Bacon's Rebellion

  • Finally, a Law to Help Teachers!

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    by Matt Hurt

    This year HB568 was introduced in the General Assembly. The bill aims to reduce the amount of work required by educators to comply with the Virginia Literacy Act by leveraging technology.  If enacted, this law would significantly reduce the time teachers and reading specialists spend on paperwork, allowing them to devote more time to helping students learn to read.

    A joyful teacher in a suit stands in a classroom, celebrating while covered in red streamers, as surprised students watch in amazement.
    Teacher shredding red tape. Image credit: Grok

    The Virginia Literacy Act (VLA) has many requirements related to reading instruction in grades Kindergarten through eight, with different expectations across grade bands. This article focuses on the requirements for students in grades Kindergarten through 3; however, HB568 would be beneficial across all grades.

    Among other requirements, the VLA mandates that student reading be assessed using the VALLSS assessment. In Kindergarten through third grade, this assessment functions as a screener to identify students who may be struggling readers. Students who are identified as “high risk” based on VALLSS results are required to have a reading plan. The goals and objectives to be written in each student’s plan must be derived directly from VALLSS data and address the specific reading weakness for each student.

    During the 2023–2024 school year, a group of reading specialists and division literacy leaders from our consortium met to address the daunting task of creating and managing the large number of reading plans anticipated under the VLA. Over several months, the group researched commercially available solutions to help manage this workload. While a few options were identified, they were ultimately found to be insufficient.  

    A smaller group of these educators continued to meet and eventually decided that we needed to build our own technology solution to meet the requirements of the VLA. They developed a detailed document outlining functional expectations for such a system. Several divisions in the consortium endorsed the idea and agreed to fund its development. A programmer was hired to bring the educators’ vision to life, resulting in a program later named the “VLA Tracker”.

    (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    Packages of cinnamon-flavored bacon labeled 'Cinnamon Toast Crunch' on a store shelf, featuring colorful branding and a humorous caption questioning the necessity of this product.

  • Note on Comments

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The goal of Bacon’s Rebellion has always been to maintain a high-quality comments section where people of diverse views can engage in civil dialogue on topics of state and local interest. Inevitably, commenters, being human, are tempted to stray from matters addressed in the columns. Before long, some wind up debating the price of eggs in China. Readers of the comments who are curious to see what others are saying about the column can be deluged with irrelevant material.

    To address that problem, Bacon’s Rebellion is limiting new threads to two per reader. That restriction does not apply to those responding to the comments of others. Readers still will be able to respond to one another on existing threads as much as they like. (We will monitor those threads, however, to make sure readers aren’t using them to introduce new and off-topic subjects.)

    If readers have a burning desire to discuss issues not raised by our regular columnists and guest contributors, I will consider setting up a special post where you can go at it with your favorite antagonists. Email me your suggestions at [email protected].

  • Give Us Your Voter Registration Rolls

    Posted on

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    The Trump administration has sued the Commonwealth of Virginia for refusing to turn over its voting registration rolls to the U.S. Dept. of Justice (DOJ).

    The Commonwealth is not alone. Currently, the administration has sued 24 states and the District of Columbia for refusing the demand. The states sued were primarily those with Democrat governors.

    Last May, the administration sent “requests” to all the states for digital copies of their registration rolls to include at least the following information: “the voter registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number.” The purpose of the request was to enable the DOJ “to test, analyze, and assess states’ VRLs [Voting Registration Lists] for proper list maintenance and compliance with federal law.”

    Along with submitting the data, states were asked to sign a “Confidential Memorandum of Understanding”. That MOU included among provisions:

    • “After analysis and assessment of your state’s VRL, the Justice Department will securely notify you or your state of any voter list maintenance issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns, the Justice Department found when testing, assessing, and analyzing your state’s VRL.”
    • “You agree therefore that within forty-five (45) days of receiving that notice from the Justice Department of any issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns, your state will clean its VRL/Data by removing ineligible voters and resubmit the updated VRL/Data to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to verify proper list maintenance has occurred by your state.”
    (more…)

  • The Death of Fair Representation

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    James A. Bacon

    Every partisan-drawn map is an insult, but Virginia’s is the most insulting.

    A cartoon-style illustration of the state of Virginia depicted as a character with large eyes and a distressed expression, lying on a colorful map background, with a playful and humorous design.
    Image credit: Bing Image Creator

    by Derrick A. Max

    There is a difference between redistricting and rigging. One is a constitutional necessity. The other is political temptation. Right now, Virginia stands at the crossroads between the two. On April 21st the voters will decide which way we turn.

    Using current congressional delegation data and 2024 presidential vote totals, we can measure fairness in a straightforward way: compare a party’s statewide vote share in the last Presidential election to the percentage of congressional seats it holds. Basically, the larger the gap between popular votes and Congressional seats, the more distorted the map. Yes, it is a crude measure, but it is insightful and measurable across all states.

    By that standard, the Commonwealth is currently one of the fairest large states in America. In Virginia, Democrats hold 6 of 11 seats or (54.5%) and Kamala Harris won 51.8% of the presidential vote in 2024. That creates a current seat/vote gap of just +2.7 points.

    In district drawing terms, that is remarkably proportional. Compare that to:

    Maryland: a +24.9-point gap
    California: a +24.2-point gap
    North Carolina: a +20.5-point gap.

    (more…)

  • States Confront Rising Energy Costs

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    James A. Bacon

    Data center demands create headaches for lawmakers

    Aerial view of a large industrial facility with multiple buildings and rooftop cooling units, surrounded by greenery and power lines.
    Data center complex in Ashburn

    by David J. Toscano

    As Donald Trump continues his campaign against offshore wind[1] and encourages the U.S. military to buy expensive, dirty coal[2], state governments are left to manage electricity affordability, reliability, and climate goals on their own.

    It is a delicate balance. Consumers naturally want lower rates and reliability. But when it comes to energy policy, there is no free lunch. It is not simply finding the cheapest electrons, but ensuring that they can get to our homes, even if they have been generated from thousands of miles away. This requires transmission and distribution, two costly infrastructural needs whose costs are rising as our demand for electricity soars. When infrastructure is neglected, consumers face higher prices and power outages. Texas learned this lesson the hard way in 2021, when years of underinvestment caused major power outages during a historic winter storm. Today, Texas’s electricity rates and monthly bills exceed those of many states, even those that promote climate change initiatives.

    With limited federal leadership, states must decide how to lower bills now without undermining long-term reliability and sustainability—and be honest about who bears the costs.

    (more…)

  • Is Boeing Leaving Virginia?

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    Not exactly. Calm down.

    A military fighter jet flying above fluffy white clouds against a blue sky.

    by Chris Saxman

    Boeing is relocating the headquarters of its Defense, Space & Security division from Arlington, Virginia back to St. Louis, Missouri to align leadership more closely with its primary engineering and manufacturing workforce.

    Company officials indicated the move is intended to improve operational focus, program execution, and proximity to production facilities.

    Boeing’s overall corporate headquarters remains in Arlington, but defense leadership will now operate closer to its largest concentration of defense employees.

    • Leadership closer to 18,000+ regional defense employees
    • Greater alignment with engineering and manufacturing hubs
    • Focus on execution and program performance
    • Not a tax or political relocation
    (more…)

  • Same Controversy, New Plaintiffs, New Arguments

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    James A. Bacon

    by Steve Emmert

    (Steve Emmert, who formerly published the Virginia Appellate News & Analysis blog, offered this legal perspective on Virginia’s redistricting debate. — JAB)

    I continue to believe that the impetus for this new filing was a recognition by the plaintiffs’ lawyers that the judge’s original order last month contained everything they wanted except specificity. (I’m reading between the lines here, as I have no inside knowledge and have had no contact with any of the lawyers in the case. I’m also inferring and therefore assuming that the lawyers for the plaintiffs in the two cases are the same, but I can’t be certain of that yet.) They could have gone back to the judge and asked for an amended injunction order in the original lawsuit, but that foreseeably would have snagged them in a procedural issue related to the appeal to the Supreme Court.

    The cleaner approach would be to get a new set of plaintiffs and file a new lawsuit, ensuring that the matter fell into the fertile soil of a court that had already ruled their way, albeit imperfectly. And as we’ve seen, that’s what they did. They filed the new suit on Wednesday and managed to get a lightning-fast hearing that convened yesterday at noon. From what I can see, that was some very effective lawyering.

    I believe that this time, the lawyers — assuredly the plaintiffs’ lawyers — prepared a carefully worded order and simply handed it up to the judge at the close of the hearing. It contains language that distinguishes this suit from the previous one on the simple ground that the parties are different, so they aren’t stuck with proceedings in the original lawsuit.

    (more…)

  • Restore “Fairness”? Fairness to Whom?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Map of Virginia displaying various districts, each represented by different colors and numbers, indicating administrative or electoral boundaries.
    Proposed new congressional districts

    by Ken Reid

    The Republican National Committee (RNC), and Virginia U.S. House Reps. Morgan Griffith, R-9, and Ben Cline, R-6, announced Feb. 18 a second challenge to the Democrat-controlled General Assembly’s April 21 ballot measure to suspend bipartisan redistricting – which passed in 2020 by a roughly 65-35 margin – so the GA can gerrymander Virginia’s 11 congressional districts to give Democrats a 10-1 advantage (vs. a 6-5 edge now).

    A circuit court judge in Tazewell County, where the suit was filed, issued an injunction to stop the State Board of Elections from going forward with any work to prepare for the special election.

    The GOP suit raises several new legal and constitutional objections to the referendum, some of which are comprehensible only to lawyers, but at least one of which any voter can understand. Specifically, is the reference to “fairness” in the referendum legal?

    Here is the language that will appear on the ballot:  

    Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?

    (more…)

  • Virginia Dems Lose Leftist Media Support Over Gerrymandering

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Maybe, just maybe, Virginia Democrats have gone too far. Their lopsided congressional district map, designed to create safe districts for handpicked Dem candidates may simply be too brazen to get a nod from voters in April.

    Looks like brazen election rigging is a bridge too far for the leftist fan club of the legacy media.

    After all, when the The New York Times calls out your chicanery, you’re in trouble. When they join the chorus of Dem-loyal outlets like The Washington Post and Virginia Mercury, this amounts to a media coup.

    Dem loyalists are alarmed.

    In a Wednesday piece by Times political reporter Reid J. Epstein, An Architect of Virginia’s Redistricting Will Run for A New  Seat Himself: Dan Helmer, A Democratic State Lawmaker Played A Key Role In Putting Redrawn Congressional Maps Before State Voters, the Times staffer spotlights the shameless partisan behavior of Helmer and other Dems.

    Earlier this week, Helmer announced that he’s running for the new 7th Congressional District seat. You know, the one created just for him! Continue reading.

  • No, RTD, That Bill Does Not Cut Future Electric Rates

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    The nonsense that the General Assembly is passing a bill to shift huge energy costs onto data centers and off all the other utility customers is going to be a bipartisan meme. A bill that merely punts that issue to the regulatory State Corporation Commission passed on a unanimous State Senate vote.   

    Senate Bill 253, which first appeared last week as a last-minute substitute to an unrelated bill, was touted as “Legislation to Cut Electric Rates…” in a Richmond Times-Dispatch headline. The paper went on to describe the bill as “promising” a three percent rate reduction for residential customers. Did either reporter listed in the by-line read the language in question?  

    The House companion bill, House Bill 1393, was not approved unanimously. It received nay votes from most House Republicans. These bills will be the political fig leaf some legislators will try to hide behind as all the other energy bills they have passed will be raising costs in coming years.

    All the relevant enactment clause in the bills does is direct Dominion Energy Virginia, and only Dominion, to “propose to the State Corporation Commission in a petition” (emphasis added) a series of changes in how various major capital costs are allocated by customer class, imposing them in full on the large mega users. The SCC, which had already stated it was going to examine those same allocation issues, has full discretion to say no. Look again at the language:

    (more…)

  • Will Virginia Criminalize Opposition to Islam?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Daniel Greenfield

    A smiling man in a blue suit jacket and light blue shirt sitting on stairs.
    State Senator Saddam Azlan Salim

    Senator Saddam Azlan Salim, D-Faircax, claims that Virginia is in the middle of an ‘Islamophobia’ crisis. The second Muslim selected for the state senate, after Ghazala Hashmi who is now Virginia’s Lt. Governor, the Bangladeshi immigrant, from a country where non-Muslims are being murdered in the streets, has made complaining about “Islamophobia” in his new home his signature issue.

    Salim’s first priority has been a bill to define “Islamophobia.” The most notable thing about his bill — SB 624 “assault and battery; definition of ‘Islamophobia’ penalty” — is how completely unnecessary it is. Virginia already has multiple layers of hate crimes enhancements for assaults motivated by race, ethnicity and religion. During Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s term, the legislature passed SB 7 (Senate Bill 7) and its HB counterpart enhancing the assault charge for anyone who “intentionally selects the person against whom a simple assault is committed because of his race, religious conviction, gender, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, color, or ethnic or national origin.”

    That should cover Islam and Muslims. And yet Salim introduced a three-page bill with 10 clauses in its first section, a whole lot of which do nothing more than add “(including Islam)” where it isn’t remotely needed or useful. For example, “because of his race, religious conviction (including Islam), gender, disability, gender identity” or “because of his race, religious conviction (including Islam).” Islam appears to be the only religion being singled out this way.

    (SB 624, which had 15 Democratic co-sponsors, was referred to the Courts of Justice Committee and continued to the next session. — JAB)

    Why provide Islam with this privileged status? Because it makes Islam distinct, which is a step towards making it superior, and making Islam distinct and superior is the religious mission of all believing Muslims.

    (more…)

  • Buttressing Virginia’s AAA Finances

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    Running budget surpluses, cutting taxes, and maxing out the rainy day fund

    Professional headshot of a man with light gray hair, smiling, wearing a suit and tie against a neutral background.
    Steve Cummings

    Excerpt from the Feb. 13 Oinkonomics podcast interview of former Secretary of Finance Steve Cummings about Governor Glenn Youngkin’s fiscal legacy:

    “We were able to generate $10 billion in cumulative surpluses. Some of that was last year, where a conservative position was taken at the end of the year to hold some money back in addition to our reserve fund. The extra dollars that were held back in the budget added another $900 million. So, $10 billion of cumulative surplus, the ability to return $9 billion to taxpayers within the four-year term of the Governor. Much of that is recurring. That will continue forever. So, it’s not one and done.

    “We did have rebates [based on] one-time events. We took a rainy-day reserve fund from about $2.5 billion at the end of the Northam administration. It’s now $4.7 billion. It is at the required level. As compared to the other 13 or 14 AAA-rated states, we are the number two funded rainy-day reserve fund. At the beginning, we were third from the bottom. So, taxpayer money, rainy day reserve fund, and then you just go through the list of major policy areas that were able to get accomplished. Economic development I’d put first, and that ties into what we have been able to do with respect to the general fund revenue side, has really been stunning.”

  • Rigging Elections to Save Democracy

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Last week the state Supreme Court negated the 2020 votes of 2.8 million Virginians who supported redistricting reform.

    A judge in a courtroom holding up a ruling document labeled 'DISENFRANCHISED,' with a large crowd of supporters in the background, some wearing blue and others in red, raising their fists in protest.
    Image credit: ChatGPT

    by Scott Dreyer

    On Friday, February 13, the Supreme Court of Virginia (SCOVA) overruled a lower judge and stated that an election about the redistricting of Virginia’s 11 Congressional seats can proceed.

    Democrats, angered by President Trump’s urging GOP-led states to gerrymander their Congressional lines ahead of this year’s midterm elections, claim they are changing Virginia’s lines now to make elections “fair.” They see adding four new Democrat Congressmen from Virginia as a way to offset possible new Republican Congressmen from other states such as Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri.

    Republicans, on the other hand, claim that what other states are doing should not dictate what happens here, and also point to a 2020 election where over 65% of Virginia voters wanted to ban political gerrymandering by the General Assembly.

    Moreover, to make it harder to amend the Virginia Constitution, state law requires a full election cycle to pass between the General Assembly voting to put an amendment before the voters and the actual vote for that proposed amendment. And for full disclosure, the text of such proposed amendments must be made public at least 90 days before voting begins.

    Detractors of the new maps point out that state Democrats, in their fast push to get the issue before voters, failed to meet the above two criteria, and thus the proposal is illegal.

    (more…)

  • Radical Progressive Bills Advance in General Assembly

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Car tax relief dies as radical Democrat legislation moves forward.

    A large group of colorful, cartoonish monster plush toys piled in front of a white building with columns, resembling a government structure.
    Image credit: Chat GPT

    by Victoria Manning

    Car tax relief was a central issue in the 2025 Virginia gubernatorial race. Both candidates publicly supported ending the car tax. Yet now that she’s governor, Abigail Spanberger has failed to deliver. Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing legislation to raise taxes and impose radical social justice ideology onto local communities and public schools.

    As Democrats torpedoed a Republican bill to eliminate the car tax in committee, even a Democrat-backed bill to simply study the possibility of nixing the tax failed to garner enough support.

    Restoration News has reviewed thousands of bills filed this legislative session in Virginia. We’ve highlighted some that stand out for their negative impact on the public and some for their sheer absurdity. The current schedule requires legislation to be passed by March 14, and then those bills head to the governor’s desk for approval. The public can check the status of bills and provide public comment through the Virginia legislative information system.

    Democratic-Sponsored Legislation Passed in House or Senate

    HB1—Increases the minimum wage to $13.75 by January 2027 and to $15 by January 2028. In 2020, it was $7.25. Passed in House.

    HB 6—Establishes the right to obtain contraception, with no age limit or parental consent. Passed in House.

    (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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