Bacon's Rebellion

  • What Do You Do If There Are No Statues Left to Tear Down?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Can of worms

    Step #1: Reinterpret the Confederate statues;

    Step #2: Remove the Confederate statues from the public square;

    Step #3: Prevent those who want the statues from having them. Decapitate the statues, melt them down, or desecrate them in art and museum displays.

    What’s left? Where else is there to go?

    Step #4: Take away tax-exempt status from a prominent organization dedicated to preserving the statues.

    SB517 and HB 568 would eliminate the exemption from state recordation taxes for the Virginia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) as well as the tax exemption for real and personal property owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The House Bill passed the House Finance Committee in a 12 to 10 (presumably party-line) vote. (more…)

  • Library Woes in Botetourt County

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    For more than one year, a controversy has been growing in Botetourt County regarding explicit materials in or near the libraries’ children’s areas. On one side is a grassroots community organization, Botetourt Residents Against Child Exploitation (BRACE), seeking removal of some materials. On the other side one finds the Botetourt County Supervisors, administration, and library leadership opposing such removals.

    When researching for this story, The Roanoke Star asked BRACE for a timeline of key events in the controversy. That Dec. 19, 2023 timeline from group leader Charles Ruhl is given below. A news story including comments from two County officials is upcoming.

    –Scott Dreyer, The Roanoke Star

    BRACE was founded by Christine Liana in March of 2023. She did so after seeing an adult DVD, BROS, on display near the children’s section at the Fincastle Library.  She complained to staff that the cover, which showed two men grasping each other’s bottoms, was inappropriate for children to see. The response was American Library Association talking points about the library’s need to provide “information and enlightenment.” Christine Liana gave a citizen comment at the 1/24/23 Board of Supervisors meeting, demanding that the Board act to remove “perverted” materials from our libraries. There was no response. After that she began talking with parents in her church and elsewhere who were also unhappy with inappropriate, sexually graphic materials available for children in the County libraries.

    Christine Liana met with Botetourt County Library Director Julie Phillips in March to review her formal request to have 60 books and DVDs reviewed to potentially be removed. (more…)

  • Competition for Schools

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Sen. Mark Peake (R-Lynchburg)

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    One of the good bills introduced in the General Assembly this year would bring a measure of competition in public schools. Put in by Sen. Mark Peake (R-Lynchburg), SB 552 would require school districts to allow students to attend any school in the district. Currently, districts are allowed to adopt such open enrollment policies, but are not required to do so. Typically, students must attend the school within the attendance zone where they live.

    The legislation would enable an elementary school student in the eastern part of Henrico County, for example, where the reading scores in schools are very low, to attend an elementary school in the western part of the county, which has schools with high reading scores. If the requests for “nonresident” students to attend a particular school exceed that school’s enrollment capacity, a lottery would be used to decide which nonresident students got to attend that school.

    The legislation directs the State Board of Education to develop model policies and guidelines to implement the legislation. Under the provisions of the legislation as introduced, the Board would have to act quickly. The bill requires the policies and guidelines to be adopted by August 1, 2024, to enable the open enrollment process to be in effect for the next school year, 2024-2025. (more…)

  • Richmond Shoots Itself in the Foot–Again

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Keith Balmer, Richmond City General Registrar, Photo credit: Richmond Free Press

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    It never ceases to amaze me how the City of Richmond seems unable to accomplish even the most basic functions of government right.

    The latest snafu occurred in the office of the General Registrar. A fourth of the voters requesting absentee ballots for the upcoming Democratic presidential primary election received outdated instructions. The instructions, dated 2021, said that absentee voters need to include a witness signature. Legislation enacted by the 2023 General Assembly eliminated that requirement.

    That might be excused as a simple oversight involving a recent change in the statutory requirements. Except, this is the second time that it has happened.  Last fall, some Richmond voters got the same wrong instructions with their absentee ballots.

    General Registrar Keith Balmer blamed the office’s vendor for the mistakes.

    This is simple, basic stuff that should not happen, especially twice within a few months. (more…)

  • “Enacting Racial Change by Design”

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    The backlash against Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in higher-ed and the corporate world may be gathering momentum across the country, but the University of Virginia is rolling out a new DEI initiative oblivious to the shift in the national mood.

    UVA’s College of Arts & Sciences has launched a program this semester entitled, “Enacting Racial Change by Design.” Participating faculty will discuss chapters from the book, From Equity Talk to Equity Walk to deepen understanding of “systematic racial inequity in higher education.” Participants will be able to apply for $1,000 grants to implement DEI-related projects.

    The rhetoric of the memo announcing the initiative is disconnected from the national conversation now underway. The program shows not the slightest inkling that critics of DEI need be acknowledged much less engaged in dialogue. U.S. Supreme Court ruling on race in admissions? Resignation of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania? Helloooo? Anyone home?

    This is what happens when an academic elite is captive to DEI dogma and there is not enough diversity of thought for anyone to push back.

    Here follows the memo: (more…)

  • One Surprise on Virginia’s Primary Ballot

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty

    I’d almost forgotten that last summer I signed up to be an absentee voter.

    Until this arrived in yesterday’s mail, that is.

    Yep, it’s a Republican primary ballot. Early voting starts Friday for Super Tuesday and Virginia is one of 15 states participating in what promises to be an essentially empty exercise on March 4.

    Trump is building an insurmountable lead and his opponents are bowing out. Nikki Haley didn’t totally embarrass herself last night in New Hampshire, yet she lost by almost 12 points in the state many thought was most friendly to her brand of conservatism.

    Her home state of South Carolina is next. Prospects for her are bleak there. It’s likely there will be a strike-out through her name too by the first week in March..

    But one big question remains: who the heck is Ryan L. Binkley, the second name on Virginia’s GOP ballot? (more…)

  • Whose Rights?

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Joe Fitzgerald

    One thing you have to give the parental rights authoritarians. At least they’re more honest about their goals than some of their thematic ancestors.

    Slave codes were not slave codes. They were master codes. Leftists in the 1950s weren’t involved in unamerican activities. The House committee harassing them was. Dissent and disagreement are supposed to be the American way, except to whatever faction is in charge and defining or redefining what’s American at any given time.

    But parents’ rights, the latest right-wing lie designed to inflame rather than inform, is at least clear about who it’s aimed at. Teacher’s rights? Unless we’re talking about the right to be accused of corrupting and indoctrinating children, that’s not an issue for the rightists. Children’s rights? They have none in the world-view of people like the majority on the Rockingham County School Board. (more…)

  • Two Excellent Nominees Emerge for SCC

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Kelsey A. Bagot, now nominated for the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

    By Steve Haner

    The new Democratic majority in the Virginia General Assembly is moving rapidly to fill the two State Corporation Commission vacancies with excellent, qualified choices. One is well known in Virginia and the second is new to our hallowed Capitol, but with a decade of energy law experience on the federal level.

    Former Virginia Deputy Attorney General Samuel T. Towell has degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (engineering) and the University of Virginia (law).  Kelsey A. Bagot just got her Harvard Law degree a decade ago, but she had the opportunity at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to work for former SCC Chairman Mark Christie.

    Former Deputy Attorney General Sam Towell, also nominated today.

    Both appeared this afternoon before a brief, perfunctory really, joint meeting of the relevant House and Senate committees. Within a couple of minutes, with only one question asked, both were unanimously certified as qualified. Which they are.

    It will be up to the full House and Senate to formally elect them at some point in the next few days. The two seats they will fill have been vacant for a long time and they will start with desks piled high. Members of the SCC are actually judges, subject to Virginia judicial canons. The pending state budget sets the salaries as of next July 1 at $214,000 for the chair and $212,000 for the other two members. (more…)

  • VMI Loses DEI Court Case: a Win-Win Situation

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Jake Spivey

    In Virginia’s ever-shifting landscape of diversity, equity, or opportunity, and inclusion, a powerful decision has been made. Following the sensational, yet unproven, allegations of exceptionally bad behavior and poor leadership at Virginia Military Institute in late autumn 2019, the administration and Board of Visitors attempted to quickly effect conclusive actions that would correct their unproven ills. A prime effort by the administration would be delivery of DEI training to staff, faculty, and the Corps of cadets. Unfortunately, in its haste to instigate the training, VMI circumvented the state’s procurement laws. By sidestepping the proper legal path for solicitations and contracts, VMI became vulnerable to protest by competing but unsuccessful contractors.

    After a series of hearings before Judge Christopher B. Russell, the judge rendered a verdict finding VMI in “Violation of Virginia Public Procurement Act and/or the Rules Governing Procurement of Goods, Services, Insurance and Construction by a Public Institution of Higher Education of the Commonwealth of Virginia.” The judge’s decision represents a loss for VMI and its legal counsel,  an alumnus. VMI’s attorneys tried but repeatedly failed to have the case dismissed on technicalities rather than argue the merits of VMI’s actions when pursuing the DEI training contract. (more…)

  • Like It or Not, Solar Farms May Be On Their Way

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty 

    I know it’s winter and Virginia is not looking her best. But if you have nothing else to do this weekend, may I suggest you take a drive into the rural corners of the commonwealth and soak up the bucolic scenery.

    Check out those cotton fields along Route 58 west toward Danville, even though most of the cotton has been harvested. Check out the farmland of the Middle Peninsula and the Northern Neck. Then head out toward Lexington and north to the orchards of the Shenandoah Valley. Don’t forget to take a drive up the Eastern Shore past the thousands of acres that in summer give us potatoes, tomatoes and corn. Lastly, zip out to Pungo where the fields will be full of strawberries in a few months

    While you’re driving, take a gander at the beautiful old growth forests that blanket much of the Old Dominion.

    In fact, take a good, long look. Drink it in. Vow to never forget the beauty that was once Virginia.

    Because next time you pass through these areas you may see nothing but the glare of solar panels. The wildlife that once inhabited the land? The birds that nested in the trees? The produce that flourished in the fields? Gone.

    If Democrats in Richmond have their way, that is. (more…)

  • The Monster at the End of the Book

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    We have created a monster. The genie is out of the bottle. Whatever metaphor you want to use, there is no going back and the way forward poses great dangers. The monster or genie is AI.

    The media are full of the promising possibilities of AI improving our lives—great leaps in medicine, science, technology, manufacturing, etc. There is less discussion of the effects of having leaders in business and government, as well as the bureaucrats in those spheres, who are incapable of composing a coherent paragraph on their own due to their reliance on ChatGPT through high school and college.

    What really concerns me is the potential of AI for politics; elections in particular. Candidates, or, more likely, sympathetic groups, could release recordings having opposing candidates seeming to say what they did not say. For example, residents of New Hampshire recently received a robocall with what sounded like the voice of Joe Biden urging them to skip the primary election there.

    For the upcoming election, think of the effect of a video surfacing that showed Trump doing what the Steele dossier alleged he did in Russia. There is no doubt this is possible. After all, last fall, a group of teenage boys in New Jersey, being teenage boys, circulated pictures of girls in their classes with nude bodies (not theirs). Experts say that all it takes is an iPhone and easily accessible AI software.

    I have been mulling all this over for a while. It turns out that I was not thinking broadly enough. In addition to being a possible weapon, the existence of AI provides politicians “plausible deniability,” as one expert explained. FOX News recently ran an ad comprised of well-documented gaffes of Trump. He responded, “The perverts and losers at the failed and once disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden, not an easy thing to do.”

    I should not have been surprised at this response. After all, this is a man who insists, in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 election was stolen. And millions of people accept his version. I expect that, at some point in the upcoming year, Trump or some group allied with him, will be claiming that all the footage showing the January 6 attack on the Capitol was AI-generated.

    It used to be said, “Seeing is believing.” That is no longer true. We are entering a world in which we will not know what to believe. We will not know whether to believe that what we see, pictures, video, film, etc., is real or AI-generated. Truth will become elusive. Or, perhaps truth and reality will cease to exist as objective concepts and become whatever one defines it to be at that moment.

  • Failure is not an Option with Proposed SOL Revisions

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    Glenn Youngkin

    by Charles Pyle

    During summer and fall 2021, Glenn Youngkin tapped into rising parent frustration over prolonged school closures and a general unease about falling student achievement in Virginia’s public schools. 

    Although a newcomer to state politics, Youngkin had the data and evidence to show the correlation between the lowering of expectations for students and schools under his two Democratic predecessors and declining achievement on state and national assessments. 

    Youngkin seized on the performance of Virginia students on the pre-pandemic 2019 national reading and math tests to highlight the consequences — especially for minority students — of lowering standards. He correctly pointed out that Virginia’s definitions for proficiency relative to national expectations were the lowest in the nation.

    The challenge Youngkin faced as he took office mirrored what confronted George Allen 28 years ago following sharp declines in student achievement on the 1994 national reading and math tests. 

    Allen saw the results as a call to action. His Commission on Champion Schools laid the foundation for the Standards of Learning program, and Allen went on to become the most consequential Republican “education” governor of the 20th century. 

    Allen launched the SOL reform despite Democratic majorities in both houses of the General Assembly and at times fierce opposition from the education establishment. But over time, the performance of Virginia students improved, and the “SOL wars” ended as a bipartisan consensus emerged around standards and accountability. (more…)

  • Virginia Legislation Would Define Raising Rent to Keep Pace with Inflation as ‘Rent Gouging’

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    from the Liberty Unyielding blog

    Raising rent to keep up with inflation isn’t what most people would consider “rent gouging,” even when the landlord has to increase rent by more than 7%. For example, Washington, DC’s rent control board allowed landlords to raise rents on most tenants 8.9% in 2023, to compensate for the 6.9% inflation in Washington, DC that occurred in the previous year. But pending bills in Virginia’s legislature would allow local governments to adopt “anti-rent gouging” ordinances, that would define raising rent by more than the lesser of 7%, or inflation, as illegal “rent gouging.”

    The legislation states that once a local government has adopted “anti-rent gouging provisions,” it “shall prohibit any rent increase … of more than the locality’s annual anti-rent gouging allowance,” defined as the “percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index...or seven percent, whichever is less.” So if inflation is 8% — as it was nationally in 2022 — the landlord can only raise rent by 7%, at most. And the landlord might not be allowed any inflation adjustment at all, because under the legislation, a local government “may” — not must — “allow rent increases” to compensate for inflation.

    So landlords will become poorer and poorer due to inflation under the ordinances authorized by the legislation.

    This seems unfair. Why shouldn’t landlords be able to raise rent to keep pace with inflation? Most tenants get pay raises or cost-of-living increases to compensate for inflation. American workers’ wages grew faster than inflation in most of the past decade, and over the cumulative ten-year period. Federal workers commonly get pay raises to offset inflation. Retirees get annual increases in their social security payments based on cost-of-living adjustments. With their increased wages, tenants should be able to pay rent that rises with inflation. But under the legislation, they could avoid doing so, and pay less than the market rate.

    Effectively, this legislation would allow local governments to adopt very harsh rent control. Currently, Virginia does not have any rent control laws, either at the local government level, or at the state level. Like most states, Virginia has viewed rent control as a bad idea. Thirty-three states preempt local governments from adopting rent regulation laws.

    But this legislation — which is pending in both houses of Virginia’s legislature as HB 721 and SB 366 — would for the first time give local governments in Virginia the power to impose rent control. (more…)

  • Rebellion Within the Rebellion: The Wayward Militiamen of Rockingham

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Karl Rhodes

    Thomas Jefferson once wrote that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing; as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them.”

    Perhaps this was the principle at work in March 1862, when a significant number of Virginians in Rockingham County refused to comply with Gov. John Letcher’s declaration that all militiamen in the Shenandoah Valley must answer the bell for round two of the Civil War.

    The first inkling of this little-known rebellion within the rebellion came from the pen of Jedediah Hotchkiss, who would become Stonewall Jackson’s topographer. “The Rockingham militia has been released for 10 days,” he wrote on March 18, as he passed through the county on his way to Jackson’s headquarters at Winchester. “They are quite averse to going.”

    It was certainly no surprise to Hotchkiss or to Jackson that groups of Mennonites and Dunkers (German Baptist Brethren) were captured in mid-March as they tried to flee through the mountains of Western Virginia. But these nonviolent deserters were not alone in their refusal to return to the war. Jackson’s 10-day grace period had ended, and quite a few Rockingham militiamen were still AWOL. Some of these men had volunteered for military service at the start of the war, and under Virginia law, their one-year military obligation was about to expire. More disgruntled men joined the Rockingham Rebellion after March 29, when Governor Letcher proclaimed that all Virginia militiamen would be inducted as privates into “volunteer companies” of the Confederate ranks.

    “There is much uproar among the militia,” Hotchkiss wrote. “I am glad that I have made my escape from the militia [onto Jackson’s staff] before this proclamation.” (more…)

  • Serious Tax Reform Addressing a Serious Problem

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Chris Braunlich

    By Chris Braunlich

    The American linguist Yogi Berra once said of a New York City restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore.  It’s too crowded.”

    Overcrowding, however, isn’t what motivates a move to a state (or from a state).  Those decisions are inspired by robust economic activity, jobs for residents, and a pathway for each generation to do better than their parents did.  People move for a job, for higher pay, for lower cost of living, or for a better education. (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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