Bacon's Rebellion

  • Buttressing Virginia’s AAA Finances

    Posted on

    by

    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

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    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.

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  • Radical Progressive Bills Advance in General Assembly

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    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.

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  • They Think Your Electric Bill is Just a Piggy Bank to Raid

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    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    Key energy legislation poised to pass the 2026 General Assembly will increase your future electricity bills, not lower them. The bills will worsen price increases already caused by the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which passed the last time Virginia was under one-party control.  

    As the Assembly crosses its first deadline, with each chamber now able to only consider bills approved by the other body, several of the proposals discussed below have passed on both sides. They likely will end up in front of Governor Abigail Spanberger (D) for final approval. 

    Many will raise future electricity costs for everyone. Others will have a more targeted impact, as the Assembly’s majority is creating or expanding programs that use ratepayer funds to pay for energy home improvements for the favored few. Why raise taxes when you can hide social spending programs on utility bills?  

    The demarcation line to identify those deserving the financial investment in their residences, as opposed to those who provide the cash, seems to be 200 percent of the official federal poverty measure. That is an income of $66,000 for a family of four in 2026. 

    That will be the new, higher eligibility cut-off for the existing Percentage of Income Payment Program (PIPP), first authorized in 2020, under House Bill 884. PIPP creates a monthly bill cap for its enrollees, and the pending bill also lowers that cap, which will further increase its reach. The cap now kicks in if the electricity bill (including heat) exceeds ten percent of the enrollee’s income, but under this bill the cap is lowered to five percent of income. 

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  • Don’t Mess With Texas Natural Gas

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    Steve Haner

    Natural gas kept the lights on in Texas during the coldest days of this past January, just the way it did in Virginia.The popular Democratic nonsense narrative that Texas is achieving energy nirvana with all its solar and wind and battery assets should just be disregarded.

    You can see above what was working during the peak cold period in the Lone Star state, which goes it alone on electricity and is not part of an interstate energy marketplace like our PJM Interconnection. Battery assets, all the rage with the 2026 Virginia General Assembly, made only minor contributions on the shoulders of when solar was available.

    Texas relies less on nuclear or coal power than Virginia and PJM, so natural gas may have been an even larger contributor than here to maintaining power service. Reported WattsUpWithThat.Com:

    From January 24 through January 27, fossil fuels and nuclear power delivered 77% of the electricity, wind delivered a fairly steady 15% and the combination of solar power and batteries delivered a paltry 8% of the electricity generation… (The wind actually does not look that steady in that graph but faded as solar rose.)

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  • Why Stonewall Jackson Is Still Worth Honoring

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Donald Smith

    A historical portrait of a man with a beard, wearing a military uniform and sunglasses, conveying a bold and confident demeanor.
    Dude! Image credit: Chat GPT

    The Capitol Square Preservation Council, which has the mission to review any major changes to the monuments in Capitol Square. Although it still exists, it has been defunded and no longer operates. These are my prepared remarks for the presentation I would gladly offer to the council, should it convene again, to consider the fate of Confederate monuments in the square.

    If the people and government of the Commonwealth cannot bring themselves to honor the legacy of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, they will look silly, shallow, emotionally and culturally brittle, and incapable of dealing with complex matters. His statue should remain in Capitol Square.

    My name is Donald Smith, and I am a proud Son of Virginia. My mother was born in a cabin—I am not kidding, an actual cabin—outside of Lexington.  That cabin was built by my great-grandfather, Givens Kirkpatrick.  He, along with his father and all of his brothers, fought under the Confederate flag.  Their legacy, and the legacies of hundreds of thousands of past Virginians, are tied in with the legacy of Stonewall Jackson, the quirky but brilliant general who not only led them, but was one of them.

    Thomas J., “Stonewall” Jackson, was unique in many ways.

    He came from a disadvantaged background. He lost his parents in childhood and was raised by an indifferent uncle. He was dirt-poor. He represents the vast majority of Virginians in the 1800s, who had to struggle to make ends meet. He was not a “First Family of Virginia” Cavalier.

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  • Dems Don’t Want To Talk About Their River Of Poop

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    In the past month Virginia’s two senators and governor have been busy on social medial.

    Mark Warner interrupted his relentless whining about President Trump long enough to demand that Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth be sacked and to blame Robert Kennedy for an outbreak of measles among adults. Tim Kaine constantly blamed Trump for prices that have remained stubbornly high since his pal, Joe Biden, created 9.5% inflation. Meanwhile, he’s ranted incessantly about Trump’s tariffs and ICE.

    Spanberger’s team clearly realizes the new gov is increasingly seen as a she-witch by voters who believe she lied about being moderate to get elected. They’re attempting to soften her image with X posts that showed her merrily grilling some sort of meat, celebrating the birthday of Shadow Governor Louise Lucas and finally, on Saturday, wishing her husband a happy Valentine’s Day.

    Continue reading.

  • Virginia’s Medicaid Finances

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    James A. Bacon

    Includes $21.8 million paid to managed care programs for dead enrollees.

    (more…)

  • How to Make Sure Virginia Universities Are Governed by Unaccountable, Leftist Oligarchies Forever

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

  • SCC Rejects Effort to Reverse Its Gas Plant Approval

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    Rendering of Chesterfield project from Dominion’s public website.

    The Virginia State Corporation Commission has rejected a petition for reconsideration pushed by opponents of Dominion Energy’s planned Chesterfield natural gas generators. The environmental activist groups could now appeal the SCC’s approval of the plant to the Virginia Supreme Court.

    The SCC is a court, after all, so its decisions can be appealed.  Whether continued legal wrangling over the 944-megawatt facility will delay the utility’s construction timeline is not clear, but there was no order from the SCC for the utility to pause preliminary work during the two months of this reconsideration process.

    The petition for reconsideration was filed on December 15 last year and answered by Dominion on January 16 this year. In a decision that was dated February 12, the three-member Commission stood by its conclusion that imminent threats to the electrical system’s reliability were sufficient to authorize the utility to build a new carbon-emitting power plant, despite the hurdles put in place by the Virginia Clean Economy Act. 

    “In addition to Dominion’s evidence on this issue, expert witnesses for the Commission’s Staff (“Staff’) and for the Office of the Attorney General’s Division of Consumer Counsel (“Consumer Counsel”) did not question Dominion’s conclusion that a threat to reliability exists,” the Commission wrote.

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  • Best of Intentions, Unintended Consequences

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    A black and white image of a young boy wearing a cone-shaped hat, sitting against a wall with a thoughtful expression.

    by Matt Hurt

    Maintaining an appropriate level of orderliness in school is a delicate, nuanced balance when done well. Without discipline learning can’t take place. Good teachers are loath to remain in schools that do not maintain appropriate student behavior. Students respond to some practices by some teachers and administrators, and run roughshod over others. Many strategies have been put in place over the years to address positive disciplinary approaches, but none seem to be able to compete with good old-fashioned high expectations and relationships.

    During this General Assembly session our legislators in Richmond are considering HB298, a bill which intends to prohibit schools from suspending or expelling students prior to considering evidence-based restorative disciplinary practices. Generally speaking, evidence-based restorative disciplinary practices are intended to replace punitive disciplinary actions with other approaches such as mediation, relationship building, harm repair, etc.

    There are currently more suspensions and expulsions than are desired, and this is a real problem. In some schools, these are the primary methodologies for maintaining discipline in the building. There are many incentive structures that cause student misbehavior, and just as many strategies to successfully mitigate those behaviors. When our primary tool is a hammer (suspension), then every problem presents as a nail.

    There are problems with suspension as the primary response to negative student behaviors. First, when students are suspended, they are not learning. Once students are out of our sight, we have no way of making sure that they attend to their studies. Second, when students are suspended, they are likely having more fun than they would have if they were sitting in class. Sometimes the freedom from school provides enough incentive for additional negative behaviors in the future.  

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  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    A humorous scene from a sci-fi series depicting two characters, one Vulcan and one human, discussing an alien race, with speech bubbles expressing their thoughts about the aliens' dietary habits.

    See more memes at The Bull Elephant

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    Four dogs in a kitchen, with three looking happy and one looking cautious, accompanied by a humorous text about dogs loving bacon and a hidden pill.

  • Big Batteries Lose Big Energy Every Charging Cycle

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    An inconvenient truth of utility-scale battery operations is that they take in more power than they later put out. From an energy grid operations point of view they are considered “net load” and certainly not a generation asset. 

    In a previous post about the battery mandate legislation now poised for passage in both the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates, a national energy laboratory was cited as reporting the batteries lose about 15 percent of stored energy on one “round trip”, a charge-discharge cycle. For every 100 megawatt hours stored, they can later discharge 85 megawatt hours.

    A local energy engineer then contacted Bacon’s Rebellion to argue that the efficiency figure is worse than that. He came armed with actual performance data on North Carolina and Virginia utility scale batteries from 2020 to 2024, culled directly from U.S. Energy Information Agency public data. 

    Of the 36 battery installations tracked, 33 were in North Carolina, which is ahead of Virginia in using both solar power and related battery backup facilities. The utilities report to EIA how much power the batteries took off the grid over the year, and how much they put back in when called upon. 

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  • “The facility staff failed …”

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    sherlockj

    “The facility staff failed …”

    by James C. Sherlock

    Either the title of this article or “the facility failed” is stock language used in every summary of a citation for a nursing home’s violation of federal regulation. It is the truth, but not the whole truth.

    Inspectors come to a nursing home in Virginia once every couple of years. The staff of each chain-owned nursing home is instructed on what to do and how to do it and is closely monitored year-round by the chain’s regional operations and nursing representatives.

    So, a change in the language seems appropriate.

    Perhaps write “the management and staff of chain xxx, and the staff of the facility failed …” for each citation. That is the full truth and would enable both the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and state oversight authorities to track chain performance through a new metric.

    The author, with a high tolerance for boredom, reads journalist reports and academic and government studies on the effects of ownership structures on the quality of care in nursing homes. Many make a great deal out of small differences. He decided to examine that topic in Virginia.

    The differences here are stunning in their scale and consistency.  

    Consider some of the facts.

    Ownership Structures

    Virginia has 289 nursing home operating companies certified for Medicare and Medicaid, for Medicare alone or Medicaid alone. Of those, an assessment of ownership records reveals:

    • 171 facilities owned by private equity;
    • 60 by 501(c)(3)s;
    • 23 by corporations;
    • 14 by individuals;
    • 12 by partnerships; and
    • 9 by state or local governments.

    CMS provides a Survey Summary database as a baseline to assess compliance with federal nursing home regulations. To that is added for this discussion:

    • the names of the chains. Chains control all of the private equity facilities.
    • The current staffing ratings and occupancy rates offer context for chain business models.

    The chart below shows the chains with the highest average number of health violations per facility in the current inspection cycle.

    (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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