Bacon's Rebellion

  • Look What UVA Is Hiding

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Acting on behalf of The Jefferson Council, Walter Smith has filed a complaint in Henrico County against the University of Virginia, seeking a remedy for its refusal to supply documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Smith serves in a volunteer capacity as chair of the Council’s research committee.

    The suit alleges 14 instances in which the University’s FOIA staff improperly denied emails and other documents to the Council. Smith’s FOIA requests asked for documents that would shed light on the inner workings of the University’s administrative decision-making process.

    The cases highlighted in the complaint illustrate two main themes. First, UVA’s FOIA lawyers have stretched the presidential “working papers” exemption beyond its original intent of protecting the university president’s personal deliberations. Second, the lawyers did not apply privacy protections to Bert Ellis, a Board of Visitors member who was widely perceived as a threat to the university status quo.

    “UVa’s FOIA process seems designed to delay and discourage and deny inquiries that may be embarrassing to the Ryan administration,” said Smith. “The administration says it’s all for open inquiry. These are matters of legitimate interest to the public. It seems hypocritical to hide so much.” (more…)

  • Hey Virginia: Hands Off Those Cake Pops

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    Photo courtesy of Kelly Phillips

    by Kerry Dougherty

    There’s a reason Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s approval rating in the latest Mason-Dixon Poll perches at a lofty 58 percent in this once-blue state, despite Republicans losing control of the legislature in November’s election.

    Youngkin gets it.

    On X, he wrote:

    “We’re going to fix this, Virginia will always be the best place to live, work, and bake cake pops!”

    Like everyone else who heard about Kelly Phillips’ cake pop conflict, the governor immediately saw this for what it was: one more example of government overreach, punishing an enterprising Richmond woman with a small business for no good reason or public benefit.

    According to The Virginia Mercury, cake pops are Ms. Phillips’ side hustle. Her day job is as a manager in a financial planning firm. But what began simply as irresistible treats she made for birthday parties and baby showers grew into a little cottage business.

    Phillips now sells her gorgeously decorated confections mostly at craft fairs. If Richmond regulators have their way, she’ll have to stop.

    Virginia’s stringent food safety regulations, designed to protect folks from unsanitary practices, make exceptions for small craft bakeries. But ridiculous regs, such as the one that allows these homemade goodies to be sold at farmer’s markets but not craft fairs make absolutely no sense.

    “What is the difference between a farmers market and a craft show?” Phillips asked The Mercury.

    Gee, I don’t know. A roof? (more…)

  • Not Every Teacher’s Salary Can Be Above Average

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    Bob Rayner

    by Hans Bader

    In the mythical Lake Wobegon, all the children are above average. But in real life, half of all people have to be below average, by definition. Half of all people are paid below average, especially in counties with very low living costs, where the vast majority of people are paid below the national average.

    Still, no teachers union likes its members to be paid below average, even when they live in areas where the cost of living is below the national average, like Richmond, Amherst, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Harrisonburg, Staunton, or Waynesboro.

    Nadarius Clark, a Democratic Virginia delegate, has introduced House Bill 187, which would require Virginia teachers to be paid at or above the national average for teachers. The bill “requires that public school teachers be compensated at a rate that is at or above the national average teacher salary…. ” The bill also requires that public school instructional and non-instructional support staff be compensated at a rate that is “at or above the national average salary for such staff.”

    It is a bad idea for states to pass such laws. If every state passed such a law, teacher pay would be higher than for any other profession, and increase toward infinity, because states would be constantly increasing their teachers’ pay relative to other states so as not to be below the national average, and yet, many states would never reach the national average, due to other states increasing teacher pay first. (By definition, half of all states are going to be below average.) (more…)

  • What Does UVA Need in a University President?

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    For anyone following governance issues at the University of Virginia, Bill Ackman’s Twitter broadside against Harvard’s now- dethroned president Claudine Gay and its governing board is must reading. Ackman, the hedge-fund manager-turned-activist who spearheaded Gay’s overthrow, identifies serious systemic problems at Harvard, from its ponderous DEI bureaucracy to a tuition policy that prices out the middle class.

    Every one of the pathologies he describes at Harvard plays out at UVA (although, one can argue, in diluted form). Little of this is new to readers of The Jefferson Council blog, for we have been documenting the problems for two years. But Ackman raises one point that we have not considered: what qualifications should a governing board look for in a university president?

    The question might seem academic, but UVa President Jim Ryan is surely feeling nervous these days. As dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education before ascending to his position at UVA, he is a product of the same hyper-progressive Harvard culture as Gay. And Liz Magill, the University of Pennsylvania president who was sacked after her abysmal testimony before Congress, was Ryan’s hand-picked provost for UVa before she moved on to the Ivy League. Ryan is less politically tone deaf, to be sure. He is popular among UVA students and faculty, and he has said all the right things regarding free speech and institutional neutrality. No one in authority has publicly called for his resignation. Even The Jefferson Council, as critical as it has been of UVA under Ryan’s tenure, has taken no position on whether he should stay or go.

    Nevertheless, it is worth asking the question, in light of the presidential de-fenestrations at Harvard and Penn: what should an elite university look for in a president? (more…)

  • Nooses, Masks and Double Standards

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    In the fall of 2022 a furtive figure was caught on videotape draping a noose around the Homer statue on the Grounds of the University of Virginia. The university administration immediately declared the act a hate crime. University police launched an investigation, enlisting the FBI to help in the search for the perpetrator. A $10,000 award was offered to anyone who could provide more information.

    “The facts available indicate that this was an act intended to intimidate members of this community,” said President Jim Ryan in a letter to the community. “A noose is a recognizable and well-known symbol of violence, most closely associated with the racially motivated lynching of African Americans.”

    A noose hung from a tree branch is indeed a recognizable symbol of lynching. The meaning when hung around the neck of a statue of an ancient Greek poet, however, was not self-evident (as we noted at the time). Indeed, when the offender was discovered, it turned out he hadn’t been targeting African Americans at all. Irate at how the Homer statue placed a hand on the head of a naked youth, the Albemarle County man declared that it “glorified pedophilia.” Local authorities charged him with intimidation anyway.

    That was then.

    Photo credit: WUVAnews.com

    The day after Hamas’ October 7 terrorist assault on Israel, the Students for Justice in Palestine at UVA issued a statement  declaring that “colonized people” had the right to resist oppression “by whatever means they deem necessary.” A poster promoting the October 12 march showed a Hamas bulldozer plowing through an Israeli security fence. “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” the poster said. Later that month, SJP held two rallies on the Grounds. Marchers waved Palestinian flags and chanted, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.” Some insisted that the slogan was just a call for solidarity with oppressed Palestinians, but many Jews interpreted it as advocating the eradication of the Israeli state and, in the context of the Hamas massacres, the slaughter of the Jewish population.
    (more…)

  • A Hostile Environment for Jews

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Matan Goldstein is a rarity at the University of Virginia — a Jewish student unafraid to openly defend Israel in its war with Hamas and oppose Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a pro-Palestinian group that praised Hamas’ October 7 terror attacks on Israeli citizens. The Israeli student has appeared on local talk radio and published an op-ed in the local newspaper. He wears a kippah, openly identifying himself as a Jew, and he was one of the two students who waved an Israeli flag on the steps of the Rotunda during an SJP rally. 

    Goldstein, who was drawn to UVa by its classics program, was surprised upon coming to Charlottesville by the prevalence of antisemitism and the impotent handwringing of the UVa administration in dealing with it. University officials have declined to criticize the eliminationist rhetoric of pro-Palestinian students and faculty. Instead, the University has created a religious diversity task force to investigate discrimination against Jews… and Muslims… and other religions. Two of the eleven task-force members had signed a faculty letter faulting Ryan for his failure to sufficiently acknowledge the suffering of the Palestinians.

    Goldstein’s account is echoed by other members of UVa’s Jewish community contacted by The Jefferson Council, although he was the only one willing to speak on the record. A law school student spoke off the record, while parents, alumni, a professor and a rabbi conveyed the sentiments of many other Jewish students whom I was unable to contact for first-hand accounts. Jewish students are so reticent to speak publicly that the signatories to a letter in The Cavalier Daily identified themselves only as “a group of Jewish students.”

    During his first-year orientation in September, Goldstein participated in a group discussion in which students told others about themselves. He mentioned that he was Israeli. A classmate, a student from Egypt, spoke up. He said he was angry at the Jewish state and the Israeli Defense Force. He thought Abdul Gamal Nasser, an Egyptian dictator who sought to destroy Israel in the Six Day War, was a hero. “He said we could never be friends.” (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    James A. Bacon

  • Showdown in Hill City

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    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Stephanie Reed, Mayor, City of Lynchburg Photo credit: Lynchburg City Council

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    The members of the Lynchburg City Council have been embroiled in fighting among themselves for the past year. At the close of the year, the council took the unprecedented step of censuring one of its members.

    Because of the dearth of the coverage of local government by today’s media, not much news of those goings-on has filtered to the eastern portion of the Commonwealth. Fortunately, we have Cardinal News, along with The News & Advance, to chronicle these events. Using FOIA requests, Cardinal News was able to use e-mails and phone conversations among the members to report and comment extensively on the situation.

    Marty MIsjuns, member of Lynchburg City Council. Photo credit: Lynchburg City Council

    The main characters in this drama have been Stephanie Reed, the mayor, and Marty Misjuns, at-large member of city council.

    Before getting into the current controversy, a little prologue will help shed some light on the situation. In January 2021, Misjuns was a captain in the city fire department and the Ward I chair of the Lynchburg Republican City Committee. That month, he posted on his Facebook page political cartoons that included “caricaturized illustrations of transgender women.” In October 2021, the Lynchburg Fire Department fired him. His Facebook page identified him as a “public figure” due to his party position. Misjuns sued the city claiming wrongful termination, violation of equal protection, conspiracy, municipal liability, violation of First Amendment freedom of speech rights, and violation of First Amendment freedom of religion rights. In April 2023, a federal judge dismissed all the claims except for the First Amendment claims. Those claims were allowed to proceed to the discovery phase. Misjuns appealed the dismissal of the other claims to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The trial for the upheld claims is set for mid-March of 2024. No date has been listed for the appeals to be heard. (more…)

  • A Far Better Option for Public Education of Poor Urban Minority Students in Virginia

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    sherlockj


    by James C. Sherlock

    We are going to discuss here — it will be a series — Virginia’s urban majority-minority school divisions.

    School boards, superintendents and teachers in those divisions want their students to learn. They are especially frustrated that far too many of their minority students fail to do so.

    For those divisions, an exhaustive 2023 report from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) confirms that poor urban minority students can and do learn at the same or higher levels as white children.

    They do so in charter schools nationwide managed by the best Charter Management Organizations (CMO).

    The results reported are stunning.

    CMO schools make a bigger difference in urban environments, and for poor minority kids, than anywhere else for any other populations.

    Those kids come to school. They and their parents like school. In some of the toughest neighborhoods in America.

    Readers who oppose charter schools think there are unacceptable explanations for that. Fair enough. CREDO addresses every one of the commonly cited rationalizations and bats them away. We will get to that in a follow-on article.

    What matters here is that the study, focused on equity, finds over 1,000 “gap buster” public charter schools, most run by CMOs, that deliver academic results that eliminate the learning gap across student groups. (more…)

  • Virginia Army National Guard Switches from Red to Blue

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    by

    Bob Rayner


    by Thomas. M. Moncure Jr.

    Confederate statues have come down and in some cases – to assure they will never rise again – have been melted down. Schools and roads have been purged of Confederate references. Army bases likewise are renamed in this cultural cleansing. This rewriting of history – Soviet style – would make Joseph Stalin proud. This eradication of one of the most significant events in American history – the formation of the Confederate States of America – has been done more swiftly and with greater success than even George Orwell might have envisioned.

    Even symbols must be dispatched down the memory hole. The old unit patch of the Virginia Army National Guard (above left) showed a spear cutting thru the chain of tyranny in a St. Andrews Cross on a field of red. This is a subtle but somewhat obvious nod to the Confederate Battle Flag; any vague resemblance to anything Confederate must be purged.

    The new National Guard patch shows Virtue over the dead body of Tyranny, imitating the Seal of Virginia on a blue field. Symbols do underlie and emphasize political realities. In addition to removing Confederate taint, the Guard has -intentionally or not – fallen in with the transition of the partisan makeup of the General Assembly. As Virginia has gone from Red to Blue, so has the Guard.

    Thomas Moncure lives in Colonial Beach. He is an attorney and former Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates. 

  • An Obstructionist Rises to the Top

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    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Rep. Bob Good (5th District)

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Amid all the other topics being discussed and debated on Bacon’s Rebellion, we have neglected to note that the Commonwealth has recently picked up a dubious distinction. It is now the home of the chair of the House Freedom Caucus — Rep. Bob Good (R–5th District).

    His selection was not cheered by all conservatives. Those supporting Donald Trump’s presidential bid are upset that Good is backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. State Senator-elect John McGuire (R-Goochland) announced soon after the November elections that he would challenge Good in the Republican primary in the spring. “I’m running for Congress against ‘Never Trump’ politician Bob Good,” he declared. (more…)

  • Virginia Child Victims in the Left’s War on the Enlightenment and Science

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    sherlockj

    Richard Bernstein, a founder of American critical theory.

    by James C. Sherlock

    Modern progressivism is religion, defined by Webster as “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.”

    The critical theory progressive, that is to say the modern American progressive, rejects proudly and publicly, root and branch, both the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolutions of the 16th through 18th centuries in Europe.

    Critical Theory developed into a synthesis of Marx and Freud. The Frankfurt School which birthed it studied the sources of authoritarianism. Their followers, as in much of human experience, wound up as practitioners.

    By contrast, the leading lights of Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution awakenings, bravely in their time, stressed the belief that science and logic give people more understanding. And with understanding came freedom and the rights of man.

    Logic is the principles of reasoning; science provides the principles of investigation and proof.

    They led much of Europe, and the American colonies, to develop more successful systems of governance, economics, mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, and education than did tradition and religion.

    One development, capitalism, has raised more people out of poverty than any economic system ever.

    Some of the rest of the world followed. Some did not. Those that did, prospered, and improved the lives of billions of people.

    But success in those twin intellectual revolutions came too slow for some.

    To that table came two prominent 19th and 20th century experiments in rejecting the Enlightenment: communism and national socialism.

    They proved the deadliest political movements in human history. (more…)

  • W&L Students Trained in Privilege, Identity, and Intersectionality

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    James A. Bacon

    Once upon a time university students spent their college years, to use the vernacular of the time, “finding themselves.” It was a journey they undertook on their own by sampling from a wide range of courses, experimenting with sex, alcohol and drugs, and floating ideas — and shooting them down — in dormitory bull sessions.

    Now they have help. Whether they want it or not.

    In November the entire Washington & Lee University freshman class was required to participate in mandatory training titled, “Continuing Education: Diversity, Inclusion and Community.” Under the direction of university representatives, students were walked through an exploration of their “identity” using a leftist oppressor/victim paradigm by race, class, sex, gender, age, ability, etc., according to The W&L Spectator. (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant.

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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