doing double duty as the bacon meme of the week.
from The Bull Elephant.
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Jeanine’s Memes…
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Luria Transmogrifies Oath of Office
Representative Elaine Luria, Virginia 2nd district by Emilio Jaksetic
On January 6, 2022, Representative Elaine Luria (D-2nd District) announced her decision to run for reelection. In the opening sentence of her statement she said: “On the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, I recommit to uphold my oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.’”
She correctly quoted language from the oath of office required by military personnel and federal officials and employees. (See the oath of office here.) But later in her remarks, she engaged in an odd verbal prestidigitation.
“I take my oath seriously. Today I know that my continued service is not a choice, but a duty to our nation and our values as Americans,” she said. Her remarks ended with the following closing: “I took an oath to serve. And in this critical moment for our democracy, I intend to continue to serve.”
Without warning and without explanation Luria magically transformed the oath of office from a commitment to defend the Constitution into a duty to serve by continuing in office and running for reelection. (more…)
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UVa, Defend Your Women!
Letter to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors from Walter Smith.
Now that International Transgender Day of Visibility is behind us, it is safe to discuss your lack of visibility in the matter regarding UVa student Emma Weyant, who, in the world where reality and truth are valued, is the true women’s NCAA 500 freestyle swimming champion. None of you has spoken out regarding the injustice of her loss of the 1st-place trophy to a transgendered individual, Lia Thomas — a silence, I suspect, that arises from your terror of woke intersectionalists.
The only statement I have seen from any UVa official was a quote in The Jefferson Independent, in which President Jim Ryan bravely stated, “I’m not an expert on this and I haven’t been following it as closely as others… I have to say it seems unfair to me, at a very basic level.”
Wow! What clarity of thought! What bold leadership! I now see how Ryan was selected to lead Thomas Jefferson’s University — to make it Great and Good as only he can! (more…)
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Virginia Students’ AP Metrics Are Slipping
Nearly 27% of Virginia’s public high school test takers demonstrated college-level achievement on at least one Advanced Placement exam this year, according to data released today by The College Board.The good news: Virginia ranks 9th among the states in the percentage earning a score of three or higher in an AP test.
The bad news: The 26.9% percentage represents a one percentage-point decline from 27.9% since last year.
Superintendent for Public Instruction Jillian Balow did not put a happy face on the results, as past superintendents have done. While celebrating the success of 2021 graduates, she said in a press release, “We also must recognize that since 2015 the commonwealth has fallen from third in the nation to ninth as the number of Virginia students taking AP exams has declined and participation in other states has grown.” (more…)
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Another Try for Natural Gas to Hampton Roads
Existing 12″ natural gas pipelines proposed for replacement with new 24″ lines. Click for larger view. by Steve Haner
Natural gas pipeline companies have applied to federal regulators with another proposal to enhance supply into Virginia’s Hampton Roads region, despite the earlier failures of two similar high profile efforts.
Columbia Gas Transmission, part of TC Energy which is best known for the recently-rejected Keystone XL pipeline, is proposing to replace 48 miles of existing, 1950s-era, 12-inch diameter pipe with new 24-inch pipe. Compressor stations and other facilities would also be modernized. This proposal is being marketed as the Virginia Reliability Project and stays within existing right of way from Sussex County to Chesapeake.
Transcontinental (Transco), in a separate application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, wants to add a 6.35-mile loop of new 24-inch pipe in Brunswick and Greensville counties, and improve a compressor there, allowing it to supply an additional 105,000 dekatherms per day to points east and south. It has been named the Commonwealth Energy Connector Project.
From the S&P Global story linked in the adjacent paragraph. Click for larger view. To some writing for the energy trade press, the combined projects look like an effort to make up for the loss of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, abandoned by Dominion Energy. It was to provide substantial new supply to regional retailer Virginia Natural Gas. Following that retreat in the face of environmental opposition and a change in attitude by elected Virginia leaders, the VNG Header project was also abandoned. Will this third proposal fare better? (more…)
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Virginia’s Incredible Money-Spending Machine
by James A. Bacon
Spending by Virginia’s state government isn’t just increasing — spending is increasing at an accelerating rate. The current budget biennium (fiscal 2021-22) and the next (fiscal 2023-24) will have seen the two biggest spending increases of the past nine budget cycles.
Assuming no modifications to the next biennial budget’s spending totals submitted by former Governor Ralph Northam, the combined General Fund and Non General Fund budgets will have increased 123% in the 17 years between fiscal 2007 and 2024.
(For purposes of comparison, the increase in the Consumer Price Index was 40% between 2007 and 2022. The state population increased 8.2% between 2010 and 2022. Spending has been increasing at roughly double the rate of inflation and population growth.) (more…)
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If U.S. Copies Europe, “It Will End In Tears”
Dr. Benny Peiser by Steve Haner
First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.
A major European voice for climate and energy rationality told a small Charlottesville audience March 30 that his home, the United Kingdom, and the rest of Europe face an immediate energy crisis that was brewing long before the war in Ukraine.
Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation said prices in Britain jump as of today, April 1. Householders are seeing the rising electricity and natural gas costs suddenly double, from about 1,000 pounds to 2,000 pounds annually. By the end of the year another jump to 3,000 pounds annually (almost $4,000) is predicted. The parallel impact on business and transportation will push up food and other commodity prices. (more…)
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Policies at War With Themselves
UVa President Jim Ryan by James A. Bacon
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan and Provost Ian Baucom have finally begun to engage in a discussion about university “cancel culture.” In the abstract, they’re against it. Their latest musings represent a step beyond the mere protection of free speech, which the Board of Visitors had endorsed previously, toward respectful engagement of people with different views.
“We can teach our students not only about the right to free speech but also how to be empathetic speakers and generous listeners,” they wrote in the higher-ed trade publication Inside Higher Education. “We should teach them to dismantle arguments, not people.”
UVa Provost Ian Baucom They even go so far as to acknowledge the value of entertaining a wide variety of viewpoints in academia. “Colleges and universities … could stand to be more intellectually diverse than they are, just as they could stand to be more racially and socioeconomically diverse.”
These are fine sentiments, and the critics of UVa — and higher education in Virginia generally — should welcome them. There may be reason to hope that UVa, after an orgy of self-flagellation for its past, the renaming of buildings, the dismantling of statues, and the blackening of the name of Thomas Jefferson, will live up to the aspiration of its founder to “follow the truth wherever it might lead.” (more…)
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The Relentless Push for Child Gender Transition
Dr. Rachel Levine, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health by James C. Sherlock
On the odd chance you missed it, the Biden administration announced a flurry of new measures today, designated the Transgender Day of Visibility. (I need to keep up.)
The Washington Post reported on the festivities. What that story did not report is the celebration’s most important “feature.”
HHS today announced Biden administration support for gender transition for children.
For transgender and nonbinary children and adolescents, early gender-affirming care is crucial to overall health and well-being as it allows the child or adolescent to focus on social transitions and can increase their confidence while navigating the healthcare system.
Happy to know that HHS defines this as “gender-affirming” care — “affirming” and “care” are cute terms — “at any age or stage” of development. (more…)
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The AG Should Investigate Portsmouth Political Corruption
by Ken ReidPhilosopher David Hume once said: “The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.” That may be the fate of the Portsmouth, population of 93,000, in the absence of outside oversight.
In the wave of protests over George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020, Portsmouth activists called for tearing down a 127-year-old monument to Confederate war dead. City Council deferred a decision to remove the two statues, as required by law. In June a mob proceeded to topple one and behead the other. Portsmouth city police pressed charges against several high-profile participants. Although the charges were withdrawn, the subjects turned around and sued the city.
Rather than litigate the suits, the city awarded $300,000 earlier this year to state Senator Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, who is the Senate Pro Tempore and de facto Democrat political boss of Portsmouth. The remaining $150,000 was divided between 10 influential demonstrators, whom columnist Kerry Dougherty called the “Portsmouth 10.”
These include Portsmouth School Board Vice Chair LaKeesha Atkinson, an employee in the public defender’s office, and several city NAACP leaders. Among 19 arrested in the protest was the public defender, Brenda Spry. She was later confirmed by the General Assembly to be a judge — a decision that was decried by then-Delegate Jason Miyares before he was elected Attorney General. (more…)
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Tell Me Again. Why Are Virginia Taxes So Bad?
by Dick Hall-SizemoreI have taxes on my mind. It is sort of hard not to be thinking a lot about taxes these days. I just finished compiling my tax returns (yes, I realize that I am a procrastinator). The Governor is telling me that the state taxes me too much and he wants to give some of it back and lower my future taxes. Many folks on this blog also say that my state taxes are too high.
I must admit that I have not paid a great deal of attention to the details of my state tax returns in recent years. I just plugged the numbers into Turbotax and whatever return it spit out, I filed and paid what I owed or got the refund it said I was due, whichever was the case. (You have to admit; that state form produced by the electronic tax filing programs is not easy to follow without a program.)
This year, with all the talk about taxes swirling about, I decided to pay more attention to the details of Virginia’s income tax provisions. I found that they are not nearly as bad as the Governor and others make out. At least not for retirees, like me. (more…)
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Forgive Student Debt? Nope. Cut College Costs
LSU’s infamous lazy river by Kerry Dougherty
I’m tired of bickering with millennials.
Every time the topic of student loan forgiveness comes up and I point out that it’s bad form to borrow money you can’t repay, they come at me:
College was so much cheaper when you went to school, they whine.
Indeed, it was.
You know what else was different during the Bare Bones Era of Education?
College itself. (more…)
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Is California-Style Shoplifting Coming to Virginia?
by James A. Bacon
California has become notorious as a shoplifter’s paradise where prosecutors downplay “minor” crimes and the criminal element has responded, quite rationally, by increasing the brazen looting of retail outlets. The theft is so rampant in San Francisco and Los Angeles that dozens of drugstores and other retailers have closed shop. I’ve long wondered if such phenomena would reach Virginia, which has elected a good number of prosecutors who, in the California mold, have professed an intention to ameliorate the impact of a supposedly racist criminal justice system upon racial minorities.
I had seen no sign of such social disorder in Virginia… until today. I happened to be perusing the Fredericksburg Police Department crime report of March 28th, when I came across this notice, along with the photograph posted below:
Ulta, 1696 Carl D. Silver Parkway, 3/21, The store manager reported two males and a female entered the store and stole approximately $15,000 worth of merchandise before exiting. While leaving, one of the males knocked a customer to the ground. Photos of the suspects are below.
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The Left Doubles Down in Defense of Divisive Concepts
Image credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch. by James A. Bacon
A coalition of left-wing groups has organized to contest Governor Glenn Youngkin’s effort to expunge “inherently divisive concepts” from Virginia’s public school system. Among the member organizations are the Virginia Education Association, the Legal Aid Justice Center, and the Virginia chapter of the NAACP. One is tempted to say that an unofficial member of the coalition is the Richmond Times-Dispatch, whose one-sided coverage of the issue demonstrates that it has abandoned any pretense of impartiality.
Last month Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow identified policies, programs, training and curricula that violate federal Civil Rights law, including administrative materials that advocate “anti-racism,” or reverse racism. “We must continue to ensure that no student in Virginia is taught to judge or treat others differently solely on the basis of their race, skin color, ethnicity, sex or faith,” she said in the preliminary report.
At a news conference yesterday, the organizations blasted her assessment. It appears that the coalition’s strategy is to systematically misrepresent the Youngkin administration’s position and obscure the nature of the policies and guidelines the Governor seeks to change, knowing that the mainstream media will frame the narrative in their favor. (more…)
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Education Data Reporting is Very Expensive, Time Consuming, Important and Flawed in Virginia
by James C. SherlockIn government, there is seldom a dispassionate, objective assessment of what works and what doesn’t. Just eternal programs joined by new ones.
We citizens all hope that in governance and budgeting Virginia rewards programs that prove effective and efficient and enforces a cut line for those that do not. But we know that happens far less often than it should.
We also know that the Governor, his budget people and the General Assembly would appreciate objectively measured cut lines. So would agency budget directors.
In education, the government needs three things it largely does not have:
- measurable objectives;
- quality data with which to measure them; and
- the ability to generate data and assess it far less expensively and with higher quality than we have now.
