Bacon's Rebellion

  • Richmond Planned Parenthood in Expansion Mode

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    Image credit: Virginia League of Planned Parenthood website

    by James A. Bacon

    Richmond City Council voted Monday night to sell the old Brookhill School to the Virginia League of Planned Parenthood (VLPP) for $10. The nonprofit organization, which provides abortions among other reproductive services, plans to construct a $6 million, 10,000-square-foot women’s facility on the property, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

    In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, which has resulted in abortion restrictions in nearby states like West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, abortion has become a booming business in Virginia.

    Statewide, there has been a nearly 85% increase in clinician-provided abortions since 2020, according to the RTD, and much of the growth has come from outside the state. In 2016, only 6% of Planned Parenthood’s Virginia clients came from out of state, a percentage that had remained roughly the same since 1980. Earlier this year, Planned Parenthood reported 30% of its clientele comes from out of state.

    The RTD article does not say explicitly that the new facility is being built to meet the increased demand for abortions, but the VLPP website does pitch its services to out-of-state residents:

    (more…)

  • Not a Healthy Development

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    James A. Bacon

    Gun rights rally in downtown Richmond. Photo credit; Virginia Public Media

    by James A. Bacon

    As conservative as I am, right-wing “militias” make me nervous. I’m sympathetic to some of what these citizen groups say they want to accomplish — keep neighborhoods safe, provide backup to local law enforcement in emergencies — but I don’t see why they need to parade around with guns to do that. I don’t hear sheriffs and police chiefs crying out for assistance from an armed citizenry.

    A basic precept of any well-ordered society is that government maintains a monopoly on violence. Any other arrangement is an invitation to anarchy.

    In an article describing the rise of self-described militias, Virginia Public Media highlighted the Virginia Kekoas, a militia group in Eastern Virginia that was formerly affiliated with the Bugaloo movement but broke away over disagreements with the Bugaloos’ white-supremacist ideology. Writes VPM:

    Virginia-based militia members VPM News spoke with considered their activities legal and said they had organized primarily to protect themselves and their families from criminals, an overzealous federal government and natural disasters.

    I distrust an “overzealous federal government,” too, but I’m not attending monthly meetings to conduct weapons training and learn how to patch up bullet wounds.

    (more…)

  • Don’t Politicize Cell Phone-Free Education

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    James A. Bacon

    Photo credit: U.S. News and World Report

    By Chris Braunlich

    Governor Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order for developing policies restricting or eliminating cell phones in schools – a concept garnering widespread support among parents, with 61 percent favoring requiring students to leave their phones in secured locations during the day – responds to a clear and rising mental health, academic and behavioral problem.

    Seventy-two percent of high school teachers say cell phones in the classroom are a major distraction. Ninety percent of principals support restrictions on middle- and high-school cell-phone use during the day. And 68 percent of all American adults believe that smart phones should not be allowed in school.

    The reason for this level of support is self-evident: more than 80% of American adults – young and old – are concerned about the impact of social media on today’s children. This concern is supported by the evidence.

    According to the American Psychological Association, 41% percent of teens with the highest social media use rate their overall mental health as poor or very poor, compared with 23% of those with the lowest use. Ten percent of the highest use group expressed suicidal or self-harm intent in the past 12 months compared with 5% of the lowest use group; and 17% of the highest users expressed poor body image compared with 6% of the lowest users.

    (more…)

  • The South Shall Rise Again

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    James A. Bacon

     The South is projected to have the fastest-growing population of any region in the U.S. through 2050, surpassing even the West, according to the demographics research group at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. The population of the Midwest and Northeast are expected to shrink slightly between 2030 and 2050.

    However, the population boom in the South is not uniform — it is concentrated in Texas, Tennessee and the South Atlantic states — Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Other Southern states are projected to experience slow population growth. Virginia, one of three states nationally classified in this analysis as having population growth that “fluctuates over the decades,” is more of a question mark.

    (more…)

  • Money Burning a Hole in their Pockets

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    If anyone needs concrete evidence that the 2024 General Assembly had more money for the 2024-2026 biennial budget that it could responsibly spend, he need only to examine one little-known item in the budget: capital maintenance reserve (MR).

    In an earlier article, I examined this budget item and identified five agencies that likely could get through the upcoming biennium using only their existing balances without any additional appropriation. That would have resulted in a saving of about $200 million.

    This article is a follow-up to that earlier analysis and examines what approach the legislature took. The conclusion: rather than cut off any additional money because these agencies already had enough, the legislature gave four of them more than the governor had recommended and, for the fifth one, decreased the governor’s recommendation only slightly.

    (more…)

  • Virginia Supremes Limit Sovereign Immunity in Portsmouth Case

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    James A. Bacon

    H. Cliff Page

    by James A. Bacon

    H. Cliff Page, an artist, sculptor, Vietnam vet, merchant mariner, civic activist and former candidate for Mayor of Portsmouth, won a victory for individual property rights when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled unanimously in his favor July 3 in a dispute with the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority (PRHA).

    “This is a precedent-setting case of huge import to all Virginians,” Page tells Bacon’s Rebellion. The ruling “will make cities and municipal housing and economic authorities sit up and take notice that they cannot abuse the protected rights of the citizens with tyrannical impunity!”

    The case has been a decade in the making, dating to when the PRHA demolished a building sharing a wall with Page’s property, causing major damage to its supporting structure, interior walls and roof.

    The PRHA argued that it enjoyed sovereign immunity because it tore down its building at the instruction of the City of Portsmouth, which was exercising its governmental powers to eliminate a blight. The Portsmouth Circuit Court ruled in favor of the housing authority, and its interpretation was upheld by a Court of Appeals. But the Supreme Court accepted Page’s argument that the PRHA was carrying out a proprietary function — in effect, acting as a property owner, not a sovereign government.

    (more…)

  • DEI at UVA Astronomy: The Stars Are Not Aligned

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Back in 2020, the University of Virginia Astronomy Department jumped on the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) bandwagon. Ashamed of its history of attracting so few Blacks and Hispanics, the Department formed a DEI committee to advance the goal of making the department more demographically diverse.

    The committee quickly resolved to hire an outside expert to conduct a climate survey and help write a strategic plan. The Department scraped together $3,000 of its own funds and applied to the College of Arts & Sciences for another $3,000 to pay for an outside consultant.

    “The changes to the admissions process should result in more applications from underrepresented students and should result in more equitable admissions offers,” stated the Committee’s application. “Changes to the department climate should result in better retention of URM (Underrepresented minority) students, staff, and faculty.”

    The Astronomy Department was a microcosm of the DEI fever that gripped UVA as a whole in 2020 in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing. The Astronomy Department’s earnest endeavors to advance racial justice were mirrored in dozens of other departments across the University.

    The details described here, based on emails and documents the Jefferson Council obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, occurred four years ago, but they provide context for a climate survey underway at the College of Arts & Sciences. As documented by Bacon’s Rebellion and the Jefferson Council (“UVA Arts & Sciences to Conduct ‘Belonging’ Survey“), numerous departments have conducted climate surveys. To “ensure consistency and validity of survey instruments,” Arts & Sciences is undertaking a college-wide survey.

    Read the whole article.

     

  • Virginia Risks Running Out of Other People’s Power

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    by

    Steve Haner

    Warner: Wind and solar power will not suffice. 

    By Steve Haner

    An electricity drought is looming, not only for Virginia but also for much of the United States, if the political hostility toward the most reliable forms of electricity generation is not reversed.  Warnings that wind and solar power alone will not be sufficient resonated like a drumbeat from the podium of a two-day conference on Virginia’s energy future last week.   

    Virginia is on the leading edge of the national risk because Virginia is ground zero for the expanding data center industry, including the massive power-hungry facilities needed to harness artificial intelligence.  Some use power measured in gigawatts, not megawatts.  Virginia’s electricity demand could double by the mid-2030s.  

    “All the solar and all the wind cannot get you to the 24-7 baseload you need to run the AI economy,” reported U.S. Senator Mark Warner, D-Virginia, who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee.  Warner was one of many speakers to use the “all of the above” cliché to summarize his advice on needed power sources, but he focused on emerging small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear technology and recent federal legislation to accelerate it. The giant corporations are still standing by their public carbon-free promises, “without SMRs none of them will get there.” 

    Winning the international race to develop the dominant designs for the next generation of nuclear “ties directly into national security,” Warner said.  We cannot let the Chinese win that race.  

    Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, another speaker at the Virginia Manufacturers Association gathering in Virginia Beach, highlighted his own support for those SMR reactors, and 2024 legislation that will allow Virginia utilities to collect their exploratory development costs from ratepayers.  But Youngkin was also blunt about the need not just to preserve natural gas as an electricity resource, but to expand it, including a contested new plant proposed for Chesterfield County.    (more…)

  • Restoring Columbus

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Richmond’s statue of Christopher Columbus is heading to upstate New York. It’s a sad, sad tale.

    At the height of the George Floyd “mostly peaceful” protests, leftist militants tore down the statue in Byrd Park, spray-painted it, set it on fire and threw it into nearby Fountain Lake. They claimed to be motivated by solidarity with America’s indigenous population.

    Americans don’t honor Columbus for his mistreatment of native Americans; they honor him for his discovery of the Western Hemisphere. But militants do remember him for his abuse of the natives, which, apparently, is far more worthy of singling out for moral condemnation than native American societies that engaged in incessant warfare, enslavement and/or human sacrifice of one another.

    (more…)

  • All of the Camel is Almost in the Tent

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    For more decades than one can remember, the policy of the Commonwealth, with one exception, has been to pay for road construction with money raised by gasoline and other transportation-related taxes. Money in the state’s general fund, consisting of revenue from income, sales, and other miscellaneous taxes, was not available for road construction.

    The exception was the widening of U.S. Rt. 58, which stretches along the state’s southern border from the Atlantic Ocean to the Kentucky border, to a divided, two-lane highway along its full length. In 1989, the General Assembly authorized the State Board of Transportation to issue up to $600 million in bonds for the project. The source of debt service for the bonds was up to $40 million per year from state recordation tax revenues, which was one of the sources of revenue for the general fund. In 2008, the source of money from the general fund was changed to the state tax on insurance premium revenue.  (See summary of funding for the Rt. 58 program here.)

    (more…)

  • COVID Questions Linger

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    There is still much we don’t know about the COVID-19 virus and the effect it has on the human body. One enduring mystery is the syndrome dubbed “long COVID,” when symptoms persist months or years after the infection. Why do some people get it while others don’t? What are the risk factors? What are the odds of contracting long COVID?

    The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) issued a preliminary report based on interviews of 68 Central Virginia residents a half year ago. Soon, according to the Virginia Mercury, VDH will conduct a study focusing on Southwest Virginia residents.

    The findings of the initial study were informative. Obesity is a risk factor: 52% of long-COVID sufferers were obese, and another 27% were overweight. (The combined percentage is higher than the 68% of all Virginia adults being overweight or obese.) Failure to keep up with COVID vaccinations is another risk factor: 88% of long-COVID patients were not up-to-date with their vaccinations.

    The more we know the better. The VDH studies are worthwhile. But there are other big knowledge gaps that warrant study — in particular, the prevalence of vaccination side effects. Some scientific studies have linked the vaccinations with a higher incidence of blood clotting, certain types of cancers and an elevated mortality rate in the population.

    Why aren’t we studying the vaccination side effects as well?

    (more…)

  • No Way Trump Wins Virginia

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    James A. Bacon

    by Paul Goldman

    The latest poll from Virginia Commonwealth University has Donald Trump up 3% — 39% to 36% — over Joe Biden after being behind by six in the school’s previous survey of public opinion. Top Trump advisor Chris LaCivita has been telling people publicly and privately Trump will win Virginia as part of a coming MAGA landslide.

    Not so fast.

    Having done a few polls in my lifetime, I view these results as more a reflection of Biden’s current weakness than any new Trump strength. In 2020, then-incumbent President Donald Trump lost Virginia by a whopping ten percentage points, considered a landslide defeat in the world of elections. Candidate Biden got 54% of the vote, the biggest Democratic winning margin in Virginia since FDR crushed Thomas Dewey in 1944 when Virginia was still part of the “solid South“ of Democratic segregation states. Even President Lyndon Johnson, while winning the biggest Democratic national landslide ever, carried Virginia by only 7% over GOP loser Barry Goldwater in 1964.

    Sure, there was a time between 1968 and 2004 when the Commonwealth had proven to be the most reliable GOP bastion among the Southern states in presidential elections. The GOP “lock” on Virginia got picked by Barack Obama in 2008. Even defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton carried Virginia by a comfortable 5% in 2016.

    (more…)

  • Upward Academic Mobility Among Virginia Immigrants

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Americans are rightly concerned about the impact of the flood of foreigners entering the country illegally through a broken border — not just the fiscal burden of increased outlays for healthcare, schools, and social services but the longer-term risk of creating an unassimilable mass in the body politic. Such fears gain traction when we observe cultural elites trying to radicalize “people of color” by portraying them as victims of systemic racism. Every racial disparity in the metrics of wellbeing is said to be evidence of oppression — as if immigrants from Third World villages should feel entitled to the same income level as native-born Americans who have been lifted up over generations.

    One of the disparities that critics of American society see as unjust is the racial/ethnic gap in educational outcomes. English Learners score much lower on their Standards of Learning (SOL) test scores than English-fluent students. The learning gap is often said to be proof of bias.

    A close examination of the testing data, however, shows quite the opposite. It shows remarkable upward mobility for immigrants, at least in terms of academic achievement.

    We cannot tell from Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) data how many immigrant children there are in public schools. But we have a decent proxy. VDOE tracks the number of “English Learners.” By VDOE’s count, there were about 130,000 in the 2022-23 school year. Not surprisingly given the difficulty in understanding their teachers, they passed their Reading, Writing, and Math SOLs at rates that were half to one-third of their English-fluent peers.

    (more…)

  • Turbine Blade Failure Closes Vineyard Wind, Nantucket Beaches

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Not the turbine in question, but follow the link to the WBZ story and there is a photo of the very large chunks of debris.

    Posted on Boston’s CBS affiliate WBZ this morning:

    NANTUCKET – The federal government has ordered the Vineyard Wind farm to shut down until further notice because of a turbine blade failure this weekend.

    Several beaches were closed on Tuesday while crews worked to clean up “large floating debris and fiberglass shards” from the broken wind turbine blade off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. A total of six south shore Nantucket beaches were closed to swimming due to debris that washed ashore.

    “You can walk on the beaches, however we strongly recommend you wear footwear due to sharp, fiberglass shards and debris on the beaches,” the Nantucket Harbormaster said.

    Late Tuesday afternoon, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said all operations are shut down until further notice. (more…)

  • To End Carbon Energy We Need More Carbon Energy!

    Posted on

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Three recent announcements from Dominion Energy Virginia in rapid succession point a path forward for the utility that complies in part and utterly rejects in part the carbon-free energy pipe dream of the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA).

    All three of the announcements will result in major cost increases to the company’s 2.6 million ratepayers. Just how much the projects will all cost combined is still unknown, and frankly nobody is likely to press that issue until the utility is ready to show its cards. The utility’s next integrated resource plan, to be filed later this year, should shed some light.

    The most recent announcement is the most surprising. Dominion has proposed to build a $550 million liquified natural gas plant and storage facility for the sole purpose of providing a fuel backup to its newest two natural gas generation plants. The facility will be fed by the Transco Pipeline and be attached to the Greensville and Brunswick generation plants. Combined they produce about 3 gigawatts of reliable electricity into Dominion’s territory or the surrounding PJM regional transmission organization. (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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