Bacon's Rebellion

  • BoV Secretary Edited Board Member’s Scathing Rebuke of Foe

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Thomas DePasquale

    by James A. Bacon

    Thomas A. DePasquale, an eight-year veteran of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, is very unhappy with board colleague Bert Ellis. A dogged defender of President Jim Ryan, he took it upon himself in April to write a missive to other board members criticizing Ellis, who has made no secret of his desire to change the way UVA does business. But before sending the letter, he shared various drafts with others, including Rector Robert Hardie, past rector Frank “Rusty” Conner, and Susan G. Harris, Secretary of the Board of Visitors.

    Harris, who has served in the staff position since 2009, responded. She fixed spelling, corrected grammar, and tamed syntax in DePasquale’s jumbled prose. Among the sentiments expressed in the revised draft were the following:

    It is after great reflection, working directly with you, participating in meetings of the Board of Visitors, and attending Jefferson Council meeting on April 9th that I have come to this conclusion: that as a Member of the Board of Visitors you have failed and will continue to fail. In this effort you have crossed lines that cannot be excused. …

    You have made clear you [sic] lack of skills and basic ethics to serve as a Visitor. You of course owe me no response, but if you have chosen not to resign, I will ask for a special board meeting.

    That is not the version that DePasquale ultimately blasted out on April 19 to the full Board of Visitors. The final draft concluded even more explicitly, “Bert, with no pleasure or bad will, I strongly believe that you should resign from Board of Visitors.” (more…)

  • UVA to Pay $9 Million in Mass-Shooting Settlement

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The University of Virginia has settled with the families of five victims of a November 2022 mass shooting that occurred after a class outing to Washington, D.C. The university will pay $2 million each to the families of football players Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry and another $3 million to be divided between two other students who were wounded.

    “The settlements approved today is [sic] just one small step on this terrible road that these families are on,” Elliott Buckner, a lawyer for Perry’s family, told media at the courthouse Friday, reports the The Daily Progress.

    However, Buckner urged UVa to release a state-commissioned report that delved into the University’s failure to follow up on warning signs that Christopher Darnell Jones, the alleged shooter, was a potential menace to the university community. (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

  • Is There an AI for Fact Checking AI?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Type “UVA Board Visitors members” into the Bing search engine, and the above information highlight appears atop the page. Just one problem. The UVA Board doesn’t have seven members, it has 17 members. For a source the text points to an article in UVA Today discussing board appointments by Governor Bob McDonnell in 2010.

    Admittedly, the info-box right below the one I show here did get the number right. But let this serve as a warning to one and all that AI has a long way to go. At the current exponential rate of improvement, we may be only a year or two away from a generation capable of generating reliably accurate results. For now, buyer beware. Search engines may be free, but you get what you pay for.

    — JAB

  • The Junk Science Behind a Property-Valuation Study

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    James A. Bacon

    Junk science

    by James A. Bacon

    When you examine every issue through a racial lens, everything looks like racism. It’s even easier to find racism everywhere when you resort to junk science (or social science, as the case may be).

    A case in point is a new study by Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia (Home), which purports to find that systemic bias in real estate appraisals results in under-valuation of properties in predominantly African-American neighborhoods in the City of Richmond. This bias harms African-American property owners, the report contends, despite the fact that if the bias actually exists it would mean African-American homeowners would be paying lower real estate taxes.

    So, how does HOME demonstrate bias?

    The story begins in 2022 when Dr. Andre Perry with the Brookings Institution make a presentation in Richmond showing that home values are much lower in majority-Black neighborhoods than in predominantly non-Black neighborhoods. While acknowledging that part of the difference arises from differences in the homes and opportunities available in the neighborhoods, his statistical analysis showed that different valuations occur even when comparing “identical homes in neighborhoods with identical (non-racial) characteristics.” (more…)

  • Wait, I’m Confused. Are Rising Housing Valuations Good or Bad for Black Neighborhoods?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    It’s hard to keep up with the twists and turns of what progressives deem to be racist these days.

    Once upon a time, gentrification was considered racist because the phenomenon of White people moving into a neighborhood increased local property values, which increased taxes on long-time African-American residents and pressured them to move out.

    But that’s old think. Now the problem isn’t that property values in gentrifying neighborhoods are too high. In the City of Richmond, property values in majority Black neighborhoods are too low!

    “An under-valued home limits the owner’s ability to access credit through home equity and limits potential profits when the owner decides to sell,” concludes a new report, “Policy Approaches to Racial Disparities in Neighborhood Home Values and Related Risks of Displacement,” published by a nonprofit group, Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia.

    “The disparities are the result of a long history of racial discrimination that has adversely affected neighborhoods of color in Richmond,” the report says.

    Got that? If appraised property values are too high, higher property taxes drive out Black residents. That’s racism in action. If property appraisals are too low, Black residents are deprived of credit, and they get less for their houses than they would have otherwise. That’s racist, too. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Everything’s racist, folks. Everything! (more…)

  • Injunction to Stop Wind Project Denied

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    by

    Steve Haner

    A federal judge in Washington has declined to prevent Dominion Energy Virginia from constructing its offshore wind turbines, but presumably the underlying legal challenge to the federal permitting process will grind on through the court process. Virginia Mercury reports the basics this morning.

    Installation of the first monopiles actually started while the judge was still pondering the petition for an injunction, but getting such an injunction before the actual trial process requires clearing a very high legal hurdle. The plaintiffs claim the project will cause irreversible harm to marine life in the area, including whales, but the truth is evidence either way is lacking.

    You cannot tell from the carcass if a dead whale ended up on the beach because of noise from sonar mapping of this construction site, or construction work on previous projects elsewhere. Likewise those who claim the work won’t harm whales cannot prove that negative. The federal regulators actually are of the opinion there is risk but claim the mitigations they have imposed will prove sufficient.

    Time will tell on that. What remains is the project’s inordinate cost for the likely energy output, especially if the claimed 25- to 30-year lifespan proves too optimistic, or the project suffers major damage in some future (and long overdue) mid-Atlantic monster hurricane. And Dominion’s project is pretty much the only one which still claims it will be built for the advertised cost, thanks to contracts locked in long ago. Costs are exploding for many other developers. (more…)

  • Footloose Aaron Spence. Having Fun On Loudoun County’s Dime

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    Republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed and Unedited.

    by Kerry Dougherty 

    Let’s just admit it. Those of us who thought Aaron Spence was a disaster as Virginia Beach School Superintendent are experiencing a shameless bout of schadenfreude.

    Yep, we’re enjoying the misfortune of others.

    Those “others” would be Loudoun County parents and taxpayers. Aaron Spence is their problem now. He left Virginia Beach last year for the greener pastures of Loudoun County, the richest in the U.S.

    According to excellent news reporting by tenacious ABC News7 reporter, Nick Minock, Spence has only been on the job for just nine months but has spent 30 days out of the district at a variety of boondoggles, er conferences.

    Spence who makes a whopping $375,000 a year, ducked out of Loudoun County 10 times this school year for destinations such as Miami, West Palm Beach, San Diego and Puerto Rico, as well as several closer to home. According to records obtained by the reporter, it appears taxpayers picked up the tab for his conference registrations, hotels and travel, while at least in one instance he slurped up $15,000 for teaching two seminars at the conference seminars.

    This would be just another example of a greedy public official living large off the generosity of unsuspecting taxpayers, but this case is much, much worse. (more…)

  • Yes, You Can Fight City Hall

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Ken Davis

    by James A. Bacon

    Sometimes it takes grumpy old men to get things done.

    Ken Davis, retired from a career in the Attorney General’s Office, lived with his wife in the Willow Lawn area of Richmond for more than 40 years. They paid their property tax bills on time and without complaint. But in July 2023, thanks to late delivery by the U.S. Post Office, they missed their first payment.

    Davis went down to City Hall and dutifully paid the tax plus an $800 fine. But then he learned he wasn’t alone. More than 20 of his neighbors were late in receiving their bills, too. So, he filed an appeal.

    The city finance director turned him down. “The city complied with all applicable billing and advertising requirements and non-receipt of a tax bill does not relieve a taxpayer of fault for failure to pay taxes on time,” she wrote, as the Richmond Times-Dispatch tells the story. (more…)

  • Education and Remembrance on the Banks of the James

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Jon Baliles

    The Virginia War Memorial sits solemnly upon the edge of Oregon Hill overlooking the city and the James River and honors the 12,000+ Virginia names of those who have fallen in service of our country since 1956. But in recent decades, it has become a place of education as well as of remembrance.

    In 2010, the memorial opened the E. Bruce Heilman Amphitheater overlooking the city and hosts annual Memorial Day and Veterans Day ceremonies plus other events. That same year the memorial also opened Paul and Phyllis Galanti Education Center, named after the retired U.S. Navy Commander Paul Galanti, a Richmonder who was a prisoner of war from 1966 to 1973, and his late wife, Phyllis Eason Galanti, who never ceased in her efforts to bring him and other POW’s home. The center includes classrooms, a theater, and space for exhibits. The memorial’s five acres of green space has also grown with the planting of 87 trees, 375 shrubs, 553 perennials and hundreds of groundcover specimens that earned the Common Wealth Award by the Garden Club of Virginia.

    Clay Mountcastle, memorial’s director, told Richmond Magazine, “One of the best ideas Virginia ever had was to add a museum and education center to make it a living memorial.”

    In early 2020, the memorial added the C. Kenneth Wright Pavilion, which includes a new Shrine of Memory listing the names of 175 Virginians who have died in the global war on terrorism on the outside and the inside space includes a lecture hall, a Medal of Honor Gallery and the Veterans’ Changing Art Gallery, which showcases the art from Virginia veterans. (more…)

  • Shown the Door, Petersen Calls Out COVID Fascists

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Reading Chap Petersen’s biographical “Rebel,” it is pretty easy to understand why a year ago his fellow Democrats threw him out of office in a primary. In fact, the mystery is that he survived as long as he did.

    The book tells a history that many would like to ignore or actively suppress. That the Democratic Party in Virginia no longer has a place for Petersen should depress us all. He is not shy in returning like for like, so reward his efforts and buy his book. Then dog ear the good parts for later reference, because that crowd now in charge is just getting started.

    Petersen was always hard to pigeonhole, and like all the legislators who have made it to my personal MVP list, delighted in doing the unexpected and doing it with panache. He came to the House of Delegates in 2002 and then the Senate in 2008, defeating Republican incumbents in both elections. Many of the best known struggles of those years are detailed from his point of view in the 300 plus pages. I also engaged in some of them, not always on the same side.

    But his biggest fight of all, and the one that finally did him in, is one we are all engaged in. Petersen was one the fiercest opponents of the absolute and needless destruction of commercial and personal freedoms during the panic over COVID-19. He was a patron of successful 2021 legislation supposed to reopen Virginia’s public schools. In reality, the oppression of school kids continued for another year or longer, intensifying the educational losses. (more…)

  • Oppression of the Drinking Class

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Source: The Tax Foundation

    It’s time to proclaim a new class of the “oppressed” in the pantheon of society’s victims — bourbon drinkers and other imbibers of liquors. Virginia’s tax system engages in systemic bias in favor of the teetotalers.

    It’s not just that drinkers in Virginia must purchase their spirits at government-owned ABC stores or that they must pay excise taxes for the privilege of acquiring their sustenance. As the Tax Foundation points out, state governments utilize many other means to extract wealth from the drinking class. These include case and bottle fees, special sales taxes on spirits, wholesale taxes, and retail and distributor license fees. 

    When you measure the impact of all these add-ons, the Old Dominion imposes the third-highest implied tax of any state in the country, says the Tax Foundation.

    The states of Washington and Oregon are the two highest. The lowest? Wyoming, state motto: “the equality state.” (more…)

  • Factors Impacting Teacher Vacancies

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Matt Hurt

    Last week Jim Bacon published an article about the fact that our teacher vacancy rate problem is not all about salary, and I agree that other factors also contribute to this problem.  Jim also posited that “It’s caused by teachers dropping out of the profession because they think their jobs suck,” and recent data seem to support an approximation of this idea.

    This spring some of my colleagues and I were able to obtain and investigate the annual School Climate and Working Conditions Survey results from 2023. We specifically focused on the teacher results and were able to confirm a major tenet in the educational world: climate matters!

    The survey questions were categorized as indicated in this spreadsheet. There were significant, positive correlations among all of the categories and SOL performance both at the school and the division levels of analysis. Conversely, these correlations were significant and negative with teacher vacancy rates. One singular question — overall, my school is a good place to work and learn — had the greatest overall correlation with both SOL outcomes and teacher vacancy rates. In other words, teachers were less likely to leave divisions in which they wanted to work, and those divisions produced better student outcomes.

    Table 1 below attempts to better illustrate these relationships. Most of the questions were presented in a Likert scale with a range of answer options from one to six (six being the most favorable response). These results were aggregated by region, and the statistics below indicate the percentage of possible points for each category of questions. All values are color coded as follows: green most desirable, red least desirable, and yellow most central.

    Table 1: Aggregate teacher survey results, teacher vacancy rates, and SOL pass rates by region in 2023.


    (more…)

  • A Curmudgeon Counts His Blessings on Memorial Day

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    It’s Memorial Day, and I should be choosing an uplifting and patriotic image like an American flag to accompany this post. But I’m feeling more than ordinarily cranky this morning, so I’m using this image of an old man shouting at birds and the rain. That’s me, alright.

    Set aside my irritability for a moment. I am profoundly grateful to the thousands of Americans who gave their lives or lost their limbs in wars to win independence, end secession, conquer fascism, contain communism, fight tyrants and terrorists, and make the world a better place. Their sacrifices have given me the gift of freedom, comfort and prosperity.

    I think of my mother’s cousin Mark, long deceased, whom I remember as a taciturn man who never got married and lived with his mother and uncle until his dying day. He was severely wounded at Iwo Jima when a Japanese artillery shell destroyed the halftrack he was riding in. He was the only soldier to survive. He never cared to talk about his experience. (more…)

  • Remember and Honor

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

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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