Bacon's Rebellion

  • A New Horizon

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    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.

    (more…)

  • How About a Production About Blacks’ Reverse Migration?

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    James A. Bacon

    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.

    (more…)

  • Recount Proves Again Virginia Election Process is Sound

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    Steve Haner

    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.

    (more…)

  • About Those 10,000 New Startups…

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    James A. Bacon

    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.

    (more…)

  • The Cat Lady’s Lament

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    James A. Bacon

    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

    (more…)

  • COVID Virus Makes Leap to Wild Animals

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Ask Bing Image Creator to create an image of  “childless cat ladies transmitting COVID to pet,” and this is what you get.

    Hey, childless cat ladies, you might be giving your pets COVID!

    OK, I’ll admit this story really doesn’t have anything to do with childless cat ladies. I’m shamelessly piggybacking on the J.D. Vance childless-cat-lady furor. I should be trying to panic all pet owners, not just childless cat ladies. You all might be giving your pets COVID!!

    Actually, human-to-pet transfer of the virus has been documented already. Indeed, researchers have found that the virus has jumped to a few species of wild animals: white-tailed deer, feral mink and Eurasian river otters.

    Here’s the real news hook: A Virginia Tech research team has discovered that the COVID-19 virus has leaped from humans to wild species — right here in Virginia!

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  • Stifling Discussion in Hanover

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    A story in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch caught my eye. It revealed what seems to be an outrageous action by the Hanover County School Board.

    The story deals with the controversy over the recent resignation of the school superintendent. One school board member, in an e-mail exchange with a county resident, blamed the other school board members for the resignation and lamented that it was a “great loss for Hanover.”

    I do not intend to get into the merits of the controversy. What I find outrageous is the statement that “board members were asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement regarding the separation.” 

    Who asked them to sign an NDA? Aren’t Hanover County residents entitled to know what their school board members think about major developments affecting the schools, such as the resignation of a superintendent?

    It is common for elected officials and chief administrators to decline to discuss “personnel matters.” However, that is a discretionary decision. An NDA is another dimension. Members of governing bodies should be free to discuss publicly any aspect of the business of the public body.

    RWH

  • Riding to Richmond

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    In Northern Virginia, a common battle cry around the turn of the century was, “Don’t Fairfax Loudoun.” After much of Loudoun became Fairfaxed, the admonition moved on to, “Don’t Fairfax Fauquier.”

    Soon it will be “Don’t Fairfax Richmond.”

    Fairfax County’s dysfunctional pattern of land use — low density subdivisions of detached single-family dwellings, separated land uses, hopscotch development — was cemented in place by zoning codes and the high cost of redeveloping property into higher-density development. Traffic congestion and supply-demand imbalance for housing are baked into the cake. The resulting quality of life may be acceptable to the immigrants who replenish the population outflow, but the middle class wants out.

    According to the leading expert in Virginia demographics, thousands of Northern Virginians are moving to Richmond. (Listen to our cool AI-generated song, “Riding to Richmond,” by clicking on the audio link above.)

    The main reason more people are leaving Virginia than are moving in — and moving from Northern Virginia to Richmond — is the high cost of housing, said Hamilton Lombard, manager of the Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center on Tuesday at an online seminar organized by Virginia FREE.

    (more…)

  • Brainwashing and Politicization at GMU

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Bryan Caplan

    Last week I highlighted an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that gave voice to fears by lefty George Mason University professors about the newly constituted Board of Visitors. Six board members appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin, the profs fretted, had ties to the conservative Heritage Foundation and might do all sorts of awful things, such as interfere with the tenure-granting process and dismantle the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion apparatus.

    One of the professors interviewed, Bryan Caplan, was not quoted in the article. Caplan, whose work is informed by public choice theory, describes himself as an economic libertarian.

    In his Bet on It Substack account, Caplan has republished the written Q&A he engaged in with the Chronicle reporter. Anyone interested in GMU should read the post.

    Some excerpts:

    Q: Do you think faculty should be worried by a Heritage presence on the board?

    A: The correct story, in my view, is that far-left faculty feel “threatened” by anything short of 100% control of the university. And all of the allegedly horrible views you list are, at minimum, worthy of calm discussion.

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  • Maps of the Day: Revenue Capacity, Revenue Effort

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    James A. Bacon

     

    A concept related to “fiscal stress” (see previous post) is “revenue capacity.” The Commonwealth of Virginia defines “revenue capacity” as the amount of revenue a local government would generate if it set its tax rates at statewide averages. The calculation takes into account five main revenue sources: true value of real estate, true value of public service corporation real estate, registered vehicles, local option sales tax receipts, and adjusted gross income. The state Commission on Local Government expresses the resulting number on a per capita basis.

    The index compiled by the Commission, based on the most recently available numbers from FY 2022, ranges from a high of $5,886.10 in Bath County and a low of $1,272.16 in Radford City. The average revenue capacity per capita in the Commonwealth is $2,960.72.

    The Commission then calculates what it calls “revenue effort” — how much revenue a locality raises expressed as a ratio of its revenue capacity, as seen in the map below:

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  • Map of the Day: Fiscal Stress

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    James A. Bacon

     The Commission on Local Government has released its report ranking the “fiscal stress” of Virginia’s local governments. Fiscal stress measures a locality’s ability to generate additional local revenues from its current tax base. As shown in the map above, the most severely stressed localities in Virginia fall into two buckets: cities and chronically depressed coalfield counties.

    The most fiscally stressed localities of all are small cities — Emporia (the #1 most stressed), Petersburg (#2), Covington (#3), Bristol (#4), Galax, (#5), and Martinsville (#6). The most fiscally robust (or least stressed) localities are suburban counties and cities — Goochland County (#133), Loudoun County (#132), Falls Church (#131), and Fairfax County (#130).

    A fascinating anomaly is Bath County (at #129), which is about as rural as you can get. The largest community, Hot Springs, has a population of less than 1,000. But the county is home to The Homestead resort and has numerous vacation homes. Also high on the list of fiscally robust counties are Lancaster (#118), Middlesex (#115) and Mathews (#114) counties on the Chesapeake Bay. Lancaster is home to The Tides resort. All three are blessed with an abundance of vacation and retirement homes.

    — JAB

    Update: I have updated the post to give a more precise definition of “fiscal stress.”

     

  • The Risk of Offshore Turbine Blade Failure

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Image: Idaho National Laboratory Creative Commons

    by David Wojick

    On July 26, CFACT’s President Craig Rucker sent Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin a letter warning him about the serious risk of blade failure in the giant offshore wind facility being built off Virginia. The warning builds on the recent blade failure off of Nantucket, which has littered the beaches with fiberglass fragments. Virginia is also at risk.

    In this article, I present some technical background on that risk. The Virginia offshore wind facility will be one of the world’s biggest, with 176 enormous turbines. It is just getting started with pile driving, so no turbine blades have been installed to date. This is an opportune time to undertake caution.

    The Nantucket turbines are made by GE, and they are the world’s largest in operation today at 13 MW, each driven by three huge 107-meter-long blades. That is 351 feet for those of us who do not speak metric. The Virginia turbines will be even bigger at 14 MW with blades 108 meters (154+ feet) long. They are made by Siemens Gamesa, or SG for short.

    The GE turbines and blades have been in production for going on two years, so have some operational experience. The SG turbines and blades just came into production so there is no experience with them. One could say they are being beta tested off Virginia.

    (more…)

  • What Would You Have Done in 1861?

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    James A. Bacon

    by Donald Smith

    “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” — British writer L.P. Hartley

    “Being woke is like a magic moral time machine, where you judge everyone [who lived in the past] against what you would have done in 1066, and you always win. Presentism is just a way to congratulate yourself about being better than George Washington because you have a gay friend and he didn’t. But if he were alive today, he would too. And if you were alive then, you wouldn’t.” –Bill Maher, TV talk show host.

    Magic moral time machine

    I am the proud descendant of Confederate cavalrymen — and I am glad the Confederacy lost. Abraham Lincoln, shortly after his famous debates with Stephen Douglas, described slavery as a cancer. The Civil War cut that cancer out of the South and started in on a long path to healing. The war was a blessing, in that it ended slavery quickly. I’ve read that the Founding Fathers hoped to put slavery on the path to eventual extinction. Well, that was great for the Fathers, but not the slaves. No one asked THEM if they were willing to wait, in chains, for slavery to die off gradually, eventually, some day….

    But, I am confident that, if I had lived in a Southern state in early 1861, I would have fought for the Confederacy. Even if I loved the Union and loathed slavery. Here are some reasons why.

    (more…)

  • Will AI Obliterate Virginia Jobs?

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia is in a two-way tie with Colorado as the state whose workforce will be most impacted by artificial intelligence, concludes Journoresearch.org.

    “Professional, scientific, and technical services” was found to be the industry most affected by AI in both states. Fifty-two percent of the industry’s workforce in each state (217,829 in Colorado and 322,493 in Virginia) are estimated to be affected,” states an email communication from Journoresearch, a journalistic research company, that entered my inbox today

    The analysis drew from Pew Research, the Bureau of Labor, and localization-management platform Centus, but the email does not explain its methodology. Still, it stands to reason that “professional, scientific and technical services” would be at greater risk of being disintermediated by AI than industries that require lots of hands-on work, such as health care, construction, or hospitality.

    I cannot evaluate an analysis I cannot access. But I can say this: Journoresearch asks an interesting question.

    (more…)

  • The New Virginia Way

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    James A. Bacon

    Figures in billions of dollars. Note: FY 2025 is an estimate.

    by James A. Bacon

    Governor Glenn Youngkin announced Friday that Virginia closed out FY 2024 with $1.2 billion more revenues than forecast. Needless to say, every dollar of surplus is spoken for, and none of it is going to taxpayers. The money will fund a list of “contingent” spending priorities — clean water projects, college tuition for military survivors and dependents, and improvements to Interstate 81.

    Lost in the headlines of what is happening in the here and now is how much state government spending has ballooned over the past two decades. Between fiscal 2007 and 2025 (our current year) total state spending (General Fund and Non General Fund) has increased 139 percent. That compares to 50 percent inflation over the same period.

    More money for Medicaid. More money for K-12 schools. More higher-ed tuition dollars. More taxes for transportation. What do we get for all that money?

    Look at us. Our society is a mess. K-12 student achievement is a wreck. Health outcomes are deteriorating. Traffic congestion is as bad as ever. Universities have become engines of social revolution, not learning. Virginia’s economic performance, once stellar compared to other states, is mediocre. Housing is unaffordable, suicides are up, drug-overdose deaths are probing new highs. And the list of “unmet needs” is as long as it’s ever been.

    (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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