Bacon's Rebellion

  • Virginia Board of Education Rejects Surprise Proposal to Delay Cut Score Increases…For Now

    Posted on

    by

    Todd Truitt

    The Virginia Board of Education on Thursday rejected a last-minute proposal from the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) to delay implementation of tougher passing standards (“cut scores”) on Standards of Learning (SOL) exams. Board members repeatedly emphasized we have the lowest math and reading cut scores in the country and that Virginia students, especially the least advantaged, have already waited long enough for more accurate measures of academic achievement.

    But it’s not dead yet.

    Governor Abigail Spanberger’s appointees will control the majority of the Board in August. Two of the three Spanberger appointees yesterday voted to reject the move on cut scores. The other Spanberger appointee abstained for procedural reasons while the fourth appointee was absent. But if the administration continues with this proposal, one can imagine the pressure these new Board members would be under.

    Suspicious Timing; Board Members and Public Left in Dark Until Last Moment

    Board members noted that even they just learned of the proposal on Thursday, June 24th when it became public. The proposal’s timing—released Thursday afternoon before a holiday weekend and after schools closed for summer—appeared designed to limit public scrutiny.  And if the proposal had been approved yesterday for first and final review, it would have been subject to a final vote at the Board’s August meeting—the first meeting that Spanberger appointees would control the majority.

    There were no other public hints this was coming. The possibility of delay was not reflected in the VDOE listening sessions report or appendices issued in April. In the Board slides, the VDOE’s references to any support in the April listening session documents for this proposal were scant and indirect.

    One notable timing issue is that Spanberger vetoed the collective bargaining bill on May 14. The president of the Virginia Education Association, Carol Bauer, released this impassioned video the same day denouncing the Governor as betraying working people. On June 1, organized labor held a mass protest against Spanberger.

    (more…)

  • Europe Sizzles While Americans Stay Cool

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    If 1967 was the summer of love, 1985 was the summer of sweat.

    For me, anyway.

    I spent a lot of time on the beach 31 years ago. Over the roar of the surf I could hear Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” blaring from boomboxes, vying with Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love.”

    The soundtrack to my summer, however, was “The Heat is On” by Glenn Frey.

    The heat really was on, although after reviewing historical temperature charts it seems there was nothing remarkable about 1985. It was an ordinary southeastern Virginia summer with temperatures in the 80s and low-90s.

    Humidity in the gazillions.

    It felt awful because it was my first full summer in what we all then called Tidewater. I’d moved here after a three-year stint in Ireland, where summertime temps seemed stuck in the 50s and 60s. Where people wilted if the mercury climbed to 75.

    Not only was I unaccustomed to southeastern Virginia’s unrelenting heat, but I was living in a cramped one-bedroom garage apartment at the oceanfront.

    Second floor. Low ceilings. Small windows.

    No air conditioning. My landlord insisted the ancient electrical system couldn’t handle the load. Continue reading.

  • A Victory for Transparency

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The Richmonder wins FOIA lawsuit against School Board over redacted documents.

    From The Richmonder:

    The Richmond School Board improperly redacted documents related to an investigation into alleged misconduct by a school division employee, a Richmond Circuit Court judge ruled Wednesday.

    The documents are related to the departure earlier this year of Ronald “Bobby” Hathaway, the former director of facilities and custodial services for Richmond Public Schools. The school division conducted an investigation into Hathaway before he left the role, but kept most details of the investigation secret by heavily redacting documents before releasing them in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

    “The documents in question do not contain data, facts or statements that are of a private nature,” [Judge Tracy] Thorne-Begland wrote in his decision. “They contain allegations of malfeasance, discrimination, and favoritism by public employees and the investigative steps and conclusions reached by the board in reviewing the allegations.”

    State and local agencies, including public universities, use the same “personnel” dodge across the state. Hopefully, other judges will follow Thorne-Begland’s ruling in making the Freedom of Information Act a tool for government transparency.

  • What Caregivers of Autistic Children Should Know

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Parents, grandparents, and other caregivers of autistic children must understand who will actually be treating the child and monitor the services so that the rules of the insurer, which are important to the child’s outcome, are followed.

    Many of the Board Certified Applied Behavioral Analysts (BCABA) licensed in Virginia live in other states. Some BCABAs who live in Virginia advertise their services statewide. That means neither will be providing in-person services to many of their clients.

    An additional concern is that many billing errors and some fraud identified in state Medicaid programs for autism services stem from disregard for the required provider hierarchy in patient care, both in treatment and in billing.

    Medicaid will be used as an example, but private health insurers generally follow the same hierarchy of services and payment rules.   

    In the case of Virginia Medicaid, to qualify for reimbursement, all service delivery must comply with:

    1. The licensed clinician’s scope-of-practice guidelines; and
    2. The rules of the Virginia Medicaid Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) program.

    Caregivers’ concerns should mirror those of Virginia Medicaid

    Virginia Medicaid sent a letter to all ABA service providers in December 2025. That letter pointed out specific issues that needed to be addressed. Those issues are as important to caregivers as they are to Medicaid and private health insurers. They include:

    (more…)

  • Debunking Data Center Myths

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Jeff Reynolds

    You’ve heard the stories. Data centers are loud, water-guzzling monsters chewing up rural landscapes. They promise jobs but deliver none. They’ll suck the grid dry, jack up everyone’s electric bill, overload the power grid, and leave abandoned warehouses when the AI bubble bursts. Opponents paint them as the latest corporate scam, with Chinese Communist Party–backed accounts flooding social media to amplify every complaint from low information voters. 

    Meanwhile, the Big Tech acolytes tell us these monstrosities will unlock human flourishing to a degree never before seen in history. The AI revolution will free humanity to create instead of having to punch a clock as a slave to the grind. It will transform industries, contribute trillions to the global economy, and even heal the planet by slowing global warming. All at a relatively low low strain on resources, unlike the claims to the contrary by those opposed to data centers in their back yard.

    So who’s right?

    The social media furor has gotten so loud that local governments are hesitating, even while the technology reshapes the economy. 

    The sheer volume of misinformation surrounding the issue has marred any sort of thoughtful debate about the pros and cons of data centers. 

    To be fair, this is not to advocate for one side of the debate or the other. The purpose of this exercise is to examine the BS and offer actual facts so the debate can proceed with true understanding, not hype and fearmongering.

    This graphic made the rounds recently on social media. Regardless of verifying whether the claims hold any statistical significance, it indicates the sheer volume of misinformation and disinformation emanating from both sides of the data center divide:

    (more…)

  • Let’s Be Honest: Virginia’s Budget Is Racist

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Are black tourists having trouble coming to Virginia?

    How about “indigenous” visitors?

    Hispanics?

    I only ask because buried on page 122 of the hastily assembled 600-page budget Democrats finally finished on Friday – 100 days late – is this intriguing item:

    “$1,500,000 the first year and $1,500,000 the second year out of this appropriation from the general fund is provided for the Virginia Tourism Authority to develop a marketing campaign to attract out-of-state visitors from black, indigenous and Hispanic communities.”

    Just curious. Why do we care what color our tourists are, as long as their money is green? After all, the entire purpose of a media campaign to make Virginia attractive to visitors is so they will come here and blow a wad of money.

    If anything, the authority should be targeting wealthy zip codes where the residents have lots of loot.

    But that’s not the way virtue-signaling racists think. For reasons that boggle the mind, they want to pick the complexion of tourists.

    Imagine, for a moment, if the General Assembly decided to set aside $3 million to attract white tourists.

    We’d be hearing about Jim Crow 2.0 and white supremacy.

    And they’d be right.

    So let’s just call the architects of this sloppy budget item what they are: Racists.

  • Building a New State Climate Bureaucracy

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

  • Virginia’s Return to RGGI: Another Ratepayer Rip-Off in the Making

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Governor Spanberger just made every Virginian’s household more expensive.

    by Jeff Reynolds

    Virginia has jumped back into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and residential ratepayers will feel the pain—again. 

    The last time the state was in the program, under the last Democratic governor, it cost Virginians more than $600 million over three years. Every penny landed on electric bills. Now, Democratic leadership in the Assembly, Senate, and governor’s mansion has reenrolled the state in the “cap-and-invest” scheme, and the latest estimates put the annual hit at more than $500 million going forward. That figure doesn’t even account for rising credit prices now that Virginia’s demand has re-entered the market and driven up costs. 

    Analyses have pegged the household impact north of $1,500 a year. 

    Glenn Davis, who helped shape Virginia’s energy policy as director of the state Department of Energy, doesn’t mince words about what this means for families. 

    “We know everyone’s bill is going to go up,” he told Restoration News. 

    (more…)

  • Virginia Democrats Inject Race into Tourism

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Virginia Grace McKinnon

    Image credit: Grok

    The Virginia House of Delegates just released its final draft of the 2026 budget. Buried in a civil war on data centers, lifting marijuana restrictions, and giving themselves a 150% pay raise, Democrats are also seeking to spend millions on DEI tourism.

    Virginia legislators are busy working out the 2026 budget. After months of back and forth with the state Senate and the governor, the Democrat-controlled Legislature released its budget proposal Friday evening, 100 days late.

    Buried in the 600-page proposal, which cost taxpayers $50,000 to craft, is a marketing provision that seeks to promote non-white travel to Virginia.

    The item, titled “Establish a Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic Communities Marketing Campaign,” aims to spend $4 million to develop a marketing campaign to attract out-of-state visitors from those minority communities.

    (more…)

  • Assembly To Data Centers: “Here’s Your Hat, There’s the Door”

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    The energy regulatory provisions buried in the final conference report on Virginia’s 2026-2028 budget, approved by the General Assembly Monday, are as complex and detailed as any of the energy bills reviewed earlier during the regular session. They are also just as damaging. 

    The data center industry was a particular target. The political fights over its partial sales and use tax exemption and its sources of energy were not resolved at all, but another new tax and a host of new regulations are now imposed on just these companies. A harsh but clear message was sent. 

    Why even have a 60-day General Assembly session if all the big decisions are made in a closed room in a delayed budget negotiation? This conference report could not be amended, could not be divided into separate votes on separate provisions, and was “must pass” because the June 30 deadline is next week. The public disenfranchisement was total.  

    All the headlines are focused on the new consumption tax imposed on the data centers effective July 1, which is similar and in addition to an existing state and local energy consumption tax. The additional tax of 1.1 cent per kilowatt hour will raise $600 million in each of the next two years and then sunset, but this tax likely will only go away if something even more detrimental to the industry is adopted. 

    Three things are important to note about that new consumption tax.  (more…)

  • Spanberger Admin Proposes Extending Virginia’s Lowest-in-Nation English and Math State Standards for 2 More Years

    Posted on

    by

    Todd Truitt

    After years of delays, the proposed additional delay sets up a likely strong push for another delay in 2 years by powerful lobbying groups for those who work in the K-12 system… at the expense of Virginia students and parents

    by Todd Truitt

    As a supporter of Governor Abigail Spanberger, I’ve been impressed by much of the new administration’s promises on the campaign trail and in their first day executive order on higher expectations for Virginia’s public schools.

    The administration’s upcoming presentation to the Virginia Board of Education on the Assessment and Accountability Roadmap attempts to confirm this commitment. The presentation lays out the administration’s policy plans in detail, with multiple strong accountability elements and repeatedly affirms a commitment to higher expectations.

    Unfortunately, the same presentation’s proposal to delay any increase in the minimum thresholds for “passing” state English and Math standardized tests (“cut scores”) by two more years does the exact opposite. Instead, the administration proposes changing the 4-year gradual cut score hikes scheduled to begin this fall into a single large increase in Fall 2028-2029 to coincide with implementation of accountability changes and new assessments. One can see the “stakeholder” voices—school administrators and teachers associations—almost certainly arguing in a couple years that it’s “too much at once” and lobbying for yet another delay or another long phase-in.

    Spanberger administration proposal
    Source: Virginia Department of Education, June 2026

    Virginia’s cut scores have embarrassingly remained the lowest in the nation for years, and this proposed move extends that embarrassing distinction even further. In the best-case scenario, the proposal is a politically naïve concession to the powerful K-12 lobby. In the worst-case scenario, it is a policy giveaway to those who are employed by and administer the public school system and their powerful lobbyists. In either case, Virginia students and families will pay the price if such proposal is enacted by the Board in August.

    (more…)

  • Amazon Data Centers Now Use Less Water

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Plus, in Virginia they spawn tax cuts for homeowners.

    A cartoon illustration of a server tower standing on a tiled floor with water around it, featuring a straw inserted into the server that is submerged in the water.
    Data center sipping water. Image credit: Grok

    by Hans Bader

    Amazon’s data centers are using water more efficiently than in the past. A company report shows that “Amazon’s data centers used just 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt-hour of compute in 2025, about one-seventh of the industry average and less than half of Amazon’s rate of 0.25 liters in 2021,” notes The Doomslayer.

    Amazon News says that

    When data centers use water for cooling, one of the most important metrics is how efficiently they use that water—meaning how little water they use for each unit of compute. Amazon announced that its global data center operations used just 0.12 liters of water per kilowatt-hour (L/kWh) in 2025, a rate that’s over 7x more efficient than the industry average of 0.84 L/kWh.

    In other words, we use far less water per unit of compute than others in the global data center industry, which as a whole accounts for less than 0.5% of all industrial water use globally.

    And we’re continuing to get even more efficient year over year. These efficiency gains are the result of years of investment in custom cooling technology, smarter systems, and a commitment to minimize water use wherever possible.

    A think-tank says that “the total water use of all U.S. data centers constitutes less than 0.5% of American freshwater use and there is not a single instance of AI infrastructure raising water prices anywhere in America. AI data centers are a boon for the country, driving economic growth.” The largest U.S. data center consumed less water than three square miles of farmland did.

    (more…)

  • Spanberger’s Slow Start

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A woman in a red blazer is reading a document while standing in front of Virginia state flags.

    by Rich Tucker

    Imagine for a moment that you’re at a Donald Trump rally. As you approach the event, you come across a Republican protester wearing an anti-Trump mask and carrying a “No more wars” sign. Perhaps the person is also accusing the president of being too cozy with corporations.

    Does that sound unlikely?

    Well, outside a Democratic meeting this week—an event sponsored by a Democrat state senator and featuring an appearance by L. Louise Lucas, the president pro tempore of the Senate and the state’s most influential lawmaker—stood the Virginia Democratic Party’s version of just such a protester.

    This Democrat sported a cardboard image of the Democrat governor wearing a mock tiara that said: “Diva Data Center.” The protester was holding a “No more data centers” sign and hinted the governor is too close to Dominion Energy. The protester wasn’t shunned for shaming a governor from her own party; other rally-goers seemed to welcome her presence.

    The governor’s rift with Democrats goes deeper.

    (more…)

  • If We Ban the AR-15, Perhaps We Should Restrict Hands and Feet As Well

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Ken Stiles

    A black rifle positioned next to a human hand and foot, all arranged on a flat surface.
    Which kills more Virginians each year? AR-15s or hands and feet? Image credit: Grok

    “We have finally reached a place where we have a critical mass of legislators who are willing to vote for bills that save lives – not that you hope will save lives, but bills that are written based on data and evidence, and empirically we know they save lives,”

    So said Governor Abigail Spanberger about legislation, which she signed, that restricts the sale and purchase of the AR-15 style rifle/carbine in Virginia.

    Delegate Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax Station had this to say:

    “Weapons similar to those I carried in Iraq and Afghanistan should not be trafficked in our commonwealth. … I think the high-capacity magazines that so oftentimes have been involved in instances of mass shootings that lead to mass death should be removed from Virginia.”

    Spanberger said she was signing HB 217 into law “because firearms designed to inflict maximum casualties do not belong on our streets.”

    But she admitted that the AR-15 holds a special place in America when she added, “While the General Assembly chose not to adopt my amendment that specifically carves out certain firearms frequently used for hunting, I will work with the patrons to clarify this language.”

    The rhetoric echoed that of Vice President Harris, speaking in May 2022: “You know what an assault weapon is? You know how an assault weapon was designed? It was designed for a specific purpose – to kill a lot of human beings quickly. An assault weapon is a weapon of war with no place, no place in a civil society.”

    All of the above, except the governor’s caveat about the special carve out are based on emotional dribble grounded on lies and ignorance.

    Let’s examine a few facts:

    (more…)

  • RGGI Rebates for Some Ordered in New Budget Language

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    The pending conference report on adopting a new Virginia state budget includes a process to rebate the cost of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s carbon tax, but only to smaller customers and only if their utility is charging them for it directly.

    The states currently in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative tax compact.

    Larger energy users, especially the largest industrial, commercial and data customers, will still pay in full. The full economic impact of the tax on electricity prices in general will be unchanged, and RGGI raises energy costs across the board in Virginia. 

    The complicated rebate process outlined in one paragraph in the budget section on the Department of Environmental Quality would apply only if the utility paying the RGGI carbon tax to run its hydrocarbon power plants then collects the tax from its customers through a special charge on monthly bills.

    This might apply only to customers of Dominion Energy Virginia, which has applied to the State Corporation Commission for a 1.3 cent per kilowatt hour “rate adjustment clause” on all its customers. Appalachian Power Company, serving parts of Western Virginia, pays very little RGGI tax on just one in-state plant and has not used a RGGI rider to collect the funds from customers. Maybe now it will do so. There is no provision for rebates to rural cooperative customers, and again, the RGGI cost has not been segregated on their bills as it is buried in their purchased power costs.

    This is another admission by the Democrats so fond of this carbon tax that it ultimately is paid by customers, not the power companies. When the tax was $5- to $6 per ton of carbon emissions, it was harder to see, but now at $35 per ton it is impossible to miss. 

    (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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