Bacon's Rebellion

  • We Don’t Pay Virginia Beach Cops Enough

    Posted on

    by

    Robin Beres

    by Kerry Dougherty

    On Monday, Virginia Beach Police Chief Paul Neudigate did something unusual: he released a video showing the fatal shooting of 28-year-old suspected car thief, Deshawn Whitaker, in a strip mall parking lot last week.

    Police are usually loathe to release dash cam and body cam footage in the immediate aftermath of a shooting, no matter how justified the killing.

    Neudigate broke with protocol, he explained, to dispel false reports circulating that the dead man and his female passenger were unarmed and that Whitaker didnโ€™t receive prompt medical attention.

    Typical anti-cop rhetoric that spreads through the community any time a criminal is killed. You can see spectators gathering in the video.

    In fact, both the driver and passenger had guns and posed an immediate danger to the officer. Oh, and fire fighters – who are also paramedics – arrived on the scene during the five-minute video.

    While the chief wanted to tamp down inflammatory anti-police rumors, the video does more. It gives the viewer an eyewitness account of the chaotic and dangerous life of a Beach police officer. (more…)

  • Great Investigative Reporting of a Heartbreaking Story

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Courtesy Asra Investigates

    by James C. Sherlock

    For a story that will simultaneously make you angry and break your heart, read “Fathering While Black,โ€ by Asra Nomani and Debra Tisler.

    It is the story of a guardian ad litem (GAL), Karen Keys-Gamarra, who is reported here to have systematically abused her position to pursue a Black father and his parents for the crime of loving and caring for his daughter while male.

    The child’s mother was a junkie who exposed her baby to cocaine. The father is a gainfully employed paramedic in Stafford County with a clean record and clean drug tests. His own mother is a registered nurse and his father a retiree.

    The GAL got an order from an Arlington J&D judge to take the child from the home of her father and grandparents last night.

    The authors have practiced world-class investigative journalism in describing the case and the system — Arlington J&D judge, GAL and Child Protective Services — that worked together to seize the little girl. And put a gag order on her father and his parents.

    If ethics violations were a crime, based on this reporting this case would be a Class 1 felony.

    Now nobody in the system will comment.

    Ms. Nomani and Ms. Tisler comment for them. ย Thoroughly and compellingly.

  • Student Mental Health Crisis Explained – By The Washington Post

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Freedom High Woodbridge

    by James C. Sherlock

    The Washington Post, in a lengthy article, “The crisis of student mental health is much vaster than we realize,โ€ wrote about the mental health crisis facing our school children, especially adolescents.

    Nationally, adolescent depression and anxiety โ€” already at crisis levels before the pandemic โ€” have surged amid the isolation, disruption and hardship of covid-19.

    Now, the Post tells us. They even hint that more federal money may not help. Which must have taken an extra couple of days of meetings before publication.

    The article did not identify the โ€œweโ€ who were cited in the headline as not realizing this was happening. Who indeed could have guessed such an outcome?

    Other than anyone older than 12 not blinded by a โ€œnarrative” that never included the children’s mental health.

    Some even wrote about the issues when recommending that kids go back to school in person. Before the start of the 2020-21 school year.

    In the Post story, not a word about the โ€œleadersโ€ in state and local governments and the teachers union strike threats that kept some Virginia public schools closed up to an extra year.

    Not a word about the Catholic schools that opened across the state in the fall of 2020.

    Not a word of apology for being a big part of the problem that needs to be fixed. (more…)

  • Back To the Patrick Henry Building

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Governor Glenn Youngkin presents Derek Schmidt, candidate for Kansas governor, with a red vest. Photo credit: Kansas City Star

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Governor Glenn Youngkin spent late summer and the fall campaigning around the country for Republican candidates for governor. He was passing out his signature red fleece vests all over the country.

    His main goal was to help Republican candidates knock off Democratic incumbents, but he did appear with three incumbent Republicanย  governors. So, what was his record?

    The three incumbents, Kemp (Georgia), Noem (South Dakota), and Stitt (Oklahoma) won, capturing from 53.4% to 62% of the votes.

    In one race in which the seat was open: super-red Nebraska. Youngkin appeared in a campaign event for Jim Pillen, the Republican candidate who won with 59.9% of the vote.

    In two more competitive open seats, Youngkin’s Republicans lost: Arizona, where Kari Lake got 49.7%, ย and Oregon, where Christine Drazan got 43.6% in a three-way race. (more…)

  • Map of the Day: Disability Processing Times

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Map credit: The Washington Post. Click on link to view the Post’s interactive version.

    There’s a new crisis in the welfare state: longer waiting times for the processing of Social Security Administration disability claims. More than a million Americans wait in limbo, says The Washington Post. Though far from the worst, the slowdown in processing claims in Virginia — a state responsibility — has increased 129% between fiscal year 2019 and fiscal year 2022. Says the Post: The failure has left “thousands of poor disabled and increasingly desperate people without the benefits they need to survive.”

    The article blames tight labor markets and staff shortages, obsolete technology, increasing medical evidence that must be reviewed, and shortages of physicians to review them. While the disability program is federally funded, states vet the claimants. (more…)

  • Data Dump

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Bob Rayner

    Modern marketers understand the value of data — no matter how trivial. That’s how we know, or at least can consider the possibility, that Virginia is the 10th sleepiest state in the union, tied with Pennsylvania, a numbers nugget delivered by MatressInsider.com, the bedding retailer. The company gathered county health data from around the country to see how many people sleep less than 7 hours per night. The sleepiest state: Hawaii, where 43.2% of adults report less than 7 hours of shut-eye. That’s no surprise, with so many waves to catch. The No. 2 and 3 spots are a surprise: West Virginia and Kentucky, respectively. Maybe it’s all those coal miners worrying about what new horrors the Biden Administration is dreaming up for them. Virginia clocks in at 38.6%. No breakdown by region, but we suggest the folks in Northern Virginia stay in bed a little longer. No need to rush into work, folks. America’s best sleepers, by the way, live in Minnesota, where just 29% don’t sleep enough. Plenty of warm blankets up there.

    Insomnia can make you hungry. And according to Pricelisto, a web site that tracks pricing, Virginians are most likely to seek fast food at Chick-Fil-a. The finding is sure to horrify in certain narrow precincts, but there’s no denying good taste and superior service. It’s equally unsurprising that Five Guys ranks No. 3 among Virginia’s favorite fast-food spots. The stunner is No. 2: Hardees. To paraphrase a certain former president, the ‘ 70s are calling and they want their burgers back.

  • An Open Letter to the Mayor of Roanoke

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    (This letter was first published by The Roanoke Star.)

    Mayor Sherman Lea:

    I called your office last week in an attempt to speak with you about the current state of affairs and my recent experiences in Roanoke City. Your secretary took my information. I asked for a return call; Iโ€™ve heard nothing from you.

    What are you doing about the decline of Roanoke City? I frequently shop and support businesses around Valley View Mall and the airport, and have been doing so for over 10 years. However, things are happening now that indicate I should take my business elsewhere.

    Last Tuesday I was pumping gas at the BJ service station at 10:30 AM when a homeless man approached me, panhandling. When I refused him, he became angry and agitated. He retreated behind the pay center and emerged shoving a shopping cart through the parkingย lot filled with over-stuffed trash bagsโ€ฆcursing to himself.

    I spoke to the employee in the pay center and shared what happened. She said, โ€œit happens here numerous times a day. We tell them to leave. The Roanoke police occasionally come but they are powerless to do anything.โ€

    Friday I was in my car in the Kroger parking lot on Rutgers St. A staggering woman made her way over to my car, and stood next to my window begging for money.

    Iโ€™m sure youโ€™re aware of the large homeless encampment in the woods between Aviation Drive and Loweโ€™s. Bags of trash, overturned shopping carts and homeless individuals are strewn across the truck exit from Loweโ€™s to Hershberger.

    Why have you let these problems metastasize?

    On numerous streets in Roanoke City,ย individuals are camping, squatting, or panhandling drivers. We do not see this in Roanoke County, Salem or Vinton. Police vehicles are more prevalent in these areas. I rarely see a police car in Roanoke City. What have you and City Council done to drive away and disenfranchise our police force? (more…)

  • Feds: Whales Must Be Protected from Turbines

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Two right whales photographed off the Virginia coast last month on their way south toward the calving grounds. U.S. Navy Photo

    by Steve Haner

    First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.

    Soon after a group of opponents to proposed East Coast offshore wind projects hired a law firm with environmental regulation expertise, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced a new plan to protect North Atlantic Right Whales and put it out for public comment. (more…)

  • Is there a Better Way to Manage Virginiaโ€™s State Colleges and Universities?

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Tim Sands, President of Virginia Tech. Courtesy Virginia Tech

    by James C. Sherlock

    My wife and I had the pleasure of dining recently with a woman pursuing a career in the financial services industry. ย I asked her about the leadership of her company. What was the climate in her workplace?

    She answered that the first thing she learned was to โ€œcolor inside the lines.โ€

    She elaborated that the โ€œlinesโ€ of which she spoke were the federal regulations which governed her work, which is wealth management. Rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission and those of the rest of the agencies that regulate financial services.

    In her workplace, she is employed doing investment analysis, including dealing with the businesses she analyses. Later she may move to deal with customers. Or technology. Or go to law school to move through the ranks to general counsel. ย Or get a finance degree with a goal of being comptroller. And then maybe CEO. In a related industry.

    In any role she will assume increasing management and administrative responsibilities. At every step, she will be mentored to be both skilled and creative. But always to learn new sets of lines and stay within them. She has not only learned but internalized her first set of lines.

    She is 23 years old.

    Similarly, skilled academics, even those with experiences as dean of a school within a university whose job is distanced from the day-to-day concerns of the executive suite, cannot reasonably be expected to jump straight to the role of chief executive of a major university and be successful.

    There are too many management lines, including state laws and regulations, within which he or she must color that need to be internalized first.

    And perhaps there is a way to manage Virginiaโ€™s portfolio of state colleges and universities that is better than we do it now and reduces the chances of mismanagement. (more…)

  • Virginiaโ€™s Northam Learning Gap

    Posted on

    by

    Robin Beres

    by L. Scott Ligamfelter

    It should surprise no one. After the ill-conceived March 2020 closing of Virginiaโ€™s public schools by former Democrat Gov.ย Ralph Northam, it should have been evident that children would suffer academically.

    We now know the extent of that damage to fourth and eighth grade students. Virginiaโ€™s Secretary of Education, Aimee Rogstad Guidera, put it aptly. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results, she said, offer a โ€œclear and heart-wrenchingโ€ statement on the โ€œcatastrophic declineโ€ and a โ€œpredictable outcome of the decade-long systemic dismantling of a foundational commitment to excellence in education.โ€ It didnโ€™t have to be. What followed was a complete failure in virtual education. In the process, children fell victim to the self-absorbed politics of teachers’ unions and a complete disregard of the medical evidence from European countries that school-aged children were not at increased threat to contract COVID-19.

    Moreover, the teachers’ unions saw the COVID-19 closing as an opportunity to keep schools shuttered while they lobbied for more pay and fatter school budgets once the pandemic crisis passed. A cynical assessment? Yes. But even when high schoolers in my county of Prince William returned to classrooms in 2021, teachers remained out, preferring to instruct kids virtually even as their students sat in segmented classroom space watching their teacher on a computer screen. It was farcical, and Virginiaโ€™s parents knew it.

    Enter Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, who correctly characterized parental outrage in Virginia, not only for the elongated closure of public schools, but also for the โ€œwoke pandemicโ€ spread by liberal school boards bent on indoctrinating children to be social justice warriors. Of almost no concern to these latter-day commissars was the performance of our kids and grandkids in reading, math, genuine history, and critical thinking skills. Mr. Youngkin listened to parents. In turn, they elected Mr. Youngkin because he pledged to realign educational priorities to those of parents, not woke administrators.

    The governor is rightly indignant over the recent NAEP results and has committed to ensuring that Virginia children โ€œhave the tools and support structure to get back on track.โ€ Tutors, particularly in math and reading, are needed for our fourth graders. Reading scores for this segment were dismal, tumbling from seventh to 33rd place among all states. In math, fourth grade students barely reached the national average.

    (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    at The Bull Elephant.

  • Suggestions to Ease Virginiaโ€™s Housing Crisis without Additional State Money

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Courtesy californiahumandevelopment.org

    by James C. Sherlock

    The Richmond Times-Dispatch, on cue, wrote in an editorial the other day that more state money was needed to fund local housing.

    Maybe.

    But that is not the first place to look.

    The governor wants to condition development aid to local communities on their reforming land-use policies to permit more construction.

    I have a few ideas along that line.

    Proffers, also known as conditional zoning, are a recognition that real estate developments have impacts on other properties and on services provided by the local jurisdiction. Fair enough.

    The money for roads, sewers and schools has to come from somewhere. Proffers make the developers and their customers pay for a share of capital improvements deemed necessary by city/county planners.

    Wielded unpredictably, and sometimes unethically, they are also part of the problem. See the excellent articleย Politics and Proffersย by Matt Ahern for the games played with proffers and their cost to the housing economy.

    Then there is low-cost housing.

    The Commonwealth by law permits but does not require localities to waive fees for low-cost housing. That law, originally and curiously restricted to only non-profit developers, was updated in 2019 to permit the same waivers to for-profit builders.

    Send state housing funds only to jurisdictions that do so. Require in law a limit to the costs of proffers for low-cost housing.

    Finally, tax Virginiaโ€™s astonishingly profitable non-profit hospitals to help them with their mission of caring for the disadvantaged — in this case in low-cost housing. (more…)

  • SCHEV’s Study on College Completion Rates Is… Incomplete

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    The dirty secret of the higher-ed industry is the high rate at which students drop out of college. The six-year graduation rate for full-time, in-state students entering Virginia’s public four-year institutions in 1995 was 60%, implying a drop-out rate of 40%, according to State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) data.

    After Virginia institutions made strenuous efforts to improve performance, the rate increased to 73% for the 2015 entering class — a big improvement. But there is still a long way to go — and it’s not yet clear from the published data what impact the COVID pandemic had on completions.

    A high drop-out rate is a major social issue. Thousands of Virginia students spend tens of thousands of dollars, often borrowed, on tuition, fees, and room and board without ever acquiring a credential to improve their job prospects. Recognizing the problem, SCHEV has issued a report, “What Matters Most,” which explores how Virginia higher-ed can get better results.

    The report contains some useful perspectives. But, as one might expect from a document compiled with input fromย university administrators with vested interests and sacred cows to protect — deans of students, vice presidents of student affairs, vice presidents of admissions, student support services administrators, and unspecified “subject matter experts” —ย  it has blind spots as well. (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

  • Remembering Donald McEachin

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Chris Saxman

    Virginia lost a good man this week when Congressman Don McEachin passed away at age 61 due to cancer. Having served with McEachin in the Virginia House, I can attest to his fine nature and dedication to his principles. While I didnโ€™t have the fortune to work with him directly on legislation, he was, without fail, a kind and thoughtful man who had deep respect for and from his colleagues. It was an honor to know him and I will remember him very fondly.

    Don McEachin was a good, gentle, and kind man. Please keep his soul and his family in your prayers.

    While it is still a tad early for candidates to publicly begin the process to replace McEachin, the private conversations will turn quickly to whether or not his wife, Colette, Richmondโ€™s Commonwealth Attorney, decides to run for his seat in a special election.

    Other candidates who have been mentioned but have not said, โ€œNo, thank you.” include Delegate Lamont Bagby and Senator Jennifer McClellan. The 4th Congressional District was won just a month ago by McEachin with 65% of the vote. It will again be represented by a Democrat.

    Possibly a January 10th special election date could be held since thatโ€™s when the special election will be for Congresswoman-elect Jen Kiggansโ€™ state Senate seat.

    By the numbers, 30% of the 4th is Richmond, 24% is Chesterfield, and 18% comes from Henrico.

    From Chris Saxman’s The Intersection. Used with permission.

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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