Pig farm operated by Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods.
by James A. Bacon
Look, I consider myself a China hawk. I detest the communist regime, I consider China a threat to the global order, I think the U.S. should commit to defend Taiwan, and I support measures to crack down on China’s cyber theft and unfair trade practices. But there’s one thing I don’t get. I don’t understand the agitation about the Chinese buying American farmland.
The General Assembly appears to be poised to pass a bill that would prohibit “foreign adversaries” from acquiring or transferring agricultural land in Virginia — a ban that would extend to “meat, dairy, and poultry products; nuts, tobacco, nursery, and floral products.”
According to Virginia Public Media, the Chinese own 14,000 acres of Virginia farmland. (I expect most of this acreage can be attributed to Smithfield Foods, the pork products company.)
So what? How would Chinese ownership of Virginia floral greenhouses, or pig farms for that matter, constitute a danger to U.S. economic, military or political security? (more…)
Physician burnout is a major issue in the U.S., receiving attention in medical education, medical specialties and at various government levels. Moral injury, in my professional and teaching experience, is a significant and growing challenge to physician wellness. Moral injury happens when one’s personal convictions are unwelcomed and one is pressured to think, be silent, speak, act or not act in a way that compromises one’s conscience.
I graduated from the VCU School of Medicine (formerly Medical College of Virginia) in 1991, trained in family medicine and served in a mission hospital in Asia for 16 years. In 2015, I transitioned to a Virginia university practice and became heavily involved in the lives of medical students.
In the time that had passed since I was a medical student, I found the environment of medicine and medical education had significantly changed. One area of change was the emergence of the “provider of services model.” “Provider,” a relatively new term at the time, is now commonplace. (more…)
Race has too long defined Virginia politics. Several efforts to change this dynamic are discussed in my book Remaking Virginia Politics. My gut senses 2023 may feature another noteworthy moment on the road to Dr. King’s dream. The fight between Petersburg and Richmond over a casino license is currently not seen in this light. Neither by the General Assembly. Nor the Virginia media. Let me humbly discuss an alternative view. Based on my experience helping to move Virginia forward.
In Virginia’s political lexicon, Governor Glenn Youngkin is a conservative white Republican. While winning the governorship, he got barely 13% of the vote in Petersburg. His worst showing in any city. Hardly surprising given the city’s roughly 75% black electorate, 85% Democratic in partisan terms. The city has long been economically challenged, with a high poverty rate. Yet Governor Youngkin has made reviving Petersburg a top priority. Conventional political wisdom, to paraphrase singer Johnny Lee, says he is looking for love in all the wrong places. I disagree. (more…)
Now that Democrats have de-confirmed Virginia’s state health commissioner, Colin Greene, they have effectively set a new qualification for the office: it is no longer permissible to express skepticism that “systemic racism” is, in the words of Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, “a public health crisis.”
Ironically, only a few days after senate Democrats sent Greene packing, Old Dominion University has published a graph in its 2022 State of the Commonwealth report that dismembers any idea of systemic racism playing a role in the biggest public health crisis of our generation — the COVID pandemic. The graph above, taken from the study, compares the percentage of COVID-related deaths for each race to its percentage of Virginia’s population.
African Americans accounted for 23% of COVID deaths through October 22 compared to only 19.2% of the state’s population — a four-percentage point gap.
But it turns out that Whites accounted for 68.1% of COVID-related deaths compared to 60.8% of the population — an eight-percentage point gap. Is that evidence of systemic anti-White racism? (more…)
TheWashington Post recently ran an article that demonstrates that there is still hope for bipartisan cooperation in a hyper-partisan environment on an important issue.
Del. Glenn Davis, R-Virginia Beach Photo credit: Newsbreak
The legislators involved were Del. Glenn Davis (R-Virginia Beach), former candidate for Lieutenant Governor, chair of the House Committee on Education, and carrier of many of the Youngkin administration education bills in the General Assembly this year, and Del. Don Scott, House minority leader and often-outspoken critic of the Youngkin administration. The issue was limiting the use of solitary confinement in Virginia’s prisons.
Background
Solitary confinement, or isolation, is a basic tool in prison management. It is used to separate inmates from the general population for one or more of the following reasons:
For the protection of the inmate, sometimes at his request;
One of the key elements of state and local efforts to support children with behavioral health, educational disabilities, and other challenges is the Children’s Services Act (CSA) (the Act).
In education, its primary role has been paying for placement of children and youth with educational disabilities into private special education schools (PSES).
CSA funds support those students whose educations are judged by the public schools themselves to be too demanding for them to accommodate.
The local CSA Community Policy and Management Teams, appointed by the governing body of the participating local political subdivision, send their own children to those private schools.
I will describe Virginia’s network of PSESs in a follow-on article.
Changes proposed. In a 2020 report, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) had found a long list of seemingly disqualifying flaws in public school special education that would prevent them from accepting students with more severe disabilities than the ones they already try to serve.
Yet there is a movement to remove some severely troubled kids from PSESs back into public schools that have already admitted that they cannot properly serve them.
JLARC, in a disturbingly superficial report in that same year, recommended CSA money be taken away from PSESs and made available to public schools, which is not currently permitted under law.
And that all of the then-fungible CSA school money be administered by the Department of Education, not the Department of Health and Human Resources.
This recommendation was made in the face of the fact that JLARC, in both 2020 reports, admitted the public schools are not equipped to handle these children, much less for the average of 271 days a year they attend PSESs.
So some combination of progressive ed-school dogma, as yet undefined fairy dust and widely non-existent qualified mental health providers and trained special ed teachers are apparently to be sprinkled on the public schools to transform them to be ready to accept children whom they have already referred out to PSESs.
Most of the proposed changes are dangerous, dogmatic and thinly researched nonsense. (more…)
Last week Richmond’s Mayor and Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) reported to City Council that the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) was completed and had been turned in to the Virginia Auditor of Accounts. The report was due in mid-December, but better late than never I guess (and still it was way earlier than Mayor Jones, who tuned them in super-late three years in a row).
The external auditor called in virtually for the brief presentation to Council and went over their firms’ processes and evaluation methods (video starts at 1:03:30 mark) but never referred to any numbers or conclusions; she pointed out that certain figures could be found with corresponding footnote numbers in the report, which Councilors did not have.
After the auditor finished her brief presentation, Councilwoman Jordan had to inquire as to what figures the external auditor was talking about and where could she see them (at the 1:11:25 mark of the video) because the Council did not have the audit report in front of them so they could ask questions. The auditor told her they disclosed what they were required to and that she would be happy to go into the numbers. That’s when CAO Saunders stepped in and told Council the reports had been delivered to each Councilor’s office on Friday. Talk about collaboration and communication.
Councilwoman Lynch also asked the external auditor for the “Top 3 bullet points or risks” from the audit. (more…)
There are good ways and bad ways to handle controversial statues and memorials. These excerpts from a press release demonstrate one of the good ways.The press release describes how Dalton, Georgia, relocated a statue of a Confederate general, and did it in a way that fostered cooperation within the community. (All emphasis is added).
On July 8, 2020, following 30 days of several marches and demonstrations, a town hall meeting in which a number of persons spoke to the Council of Dalton about the removal of the Joseph E. Johnston Statue from public property, a Facebook petition to move the statue and another Facebook petition to not move the statue, the City of Dalton notified the local Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (hereinafter “UDC”) that the UDC needed to make arrangements to move the statue as any permissive easement to allow its continued placement on the public right of way of the intersection of Crawford and Hamilton Streets were no longer permitted. The City of Dalton gave the UDC a reasonable time period within which to arrange to move the statue.
The UDC expressed last summer that it was ready and willing to move the statue provided that a suitable location could be found AND provided that funds sufficient to safely handle the move could be secured as the UDC did not have any money to be able to do so. … Members of the community at large including some of the original marchers volunteered to raise funds to pay for the move.
The Community Foundation of Northwest Georgia which took no position on the subject of whether to move the statue or not to move it, offered to serve as a conduit, or bank, to facilitate the anonymous donations required for the move.… (more…)
Photo credit: Department of Wildlife Resources, by way of WJHL
Virginia wildlife officials have been working for several years on reintroducing elk to Southwestern Virginia. In a sign that the effort is working, elk have been spotted in the Breaks Interstate Park, a joint Virginia-Kentucky state park, for the first time since the 1800s, reports WJHL.
For two years now, park officials have endeavored to make the Breaks habitat more welcoming by removing invasive species and planting native grasses. However, the elk have not responded as one might hope. It seems they are drawn to the nearby Willowbrook Golf Course, where they find enticing food on the fairway. It’s not clear what that food might be but, according to WJHL, park leadership plans to “draw the elk away” from the golf course to the park where visitors can see them.
A defund-the-police protest in downtown Charlottesville. Photo credit: The Daily Progress
by James A. Bacon
I’ve just returned from a week in Costa Rica. The country is beautiful and the people are friendly. More than that, they’re sane. I saw none of the zaniness that is routinely on display in Los Estados Unidos. By contrast, here at home the lunacy is so loco that it could emanate only from a people educated by a system bent upon extinguishing rational thought, and possessed by a naïveté so extreme that they believe in the social-justice equivalent of unicorns and leprechauns.
Costa Rica defunded its army back in 1948, a fact lauded by many on the left. But the country still has a police force. During my stay, the police were very much in evidence — pistol-packing guards in the airport, motorcycle cops enforcing the speed limit ($600 fines!), and agents who enforce the nation’s strict immigration laws. (Nicaraguans who overstay their visas are quickly booted out.) Maybe Costa Rican nut cases are calling for defunding the police, but they haven’t had much impact. According to Wikipedia, the number of police per 100,000 population in Costa Rica is 297 (2012 figures) — more than that of the U.S. at 242 (2019 figures).
In Charlottesville yesterday, a group calling itself SURJ, which is dedicated to ending “white supremacy,” held a protest downtown to defund the police… this in a small city where, even The Daily Progress acknowledges, gun violence is (pardon the pun) SURGing: nine homicides and 18 injuries since September. In 2021, the city had reported zero homicides, and only five the year before that.
The solution? “Loving and supporting one another,” according to one scribbler on the city’s free speech wall.
Consider the words of a certain Laura Sirgany to TheDaily Progress. Her interactions with police have been negative, she said. (more…)
Ad placed by opponents of Dominion’s bill on profit margins in Sunday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch. Click for larger view.
by Steve Haner
Battles over utility ratemaking can produce some “strange bedfellow” coalitions. Check out the list of advocacy organizations which have banded together to oppose Dominion Energy Virginia’s pending bill to mandate a higher profit margin.
The list appeared in a full page advertisement in the Sunday Richmond Times-Dispatch and can also be found on a website. It is a longer and more interesting list than a coalition previously mentioned, calling itself the Energy Burden Coalition. The broader group also just focused on this one bill.
The list in the paper includes the Virginia Manufacturers Association and the union-affiliated Virginia Organizing, certainly on opposite sides of many issues. Americans for Prosperity, usually attacked from the left as being founded by major fossil fuel magnates, finds itself listed along with Clean Virginia and plenty of other organizations affiliated with and/or funded by the wind and solar industries. (more…)
Dominion’s ad copy in this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch. Click for larger view.
by Steve Haner
Dominion Energy Virginia has launched a major advertising campaign advocating legislation to increase its allowed profit margin, with ads focused on a deceptive message that the bill will actually lower costs for consumers. It will not.
The print version of the campaign, which can be seen in a full page ad in the Richmond Times-Dispatch in print and online, refers to and reproduces part of a February 1 letter from the State Corporation Commission that answered one question about the bill, looking at one item in isolation from the whole. It ignores an earlier, longer, January 27 letter from the SCC that outlines the cumulative rate impacts from the bill.
With all its many deceptions, nothing tops the headline which implies the SCC has claimed this bill will save customers money. There is no other word for that than “lie.” (more…)
The Governor is pretty upset about a toolkit sent to its members by the Virginia Education Association.
The toolkit includes sample lesson plans that include teachings on racial identity and the Black Lives Matter movement.
“The Administration will not support a teachers union’s attempts to prop up a politically driven curriculum toolkit which contains tenets that go beyond teaching history, lesson plans, and operates as a political manual for the next generation of Virginia’s students,” Youngkin press secretary Macaulay Porter said in an email. “Virginia’s schools will continue to teach all history — the good and the bad.”
What is the Governor going to do? Forbid teachers to use the material in the toolkit and use only lesson plans prepared by his Department of Education? The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Ms. Porter “did not respond to questions about which aspects of the toolkit the administration opposes.”
Javelina sighted near Puntarenas, Costa Rica. He wouldn’t let me get close. Saying “nice little piggy,” didn’t work. Maybe he didn’t understand English.
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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