominant utility is a revolving door of additions and subtractions impossible for the average citizen to track. For example, in recent weeks Dominion has announced the acquisition of a wind lease area off North Carolina, plans to build a liquified natural gas storage facility, and is moving forward on a planned Chesterfield natural gas plant. No money for those is being collected yet.
Remember, those totals would have been about $4 per month higher if Virginia were still part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative carbon tax compact, and advocates are seeking to get us back in either through court order or through Democratic victories in 2025 elections. Democrats love RGGI.
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Another Year, Another Tuition Hike
by James A. Bacon
Virginia’s institutions of higher education increased in-state undergraduate tuition & fees by 2.6% on average in the 2024-25 academic year, according to data published last week by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). That’s a smidgeon less than the 2.8% rise in the Consumer Price Index over the previous fiscal year (July 2023 to June 2025).
When room, board and fees not related to the cost of instruction are added in, however, the total cost of attendance for four-year institutions increased 3.4% on average, or 3.4% for in-state, undergraduate students.
The statewide average masked considerable variability between institutions, and even within institutions as some universities have begun charging different rates for different degree programs. The University of Virginia-Wise campus did not increase undergraduate tuition & fees at all this year, while the UVA main campus in Charlottesville hiked rates by 3.0% on average.
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City Hall Blues
Here’s the obligatory AI-generated Suno follow-up to Jon Baliles’ post (based on Richmond Times-Dispatch reporting) about the latest credit card scandal at Richmond City Hall.
[Verse]City hall is a dark pit
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Scams runnin’ wild
Credit cards gettin’ hit
They livin’ like kings in style
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The Cesspool Overfloweth….
by Jon Baliles
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the “cesspool of corruption and inefficiency” that is inundating City Hall, the shark comes back around and takes another chunk out of any remaining credibility. Samuel Parker with the Richmond Times-Dispatch has found more glaring incompetence at 900 E. Broad Street and secured his reporting job for some time to come as he continues to investigate and reveal more layers of corruption as if he is peeling an onion big enough to make all of us cry.
Parker began his investigation into the use of the city’s credit card program several months ago and found multiple abuses and questionable spending at the Voter Registrar’s office. The Registrar is appointed (or fired) by a three-person, state-controlled Electoral Board, but the office is funded by the city and the credit cards issued to it are managed by the city’s Procurement Department.
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Your Daily Illegal
by Kerry Dougherty
Chances are until this week you’d never heard of Melody Waldecker. She’s the 54-year-old mother of four and grandmother of eight who was run over and killed Sunday morning in Sterling, Va. by a carjacker.
His name? Jose Aguilar-Martinez, 21. He’s from El Salvador. In the country illegally.
Thanks to failed border czar Kamala Harris.
Ms. Waldecker is from Silver Spring, Md., but she was in Virginia this weekend, visiting her ailing mother. On Sunday morning she dashed into a 7-Eleven when she saw someone getting into her Kia Sorento.
She ran to the car and attempted to stop the car thief. He gunned the engine and ran her over.
This suspected killer took off, was involved in two other minor accidents before being arrested. Continue reading.
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Bacon Meme of the Week
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This and That: GMU and Voter Turnout
GMU board appointees
Jim Bacon and others who are lauding Governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointments of Heritage Foundation-affiliated folks to the Board of Visitors of George Mason University should bear in mind that those appointments are subject to confirmation by the General Assembly in the 2025 Session. With Youngkin being a lame duck and with the Democrats in the majority in both houses being either pumped up by the defeat of Donald Trump or mad as hell about his election, I would not bet on all those appointments being confirmed.
Election turnout efforts
After recently reading about the efforts being ramped up by both parties to turn out voters in swing states this fall, I am thankful that Virginia is not included in the lists of all those states that will be getting attention. However, there is some activity going on. I recently talked to someone who has been knocking on doors for Democrats and she reported encountering a lot of enthusiasm.
RWH
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Now What Do We Do With Him?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
I was perusing the latest list of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointments and could not help smiling when I came across one entry: Carl Beckett, Special Assistant, Department of Corrections.
I have no idea who Carl Beckett is. It was the position that caught my eye. “Special assistant” is a pretty non-descriptive job title.
Some context is needed. Generally, most state personnel positions fall under the Virginia Personnel Act. Filling those positions is accomplished through a competitive process “based on merit principles.” After a state employee has been hired and completed a probationary period, he or she cannot be dismissed except for certain specified reasons and there are systems in place to ensure due process for the employee.
There is another classification of state employee: at-will. The governor has complete discretion in the hiring (appointing) of people to serve in these positions and they serve at the pleasure of the governor. They include people in the governor’s office; cabinet members and their staff; and agency heads. In addition to these employees in policy positions, the governor may appoint up to two at-will positions for each agency, in addition to the agency head. The statute authorizing such appointments describes them as those “serving in the capacity of chief deputy, or equivalent, and the employee who has accepted serving in the capacity of a confidential assistant for policy or administration.”
People appointed to these positions are usually folks who have worked in the governor’s campaign or have some other political connection and the administration does not have another suitable position to offer them.
Agencies really do not like these appointments and they resent them. These are people that have been assigned to them by the governor and about whom they had no say in the assignment. Often, the at-will employee does not have any knowledge or experience in the subject matter of the agency. The appointment was not in response to any specific need of the agency or a vacant position within the agency. As a result, the agency has to figure out what to do with this staff person just assigned to it. Finally, there is the assumption or concern, especially with an at-will appointee at the chief deputy, or equivalent, position that the appointee’s chief role is to “spy” on the agency and report back to the governor. Due to all these misgivings, the at-will appointee is usually given an assignment that isolates him or her from the major operations of the agency doing something that will have as little impact as possible.
I hope Mr. Beckett is assigned to a role he finds interesting and something that he thinks will contribute to the good of state government.
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A New Horizon
In the previous post, I suggested that it would be nice if our cultural elites ever produced something uplifting about the contemporary state of race relations. But we know they won’t. They’re too invested in their worldview of systemic oppression. So, I’ve turned to AI to explore the theme I raised about the great Reverse Migration, in which young, educated African Americans are migrating from Northern cities to the South in search of greater economic opportunity.
First the theatrical poster (courtesy of Bing image Creator):
Then the theme song (courtesy of Suno):
And then the play itself (in 1,000 words) from Chat GBT.
Title: “A New Horizon”
Act 1: The Struggle
Scene 1: The Streets of the North
The stage is dimly lit, portraying a rundown neighborhood in a Northern city. Broken streetlights, graffiti-covered walls, and distant sirens set the atmosphere. JAMES, a young African-American man in his late twenties, stands under a flickering streetlamp, nervously glancing around. Enter MARCUS, his friend, dressed in similar streetwear.
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How About a Production About Blacks’ Reverse Migration?
by James A. Bacon
The University of Richmond’s Modlin Center for the Arts is bringing the dance troupe Step Afrika! to Richmond to perform its signature work, “The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence.” Inspired by the paintings of Lawrence, an African-American artist of the era, the production “charts the story of African American migrants moving from the rural South to the industrial North to escape Jim Crow, racial oppression, and lynchings in the early 1900s.”
The Great Migration reflects badly on the American experience, to be sure, and it is important never to forget the history of racism and segregation. But our cultural elites who finance, package and promote such productions seem to be interested in telling only the history of racial oppression, reliving traumatic events as if they happened yesterday, and ignoring the immense progress that American society has made toward becoming a post-racial society.
We rarely hear about the great Reverse Migration, which is actually occurring today — not a century ago. How many movies, documentaries, theatrical productions, or New York Times best-selling books tell that story?
What’s the Reverse Migration? If you have to ask the question, you’re making my point.
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Recount Proves Again Virginia Election Process is Sound
By Steve Haner
U.S. Representative Bob Good Four votes. After weeks of dire warnings, paranoia and conspiracy chatter, a formal recount of the Bob Good-John McGuire congressional primary yesterday moved a total of four votes out of almost 63,000. McGuire was confirmed as the nominee for November by a narrow but solid margin of more than three hundred votes.
Soon to be former Congressman Good presumably will get a fat bill for the personnel, travel, legal and administrative costs of assembling and reviewing all the ballots in a room full of observers. Pay no attention if he squawks, because nobody actually familiar with Virginia’s elections saw this recount as anything but a waste of time. Virginia’s election process, with its reliance on paper ballots backing up the machine counts, is solid.
It is time for those in the Republican Party who continue to insist Virginia’s elections are insecure to just shut up. It was a bit of irony that as the media were reporting the smooth recount that confirmed the outcome, the Richmond Times-Dispatch was posting another guest column from one of the complainers. The “risk-limiting audit” process he advocates would be unnecessary. If there is a tight outcome with a reason to be concerned, the recount law remains in place.
Worse, such a mandate would continue to allow Virginia Republicans to delude themselves about why they lose elections. It cannot be that too many voters are rejecting their candidates or policies! Or they are not running good campaigns! With the major shift in momentum in the presidential race since President Joe Biden withdrew, the chance the GOP will be scrambling for excuses in Virginia is once again very high.
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About Those 10,000 New Startups…
by James A. Bacon
Photo credit: Rawstory.com Governor Glenn Youngkin has made quite the audacious claim: his administration has created 10,000 new high-growth and high-wage startup companies in Virginia, a faster pace of startups than seen under any previous Virginia governor in the last 15 years. That would be an impressive accomplishment if it stands up to scrutiny.
“At the beginning of my administration, I pledged to reinvigorate job growth and foster an environment for 10,000 new startups in Virginia and we’ve achieved it in record time,” Youngkin said in making the announcement this morning. “Through our Compete to Win strategy, we’ve reached this incredible milestone by driving innovation, fostering entrepreneurship, bolstering our talent pipeline, providing needed tax relief, and truly creating an environment where startups and businesses can thrive.”
First, let me say, 10,000 startups are great news. We should all celebrate the fact that Virginia is climbing out of the economic doldrums. If we want to create an Opportunity Society, as opposed to a society mired in grievance, victimhood and resentment, it is imperative to have an economy that creates jobs and business opportunities for all.
But my first journalistic instinct when appraising any such claim, whether it comes from Youngkin, Ralph Northam, Terry McAuliffe or anyone else is: prove it. When a governor says that his administration “created” X number of jobs, persuade me that the economic resurgence is due to his policies and would have fallen short without them.
Let’s take a look at Youngkin’s backup for his claims.
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The Cat Lady’s Lament
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. After filing the previous post, I asked Suno to compose a folk ballad about childless cat ladies infecting their pets with the COVID-19 virus.
This is the result:
[Verse]
In a cluttered old apartment by the railway’s rusty line
Wanda sits alone
Feeding Mischa ‘neath the moon’s bright shine
No children at her knee
Just memories left to rust
Her felines are her family
In them she places trust
