Bacon's Rebellion

  • “Toxic” Parents in Harrisonburg

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Harrisonburg City Public Schools

    by James C. Sherlock

    Harrisonburg City Public Schools (HCPS) have a tough row to hoe.

    April Howard, HCPS chief officer for student support, noted in a presentation to the school board on October 19 of 2021:

    Fall 2021 Student Trends
    ➔ Observations of increased anxiety
    ➔ Increased school refusal
    ➔ Increased reports of suicidal ideation—utilization of SPG protocol
    ➔ Increased needs for emotional regulation support
    ➔ Increased behavioral issues in pre K-12
    ➔ Concerns related to loss of social skills due to pandemic-related isolation

    That is a common list of the monumental issues brought about by the COVID closures.

    So, HCPS somehow thought it a good time to pick a fight over protecting “transgender and gender questioning” kids from their teachers and parents.

    They got one. (more…)

  • Irish-Americans in Northern Virginia Caught in COVID Fraud

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    by

    sherlockj

    National Flag of Ireland

    by James C. Sherlock

    I am of Irish heritage. Grandparents and great grandparents on both sides immigrated to America in the 19th century.

    Imagine my shame when I read a recent news release from the Department of Justice.

    My people have taken entrepreneurialism a step too far. (more…)

  • Chart of the Day: Teacher Retirements Surging

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Source: Virginia Public Access Project

    The teacher shortage in Virginia is getting worse, and one reason is that teachers retired in accelerating numbers in the 2021-22 school year. While the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) reported 4,345 retirements per year on average between the 2016-17 and 2019-2020 school years, the number leaped to 4,881 — an increase of 536, or 12.6%, in the school year now ending.

    “COVID-19 has exacerbated the state teacher shortage,” comments the Virginia Public Access Project in publishing the data. (more…)

  • Lord-of-the-Flies Crimes

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Mass shootings have become so common in the United States that incidents with only five or six victims warrant no national attention and are soon forgotten even in local media. A barrage of gunfire Friday night at a graduation party in Chesterfield County, which left one dead and five others injured, falls into that category.

    More than 50 shots were fired. Police have identified four different calibers of shell casings at the scene, indicating that four different guns were used, and suggesting that up to four different assailants might have been involved. The shooting victims were all males. Two females were injured when struck by a vehicle as they fled the scene, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

    The party held for a Thomas Dale High School student attracted between 50 and 100 people, including many underage, from the Richmond and Petersburg areas. Police inquiries found that, prior to the shootings, two separate “fights or disturbances” had broken out between females. The shots were fired very shortly after the second fight.

    Most media attention focuses on incidents in which the mass-shooting perpetrators are isolated, alienated loners, often suffering from mental illness. As mental illness is on the rise, this phenomenon is a legitimate source of concern. But the Chesterfield incident was of a different type — indiscriminate shooting by young people getting into heated arguments — that gets far less commentary. (more…)

  • Remember

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    June 6, 78 years ago

  • Instant Background Checks for Gun Purchases – What is Checked and Who Populates the Databases?

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    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    The FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is much discussed and little understood by the general public.

    In an effort to help, this article will inform readers about the NICS Indices, what information is kept there and how it gets there. The information here about the NICS is quoted or adapted from the FBI descriptions of the system it runs.

    Then we will look at Virginia background checks specifically.

    You will find that the utility of the data used for such checks, and thus who is sold or is not sold a gun by a licensed dealer, varies a lot.

    It depends to a great degree upon the prosecutorial philosophy and policies of the Commonwealth’s Attorney where the buyer was raised and has lived since reaching adulthood. (more…)

  • You Just Paid More RGGI Tax, Virginians

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Six RGGI auctions have reaped Virginia $378 million.

    by Steve Haner

    Last week Virginia collected another $76 million in carbon tax dollars through the ongoing Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative allowance auction. That was the sixth such sale since Virginia joined RGGI, and the state’s total tax take is now $378 million in 18 months.

    Do not for one minute allow yourself to be fooled into thinking this money is not coming out of the pockets of Virginia’s citizens or businesses. Do not fall for the ploy Dominion Energy Virginia is attempting by claiming it will charge it off to “base rates.” The pea is still under your walnut shell.  (more…)

  • Red Flags in Fairfax County

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Restorative justice (RJ) in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) and Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano’s progressive “reforms” of the criminal justice system had better work.

    Because they virtually eliminate the very records of criminal and mentally disturbed misconduct by juveniles needed to support gun-purchase background checks.

    FCPS asserts that their RJ system results in better-behaved students.

    Here is that county’s paradigm comparison. What other choice do we have, it blares, than RJ? (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    from The Bull Elephant

  • Ideas Suffer the Casualty of Casualness

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano

    by Jim McCarthy

    Skilled polemicists and rhetoricians (perhaps even unskilled) can present material in a seemingly unbiased way even while intentionally distorting it. A recent Bacon’s Rebellion article bemoaned the assertion of Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano in a New York Times op-ed piece that he would “never prosecute a woman for having an abortion.” The blog item further placed in quotation marks, “no matter what the law in Virginia says.” Both quoted selections are, in fact, words from the op-ed.

    We owe it to the iconic Paul Harvey to be on guard to hear the rest of the story.

    The title of the original ep-ed column is, in itself, political pander, pure campaign bombast: “My Governor Can Pass Bad Abortion Laws, But I Won’t Enforce Them.” Any who accept that Virginia’s governor can pass an abortion law – good or bad – failed grade school civics. Don’t judge the content of an article by a headline that was likely written by the newspaper editor. As for the argument made by Descano, follow the Bacon’s Rebellion post’s hyperlink to the op-ed. There you will see the complete context of the statement:

    …in Virginia today women who are suspected of terminating a pregnancy without the assistance of a certified medical professional can face felony charges if they miscarry.

    So when the court’s draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked earlier this month, I committed to never prosecute a woman for making her own health care decisions. That means that no matter what the law in Virginia says, I will not prosecute a woman for having an abortion, or for being suspected of inducing one.

    In context, the full and complete CA statement presents a different import of the matter than that communicated to Bacon’s Rebellion readers. (more…)

  • Legislators Deal Huge Blow to Upwardly Mobile Poor Kids

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Photo credit: Anna Julia Cooper School

    by James A. Bacon

    Anna Julia Cooper School was founded as a private, nonprofit middle school in 2009 in Richmond’s poverty-ridden East End. The first-year enrollment in the middle school was 29 students. The founders offered a proposition to students’ families: the school would charge no tuition, but parents had to be committed to the program, which made greater demands and set higher expectations than the city’s public schools.

    “In the early days, we had to knock on doors and say, hey, we have a school here,” recalls Laura McGowan, director of development and communications. But it didn’t take long for parents to see the value. Anna Julia Cooper School added an elementary school, the student body has expanded to 176, and now there is a waiting list.

    The school has widespread charitable support in the Richmond community, including from churches in the Episcopal diocese. But critical to its expansion, says McGowan, has been a state tax credit, the Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit (EISTC), which gives philanthropists a credit on their state taxes equivalent to 65% of their donation. For years the program has been capped at $25 million.

    “We like to think that people are donating to the school because they believe in our cause, and the tax credit is an added bonus,” says McGowan. “They go, wow, I can give you more money.” (more…)

  • Unaffordable? A Proposed Town Center Doesn’t Have to Answer the Questions It Raises.

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Land across from Harrisonburg High School is the site of a proposed 1,000 unit housing development. Photo credit: Daily News-Record

    by Joe Fitzgerald

    On the website for a proposed 1,000-unit housing development in Harrisonburg is a description of the players in the project. Included is a history of sorts of the Harrisonburg Redevelopment and Housing Authority:

    “[A] local election was held on November 8, 1955 and a majority of those voting in the election approved the need for a Redevelopment and Housing Authority to be activated in the City.”

    The next sentence says HRHA helps people with their rent today. You’d almost think nothing had happened in the ensuing 67 years.

    Sure, there was the time HRHA destroyed the city’s Black business section to build a Safeway and a Rose’s. And the time the authority partnered with the city and county to raze a couple of city blocks downtown to build a jail. There was the theatre that had to be bailed out by the city and the community center renovation that had to be bailed out by the city. (Full disclosure, I voted for the first bailout when I was on City Council and knew the second would have to happen when I voted for the renovation.)

    It’s not that HRHA has a checkered history. It just happens to be the agency the city has often used for projects that are off the city’s books, until they’re not. (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Hat tip: John Butcher

  • The Inner Circle Shrinks

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax), chair of Senate Finance and Del. Barry Knight (R-Virginia Beach), chair of House Appropriations. Photo credit: Richmond Times Dispatch

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    In recent years, 13 or 14 Virginia delegates and senators have held extraordinary power and have been the envy of their colleagues. (The total number and the size of the delegation from each house varied over the years.)

    They were the conferees on the budget bill and they had the power to make the final decisions on what would be in the budget bill. Their budget report could not be amended on the floor. It was an up or down vote on the whole report. It was inconceivable that either house would reject a budget conference report.

    This year was different. There were still 14 conferees, but, from all reports, most did not participate in developing the budget conference report. It seems that only three members were the architects: Del. Barry Knight (R-Virginia Beach), chair of the House Appropriations Committee; Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax), chair of the Senate Finance Committee; and Sen. George Barker (D-Fairfax). Not mentioned in the press, but surely instrumental in putting the conference amendments together, were the staffs of the two committees. (more…)

  • School Choice Tax Credits Reduced in New Budget

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    The famous phrase about no one’s life, liberty or property being safe while the legislature sits probably arose after somebody got burned by an out-of-control conference committee. It just happened again to Virginia’s private schools, who had a popular scholarship tax credit program chopped Wednesday.

    The Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit (EISTC) is available for donations to support free or reduced tuition for the lowest income Virginia students, those who otherwise would never have a way into a private school. It dates back to Governor Bob McDonnell (R).  (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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