Bacon's Rebellion

  • Corporate Media Is Hostile to You and Your Religious Beliefs

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Chances are you were too busy last weekend, or too smart, to bother with The New York Times.

    But had you glanced at it, as I did, you would have seen this piece, promoted on the front page:

    “In This Time of War, I Propose We Give Up God.”

    The editors of The Times ran this story on a weekend that is holy to all three major religions: for Christians, it was Easter. For Jews, Passover. And for Muslims, this is part of the holy month of Ramadan.

    I read the piece, by the way. Written by a Jewish man apparently still haunted by some of the metaphorical stories he heard in his youth about the ancient Jews.

    In my opinion, it was drivel. But even drivel has its place.

    But why was it published on this particular weekend? Did anyone at The Times consider that the article might be offensive to those with a religious bent? Who at that newspaper thought the timing was exquisite? (more…)

  • Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three

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    James A. Bacon

    The year… 2075.

    The location… Galileo Station, the largest and most prosperous settlement on the Moon.

    The crisis… The United States federal government is determined to rope in its free-wheeling lunar colonies. Resentful of intrusive politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., the Galiletians are getting restless.

    The spark… When negotiations deadlock over Galileo Station’s right to settle new territories, U.S. Attorney Alyssa Reyes makes a critical decision: to infiltrate an elite squad of U.S. Marshals into the underground colony, snatch Governor Alexander Macaulay, and bring him to trial in U.S. territory. But the plan goes awry. The Galiletians resist, and events spiral out of control.

    The actions of a handful of men and women who never thought of themselves as heroes determine the fate of the Moon and, with it, the geopolitical balance of power on Earth.

    A work of future fiction, “Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three,” is more than an action-packed page turner. It explores the eternal struggle between tyranny and liberty. “Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three” is now available for purchase at Amazon.com.

    This is my first venture into self-publishing a novel. I like the  fast-paced action/thriller genre, but I usually find the characters and settings to be of indifferent quality. I also find most action tales intellectually vapid. “Dust Mites” is my effort at writing a thinking man’s thriller, with some social commentary thrown in.

    Most of the story takes place on the Moon and in Washington, D.C. However, Virginia readers of Bacon’s Rebellion might be pleased to know that there are four brief references to places or things in the Old Dominion. Read the book and see if you pick them up. Three are easy to spot, one is arcane.

    With this post, I am launching a soft roll-out. What I need more than anything before cranking up the publicity machine is reviews on Amazon.com. I would be exceedingly grateful to anyone who buys the book and gives a review — even more grateful if you give me five stars!

    Meanwhile, for your amusement and edification, I would steer you to the Dust Mites website and check out the essays. There I expound upon the challenge of writing about futuristic fiction and imagining the world of 2076. Subscribe for periodic email updates about the science, business, and geopolitics of the Moon.

    — JAB

  • @GridNews Targets Greedy Asian Parents ‘Bankrolling’ ‘Math Camps’

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Asra Q. Nomani

    In June 2021, a reporter for Politico, Maggie Severns, reached out to interview me about the activism in northern Virginia around the governor’s race. Connecting with her over our common roots in West Virginia, I invited her to an event at an Indian restaurant hosted that night by the Coalition for TJ and the American Hindu Coalition, two local groups with Asian immigrants as members.

    In a long interview, I told her that the story in northern Virginia belies stereotypes. Many of us are Asian, immigrant parents with long history as Democrats but the war on merit education — particularly in our community at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology — had turned so many parents off, they were hosting a meet-and-greet with Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin. Staff for the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, had asked for a sizable donation in exchange for a meeting, while Youngkin hadn’t asked for any quid pro quo.

    I spent a lot of time trying to bring the stories of our parents to life. But almost a year later, it didn’t matter, as Maggie pens a piece for a new media outlet, Grid.News, filled with stereotypes and caricatures that the Fairfax County school board and activists within TJ Alumni Action Group have long been throwing at our families and students. (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Early Exits

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    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    After barely three months in office, there has already been turnover among the ranks of Governor Youngkin’s appointments.

    The first to go was Phil Wittmer, whom Youngkin appointed to replace Nelson Moe as head of the Virginia Information Technology Agency (VITA). He left less than a month after his appointment was announced. There was no public explanation for his abrupt departure. Several days later, the no. 2 person at VITA, Jon Ozovek, announced he was leaving, making it clear that he was leaving because Moe had not been reappointed.

    Yesterday, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on the appointment of Jackson Miller, a former Republican member of the House of Delegates, to head the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). Not included in the article was the information that, six days after he took office, Youngkin submitted a list of agency head appointments to the General Assembly that included the reappointment of Shannon Dion Taylor as the DCJS director. (She had originally been appointed to the position by Governor Northam.) Final confirmation of the appointment occurred in early March. (more…)

  • The Alexandria Experiment

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    James A. Bacon

    Gregory C. Hutchings, Jr.

    by James A. Bacon

    The election of Governor Glenn Youngkin may bring about changes in K-12 educational policy in Virginia, but those changes will take time to take hold, and they will not play out uniformly across the state. “Progressive” school systems are organizing a form of Massive Resistance (a term I use with deliberate irony) to oppose Youngkin’s effort to rid schools of “inherently divisive concepts.”

    In a recent essay published in Education Week, Superintendent Gregory C. Hutchings, Jr., has called for “anti-racist” school systems to band together to “escape the reactionary trap that continues to perpetuate systemic racism in our public schools.” He doubles down on every leftist trope regarding the causes of racial inequality in educational outcomes.

    Assuming Hutchings puts his principles into action, Virginia will get to witness a living-lab experiment in social policy. If Hutchings’ understanding of the causes of racial inequality is based on reality, we should expect to see a significant narrowing in the racial achievement gap, as measured by Standards of Learning test scores, over the next few years. By contrast, if his “anti-racist” paradigm is riddled with false premises, as I believe it is, we will likely see no progress — or even a retrogression in learning.

    Hutchings calls for educators to embrace several steps to build “anti-racist” school systems. These include: (more…)

  • More on Vetoes

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    At least one reader has requested that I post a list of all the bills that Governor Youngkin vetoed, along with summaries of the bills and the Governor’s explanation for his veto.  Such a list is at the end of this post.

    I agree with some of the Governor’s vetoes, particularly of those bills directing a study or the convening of a task force.  Some of the bills seem somewhat trivial, such as the regulation of swimming pools by the Department of Health (HB 669) or requesting a federal waiver (HB 1270).  Sometimes, it is best to study an issue before proposing legislation to carry out a certain policy.  The oversight of the Department of Juvenile Justice (HB 1197) would be such an example. In those cases, the General Assembly could have accomplished its purpose by passing a joint resolution requesting agencies to conduct such studies. Agencies invariably conduct such studies, if requested, and joint resolutions cannot be vetoed. (more…)

  • NOW They Sue

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    They’re so dang proud of themselves.

    My former employer, The Virginian-Pilot, is so delighted with itself for joining with other corporate news outlets to sue Gov. Glenn Youngkin that they’ve Tweeted about it six times and even put it on the front page for the ever-dwindling number of people who still subscribe.

    They claim the governor violated the FOIA laws when he refused to turn over the contents of a tip line that parents can use to report divisive practices in the schools.

    This is, in effect, a whistleblower line, which is traditionally regarded as privileged. But the Pilot, The Washington Post and NPR and other mainstream media outlets who loathe Youngkin seem determined to break that seal of privacy.

    You know what’s really odd? (more…)

  • What’s That About Telecommuting?

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    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Traffic at about 5:00 p.m. near the Rt. 3 exit in Spotsylvania

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    For those who have predicted that the pandemic would result in a fundamental shift in commuting patterns and highway traffic, I invite you to get on I-95 at its junction with the Beltway at 3:00 on a week-day afternoon, driving south. Thursday afternoon, it took me more than two hours to get from the Beltway to Fredericksburg and I used the E-Z Pass lane for part of the way. (My mistake was in getting off at the Dumfries exit.) The traffic from Woodbridge to Spotsylvania was bumper-to-bumper the entire way. And it was crawling. At times, traffic was not moving at all.

    Furthermore, I know that there has been a lot of national news about the shortage of truck drivers, but the number of trucks on the road today did not seem significantly different from what it was in pre-pandemic days.

  • Criminal Charges Against Conservative School Activist Dismissed

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    A General District Court judge has dismissed criminal charges leveled by against Harry Jackson, a conservative parent active in the Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology admissions controversy. A Fairfax magistrate had charged Jackson, who had alleged in tweets and a YouTube video that a political antagonist had engaged in “grooming” of high school students, with slander.

    What made the case unique, said RightDefense.org, a criminal justice group that represented Jackson, “is that criminal charges were brought to suppress the concerns of a conservative parent — as opposed to a civil lawsuit — and a George Soros-sponsored prosecutor allowed for the criminal prosecution to take place over the course of seven months.” (more…)

  • SCC Asked for Hearing on Secret Renewables Costs

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    Appalachian Power Company has asked the State Corporation Commission to schedule a separate hearing on Attorney General Jason Miyares’ motion to break the seal on exhibits in its application for new renewable energy sources.

    Miyares’ April 6 motion was first reported by Bacon’s Rebellion, in a story on Appalachian’s pending application for approval of the projects and of its overall plan for complying with the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). Appalachian’s response motion was filed April 13, claiming irreparable harm to its stockholders if the actual line-by-line project cost projections were revealed to its customers.

    Although some of these discrete items may appear innocuous on their own, collectively they would enable a savvy party to discern the price paid for the facility, which is competitively sensitive.

    What do they say in swanky restaurants? If you have to ask the price, you cannot afford it. Revelations could be politically sensitive, as well, given the partisan divide on the VCEA itself. (more…)

  • Youngkin Signs Donor-Privacy Bill

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    In recent years, “cancel culture” has targeted many individuals, businesses, and organizations with the intention of silencing them into submission. In one tactic, political activists target or hack donor lists of groups they disagree with and publicly shame or intimidate donors and/or their businesses who expected that their gifts would be kept private. For example, some donors to the Canadian truckers’ Freedom Convoy had their gifts made public, and the givers were subjected to public shaming, in some cases costing them their reputations and livelihoods.

    To remedy this, the General Assembly passed HB 970 and Governor Glenn Youngkin signed it April 11.

    The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Senior Counsel Zack Pruitt had this to say about the signing Monday of HB 970, a bill that protects the private information of individuals who support charities and other nonprofit organizations of their choice: (more…)

  • The Monetary Rape of Middle-Class Retirees

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    This past year saw one of the greatest redistributions of wealth in U.S. history. People are upset by the 8.5% increase in inflation, but they’re not nearly as upset as they should be.

    Wage earners, especially lower-income wage earners, have every right to be irate. Their hourly pay has increased, but not nearly as rapidly as the Consumer Price Index, and far less than those components of the CPI such as food, housing and gasoline that comprise a major share of their household budgets. Many were living paycheck to paycheck before the onset of inflation. Now they’re drowning.

    Retirees ought to be enraged. Inflation is more devastating by far to their financial security than taxes. A retiree family with a middle-class standard of living might pay, say, $20,000 a year in federal taxes. But if they have a $1 million nest egg in 401(k), IRA and other investments, an 8.5% inflation rate pillages $85,000 from their net worth.

    Who are the beneficiaries of inflation? Borrowers — homeowners with a mortgage, consumers with credit card debt, motorists paying off notes on their cars, corporations that have taken advantage of Federal Reserve Bank-engineered low interest rates to leverage their balance sheets, and, of course, the biggest borrower on the face of the planet… the U.S. federal government. (more…)

  • Key Victories for Virginians in 2022 Legislative Session, But Work Remains

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by JC Hernandez 

    This past legislative session, the Virginia General Assembly set the stage to unleash opportunities for all Virginians by passing several key measures.

    One of the most significant victories came in the form of a “regulatory sandbox” for health care authorized in the new budget. In simple terms, this sandbox creates space for regulators to temporarily freeze regulations and penalties. The process paves the way for private companies to develop or introduce innovative products and services in the health care arena where regulations may otherwise make that impossible. The result: better care at lower cost.

    Remember that federal, state, and local governments waived over 800 regulations in the name of combating the COVID-19 pandemic and the sky didn’t fall. In fact, consumers are better off as a result, which makes you wonder why these regulations were in place to begin with. This was abundantly clear in the health care sector, where telehealth was employed to great success in areas that badly needed it.

    Regulatory sandboxes are a relatively new concept. They were first introduced in the U.S. in Arizona in 2018, and since then 10 states have adopted some form of them — in the fintech, insurance, and legal realms in addition to health care. We are pleased that Virginia will now join the growing number of states to break down barriers to innovations that help people flourish and thrive. (more…)

  • Virginia Is Not for Weed Lovers… But Maybe Soon

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    Table credit: LawnStarter

    by James A. Bacon

    LawnStarter has listed 2022’s Best Cities to Get Stoned, ranking nearly 100 of  the biggest U.S. cities where recreational marijuana use is legal. Alexandria is the only one in Virginia that ranks in the top half. Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News, and Chesapeake all rank in the bottom eight.

    The ranking is based on access to dispensaries, head shops, consumption lounges, and cannabis-friendly lodging, as well as the availability of tours and events and even munchie relief (fast food), among other factors. (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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