Bacon's Rebellion

  • Guns for Felons?

    Posted on

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Virginia law prohibits a convicted felon from possessing or transporting a firearm. Is that unconstitutional under the provisions of last year’s Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen  (597 U.S. ___; 142 S. Ct. 2111)?

    Background

    Before trying to answer that question, it is helpful to review the Supreme Court’s opinion in Bruen. New York law required anyone wanting to carry a concealed handgun outside the home to show “proper cause” for the license. New York courts had interpreted that phrase to require applicants to show more than a general desire to protect themselves or their property. The Supreme Court struck down that law as a violation of a person’s right under the Second Amendment to carry a firearm for self-defense. (more…)

  • Ham Cemetery Stands Strong

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    Bob Rayner

    by Jon Baliles

    Over in the woods behind Bandy Field Nature Park in the West End along (and overlapping with) the border of Henrico County near the Village Shopping Center, there is a small African-American cemetery with an enormous history that recently appeared in a feature by Bill Pike in the Henrico Citizen; it is well worth the fascinating read.

    Just to set the stage: the cemetery is in an area that was important going back to colonial (and pre-colonial) times as the meeting point of two main roads — Three Notch’d Road (Three Chopt) and Horsepen Road. It was along the path of Dahlgren’s Raid in the Civil War, and it was also home to Huntley Plantation that held members of the Bradford family as slaves who, after emancipation, bought property with other freed slaves, along what is now known as Bandy Road (read a more detailed and absorbing history here). They expanded the formerly secret slave organization, the Sons of Ham, and in 1873 established the Sons and Daughters of Ham Cemetery. In the late 19th Century, Maggie Walker took a leadership role in forging an agreement between the Independent Order of St. Luke, which she ran, and the Ham Council.

    More homes were built over the years until the mid-20th Century, when the City of Richmond (which had annexed the area in 1942) announced plans to build a school on the property, cited eminent domain, forced the residents out, and razed the houses and flattened the Civil War era earthworks in the area. After the families dispersed to Bon Air, Henrico, Northside, and the Westwood Neighborhood, the school was never built and the ability of the former residents to maintain the cemetery became a challenge. (more…)

  • SCHEV on the Community College Guaranteed Admission and Credits Programs

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Image credit: Lumenlearning

    I received a note from Peter Blake, director of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), in reference to my column on that program in early July.

    He thanked, as do I, readers for their interest and supportive comments.

    We agree with you that (Community College Guaranteed Admissions and Credits) are one of the most effective ways to expand access, improve retention and completion, and make college more affordable.

    We (SCHEV) talk about it regularly in our various reports and recommendations.

    We have a standing item in our annual tuition and fees report that calculates how much a student can save by following a pathway that goes through a community college.

    For years, we have worked on improving systems that guarantee not only admission but also acceptance of community college credits toward a bachelor’s degree.

    We could always do more outreach, so we appreciate your interest in the subject and the positive response you received from your readers.

    It is important that the state offers a way to mitigate substandard K-12 educations. Virginia does that very well as far as I can tell.

    It is important to spread the word.

    But the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) cannot replace fully the lack of a solid grounding in life and academics in K-12. (more…)

  • Tech to End Racial and Legacy Preferences in Admissions

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    In the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Virginia Tech has announced that it will eliminate race and legacy status as factors in admissions. Information about an individual’s race/ethnicity will no longer be visible during the application process.

    “Much of our recent success in attracting and graduating students from underrepresented minority and underserved backgrounds (including low-income, first generation and veteran students) has been achieved by lowering barriers to admissions, creating effective pre-college programs, and supporting our students while on campus,” said President Tim Sands. “We will increase our emphasis on those programs and support mechanisms going forward.”

    These changes strike me as a reasonable compromise in response to the Supreme Court ruling. Dropping race and ethnicity as factors in admissions ends the invidious practice of explicit discrimination on the basis of race. It represents a huge defeat for “anti-racists” who believe that the only antidote to past discrimination against minorities is reverse discrimination in their favor.

    Tech has coupled that decision with a formal end to favoring legacies. Given the fact that legacies are disproportionately White, the symbolic value is huge. (more…)

  • Senators Cry “Voodoo Estimating” In Tax Fight

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

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

    Not only are the leading Virginia Senate budget negotiators adamantly opposed to providing Virginians with additional tax relief in this election year, but they are now hinting at partial roll back of one of the major individual tax reforms approved just last year.

    When the 2022 General Assembly approved a major increase in the standard deduction used by most Virginia taxpayers, it applied a condition — that the underlying General Fund revenue had to continue to grow at least 5% in both fiscal years 2022 and 2023. If it did not, the standard deduction for that year would be reduced again. The revenue growth would be adjusted for the tax cuts, so the target was 5% growth before the revenue reductions those caused.

    Meeting that trigger target for FY 2022 was easy in that year’s overheated economy. Last week Governor Glenn Youngkin’s administration certified that the second target was also met, meaning the full standard deduction also applies for this tax year. The goal was barely met, with growth of 5.1%, leading Democrats to accuse the Department of Taxation of “voodoo estimating.”

    The accusation against the usually-trusted tax staff was reported in a Richmond Times-Dispatch article. It failed to address whether the Democrats plan to act on their suspicions, but why complain otherwise? If they fight to certify the target was missed, and win, the standard deduction for a married couple filing jointly will drop by $1,000 and their tax bill will rise $58. A key Democrat dismissed it as “less than $30,” but that is for an individual. (more…)

  • Just Because

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    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Cookie Scott

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Glenn Youngkin seems to be intent on replacing members of higher education boards of education appointed by his Democratic predecessors just because.

    Case in point: N.H. “Cookie” Scott. Scott was one among the first Black students to enroll at Longwood University in Farmville in 1968 and the first to graduate four years later. She was a sociology major and was a psychiatric social worker before joining the Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC). In that agency, she worked her way up to Deputy Director for Administration. When she retired in 2018, she was overseeing several departments in an agency that had a total budget of $1.2 billion and over 12,000 employees. In 2019, Governor Northam appointed her to the Board of Visitors of Longwood. [Disclosure:  as the DOC analyst with the Department of Planning and Budget, I worked with Cookie for many years and was on friendly terms with her.]

    So, an accomplished Black woman with no partisan ties and no political contributions (at least none reported by the Virginia Public Access Project), was not reappointed. It is not as if the new Youngkin appointees to the Longwood Board of Visitors had any higher education administration or oversight experience or, lacking that, any experience with state government, the General Assembly, or managing a large public bureaucracy with a billion-dollar budget and thousands of employees.

    There is Kathryn Roberts. She is the chief financial officer of a small development company in South Boston headed up by her husband. She does have in her favor that she is a Longwood graduate. (more…)

  • Bettinger v. Ryan, Groves and UVa

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    James A. Bacon

    The Jefferson Council has obtained a file-stamped copy of a lawsuit filed on behalf of Morgan Bettinger against University of Virginia President Jim Ryan, former Dean of Students Allen Groves, and the University of Virginia.

    The allegations must be demonstrated in court. If proven true, they paint an unflattering picture of civil rights (for anyone of any race or color) at UVa. They certainly recount a horrifying tale of the abandonment and betrayal of Ms. Bettinger by the people whose very job was to protect her.

    We will let the complaint speak for itself. Readers can draw their own conclusions. — JAB

  • Dominion Hides Huge Offshore Wind Cost-Risk

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    Bob Rayner

    by David Wojik

    The offshore wind industry is suffering a runaway cost crisis, but Dominion Energy says the cost of its monster project will not go up. Apparently, there is not even a risk of it going up. This preposterous claim is worth exploring.

    On the crisis side, I recently wrote about it in general terms. See my https://www.cfact.org/2023/07/26/offshore-wind-has-a-cost-crisis/.

    The financial magazine Barron’s has done some work on this crisis situation. Here is a telling quote from a recent article:

    But behind the scenes, the news about wind power is more sobering. Financially, the industry is teetering, with a parade of companies planning to renegotiate or pull out of contracts, jeopardizing plans for projects that were expected to provide electricity for millions of homes. Inflation is erasing profits, causing some of the largest energy firms in the world to back away. “Returns on offshore wind are becoming more and more challenged,” Shell CEO Wael Sawan told Barron’s last month, just days after a Shell joint venture said it would pull out of a power contract in Massachusetts. Shell won’t build renewable projects that can’t earn initial returns of 6% to 8%, he said. (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Richmond’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Needs Better Judgment

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. Acroterion/Wikipedia

    by James C. Sherlock

    Federal judges are supposed to call balls and strikes in relation to the Constitution and the law.

    President Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act into law on June 3.  Sec 324 of that law, Expediting Completion Of The Mountain Valley Pipeline,

    1. blocked any court from hearing cases about permits for the pipeline; and
    2. gave to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals jurisdiction over any other cases about that pipeline or about the law itself.

    Judging federal agency decision cases is a traditional role for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    The 4th U.S. Circuit in Richmond, soon after the law was signed in Mountain Valley Pipeline, Llc V. Wilderness Society, Et Al. violated both key Sec. 324 provisions.

    The Fourth Circuit had for years assumed for itself the role of federal and state regulator for pipelines in Virginia and wasn’t going to surrender that authority.

    Having already multiple times rejected permits granted to the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Corps of Engineers, among other federal and state agencies, it decided on July 10th and 11th to block construction once again while it reviewed challenges to yet more permits.

    The Supreme Court overturned the decision very quickly and unanimously.

    That was not an anomaly. The Conservative-Liberal split on the Supreme Court is 6-3.  Supreme Court rejections of 4th Circuit actions unanimously, 8-1 or 7-2, are becoming all too common. (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

  • Shocking Omission at Sank Roo Doo Noo

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Sank Roo Doo Noo.

    Now that is an easy address in Paris to memorize, and that phonetic spelling for 5 Rue Daunou (a few blocks from the Opera stop on the Paris Metro and the main Galeries Lafayette) has long replaced the official address.  Anything associated with Ernest Hemingway and the other American expatriates in Paris is on my check list, and this trip I found Harry’s New York Bar.

    Now I need to ask an important question to others who may have been there before me.  The interior décor is dominated by the banners of American colleges and universities, hundreds of them.  But as hard as I looked, I could not find banners for either the College of William and Mary or the University of Virginia.

    Virginia Tech, George Mason, Virginia Military Institute, Washington and Lee – they were all there, and other Virginia schools.  Some I actually saw on the walls, and then I saw them again when the waiter gave me a plastic-coated listing with agate type so small it comes with a magnifying glass.   Again, I didn’t see them on the list, not W&M or UVA.

    If I just missed them and others can confirm their presence or know where they are, please advise.  It is a surprisingly small place, just a couple of rooms, for all the history it has (they claim George Gershwin wrote American in Paris there.)  It is not the bar that Hemingway famously “liberated” in August 1944.  That one was at the Paris Ritz, a favored Nazi haunt during the occupation.

    But this is a famous American hangout and I want to be sure those schools are represented.  If nobody can testify their colors are there, that is reason enough to mount another expedition to the Second Arrondissement.  (Not that we can’t find another excuse go back yet again in a couple of years.)

    — SDH

  • No Boys in Girls Sports. Period.

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Good news for mediocre male athletes in Virginia: tired of getting cut from the boys’ teams? Slap on some lipstick and play with the girls. The governing body of high school sports has your back!

    Yep, the Virginia High School League this week gave the middle finger to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s policy that biological sex should dictate which sports teams kids can join.

    These wokesters just announced that they will continue to follow the policies of the Northam administration that allowed boys pretending to be girls to take coveted slots on the formerly all-female teams. Ralph Northam didn’t give a rat’s patootie about girls’ sports and neither do they. (more…)

  • New CMS Hospital Quality Rankings – Virginia Facilities Ranked Exceptionally High

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    UVa Hospital

    The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Wednesday released its latest annual hospital quality rankings .

    Only 10.4% of the rated hospitals in the country were awarded the top ranking of five stars.  Of Virginia’s 74 rated hospitals, 13 received that top ranking. Almost 18%.

    Nationally, 28% received one of the top two rankings.  In Virginia, 58%.

    As a whole, Virginians are exceptionally well served.

    By Hospital.  I have taken Virginia’s hospitals from the new national list and sorted them descending by star-ranking, 5 stars though 1 star.  The results are here.  

    The footnote dictionary is here.  For the column header dictionary, see here.

    By Hospital System.  Categorized by system and with computed system hospital averages, the system ranking is here, sorted, like the individual hospitals, descending from best to worst.

    By Region.  See here.  Northern Virginia, with all of its hospitals 5- and 4-Star rated, may be the only region of its size in the country that can make that claim.

    Regional wealth or poverty, and the attractiveness of the location to staff and management still matter.  Especially management.

    The new rankings show significant changes.  We’ll take a look.

    (more…)

  • Youngkin at the Border

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Governor Glenn Youngkin looks over the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, July 26, 2023. Official Photo by Christian Martinez, Office of Governor Glenn Youngkin

    Yeah, yeah, I know, Governor Glenn Youngkin is angling for a spot on the Republican presidential ticket next year, and he doesn’t do anything without considering the political implications first. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Even politicians can do the right thing once in a while.

    Such is the case with Youngkin’s decision to send Virginia national guardsmen to the Texas border to assist Texas in holding back the flood of illegal border crossings. It is reasonable to ask whether this state-led intervention has accomplished anything tangible and is worth the funds expended. But the principle is sound: when the federal government fails utterly and absolutely in this core responsibility, the states are justified in stepping in. Youngkin’s visit to the border sends a powerful message: don’t mess with Texas — or Virginia. — JAB

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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