Chronic diseases have significant health and economic costs in the United States. Preventing chronic diseases, or managing symptoms when prevention is not possible, can reduce these costs.
Virginia pays a great deal of money every year to contractors who manage the care of its Medicaid population.
It is a hard job, but even though the challenges are tough, it has appeared to me for a long time that we are not getting our moneyโs worth from $18 billion annually in Medicaid payments for the populations managed by these contractors.
A white paper, “Prevent Costly Chronic Disease Through Member Engagement” caught my eye as the basis for a follow up to my earlier report on public health and Medicaid managed care in Petersburg.
Some contributors and commenters on Baconโs Rebellion who have recently expressed distress over schools and society in general should be able to take solace in the views of Johnny Redd, who is the newly appointed member of the Hanover County School Board. (Hanover County is one of the few jurisdictions in Virginia in which the governing body appoints school board members.)
In an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Redd explained, โ [I] made myself available to serve as a conservative, Christian voice on the School Board.โ He went on to elaborate, โA biblical worldview will be the lens that I use to analyze policies and curriculum. Our country was established under the framework of biblical principles, precepts and commandments. Our freedoms are given to us by God, not by government, but we have been complacent and have let the distractions and ungodliness get a foothold in our society, our government and our schools. We have strayed from godly principles and are reaping the consequences of disobedience.โ
Sterling Daniel Photo credit: Richmond Time-Dispatch
Sterling Daniel, the school board member not reappointed, along with another board member similarly denied reappointment two years ago, made the unforgivable sin of voting to strip Confederate names off two Hanover County schools.
Redd, who has no children in the county schools, will replace the only member of the current board who has children enrolled in the county schools. As of July 1, none of the members of the Hanover County School Board will have children attending county schools.ย Obviously, the Hanover Board of Supervisors does not feel that school board members need to know what is actually going on in the schools.
(Disclosure:ย I worked with Sterling Daniel for several years at the Department of Planning and Budget. [He is currently the associate dean for business and administration at the MCV School of Nursing.] He is young, intelligent, thoughtful, and outgoing. Hanover County schools will be worse off as a result of his not being reappointed to the school board.)
Despite the slowing market frenzy, home prices continue rising across all price points
According to theย April 2022 Virginia Home Sales Reportย released by Virginia REALTORSยฎ, the statewide median home sales price was $390,000 in April. This is $100,000 higher than April of 2018, just four years ago. Compared to last year at this time, Virginiaโs median sales price is up just over 9%, a gain of $32,500.
In Virginia, the steady upward trajectory of home prices has not been hindered by the slowdown in sales activity or the recent spike in mortgage rates. In April, homes sold for 3.4% higher than list price, on average. In all price segments, the average sold-to-list price ratio was at least 100%.
In total, there were 11,991 home sales in Virginia in April 2022, down 11.6% from a year ago. Sales have been down year-over-year for five consecutive months. This slowdown reflects the very busy 2021 market but is also indicative of buyers pulling back due to high home prices, elevated inflation, and rising mortgage rates. (more…)
Author Dale M. Brumfieldโs new book chronicles the abolishment of Virginiaโs death penalty.
by Peter Galuszka
Style Weekly
In 2015, Dale M. Brumfield, a veteran journalist and author, was finishing a masters degree in fine art in writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.
He learned of a prison inmate who escaped from Virginia to Florida, lived in a tent, and was caught after years of being on the lam.
โI got interested in talking to him for a story,โ recalls Brumfield in his small office at his home in rural Hanover County.
The interview didnโt work out, but Brumfield says he got hooked on criminal justice and the death penalty. Not only did he write a book about the now-demolished Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond, he became field director for Virginians Against the Death Penalty (VADP), an advocacy group that joined forces with other interested parties in abolishing capital punishment.
They were successful beyond their wildest dreams. In March of 2021, Virginiaโs General Assembly voted to ban executions. It is the only state in the South to do so. โPeople had thought that this was far down the road. It caught everyone flat-footed,โ he says. (more…)
Does Uvalde Texas seem far away? ย It really is not.
All ofย the problems encountered in that tragedy exist in Virginia schools.
I credit the work of everyone in every school district to keep the schools safe. But given the scale of the dangerous school security-related incidents that occur despite their efforts, there is no reason other than chance that Uvalde or Sandy Hook has not happened here.
I share here a compilation of state data that show the scope of Virginiaโs school security issues.
For reference to the numbers presented, there were slightly less than 1.3 million students in Virginia public schools pre-K through 12 in 2018-19 in something like 2,200 public schools in 132 divisions.
Perfect security is unattainable at that scale, but we can do better. (more…)
Prostitution, it is commonly said, is the world’s oldest profession. If that’s true, then sex trafficking may be the second oldest. The enslavement and sexual exploitation of women has been a feature of most recorded history. But sex trafficking has taken on novel forms, as the story of Sage “Draco” Blair makes clear. As another old saying goes, “Only in America.”
What follows is a synopsis of a story of a teenage girl from an unnamed Virginia community who experienced abuse in early childhood, declared herself a boy as a teenager, ran away, was raped, was sucked into the Baltimore sex trade, and was rescued. It is also the story of how her grandparents (who were also her adopted parents) tried to recover custody of her, only to have the judge accuse them of abuse for failing to fully embrace her transgenderism.
The article upon which this post is based was written by Lisa Selin Davis, the author of “Tomboy: The surprising history and future of girls who dare to be different.” From what I can tell from online materials, Davis comes from a left-of-center perspective. But she acknowledges the “complexity, mess, and murk” of sex and gender today. Davis bases her story primarily upon input from the grandmother, identified as “Michele.” She has verified “aspects” of the story and viewed court documents that support it.
This story is like a Rohrschach test: Everyone will extract different meaning from it. I see it as another sign of social disintegration stemming from the relentless erosion of roles and rules that once held society together. Hell on earth used to come from grinding material poverty. Now, in our affluent society, hell is something we create ourselves. (more…)
I recommend that every reader view a one-hour teleconference discussion between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and higher education leaders from around the United States.
You will watch a great and remarkably insightful man, in the middle of leading his countryโs war for survival, speak and answer questions about preserving higher education, democracy and Western civilization in Ukraine and the world. (more…)
From Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears’ speech yesterday to the NRA Women’s Leadership Forum, alluding to the slaughter of innocents at Uvalde, Texas:
America is in a battle for her children. We weep for the breakdown of the family. We weep for fatherless homes. We weep for the lack of respect for fellow men. We weep over the countless Black men murdering each other. We weep at the onslaught against the liberty of thought and expression.
Indeed we have left goodness, gentleness, and kindness behind, only to be left loathing, crudeness, greed, and sloth. Every man for himself, we are easily offended. cruelty abounds. Forgiveness is a dirty word.
Yes, guns are part of the problem, and I’m open to the idea that tighter control over guns may be part of the solution. But the problem is so much bigger. Our society is disintegrating before our eyes, but many are blind to it — indeed, many are cheering it on. Sears speaks to the broader malaise. I cannot find a link to the full text of her speech online, so I replicate it below:
Update: The speech text has been posted here. (more…)
Here’s more evidence that the social fabric is fraying: a high school senior was stabbed to death in a fight that spilled into an Alexandria neighborhood shopping center a couple of days ago. Just as Americans seem powerless to stop tragedies like the Uvalde school shooting, we seem impotent to halt the far more common number of incidents with smaller body counts.
Several elements fuel the combustion. One is the ubiquity of guns in the United States (although it must be noted that the Alexandria student was stabbed, not shot). Another is the surge in mental illness. Democrats emphasize the guns, Republicans the mental illness, each in line with their respective desires to indict or absolve firearms. But I suspect there are other factors at play, at least in incidents like the Alexandria fracas: cell phones and the erosion of adult authority. Arguments originating in social media during the school day often get resolved outside school. As one of the parents in the video above observed, “The kids are out of control.”
And adults are helpless to control them, she could have added.
Better physical security inside schools will help prevent lone shooters from entering into the schools. (See Jim Sherlock’s recent column.) There is something to be said for that. But I question whether school “hardening” can do anything to curtail fights that take place outside schools in nearby parking lots. — JAB
Baconites and Rebels, I have disabled one of the two services that had been feeding ads to Bacon’s Rebellion. I have been receiving frequent complaints about glitches in the blog, and from my own observation, the ads were highly intrusive. The ads were bringing in a not-insignificant revenue stream, but not enough to justify the apparent loss in readership.
Just so you know… I do pay attention to reader feedback. Please let me know if Bacon’s Rebellion is a more enjoyable browsing experience now. Because if it’s NOT, I don’t want to be throwing money away, and I’ll put the ads back in.
The Williamsburg-James City County School Board was due to adopt new texts this spring for its AP U.S. Government and Politics course, as well as other social studies classes, for use next fall. As reported by The Virginian-Pilot and Virginia Gazette, these deliberations may be an indication of how the Youngkin administrationโs determination to eliminate โdivisive conceptsโ may play out at the local level in the near future.
After reviewing several textbooks, the selection committee recommended the adoption of the updated version of the text currently being used in AP government classes. It is the 18th edition of Government in America, by George Edwards, a political science professor at Texas A&M University. The previous edition is on the College Boardโs example textbook list. The textbook had been vetted by the Virginia Department of Education and pre-approved. (more…)
I have worked for at least ten years — many of those with now-Attorney General Miyares when he was my delegate — to get Virginia to step up to the Louisiana model for flood control.
Louisiana. The Louisiana model is a state-federal partnership in which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is the federal executive agent in the Civil Works program and the state is the non-federal sponsor, a role with planning, funding and operational management responsibilities.
Today Louisiana celebrated the completion of the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS) that will defend the Greater New Orleans area against severe storms, including those with a one-percent chance of occurring in any given year.
HSDRRS is of similar complexity to a system to defend Hampton Roads. (more…)
Just a reminder, people: COVID-19 may have receded from the headlines, but it hasn’t gone away. After bottoming out in April at less than 1,000 daily confirmed cases, the seven-day moving average in Virginia has climbed back up to 3,200 or more. You can be double vaxxed — as much of the population has been — but you can still carry the virus in your schnoz and and you can still transmit it.
Hospitalizations are up, too. Fortunately, deaths remain subdued. But if you consider yourself at risk, it may be time to take precautions again.(more…)
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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