Bacon's Rebellion

  • Virginia’s State Higher Education System – A Concept for Magnet Schools among the Smaller Ones

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    sherlockj

    Radford University

    by James C. Sherlock

    Yesterday I posted an article listing a series of challenges facing Virginia’s Institutions of Higher Learning.

    Today I will offer a concept for a solution designed to address both the cost of a 4-year degree and the thriving of the smaller schools.

    Create a magnet school program in the smaller schools:

    • for majors that are increasing in popularity; and
    • to meet Virginia’s critical workforce needs.

    To reduce costs for the schools and students, the magnet schools would focus on attracting third- and fourth-year undergraduates to a limited number of magnet majors as transfers from the community college system.

    They inevitably would get some third-year transfers from the larger schools for strong majors, but that is not the focus.

    The Community College system already has its guaranteed entry program, with courses specified by and tailored for specific institutions.

    To strengthen specific departments, the schools would need to spend money.

    I recommend developing a state fund administered by SCHEV, access to which would require firm plans not only to strengthen specific departments, but also to cut costs elsewhere.

    The largest schools would not be permitted to apply, with a potential exception of a program for undergraduate nursing and education student stipends.

    (more…)

  • Dominion Plan to Maintain Gas Attacked at SCC

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    Steve Haner

    Percentage of Virginians reporting difficulty in paying for electricity, including those setting their thermostats to uncomfortable levels. From expert testimony filed by the University of Michigan’s Justin Schott, based on census data. Click for larger view.

    By Steve Haner

    First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.

    The front line in the war against fossil fuels in Virginia has now shifted back to the State Corporation Commission, and as usual only one side has fielded an army and brought heavy weapons to the battlefield.  Those who might defend the continued use of coal and natural gas are missing in action.   (more…)

  • Correction

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    In two recent stories about administrative bloat and faculty bloat at the University of Virginia, I published inaccurate information. I stated that annualized full-time-equivalent student enrollment between fiscal 2012 and fiscal 2022 increased 1.1%. The correct figure was 8.8%. The result of the error was to exaggerate the degree to which the increase in salaried staff and teaching faculty outpaced the increase in student enrollment.

    However, the larger point of the articles stands: the increase in staff and faculty exceeded that of enrollment by a wide margin. The headcount of salaried staff increased 25.4% over the same period and the headcount of tenure-track faculty, instructors, and lecturers increased 25.7%.

  • The Value of an Old School Roanoke County Education

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    Bob Rayner

    by Scott Dreyer

    These remarks were shared with the Roanoke County School Board by email on August 17, 2023.

    I share these thoughts with the Roanoke County School board as someone who grew up in the County from ages 1 to 18 and attended County Public Schools from grades 1-12 until graduating from Northside.

    I am profoundly thankful for the education I received over those twelve years. The content shared here is not meant to sound boastful; it’s not about me. The intention is to give honor and gratitude for the fine educational foundation the Roanoke County Schools gave me, and to share this with the community so we can appreciate what we have and build on it, and not let it be neglected or destroyed.

    The education and leadership opportunities I received in County Schools, (in tandem with lessons learned at home, in Scouts, at church, in the community, etc.) gave me the tools to enjoy a rewarding and successful life and career.

    And my experience is not unique. I am the youngest of four; all of us graduated from County schools and then attended and graduated from William and Mary. Clearly, Roanoke County gave us tools in our toolkit to take our studies and lives to the next level. (more…)

  • Virginia State Colleges and Universities Slouching Towards a Cliff

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    sherlockj

    University of Mary Washington

    by James C. Sherlock

    The economist Herb Stein once said that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

    The University of West Virginia has just stopped to take stock.

    Facing a $45 million shortfall, it had to cut programs. Instead of taking the unthinking way out — assigning a cut target to each department — it restructured.

    The university shut down nearly 10% of its majors entirely. The axe fell most directly on the humanities. The Athletic Department was told it was on its own for funding.

    President Gee did not want a bailout, figuring it was time to bite the bullet. He and his board decided to emphasize the programs in demand and let go those which could not attract enough students to justify their costs.

    Virginia’s portfolio of institutions of higher learning (IHEs) faces challenges, some unprecedented, from at least a half dozen different sources.

    Eventually, sooner rather than later, we will have to deal with them as a state. Virginia’s state “Plan” for its IHEs is not helpful.

    This issue needs detail for discussion, and I will provide some here. (more…)

  • Cruise Subsidy More Important Than Tax Relief?

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    Steve Haner

    What is this cruise ship doing in a story about Virginia’s budget and tax fight? Read and learn.

    The Richmond Times-Dispatch has obtained and released the most recent negotiating offer from Democrats in the Senate as the standoff between the two political parties over the state budget continues.  It is contained in an on-line article that doesn’t appear to have made it into the print edition yet. (more…)

  • Virginia’s New “The Stupid Party”

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    Bob Rayner

    by Chris Braunlich

    From the ‘50s to the mid-‘70s, the Republican Party was known as “the stupid party” – locked in the past, making foolish decisions, promoting unwise and counterproductive policies.

    Today, in Virginia, “the stupid party” has returned. But it is no longer Republican.

    The current battle over Virginia’s budget and the prospects for tax reduction and reform affirms the Left’s governing philosophy: what the government has belongs to the government and what the taxpayer has is negotiable.

    With a $5.1 billion surplus exceeding the last fiscal year’s projections, Governor Glenn Youngkin proposes to return $1 billion — less than 20 percent — to the taxpayers from whom it came, in the form of permanent rate reform. He would spend the remainder on education, behavioral health, law enforcement and other projects. Senate Democrats, on the other hand, want to spend all of it, offering, at best, a one-time rebate giving them “first dibs” on future excessive tax revenue. (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    James A. Bacon

  • Faculty Bloat at UVa

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    Data source: office of Institutional Research & Analytics
    by James A. Bacon

    A key cost driver at the University of Virginia is the increasing size and declining teaching productivity of its faculty. The topic appears to be taboo.

    The Board of Visitors hasn’t discussed it, and there is no indication from publicly available sources that the university administration has engaged in any introspection. The slender evidence available to the UVa community is found on the website of UVa’s office of Institutional Research & Analytics (IR&A), a 17-person office deep within the bowels of the university. While that office does publish limited data online, it has not released any reports of an analytical nature.

    Employee salaries, wages and benefits comprise roughly half of the university’s cost structure. While a 25.4% surge in salaried staff accounts for much of the growth in UV’s cost structure between fiscal 2012 and fiscal 2022 (see our article, “Hard Numbers on Administrative Bloat“), a 9.5% increase in “faculty” was a significant contributor as well. If we count teaching faculty only (tenure-track professors, lecturers and instructors) and exclude departmental-level administrators, whose numbers have been slashed, the “faculty” headcount bounded ahead by 25.7%.

    By contrast, annualized FTE enrollment rose 8.8%. (more…)

  • Loudoun Supervisors Defend Exorbitant Junkets

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Ram Venkatachalam

    Until recently, members of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors haven’t tried to sell themselves as international diplomats and business development experts. They aren’t.

    Nor do we have a long history of waste, fraud, and abuse when it comes to how members of local government spend our tax dollars, especially for money budgeted for constituent services.

    But now four Democrat members of the Board have been caught red-handed in the biggest local government scandal in decades. This is what Entitlement looks like.

    This year alone, Chair Phyliss Randall, and Supervisors Juli Briskman, Sylvia Glass, and Koran Saines have violated their oath of office by diverting nearly $100,000 in taxpayer money (that we know of) for first-class travel for themselves and others to Ghana and Uruguay. They even purchased a pricey camera to take pictures of themselves because it wasn’t enough to use their taxpayer-paid cell phones.

    That money could have been spent to hire another elementary school teacher, firefighter, or deputy sheriff this year. Instead, it was wasted.

    Our taxes paid for these four to travel with their aides, a political campaign donor and others under the guise of “sister city” partnerships – without a compelling reason, and with no return on investment.

    The four supervisors did this out of a sense of entitlement, and Loudoun taxpayers paid 100% of the bill. Then, after being confronted by an investigative reporter for WJLA-TV7, they doubled down, and Chair Randall defended their actions. Many of their political allies have done the same, including Laura Tekrony, my opponent in the contest for Supervisor, Little River District. Ms. Tekrony is Chair Randall’s chief legislative aide, and her prolonged silence about the abuse is telling.

    Instead of an apology or accountability from the four elected supervisors, Loudoun is being fed lies that more than $1.37 billion in investments and 2,500 local jobs resulted from these and similar “sister city” trips. In fact, the trips have produced absolutely nothing in economic benefits – zero dollars and no jobs, as documented by the county’s own records. (more…)

  • Who Knew?

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    sherlockj

    Henrico Doctors Hospital courtesy HCA

    by James C. Sherlock

    I just came across a fact that surprised me considering how much I have studied Virginia hospitals.

    Henrico Doctors’ Hospital with 767 beds and CJW Medical Center with 758 beds, both in Richmond, rank numbers five and six in size in the entire 180-hospital empire of HCA, the largest private hospital system in America.

    Together they represent HCA’s largest market presence by far.

    Go Richmond.

  • Impressions from a Weekend in Charlottesville

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Sometimes, things just force their way into your consciousness.

    My wife and I were in Charlottesville this weekend. We were not there to visit the University, but its continuing construction overwhelms both the senses and attempts to get from A to B. Most of the growth is vertical — very vertical — on land that the University owns on or adjacent to the central Grounds.

    Drive down Jefferson Park Avenue for a sense of the scale of it. Look straight up. Go to the intersection of Rt. 29 and 250 to see a new 14-acre complex under construction.

    There is a sense that there is never to be an end to it.

    There is certainly nothing to suggest a considered approach to growth in the University’s Strategic Plan. Sinclair Lewis recognized the symptoms a century ago.

    No room was found in the Plan for any possibility of stopping doing something for which there is no longer sufficient demand in order to do something new in existing buildings.

    Instead, University infrastructure growth seems on a self-generating loop — an idea for a new building, the land identified, a search for donors, an alumnus writes a check to buy immortality (unless the donor is later “cancelled” by the left), and voilà, some of the initial funding, if not the long-term sustaining money, is found. Skilled construction workers are brought in by the contractors who build at such scale, who then leave when the job is complete.

    Replay. (more…)

  • Fear and Loathing in Loudoun

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    Loudoun County parents pack a School Board meeting. Photo credit: Idiocracy News Media

    by Ian Prior

    For several years, parents in Loudoun County, Virginia have been clamoring for accountability, transparency, higher standards, and safety in their schools. They haven’t been getting it, and that’s why new leadership is needed.

    The brunt of the parents’ grievances has been largely directed toward the Loudoun County School Board, which has been embroiled in several scandals that remain unresolved.

    In October 2021, a male student at Broad Run High School was arrested for sexual battery and abduction of a fellow student. Only a few days later, it was reported that the same student had previously committed two counts of forcible sodomy on a fellow student at Stone Bridge High School. The male assailant, who had gained access to the female bathroom on account of his claim of “gender fluidity,” is said to have been wearing a skirt during the assault.

    The anxious parents in Loudoun County have been demanding answers as to why a student accused of rape was allowed to quietly transfer to another school where he reoffended. The scandal prompted an independent investigation into the tragedy. The LCSB has emphatically refused to make the resulting Independent Review available to the Loudoun parental community. (more…)

  • What Global Warming? A Century of Virginia Julys

    Posted on

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    Steve Haner

    Graphing every daily high temperature for July in Purcellville, VA, more than a century of daily readings up through last month. What global warming? Click for full view.

    By Steve Haner

    The constant media hysteria about July’s temperatures gets even harder to swallow when the long-term data are examined. For example, take a look at that graph above, which represents every daily high in July going back to the 19th Century at Purcellville in Loudoun County.

    The Purcellville weather monitor is one of just 19 in Virginia with a long enough and reliable enough history to be included in National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s U.S. Historical Climatology Network. It is the closest Virginia USHCN monitor to the Washington metropolitan region, but like many of the selected monitors is not deep in an urban setting.

    The graph itself was generated by a program developed by a regular writer on climate topics named Tony Heller, who spent much of his career doing research at the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories. This is mentioned because he will be attacked by the Bacon’s Rebellion usual suspects as not a real scientist or not a climate scientist. More of his background.

    The graphing program can be balky (it could be my equipment or operator error), and you can try it yourself here under “Daily Station Temperatures.” You can select by state, and if you get the version that includes a box at the top marked “Annual Average,” that gives you a pulldown menu for the individual USHCN monitor stations in each state. The graph adds a trend line if you wish, which I included in my screenshots.

    Running through the Virginia stations, the thought that comes to mind is, what climate change? What spike in temperatures? Most seem to be complete through all or most of last month. The media coverage has admitted that Virginia was not among the areas supposedly “broiling.” The state’s official NOAA summary claims a temperature rise of only 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900, almost 125 years. (more…)

  • Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need Program – A New Sheriff in Town

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Everywhere counterproductive to competition, innovation and cost, Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need (COPN) program also has proven antithetical to quality and safety in nursing homes.

    A thorough 2022 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine on improving nursing home quality had this to say about state Certificate of Need (CON) programs:

    Certificate-of-need regulations and construction moratoria do not appear to have had their intended effect of holding down Medicaid nursing home spending; rather, these laws can discourage innovation and decrease access.

    Certificate-of-need regulations may contribute to the perpetuation of larger nursing homes.

    Despite the prominent role of nursing home oversight and regulation, the evidence base for its effectiveness in ensuring a minimum standard of quality is relatively modest.

    The role of Virginia’s COPN program is as counterproductive to nursing home quality as is imaginable. Remember, COPN decisions happen before the state and federal regulators of the operations of nursing homes even get into the game.

    Virginia’s COPN program is a statutory incumbent protection regime across all of its regulated targets. But it has gotten especially bad results with nursing homes, which by nearly every measure are among the worst in America.

    In Virginia, the only realistic way to increase the size of a nursing facility is by COPN approval of the transfer of beds from one facility to another, often from one region of the state to another. (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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