Bacon's Rebellion

  • A Few Thousand Votes Would Have Made a Big Difference

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Shaun Kenney

    Yeah — I’m a bit bitter over this one.

    Virginia Republicans did everything we were asked, despite our intuition. We narrowed the talking points, stayed in our lanes, muffled internal criticisms, and allowed the effort to be centralized. Consultants made their money as they do every election and the Democrats outspent us as we thought.

    Yet at the end of the day, redistricting did us in — and voters were given a choice between Virginia Democrats or Glenn Youngkin.

    They chose the Democrats — barely.

    By The Numbers? Spirit of Virginia PAC Got Republicans Awfully Close…

    Cooler heads now prevailing, there is one culprit — maybe two — for Republican fortunes in November 2023: redistricting and $8 million in Democratic cash spent on a handful of House of Delegates races.

    Consider that Democrats did not win a single seat where Youngkin earned 52% of the vote or higher. Not a single one. Likewise, Republicans did not win a single seat where Youngkin did not perform 50% or better.

    Biden’s favorable numbers were also just about where they were in 2021, hovering in the low-40s (RCP has Biden at 41.4%). 2023 was no repeat of 2017, where Democrats enjoyed a massive victory over Republicans one year after Donald Trump was elected president.

    A 51-49 House and a 21-19 Senate is no mandate — it is stasis.

    Bolling: Three Reasons Why Republicans Fell Short

    Former Lt. Governor Bill Bolling has offered his thoughts on why Republicans lost in triplicate. I think he is wrong on two, but most certainly right on the third.

    There will be a temptation to blame the outcome of the 2023 elections on abortion, but this is not the case at all. (more…)

  • Song Sung Blue

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Not every General Assembly race has been decided, according to the data displayed by the Virginia Public Access Project, but enough votes are in to conclude that the Democrats won the election. They retained their control of the state Senate and won a narrow majority in the House. Some preliminary observations:

    Bye, Bye White House. Governor Glenn Youngkin can stop entertaining fantasies about running for president. Give him credit for fighting hard to win GOP control of the state legislature. But he failed. He has not cracked the code on how to turn blue states red, and, therefore, he does not create a viable alternative to Donald Trump in the GOP presidential nomination contest.

    Abortion, abortion, abortion. Youngkin staked his effort to retake the General Assembly largely on a platform of banning abortion after 15 weeks (with exceptions for rape and incest). It was a more moderate plank than what we’ve seen in other red states, but it was not what most Virginians wanted. The Virginia GOP needs to decide which is more important: abortion or… taxes, government spending, jobs, crime, parental rights, public-sector unions, salvaging K-12, reforming higher- ed, and every other issue they could make progress on if Democrats didn’t have the abortion issue to beat them with. (more…)

  • A Day in the Election Trenches

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    I just finished my first stint as an election official.  I was surprised by some aspects but, upon retrospect, I should not have been surprised.

    Voters came in steadily throughout the day, with some backups occurring.  The biggest push was between 5:15 and 6:15, when the line was much longer. But it cleared fairly quickly and voters did not have to wait more than about 15 minutes at the most.

    About 1,350 folks voted, which constituted a turnout of 35 percent of the active registered voters in the precinct.

    Some of that turnout undoubtedly was the result of the failure of voters to know about, and understand, the changes wrought by redistricting. The precinct’s candidates for the House and Senate in the General Assembly were unopposed Democrats. However, Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant (R) had represented the area for many years in the General Assembly. Redistricting put her in a new district which did not include this precinct. She was being challenged by Del. Schuyler VanValkenburg (D), who has represented the precinct in the House of Delegates for several years. That contest is one of the key ones in the state and there has been heavy advertising on TV by both candidates. Many voters were puzzled and frustrated when they found that neither Dunnavant nor VanValkenburg was on their ballots. I overheard one man lamenting that he had come to the polls specifically to vote against one of those candidates. (more…)

  • Election Day: VOTE

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty

    No matter how busy you are, no matter what’s going on, don’t sit this one out.

    VOTE.

    Especially if you love Virginia and don’t want our commonwealth to go backwards, turning into an East-coast version of tax-mad, crime-ridden, pronoun-obsessed California.

    Remember how good it felt the day after the 2021 election, when Glenn Youngkin beat Terry McAuliffe and you knew that it was Independence Day in Virginia?

    VOTE.

    Remember how you woke up the morning after that historic election and knew the vaccine mandates that cost state workers their jobs were a thing of the past? You knew that statewide mask mandates were not coming back. You knew that parents were going to be heard at their kids’ schools and school officials would no longer be allowed to hide a child’s gender confusion from their parents. You knew that schools would focus on excellence instead of kowtowing to teachers’ unions. You knew that the parole board would not be turning murderers loose.

    I could go on, but if you were in Virginia in November 2021, you remember the overweening tyranny of the Northam administration and his Democrat monopoly on the state house and how good it felt to shake it all off.

    VOTE.

    If all goes well, we’ll feel that sense of exhilaration again tomorrow. Youngkin’s common-sense policies will have a chance to become law if voters manage to dismantle the Democrat’s sick brick wall of stupidity.

    At last, the General Assembly will have the votes to repeal the measure that tie Virginia’s future to California’s nutty climate regulations. Parents will continue to have a say in their kids’ education. Oh, and there won’t be any drag queen story hours. (more…)

  • Tomorrow’s Ballot Question: Will Virginia Become Illinois?

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Derrick Max

    It was reported last week that billionaire Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker had made substantial campaign contributions totaling $250,000 to four liberal Democrats running for Virginia State Senate and the Democratic Party of Virginia. These donations, made through Governor Pritzker’s “Think Big America” organization, are the clearest sign yet that the left wants to turn the Commonwealth of Virginia into an Illinois of the East.

    Truthfully, the governing philosophies in Illinois and Virginia could not be more different. State and local government spending per capita in Illinois is higher than in Virginia. Illinois has a higher overall tax burden than Virginia, and Illinois has a substantially higher unionization rate than Virginia. In fact, about one in seven workers in Illinois is unionized, while only one in 22 workers in Virginia is unionized. Illinois also has a higher minimum wage than Virginia. So, what does Illinois get with its higher taxes, higher spending, higher minimum wage, and higher unionization? A worse state. (more…)

  • That’s One Way to Cut Down on Health Care Costs

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Tim Griffin, Republican candidate for 53rd House District

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Just as the Democrats and Republicans get rid of their embarrassments in the Virginia Senate (Joe Morrissey and Amanda Chase, respectively), it appears the Republicans will be electing another one for the House.

    Following up on a report by The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Dwayne Yancey reports today in Cardinal News that Tim Griffin, the Republican candidate for the district that covers parts of Bedford, Nelson, and Amherst counties, has defied multiple court orders to pay for the support of his children. In 2021, a court ordered Griffin to pay his ex-wife for health care coverage for their two young children, spousal support, and legal fees. It appears that, soon after that order was entered, he cancelled the health coverage for his children and has not paid the other required amounts. He now owes more than $33,000.

    Furthermore, some Republicans have raised questions about whether he even lives in the district, going so far as to hire a private investigator to figure out where he lives.

    There was a time when such revelations would have been devastating to a candidacy. But, this is a heavily Republican district and the Democratic candidate seems to be running an uninspired campaign. Therefore, it looks as if there will be a scofflaw in the legislature voting on laws that apply to the rest of us.

    It could be asked why the Republicans did not do a better job of vetting their candidate, who was chosen in a convention. It just so happens that the chairman of the Republican Party in Bedford County, “home to most of the voters in this district, is none other than Griffin himself.”

  • Never Again

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Chinese-funded Code Pink’s co-founder Medea Benjamin at antisemitic rally in D.C. Nov. 4th. Courtesy Asra Nomani

    by James C. Sherlock

    At 78, I have been all over the world often and for long periods of time. I felt myself reasonably immune to cultural surprises.

    But I had never seen anything like this.

    It was the Maghrib prayer time about 5 p.m. on Saturday. On the southeast corner of 12th and Pennsylvania Ave. in D.C., a devout Muslim man was in the sujood prayer position on the sidewalk, forehead touching the ground.

    That was not the surprise.

    But a girl we took to be the praying man’s daughter was waiting a few feet away next to her mother and three young siblings. She looked to be, at the most, four years old.

    There had been thousands like her at the festival on that beautiful afternoon. Families with toddlers and baby carriages were everywhere at the edges of the demonstrations. Watching. Learning.

    Full of adrenaline from the hate that had been spewed out on a huge screen broadcasting anti-Israel rally speakers in the middle of shut-down Pennsylvania Avenue, that beautiful little girl was jumping up and down, tiny fists clenched, shouting in her small voice “Gaza,” “Gaza,” “Gaza.”

    Three thousand years of hatred of Jews was being passed down to another generation.

    It is never going to stop. (more…)

  • Freedom, Consistency, and Tuesday’s Election

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    The capital city

    by Shaun Kenney

    One of the great things about being a conservative is that we are inherently an anti-ideology. As the late William F. Buckley Jr. once put it, the great task of the modern conservative movement is to stand athwart history yelling STOP!

    Yet in a wider sense, it is far easier for conservatives to tack with the wind than our counterparts on the left. Liberals tend to wed themselves to institutions and then find themselves besieged by conservatives who continue to ask why and progressives who demand more on the what and how.

    One of the particular demands on the conservative movement at present is whether or not we are a big tent or a fortress.

    More particular is this: do we have to surrender what we believe in order to become more palatable to the wider public?

    Or is there simply a better way of packaging what we believe and describing why it matters to working class families? In short, if what we believe has a kernel of truth to it, isn’t persuasion better than fighting?

    The truth is that Republicans are far better at adapting what we believe to the times than our counterparts on the left precisely because we keep asking the same question over and over again: Does this expand the cause of human freedom — or not?

    For Virginia Republicans, the sentiment is as old as there has been a Republican Party of Virginia — thank you General William Mahone. The maxim was best articulated by one Richard D. Obenshain, who by sheer force of will resurrected what we know as the present-day Virginia GOP from mere footnote to statewide conscience, serving as state party chairman in 1972 before his U.S. Senate bid in 1978. (more…)

  • Democrats, Judges, and Higher Taxes

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    from Liberty Unyielding 

    For generations, Washington State had no state income tax, because of anti-income tax provisions in its state constitution. But the Washington state supreme court recently upheld a classic example of an income tax — a state tax on income from capital gains — by making the absurd argument that a capital gains tax is an “excise tax,” not an income tax. That was nonsense. The IRS and all other states deem capital-gains taxes to be income taxes, because they are levied on the amount of income you make from selling an asset, such as shares of stock or the sale of your home. The state supreme court could not deny this, and seems to have been motivated by racial, rather than legal, considerations, in reaching its ruling. It claimed that Washington’s traditional tax system “perpetuates systemic racism by placing a disproportionate tax burden on BIPOC residents,” who pay a higher fraction of sales taxes than of income or capital gains taxes.

    As broadcaster Jason Rantz notes, the state supreme court’s opinion “doesn’t read like a Court decision, but a press release from a pro-tax, anti-capitalist Seattle activist group. But that’s what the Washington State Supreme Court has become.” The state supreme court’s 7-to-2 ruling is in tension with the fact that, as the tax consulting firm RSM notes, “the IRS defines capital gains as income and the Washington capital gains tax relies on federal income tax reporting.”

    If other state supreme courts similarly redefine income taxes as excise taxes, that could weaken tax limits contained in other states’ laws, such as Virginia law’s ban on income taxes levied by cities and counties. This Tuesday, Virginia is holding legislative elections. Virginia’s legislature picks the state’s judges, and Democrats are slightly favored to take control of the state legislature. When they last controlled the Virginia legislature, the Democrats expanded and packed the Virginia Court of Appeals. But the Virginia supreme court currently is split 4-to-3 in favor of Republicans. Residents of northern Virginia pay 3.2% less of their income in taxes than residents of neighboring counties in Maryland, because Maryland permits county income taxes, and Virginia doesn’t.

    If Democrats win the Virginia elections Tuesday, they could pick judges who uphold taxes at odds with the state constitution. (more…)

  • Race, Disparities, and Reality

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    ##### sponsored content #####

    Heather Mac Donald

    by James A. Bacon

    Statistical disparities between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians are at the root of the debate about race in America today. Other than a few powerless voices on the fringe of society, no one questions that racism is evil. With no one admitting to being racist, leftists have redefined racism. One strain of thought asserts that many White Americans are unconsciously biased, which affects their behavior in subtle yet malign ways. Another strand insists that America’s institutions are racist, which means that racism supposedly abounds even in the absence of discernible bias. The evidence for such propositions supposedly can be found in the wide differences between Whites and Blacks in income, education, health and other metrics of wellbeing. The existence of such disparities is proffered as proof of systemic bias and/or ineradicable flaws in our institutions.

    The effect of this line of thinking is pernicious in so many ways. Perhaps the most devastating to American society and to allegedly marginalized minorities themselves is the corrosive impact it has on standards of merit and excellence.

    Heather Mac Donald, a Manhattan Institute fellow, is perhaps best known for her takedown of racialist thinking on crime. But she has written extensively about the perils of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion as well. And in her most recent book, “When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives,” she explores how a monomaniacal focus on statistical disparities corrupts science, the arts, and public policy.

    In an event co-sponsored by The Jefferson Council, Mac Donald will address the University of Virginia community 7:00 p.m. Nov. 9 in Charlottesville on the topic, “DEI and the Death of Merit.” You can register here. (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Dominion, Clean VA Spend $23M Buying Influence

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Dominion Energy Virginia has increased its donations to Virginia state politicians six-fold in just four years. The other major donors in the energy regulation arena, Clean Virginia Fund and its founder, have done much the same. They are donating five times more in the 2023 election cycle than they did in the similar 2019 cycle.

    The two political behemoths have donated about $23 million between them, compared to about $4 million four years ago. The totals really won’t be known until the final reports are due after Tuesday’s election.

    Virginia’s election laws are so porous, the real spending won’t be clear even then. Here in the last weekend another round of mailings in favor of various candidates has appeared from an advocacy group called Power for Tomorrow. It sent similar mailings out just before the June primary.

    Reporting at that time noted that Dominion had provided funding for Power for Tomorrow, which basically is praising candidates who had voted for Dominion’s 2023 regulatory bill. There is every reason to believe it is acting at Dominion’s behest, and no question these mailers are intended to promote the candidates.

    No data on who received them or what they cost, for either the primary or general election mailers, can be found at Virginia Public Access Project. The text does not actually say to vote for the candidate in focus, which may be the claimed loophole.

    The mailer that appeared in Henrico County mailboxes praising Senator Siobahn Dunnavant used exactly the same talking points that Dominion has used through the year to describe that bill, which had its good and bad points. The mailer appeared just one day after the State Corporation Commission implemented part of that bill, allowing Dominion to convert two years of unpaid fuel bills into a bond, and then make its ratepayers pay off the bond over 7 years. (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

  • Casino’s Last Stand: A Nauseating Display of Hate

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    Downtown Richmond

    by Jon Baliles

    The second casino referendum will be decided on Tuesday and it will be a vote (again) on whether or not Richmond wants to do the get-rich-quick schemes to help people or do the hard work of methodically mapping out a strategy and building a future. The get-rich-quick schemes like the casino and Navy Hill only benefit the select few, but the promoters promise the world to everyone and benevolence as far as the eye can see — vote for it and approve it for YOUR benefit, they say. It will be better FOR YOU than it will be for us, they boast.

    We called B.S. on Navy Hill and we need to do it again with the casino, which will be a predatory drain on the community and do more harm than good, despite what they promise. And this will not be a policy wonky dive into the casino, I promise. That’s because this issue is sadly a nauseating reveal of what the casino developers really think about Richmond and Richmonders, told in their own words.

    News came out this week that the promoters of the casino have been going on radio in recent days and trashing everyone in Richmond that does not support the casino. They have spent more than $10 million to try and convince people to vote for it, but they are badmouthing and trashing opponents on their own radio stations for all to hear with vile and offensive an inexcusable comments demeaning people of all kinds — black and white; the rich, middle class and poor; churchgoers, pastors. It did not matter. It was open season on anyone who didn’t support the casino; they especially went after Jim Ukrop and they absolutely thrash Tim Kaine because he voted no in 2021 and said there were better ways to promote economic development in Southside. (more…)

  • SCC Approves Paying Extra for Fuel As “Relief”

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    The Virginia State Corporation Commission has approved Dominion Energy Virginia’s request to stretch out the back payments on $1.3 billion in old fuel bills from previous years over more than seven years. While the ultimate dollar cost to customers is millions higher because of interest charges, even the SCC news release touted the move as “rate relief.” (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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