Bacon's Rebellion

  • Chaos in Congress Isn’t Good for Virginia

    Posted on

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    Robin Beres

    by Robin Beres

    In a recent column for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Rep. Bob Good (R-VA 05), noted that as of this month, “the U.S. House of Representatives will be the only thing standing between Americans and the Democrats’ assault on freedom, the family, the economy and our national security.”

    The GOP won the House majority by a slim margin in November 2022. So, if Good is so concerned about the Republicans’ ability to address so many pressing issues, isn’t it odd that he is being such a willing contributor to the humiliation the GOP is inflicting upon itself right now?

    What should have been a quick vote on January 3 for a Speaker of the House — a requirement before Congress can begin working on any of the people’s business — ended in the House adjourning Tuesday with no Speaker. Three consecutive votes failed to garner enough support for GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA 23) to secure the gavel for his party.

    The failure to elect a leader on the first vote is the first time this has happened in 100 years. The opposition is coming from a small group of far-right-wing Republicans who appear to be reveling in the chaos they are causing and the humiliation they have dealt to McCarthy. Bob Good is one of them.

    I’m not sure what Good, who considers himself a biblical conservative, hopes to derive from this nonsense, other than reveling in the national attention. If he and his team of hyper-conservatives wanted to start this Congress making the GOP look like a bunch of inept buffoons, they’ve surely succeeded. If they wanted to give the Democrats a good laugh, they’ve also succeeded with that. Check out the Twitter picture of Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA 33), posing outside the House Chamber with a bag of popcorn. (more…)

  • Thawing the Brain Freeze at City Hall

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    Bob Rayner

    Richmond City Hall

    by Jon Baliles

    We can be thankful for a weather warm-up this week after last week’s bitter cold. Maybe it will help thaw the brain freeze at City Hall and enable them to fix the shelter situation before the next bitter cold arrives (hint, it’s coming back).

    Last week, after Tyler Lane at CBS6 filed a cringeworthy report about the failure of the City to provide enough shelter and people being turned away, City Hall was opened at the last minute for the two days over the Christmas weekend for people to warm up. But then those in need were turned back out into the cold at 4 p.m. each day just as the temperature fell back into the teens.

    The City did get two shelters open in Manchester with a capacity of about 100 beds in November (with about 450 needed total) through two non-profits. The excuses from the Administration for not opening the other shelters and expanding capacity were legion. The City is still quibbling with one non-profit over contract terms before they can get funding and open for the winter (they opened last week briefly with private funds to get through the cold spell). (more…)

  • Dealing with Trolls

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    Robin Beres

    by Carol J. Bova

    In March 2022, The Atlantic published an article, “Trolls Aren’t Like the Rest of Us,” by Arthur Brooks, a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the host of The Atlantic podcast “How to Build a Happy Life.”

    Brooks wrote:

    If you use the internet, the odds are about even that you’ll be mistreated there. A 2021 Pew Research report found that 41 percent of U.S. adults have personally experienced some form of online harassment. Fifty-five percent think it is a “major problem.” Seventy-five percent of the targets of online abuse say their most recent experience was on social media. I can’t think of any other area of voluntary interaction—with the possible exception of driving in rush-hour traffic—where people so frequently expose themselves to regular abuse.

    But we are not helpless in the face of either online abusers or the ones flipping us off on the highway. In fact, they are mostly one and the same: bullies with personality disorders. And you can protect your happiness by dealing with them both in some tangible, practical ways.

    He points out that “people try to reason with trolls or appeal to their better nature” and shares this link to research that explains why those approaches don’t work. Why? Because trolls usually want “to attract attention, exercise control, and manipulate others.” (more…)

  • Virginia’s Largest School System Pays $455,000 for ‘Equal Outcomes’ Consultant

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    Bob Rayner

    by Hans Spader

    Students vary widely in intelligence and willingness to work hard. Why would anyone expect “equal outcomes for every student, without exception”? But that’s what educational consultants paid for by Virginia’s largest school district expect. The consultants were hired by Fairfax County Public Schools, which have 180,000 students.

    Their goal is to “produce equal outcomes for every student, without exception,” reports The College Fix:

    Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools reportedly paid almost half a million dollars to a firm whose “Equity Imperative” is that all students’ academic performance result in equal outcomes. Documents obtained by Asra Nomani show the district paid $455,000 to Oakland, California’s Performance Fact to “analyze student data to identify trends and recommendations in support of the development of strategic goals,” among (many) other things. It also “facilitated” school board “work sessions/retreats” which allegedly were “focused on the development of the [district] strategic plan.”

    The September 20, 2022 retreat was led by company CEO Mutiu Fagbayi. … A PowerPoint for the retreat titled “Equity-centered Strategic Planning” is, like many diversity/equity/inclusion (DEI) documents, full of flowery, yet vacuous, academic lingo. It includes the typical comparison between equality (“resources and supports are distributed evenly, irrespective of individual needs or assets”) and equity (“incorporates the idea of need; distribution of resources and supports is purposefully unequal”)….Then there’s that “Equity Imperative” which is “equitable access to resources and opportunities that guarantee fair, just, and affirming experiences and produce equal outcomes for every student, without exception” (emphasis added).

    (more…)

  • Projected $312 Billion Cost of Lost Earnings of Virginia K-12 Students due to Pandemic School Closures

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    sherlockj

    Courtesy Eric Hanushek

    by James C. Sherlock

    Over $312 billion in present value.

    That is the estimate published by Stanford’s Eric A. Hanushek of expected economic losses attributable to Virginia’s pandemic school closures.

    Virginia students in the COVID cohort can expect on average 5.5 percent lower lifetime earnings.

    History indicates that the economic losses will be permanent unless the schools get better. Just returning schools to their pre-pandemic performance levels will not erase the lost learning.

    Recovering from the pandemic requires swift and decisive improvements to the schools.

    That number is an estimate, but a scientific one. Dr. Hanushek has better credentials with which to make that estimate than perhaps any other economist in the world.

    For perspective, the $312 billion present value of projected losses to the Virginia economy due to COVID school shutdowns represents about seven years of state revenue realized from Virginia sources in the 2021 and 2022 biennium.

    Even the money pales by comparison to the developmental and emotional damage done to the children.

    But feel better.

    His estimate of similar losses to California exceeds $1.2 trillion. (more…)

  • Just-in-Time Remediation for Kids Who Fall Behind

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    Robin Beres

    by Matt Hurt

    There have always been students who have evidenced a year or more delay in their independent working ability. Unfortunately, our educational response to the pandemic of closing schools and offering virtual instruction has made this problem significantly worse (more on that here). Today there are significantly more students who are a year or more behind in their ability to work on grade level skills than before 2020.

    The term “learning loss” has been used to describe the situation caused by our educational response to the pandemic. It seems that this term is an incorrect characterization of our current situation. To have lost something, one first must have had it. During the closures and subsequent offerings of virtual instruction many kids did not learn what they should have during that time. Some kids regularly participated in virtual instruction and they learned most of what they were taught. Some kids rarely if ever participated in virtual instruction and therefore didn’t learn what was expected. Unfortunately, the kids who were in the latter group tended to make up a significant part of our economically disadvantaged kids. This group typically has less structure in their homes to support these efforts.

    For the purpose of this essay, everything discussed will be limited to the content areas of English and math. These skills (Standards of Learning or SOLs) are very well sequenced from Kindergarten through high school in such a manner that if students learn the skills from the previous grade, they have all of the prerequisites necessary for success in the following grade. These skills definitely build upon what was taught in previous grade levels, and any gaps in learning that a student has will result in negative consequences later on.

    To understand the instructional process, we must first understand that there are a variety of skills that a student must master to be able to independently work on a given grade level. If a student has significant gaps in skill attainment, he or she will assess to be working on a lower grade level than the current grade placement. That does not necessarily mean that the student has learned nothing from the previous grade, but is missing some key aspects.

    For example, SOL 2.6b requires students in second grade to determine the sums and differences of two numbers of no more than two digits. This is the first year students are expected to regroup, i.e. borrow for subtraction and carry numbers while adding. In third grade, SOL 3.3a requires kids to determine the sums and differences of two numbers of up to four digits. If the student did not master SOL 2.6b in second grade, he or she does not have the prerequisites to learn SOL 3.3a in third grade. The student may or may not have learned all other second grade skills. It is unlikely that any third grade student would have mastered no second grade skills unless they were simply not taught the content. (more…)

  • Farewell to the Conscience of Virginia Beach City Council, John Moss

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty

    If you were in Virginia Beach on Wednesday morning, November 8, 2022, you could almost hear the sighs of relief.

    That collective exhalation came from the cronies on city council who would no longer have to deal with Councilman John Moss, who came in second in a three-way race for the newly created District 9.

    The other members would no longer have to squirm when the Republican pointed out that his colleagues deceived the public when they boasted that they’d held the line on property taxes by keeping the RATE static. Rising real estate assessments in the city meant taxes WENT UP for most residents, he always pointed out.

    Holding the line would mean lowering the rate.

    Moss was right, of course. But it seems you really can fool most of the people most of the time.

    Beyond that, city council would no longer have to deal with a budget wonk who was skilled in monetary matters. He was not content, as they were, to let city staff cook up spending plans with excesses that necessitated the falsehood about taxes staying the same.

    Year after year Moss accused the city budgeteers of deliberately funding vacant positions, using the loot as a slush fund for their pet projects.

    And year after year, Moss’ “revenue neutral” budget proposal died with little or no support from his colleagues.

    Beyond that, the local newspaper often ignored Moss, sometimes treating him as a kook, adding to the perception that he was simply a gadfly who’d managed to steal a seat on this body filled with friends of powerful developers and entertainers.

    Truth was, Moss had served the people since he was first elected as part of a good government slate in 1986 with a mission to slow down the rampant construction of homes that were springing up in a hodgepodge fashion around the city. Uncontrolled growth contributed to the flooding crisis that the city experiences today. (more…)

  • Cold Iron in Downtown Richmond

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    Bob Rayner

    by Jon Baliles

    The Free-Press Editorial page’s second at-bat this week also scored a hit with “No Hot Iron Here.” The piece calls out the Mayor for allowing the hot iron of development opportunity to cool to the disadvantage of the City. It mentions the selection of five teams that bid on the “City Center” development opportunity, which includes the demolition of the Coliseum, the refurbishing of the Blues Armory, as well as building a convention center hotel and ancillary development. That is all moving forward with a development process that it seems the Mayor and the City have finally realized is one worth repeating instead of plans like Navy Hill.

    But the editorial focuses on the properties on the other side of Broad Street that hold (or held?) massive potential. They are the rarely mentioned properties and opportunities that would be big wins for downtown but have remained idle since the Mayor took office in 2017.

    In the two years since the council killed the $1.5 billion Navy Hill deal, the Stoney administration has yet to issue requests for developers for city-owned surface parking lots at 6th and Grace streets and 4th and Broad streets. Both are south of Broad Street and already had active interest, and both have been ripe for activity while interest rates were still low, which is no longer the case. (more…)

  • Police Common Sense in Richmond

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Rick Edwards, acting police chief of Richmond.   Photo credit: NBC 12

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    A recent article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch brings news that contravenes two themes prevalent in Bacon’s Rebellion: the rising violent crime rate and the ineffectiveness of the Richmond city government.

    Despite having a police force with a vacancy rate of 20%, Richmond has seen a 35% drop in homicides and nearly a 20% drop in armed robberies in 2022. The Richmond police department’s strategy for helping to achieve these reductions was simple and commonsensical: put the cops where there is likely to be trouble.

    Rick Edwards, now the interim police chief, instituted a gun violence reduction program last summer. He first asked analysts in the department to identify gun violence “hot spots.” Those were defined as one to three-block areas in which there were a lot of murders, non-fatal shootings, robberies, shooting into occupied dwellings, and shootings into occupied cars.  He contends that those last two items are “indicators of future murders.” (more…)

  • Refugees in Virginia

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Happy New Year and welcome to everyone in Virginia granted refugee status by the federal government.

    You are the latest part of a tradition of welcoming refugees that predates the republic.

    The definition of refugee is:

    Any person who is outside his or her country of nationality or habitual residence, and is unable or unwilling to return to or seek protection of that country due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

    That status must be both claimed and granted by the federal government.

    Claiming refugee status, as many of the millions swarming over the southern border do, is not the same as being granted that status. Those without criminal records and not automatically eligible because of their countries of origin are allowed to remain until a judge rules on their claim.

    Virginia has a high-functioning state agency, the Office of Newcomer Services (ONS) in the Virginia Department of Social Services (VDSS), and a number of private non-profits, who help them settle and get started with the aid of federal funding.

    From Oct. 1, 2015 through the end of September 2021, Virginia resettled 12,873 persons with refugee status, a large majority of whom did not come from the Americas.

    The three largest sources of persons granted refugee status and re-settled in Virginia over that period were from Afghanistan (8,560), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1,194), and Iraq (823).

    The only significant source of those from the Americas was El Salvador (368).

    I will update this list as soon as the 2022 numbers are available, but they will include for the first-time refugees from Ukraine, now given special refugee status by the U.S. government. (more…)

  • New Sheriff in Town

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    The comments section of Bacon’s Rebellion is a patch of the Wild West on the Internet. Laws and rules are frequently ignored. There are too many ad hominem attacks, too much skirting around profanity restrictions, too many excursions into rhetorical no-man’s land, and too many flaming wars. There’s gold in them thar hills — worthy comments that add value — but you have to sift through a lot of mud to find it.

    I have given serious thought to shutting down the comments , but they serve an important function. They allow readers to supplement or contradict authors’  arguments with logic and evidence not contained in the posts. I especially value the stories readers tell based on their personal experiences. In the end I decided that I don’t want Bacon’s Rebellion to be a conservative echo chamber, and a vigorous comments section would prevent that.

    With my new job, I no longer have the time to police the comments. But there’s a new sheriff in town. Welcome Carol Bova, whom regular readers will know as a long-time contributor. Her mission is to improve the tenor of the conversation and make the comments section a place more readers will want to visit — and even participate in.

    The rules are simple: (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Who Kept Your Grocery Taxes High This Holiday Season?

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Scott Dreyer

    Turkey, ham, chuck roast, pork loin, cornish hens, cranberries, potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls, corn, cheese, flour, sugar, egg nog, hot chocolate mix.

    Quick! What do these items have in common?

    For one thing, they are popular food items, most not only year-long, but especially at the holiday season. Plus, if you are a Virginian, they are items you have been paying extra taxes on these past six months.

    Doesn’t everyone pay a tax on groceries?

    No. Five states have no grocery tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon. A tax on groceries is called a regressive tax. According to investopedia.com, a regressive tax is “a tax applied uniformly, taking a larger percentage of income from low-income earners than from middle- and high-income earners …. With a regressive tax, the tax burden decreases as income rises.” In other words, imagine a low-income family with several children. Their grocery bill eats up (pardon the pun) a huge chunk of their total budget. In contrast, imagine you’re Sen. Mark Warner (D). With a net worth north of $300 million, and as the richest member of the Senate, his grocery bill relative to his total fortune is infinitesimal.

    So what about Virginia?

    When campaigning for governor, then-candidate Glenn Youngkin (R) pledged to end the state’s tax on groceries and some personal hygiene products (diapers, tampons, etc.). At that time, the state grocery was was 1.5%, and Richmond let local governments charge an additional 1% tax. So, when one spent $100 on groceries and some personal hygiene products, the tax was $2.50 total.

    Working to keep his campaign promises, Gov. Youngkin urged the General Assembly to put the tax cuts into law. Amazingly, in our hyper-partisan environment, in February 2022 the House of Delegates voted 80-20 on House Bill (HB) 90, to end both the state and local grocery tax. In the state Senate, however, Republicans also tried to completely kill the grocery tax, but Democrats stopped it.  As a compromise, the state dropped its 1.5% tax but let local governments continue to charge a 1% tax if they wished. (more…)

  • The Big Christmas Chill Was a Wakeup Call

    Posted on

    by

    Robin Beres

    by Bill O’Keefe

    As temperatures dropped dramatically over the Christmas weekend, Dominion Energy’s advice to its customers — those who still had power — was to turn down their thermostats. Virginia was not alone. PJM, the regional grid management organization covering 13 states and the District of Columbia, made the same request because its gas plants couldn’t get enough fuel to meet the demand for home heating.

    According to The Wall Street Journal, rolling blackouts were averted because PJM ordered some businesses to curtail power while switching some generators to oil. The large regions served by both the Tennessee Valley Authority and Duke Energy experienced rolling blackouts. And for the second year in a row, Texas faced a grid problem as wind power plunged and demand doubled.

    The Wall Street Journal also noted that, “While there wasn’t a single cause for the power shortages, government policies to boost renewable energy snowballed and created problems that cascaded through the grid. There have been warnings about grid vulnerability for years but this Christmas proves that these warnings have not been taken seriously. The climate lobby blames climate change and greedy energy companies for this year’s problems but there have been colder Christmases — 1980 and 1983 for example. And, there have been colder Decembers that were survived without a grid breakdown or near breakdown.

    The problems faced by utilities should be a warning and a reason for reassessment. Will Dominion heed that warning or will it continue on its present course? How will it prevent more serious problems as the demand for electrical power continues to increase and electric heat pumps are promoted and subsidized as responsible replacements for gas- and oil-fired furnaces?

    That Dominion had to urge its customers to turn down their thermostats indicates that it did not have sufficient surge capacity to meet the demand caused by low temperatures. We need to know why. It could be the result of the 2019 decision to shutter all of its coal-fired capacity as part of its Net-Zero 2050 commitment and the General Assembly mandate to do so by 2024.
    (more…)

  • Offshore Wind Turbines in International Waters Raise Big Defense Issues

    Posted on

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    sherlockj

    By James C. Sherlock

    Courtesy U.S. Navy

    The Department of the Interior (DOI) is unlikely to be expert in the diplomatic issues and defense vulnerabilities inherent in building wind turbine farms in international waters.

    The DOI is, however, greatly concerned with “viewscape” – whether the turbine blades can be seen from shore.  By the wealthy who live there and those who visit.

    DOI’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which will issue or deny in March a construction permit to Dominion Energy to build its Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project in international waters, may understand the fact that the United States is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

    They may or may not be aware that the U.S. has done more to enforce UNCLOS than any other nation on earth.

    They may or may not fully understand that UNCLOS will severely constrain U.S. rights surrounding wind turbine projects in international waters in ways that will bedevil us constantly, drive up national defense costs and threaten the long-term viability of the projects.

    If they do understand the implications, they may consider that the business of the Departments of Defense and State.

    So do I.  Those two departments have dropped the ball.

    DOI may not understand that all of those issues are greatly mitigated if the turbine farms are within 12 miles from the coast.  But DoD and State should.

    And Congress should.

    The House Armed Services Committee should hold hearings before the CVOW permit is approved.

    (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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