Bacon's Rebellion

  • Leapfrog Group Safety Scores for Virginia Hospitals

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    The latest Leapfrog Group safety grades are out for 72 of Virginia’s hospitals.

    The Leapfrog Hospital surveys are the next-best source to the ratings based on broader data offered by  Medicare Compare. Leapfrog Group data accuracy measures are explained here.

    The grades represent cumulative scores of hospital safety, quality, and efficiency measures assessed by an organization founded to improve patient safety.

    We’ll examine the just-posted scores for Virginia hospitals. (more…)

  • Major Actions to Reduce Corporate Overhead Offer Lessons and Opportunities to Virginia Government

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Courtesy Wall Street Journal

    by James C. Sherlock

    The chart above shows that management and administrative overhead growth has been a trend not limited to government. The difference is that corporations are making quick and decisive strides in reversing the trend.

    It is axiomatic that government should minimize overhead to maximize efficiency in delivery of services. And to lower its costs.

    Efficiencies need to be found:

    • to maximize value for citizens;
    • to speed decision-making;
    • to minimize administrative consumption of the time and attention of front line workers; and
    • to restore freedom of speech suppressed by government bureaucracies assembled for that purpose.

    All senior government managers would sign up for those goals — as theory. But execution is hard. Internal pressures against change are seldom exceeded by external ones that demand it.

    An excellent report in the Wall Street Journal makes an observation that they may wish to consult for inspiration.

    Companies are rethinking the value of many white-collar roles, in what some experts anticipate will be a permanent shift in labor demand that will disrupt the work life of millions of Americans whose jobs will be lost, diminished or revamped partly through the use of artificial intelligence.

    ‘We may be at the peak of the need for knowledge workers,’ said Atif Rafiq, a former chief digital officer at McDonald’s and Volvo. ‘We just need fewer people to do the same thing.’

    (more…)

  • Is This Cartoon Racist?

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    by

    James A. Bacon


    by James A. Bacon

    Is the cartoon above, drawn by Virginia Military Institute alumnus Matt Daniel, racist?

    Former Governor L. Douglas Wilder thinks so. “It’s clearly racist,” he told Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira after Shapira showed it to him.

    Shapira evidently thinks so, too. “Some say” the depiction of Martin Brown, Virginia’s African-American director of Diversity, Opportunity & Inclusion, “resembles a monkey,” he wrote.

    Wilder is one person. The word “some” implies that there are others. None are named or alluded to. In a long-standing Washington Post reportorial tradition of the scribe attributing his own opinions to nameless others, Shapira appears to be referencing himself.

    Shapira was decent enough to quote Daniel, who happens to be chairman of the Spirit of VMI PAC and a defender of VMI traditions that Shapira has relentlessly assailed as racist and sexist. “It is not a monkey. That doesn’t even make sense,” Daniel texted. “It is a voodoo doll in a business suit being harassed by a hostile writer.”

    So… whom do we believe? Let’s undertake a critical examination of the cartoon to see whose interpretation — Shapira’s or Daniels’ — makes the most sense. (more…)

  • To Teach Is To Touch the Future

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    Robin Beres

    by Bill Bolling

    As most of you know, I left my professional career in the insurance business behind in 2018 to pursue a passion for teaching. For the past five years I’ve had the privilege of teaching young people about politics and government.

    I started out guest lecturing at James Madison University, and for the past four years have taught my own classes at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University.

    I have great respect for my colleagues who have traditional academic backgrounds, but I really appreciate universities like GMU and VCU who are also willing to give teachers like me, who are more “professors of practice,” an opportunity to share my experience with students in the classroom.

    Teaching is hard work, but it’s also extremely important. The greatest reward as a teacher is when you connect with a student and have an impact on their future direction. Toward that end, I thought I would share an email I received this week from one of my students:

    Professor Bolling, I’ll be graduating this week and just wanted to write and thank you for all you have done to help advance my educational journey. I took my first class from you totally by accident, and was shocked to find out that my professor was the former Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.

    I loved that class. I learned so much, not just from the textbook, but from someone who had actually been there, working in government at the state and local level. Since then I have taken every class you have offered. You quickly became my favorite professor, and I have learned so much from you.

    I’ve already been hired to go to work on Capitol Hill, and I can’t wait to get started. I know I will put much of what you taught me into practice, and I promise to do my part to make government work! You taught me a lot, and for that I will always be grateful.

    Folks, that’s exactly why teachers do what they do. They don’t do it for the money or the prestige. They get very little of either. They do it to have an impact on the lives of the students they teach.

    At least for today, I feel that my journey as a teacher has had an impact. That’s all I ever wanted, and it’s all any teacher can ask for.

    Bill Bolling spent 22 years in elected office including eight years as 39th Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. This column was originally published in Bearing Drift and is republished here with permission.

  • Virginia Judge Defends Handgun Purchases For 18-20 Year-Olds In New Ruling

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    by

    Robin Beres

    by The Republican Standard staff

    In a groundbreaking decision, a federal judge in Virginia has ruled that a ban on handgun sales to individuals between the ages of 18 and 20 is unconstitutional, citing last year’s Supreme Court Bruen decision.

    Fox News reports:

    In a 71-page ruling issued Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Payne said that since adults under 21 have the right to vote, join the military and serve on a federal jury, there is no reason why federal law should restrict them from buying a firearm. “If the Court were to exclude 18-to-20-year-olds from the Second Amendment’s protection, it would impose limitations on the Second Amendment that do not exist with other constitutional guarantees,” Payne wrote. “Because the statutes and regulations in question are not consistent with our Nation’s history and tradition, they, therefore, cannot stand,” he wrote. … This class action lawsuit was brought by John Corey Fraser, 20, and other plaintiffs who said the Gun Control Act of 1968 and subsequent regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were unconstitutional because they excluded all adults under 21 from “exercising the right to keep and bear arms.” Fraser, 20, had attempted to purchase a Glock 19x handgun from a licensed dealer but was turned away, according to the lawsuit.

    The ruling was derided by a number of gun control advocacy groups, including Everytown for Gun Safety which believes that “the federal law prohibiting federally licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to individuals under the age of 21 is not just an essential tool for preventing gun violence, it is also entirely constitutional.”

    It remains to be seen whether the Biden Administration will challenge the ruling.

    This article is republished from The Republican Standard with permission.

  • Mother’s Day: Meandering Through Virginia

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    A bridge of Madison County. (Virginia).

    Regular readers of this space know that I am still seething over the actions America’s fascists embraced during Covid.

    The fact that they haven’t apologized and admitted that stomping on Constitutional rights over a virus was a colossal mistake is infuriating. That said, Covid brought two very good things.

    First: my daughter met the love of her life, a soldier who was stationed in Monterey in 2020.

    He was invited to join an online game her old pals played almost nightly during the early days of the lockdowns. These two strangers on separate coasts quickly developed a bond through their shared life experiences, offbeat senses of humor and quick wits.

    By the time they met in person, they were already in love. They married, had a baby a year ago and this weekend my son-in-law surprised his wife with a Mother’s Day “golden doodle” puppy to replace her beloved husky who died recently at 16.

    The second marvelous thing that happened during covid was that we began a tradition of celebrating Mother’s Day by traveling with extended family to different parts of Virginia.

    In fact, I’m writing this from a rustic table in a sprawling old farmhouse in Madison, Va., where 12 of us and our four dogs spent the weekend.

    Back in the spring of 2020 we were already weary of hysterics screaming about masks and telling us not to gather with friends and family. (more…)

  • Virginia Lacks Regulations for the Safe, Scientific and Effective Diagnosis and Treatment of Transgender Youth

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    sherlockj

    UVa Children’s Hospital Courtesy UVa

    by James C. Sherlock

    To get this out of the way, I personally support qualified diagnosis and psychological treatment for gender dysphoria in children and adolescents.

    I oppose puberty suppression, cross-gender hormonal treatments and transgender surgical procedures in minors.

    That said, transgender individuals, like everyone, deserve skilled, safe and standards-based medical care.

    Virginia laws and regulations protect people from all sorts of things, but somehow they do not protect transgender persons from bad medical treatment. It seems axiomatic to regulate transgender medical practice to the most up-to-date and widely accepted professional standards.

    But that is not the case in Virginia. It is not that the standards are out of date; they apparently do not exist.

    I searched the regulations of the Department of Health for the term “transgender” and it came up “no results found.” But VDH protects us from bad shellfish.

    The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Health has lots of regulations, but a search for the term “dysphoria” comes up empty. (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    from The Bull Elephant

  • How UVa Offsets Bureaucratic Bloat

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    College Simply‘s 2023 Best Value Colleges in America ranks the University of Virginia as the 2nd “best value” among public colleges and universities in the United States in 2023. The best-value distinction is conferred upon institutions that provide students the most academic prowess for the money (defined as net tuition after financial aid to the student).

    When critics of UVa governance accuse the university of supporting excess administrative overhead, a common response is: if UVa is so bad, how come it’s the second-best value among all public institutions?

    That’s a fair retort and well worth exploring. In this column, I suggest that UVa has restrained the highly visible and politically sensitive metric of undergraduate in-state tuition not through budgetary belt-tightening but by pursuing two strategies: (1) maintaining a favorable ratio of students who pay the full freight versus those who require financial assistance; and (2) increasing enrollment for out-of-state post-graduate students who pay higher tuition than in-state students. Much if not all of UVa’s perceived superior value comes from tuition-and-admissions engineering. (more…)

  • Virginia Secedes from National Elections Organization

    Posted on

    by

    Robin Beres

    by Jim McCarthy

    A February 25 article in Bacon’s Rebellion, “Forget Waldo, Where’s ERIC?” by James Wyatt Whitehouse raised questions about the volunteer national election clearing house organization entitled Electronic Information Registration Center, or ERIC. The BR piece highlighted the experience of the Alabama Secretary of State:

    On February 15, 2023, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen paid a visit to the ERIC headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is important to note that Mr. Allen withdrew Alabama from participation in ERIC just a few weeks before his visit. Mr. Allen had this to say about his visit to the Connecticut Avenue headquarters of ERIC, Inc.: ‘I was in DC for a meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of States and, since I was in town, I went to see the ERIC Headquarters. What I found was that there was no ERIC headquarters at that address. There were no employees. There were no servers. There was no ERIC presence of any kind. Instead, I found a virtual office that is rentable by the day. What it was missing was people, servers, and any sign of the ERIC team.’

    The absence of existential staff and the existence of a virtual office prompted subsequent questions concerning ERIC’s information security and its utility to member states. As noted, Mr. Allen pulled the trigger on his state’s membership weeks before asking his questions. In 2012, Virginia was a founding member of ERIC under the administration of Governor Bob McDonnell.
    (more…)

  • The New Virginia Way: More People Voting

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    The 2020 and 2021 sessions of the General Assembly enacted numerous bills that made it easier for citizens of the Commonwealth to exercise their right to vote.  This article will outline the major changes, analyze their effects, and discuss efforts to repeal or modify these changes.

    Following is a summary of the changes:

    Voter ID

    • Photo ID requirement eliminated;
    • Voter must still present ID. In addition to the existing alternative forms of identification, driver’s license, DMV identification card, and student ID, the legislature added current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, government check or other government document as acceptable forms of identification;
    • Anyone not able to present any approved form of ID still allowed to vote, but must sign statement, under penalty of felony if false, that he is the named registered voter;
    • Provided for DMV to issue identification privilege card that could be used as ID for voting.

    (more…)

  • Glen Allen Va’s “Do No Harm” Doing a Great Deal of Good

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Do you assume that Virginia’s medical schools are strict meritocracies, taking only the most well prepared and accomplished applicants?

    And that their efforts are then focused entirely on creating the most skilled physicians possible?

    If so, you are mistaken.

    The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), written by the American Medical Association (AMA), a proudly progressive organization, measures everything they know to measure.

    The AMA knows MCAT is by far the best predictor of success in medical school and brags about it. The MCAT itself was redesigned in 2015 to include sections that required test-takers to have an understanding of the social and behavioral sciences.

    The current MCAT sections breakdown is as follows:

    • Section 1 – Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems (BBLS);
    • Section 2 – Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems (CPBS);
    • Section 3 – Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior (PSBB);
    • Section 4 – Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills (CARS).

    Remember that women and minorities who take the MCAT are not so “disadvantaged” that they do not feel ready to apply to medical school.

    The AMA hoped the change would produce more women and “underrepresented” (as opposed to Asian-American) minorities with high MCAT scores.

    Fair enough.

    Yet the rest of the woke medical leadership refuses to accept the results of AMA’s MCAT because that test still does not yield the “correct” candidates. (more…)

  • The Virginia Way

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    Robin Beres

    by Robin Beres

    Politicians and pundits have invoked the “Virginia Way” in speeches and writings since colonial times. The phrase is used by partisans to evoke sentiments of decency and honor (and votes) in residents of the Old Dominion. In 1926, Douglas Southall Freeman wrote in an editorial for The Richmond News Leader that the “Virginia way is not one of contention, but of understanding, not the making of humiliating laws, but the establishment of just, acceptable usage. Public sentiment can be trusted now, as always, to find the best ‘Virginia way.’”

    In January 2019, writing in Bearing Drift, Brian Schoeneman described how the “Virginia way” used to work in the legislature: “Republicans and Democrats would fight hard and long during the campaign season, and when the fighting was over, both sides would pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and govern effectively for all Virginians. The bitter invective and the accusations went away.”

    Unfortunately, if the childish, vindictive sign seen today in a Richmond front yard is any indication of today’s political atmosphere, the Virginia Way is in big trouble.

  • CVOW on Schedule and Budget, Utility Reports

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Dominion’s proposed offshore wind project.

    by Steve Haner

    Dominion Energy Virginia’s first wave of offshore wind remains on schedule, and within the announced capital cost of $9.8 billion; and the cost per unit of the energy from the turbines will be lower than initially projected, the utility reported last week.

    Details? Well, many of those are secrets. Much of the brief report the utility filed with State Corporation Commission remains redacted, with large blocks covered by black ink. The redacted data involves reports from an affiliate corporation, Blue Ocean Energy Marine LLC. There apparently is also another document “filed under seal under separate cover.”

    Finally, Dominion refers to an Excel file that includes all the data on the new levelized cost of energy (LCOE) calculations which was posted to a shared eRoom. The password is available only to the SCC and case parties who signed non-disclosure agreements, reports the SCC’s communications director in response to a query about access for Bacon’s Rebellion.

    Among the interesting items which are on the record: (more…)

  • DEI Has “Gone Off the Rails”

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Finally, we’re getting an open debate about “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” in Virginia — not an honest debate, mind you, but a debate which, whether honest or not, is long overdue.

    Last month, Virginia’s chief diversity officer Martin Brown proclaimed that DEI was “dead” at the Virginia Military Institute. Various parties, from Democratic legislators to Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams, lambasted Brown.

    “Make no mistake: Brown did not merely threaten to terminate equity, but the entirety of DEI. And Youngkin has his back in pushing for its destruction,” wrote Williams. “Somewhere, Jim Crow is smiling.”

    Ah, I see. Brown, an African-American, is bent upon dragging Virginia back to the era of lynch mobs, eugenics, and state-enforced racial segregation. With insights like that, no wonder Williams won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

    Since changing the name of the state office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion to the office of Diversity, Opportunity & Inclusion, Youngkin has largely refrained from making public pronouncements on the subject. But earlier this week, in response to a question about Brown’s statement, Youngkin said that, while DEI was admirable five or ten years ago, it has since “gone off the rails.”

    (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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