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Jeanine’s Memes
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Continuing Turmoil at Danville and Martinsville Hospitals Raises Questions of Oversight – Again
Sovah Health Danville Hospital by James C. Sherlock
Beckers Hospital Review reports that Sovah Health hospitals in Danville and Martinsville have eliminated the Chief Operating Officer (COO) positions at both hospitals.
Sovah announced that the responsibilities of those two positions will now be absorbed by “other members of the existing team.” Whatever that may mean.
Management turmoil at Sovah is hardly a new issue. But those changes just never seem to work.
Not even a little.
The timing and structure of these current changes are especially unusual given Sovah’s plea agreement with the Food and Drug Administration that is still in force. Seems employees were dealing drugs from the hospital supply.
Similarly unusual, unfortunate actually, are the weak-to-non-existent oversight activities of the Virginia Department of Health and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).
You read that right.
Sovah Danville is a teaching hospital. (more…)
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Free Speech and Open Inquiry Are “Non-Negotiable”
Aimee Guidera, Secretary of Education by James A. Bacon
Governor Glenn Youngkin made a national name for himself by standing up for parents’ rights in public education. His administration has engaged in bruising battles over transgender policy, critical race theory, and educational standards in K-12 schools. His approach to higher-ed issues has been far less contentious. Other than fighting for a year-long freeze in college tuition & fees, which he won, Youngkin’s higher-ed policy has generated few headlines.
That doesn’t mean Youngkin has neglected higher education. Rather than take a confrontational approach, such as seen in Florida and North Carolina, the governor is trying to work within the system. In a keynote address delivered to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) Friday, Amy Guidera, Virginia’s Secretary of Education, described the administration’s philosophy.
The purpose of higher education is to equip students to become more productive and constructive members of society, Guidera said. Allowing free speech, free inquiry and intellectual diversity is critical to achieving the larger goal. It is important, she said, for students to “be confronted with ideas and beliefs [they] have never encountered before.”
Rather than enact legislation, Youngkin has chosen to work with the Council of Presidents, comprised of the presidents of Virginia’s public colleges and universities. He has met with the Council every quarter, something that no previous governor did, Guidera said. In those meetings he has been clear about his support for “a culture of free expression.” (more…)
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Alumni Rising
If you’re heartsick at how your alma mater is turning into an incubator of intolerance and hate, you are not powerless. You can organize and push back just as the alumni of The University of Virginia, Washington & Lee University, the Virginia Military Institute, and James Madison University are doing. This eight-minute video produced by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) — in which yours truly plays a brief role — describes the rise of the alumni movement across the United States.
Local alumni groups have banded together in the Alumni Free Speech Alliance to share tactics and strategies. AFSA provides resources, checklists, and mentors to help you launch an alumni group at your alma mater. No need to reinvent the wheel.
You can ignore the culture wars, but the culture wars won’t ignore you. The social justice warriors in our institutions of higher education have declared their intention to fundamentally transform every institution in our society. You can sit by, do nothing, and find American society unrecognizable 20 years from now, or you can get off your butt. Visit the AFSA website now. — JAB
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New Rule: He (or She) Who Shouts the Loudest and Uses the Most Curse Words Wins
This exchange took place at Virginia Commonwealth University during the Students for Life at VCU event. Everyone in the VCU community should be hanging their head in shame at the how the VCU student conducts herself.
VCU alumni, are you going to let this slide? Regardless of where you stand on abortion, is this how we as a society are going to “debate” contentious issues? Time for alumni to assert themselves. Time to organize. Time to tell President Michael Rao that this kind of behavior is disgraceful and unacceptable.
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Violent Transgender Activists and Antifa Agitators Shut Down Pro-Life Event at VCU
by Michael Ippolito Violent transgender activists and Antifa agitators interrupted the final Students for Life โLies Pro-Choicers Believeโ Tour at Virginia Commonwealth University on Wednesday and shut the event down.
Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkinsโ and student ambassador Isabel Brownโs speaking tour concluded at the Richmond public university in violence as police arrested protesters and forced the speakers to leave.
This is what happens when our nation glorifies harmful ideologies, refuses to prosecute evil-doers, and closes down open discussion. Antifa (so basically fascists) tried to silence us with their assaults @VCU. pic.twitter.com/XXsGRlcW6n
— Kristan Hawkins (@KristanHawkins) March 29, 2023
โWe were deeply disappointed in how campus and city police handled the incident as First Amendment rights were trampled upon and physical attacks were made due to inaction,โ Students for Life press strategist and staff writer Caroline Wharton told The Daily Signal. โPro-life speech is free speech and should have been firmly defended as such, especially at a public university.โ (more…)
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Free Speech Under Assault Across Virginia
Threats to freedom of speech grow by the day in the Old Dominion. Consider the latest news stories:
- VCU Protesters broke up a speechย by pro-life activist Kristan Hawkins with chants and obscenities. Two pro-lifers suffered minor injuries in a fight that broke out. VCU police broke up the fight but canceled the event.
- More than 7,000 faculty and students at George Mason University have signed a petition to disinvite Governor Glenn Youngkin from delivering the university’s commencement address.
- Matt Walsh, a conservative pundit critical of the trans movement, has postponed a speech at Washington & Lee, where a campaign to disinvite him had taken root.
Of these, the most worrisome for Virginians is the VCU protest. GMU President Gregory Washington has held firm so far on the commencement invitation, so it appears that Governor Younkin will not be canceled. And it appears that Walsh’s decision was influenced by death threats arising from the deadly shootings at a Christian school in Nashville, where he lives, not from anything happening at W&L. But there is no avoiding the fact that the enemies of free speech are getting bolder and more assertive.
The VCU incident was the most disgraceful, and it sets a new low in Virginia. (more…)
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Bacon Meme of the Week
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The Elephant in the Room Has a Welcome Sense of Humor
by James C. SherlockUniversity of Virginia President James Ryan announced today that he oversaw an important effort to solve one of the Universityโs most pressing problems.
No, not anything you can imagine.
He announced that he and, of course, a committee, have officially changed the logo of that school from UVA to … wait for it … UV.
Thus potentially making Mincer’s perhaps the most profitable small business in Virginia over the next few years.
Not only would they get to mark up the price of their current inventory of UVA logo sportswear to reflect its now-collectors-item status.
But they would get to sell everyone the new stuff.
But, then again, it is April 1st.
The video.
Good for Ryan.
Just not nearly as good as it would have been for Mincerโs.
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More Fun with Demographics
by James C. SherlockWe had so much fun with the Texas-Virginia comparison, I offer additional demographic estimates of jurisdictional growth and decline in the one year from July 1, 2021 to July 1, 2022, courtesy of the Census Bureau.
Virginia Top 5 Jurisdictions in Numeric Growth July 1, 2021 – July 1, 2022
- Chesterfield County 7,132
- Loudoun County 3,650
- Spotsylvania County 2,731
- Suffolk City 2,209
- Stafford County 1,796
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Perspective
by James C. SherlockPeople go where they feel welcome.
Texas is now one of only two U.S. states with a population of 30 million or more.
The Census Bureau reported today that from 2000 to 2022, Texas gained 9,085,073 residents, more than the entire population of Virginia.
From 2000 to 2022, the population of 11 of Texasโs 254 counties more than doubled, according to July 1, 2022 population estimates released today.
Those new nine million people have not yet been counted for redistricting of the U.S. House of Representatives. But it is coming as a result of the 2030 census.
Some things are, indeed, relative. (more…)
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Flexibility Needed in Budget for Behavioral Health Funding
By James C. Sherlock
John Littel Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources I used to write and later in my career approve daily air plans for aircraft carriers.
There were a lot of individual rules and dependent variables.
Adding or subtracting the number or sorties, or ordnance, or changing cycle times, or a lot of other things after the plan was written required a restructuring of the entire plan, not just part of it.
Back then we had ten squadrons with nine types of aircraft onboard, each configurable.
The aircraft handler had to make the right aircraft available on the flight deck, crews needed to be ready, the shipโs captain had to plan his course to keep the ship in position to turn into the wind for longer or shorter times, air refueling needed to be re-calculated, training ranges needed to be re-scheduled, the right ordnance had to be built up, divert fields had to be notified.
You get the idea.
The Virginia House and Senate are about to negotiate with one another and with the Governor and his Secretary of Health and Human Resources, John Littel, over how much and how additional state money will be spent in FY 2024 (starts July 1, 2023) for behavioral health.
Nice problem to have, you think.
And it may prove to be, but it is crucial that the budget language not overly restrict where the money is spent. ย The current plan will need to be changed and integrated for more or less money and program-specific uses than planned.
As with my earlier example, there are a lot of rules and dependent variables. Virginians want the money spent efficiently and effectively.
Those two objectives are harder than they may sound.
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Virginia Beach School Board Celebrates Excellence Again
by Kerry Dougherty
Congratulations, Virginia Beach voters. You did it!
By electing a handful of common-sense school board members to join the duo who were already on the board, you began the process of bringing back excellence to students in the Resort City.
Board veterans Vicky Manning and Carolyn Weens needed more allies in their tireless battle on behalf of Beach students.
The last school board was on a mission to dumb down the best schools in Hampton Roads. To a great extent, they succeeded.
The new board โ including old members who suddenly saw the light โ voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday night to reverse the stupidity and return sanity to Beach schools.
(more…)
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Pilot Editorial Shows Glimmers of Insight
A glimmer of light… but just a glimmer by James A. Bacon
The editorial board of The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press is committed to the proposition that the United States is afflicted by “systemic inequalities” between the races. The publication’s analysis is more nuanced, however, than much of what we read and hear. Opining on the role of credit scores in building wealth in America, the Pilot wrote in a column yesterday, “Race plays a role, but is not in itself the determining factor.”
It’s refreshing to see the Pilot’s pundits not using racism as the universal explanation for all social ills besetting minorities today. But they still have a bit to learn.
African Americans have lower credit scores on average than the general population, the Pilot notes, drawing from research conducted by The Washington Post. The reason isn’t overt racism or even bias in the credit-reporting systems, it appears, but the fact that credit scores are lower in Southern states… and the African-American population is concentrated in the South. Why are credit scores lower in the South? Because of medical debt. Says the Pilot: “The South has a lot more unpaid medical bills than other regions.”
Unpaid medical bills may not sound like institutional racism, but the Pilot’s pontificators imply that it really is.
For starters the South has more than our share of unhealthy people. Much of that poor health is a result of systemic inequalities that lead to poverty and related problems such as food โdesertsโ where inner-city people have limited access to healthy foods.
Plus, the South was slower to expand Medicaid than other regions of the country.
Thus, in the worldview of the Pilot’s editorial writers, the chain of causality runs like this: (1) Racism created food deserts; (2) which made people overweight; (3) which put more people in the hospital; (4) which resulted in bigger medical bills; which people could not always repay until Medicaid came along; (5) which hurt credit scores; (6) which contributed to a wealth gap. (more…)
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Virginia Needs a Top Mental Health Research Hospital – UVa is Positioned Provide It Statewide
UVa Hospital by James C. Sherlock
The Commonwealth has an ambitious and promising program to improve behavioral health services to its citizens.
One thing missing among the six pillars of that program is a top mental health research hospital system.
The top-rated mental hospital in the United States is Mass General Brighamโs McLean hospital. Many of the doctors are Harvard Medical School faculty.
Of the remaining top 40 on that list, none is in Virginia.
Virginia’s two leading mental health research hospitals are both associated with the University of Virginia medical school and UVa Health.
- INOVA Fairfax Hospital, partnered with the medical school; and
- the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville.
There is an opportunity, if the Board of Visitors and Virginia Health choose to exercise it,
- to invest in bringing one or both of those facilities into the ranks of the best mental health research hospitals in America; and
- to expand UVa Health at the Wise campus to spread the benefits to that part of the state.
That, in turn, can help the state deal with its mental hospital problems. (more…)
