Bacon's Rebellion

  • End the Subminimum Wage for Disabled Virginians

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia is top ranked as a business-friendly state. How we treat employees with disabilities in the workplace matters.

    by Shaun Kenney

    What are the hallmarks of a business-friendly environment? Competitive wages, opportunities to build wealth, support for entrepreneurial endeavors, freedom to create and innovate, dignity of work, and economic independence and sustainability – to name a few.

    There’s a law on the books in Virginia that legislators and advocates on both sides of the aisle argue stands in direct contrast to many of these principles. It goes back to 1938.

    According to Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers with a 14(c) certificate from the Wage & Hour Division of the Department of Labor are legally permitted to pay wages below the minimum wage to employees with physical, developmental, cognitive, mental or age-related disabilities. (more…)

  • Who Needs a Stinkin’ Honorary Degree Anyway?

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Governor Glenn Youngkin is scheduled to speak at the College of William & Mary’s Charter Day ceremony in three days, when he will receive an honorary degree. Taking umbrage at his stance against Critical Race Theory in public schools, three law school students have started a campaign, “No Degrees for Bigotry.” As of this morning, the petition had 1,341 signatures.

    “Students from historically-marginalized groups cannot feel respected or included when the administration consistently awards honorary degrees to individuals who seek to further their oppression,” writes petition organizer Sophia Kingsley in the petition.

    Clearly, there is widespread distaste at W&M for Youngkin. And not without reason. The law school students are correct in saying that the Governor’s policies are antithetical to the values of W&M, which under President Katherine Rowe has been enthusiastically translating Critical Race Theory into practice. “What are we saying if that’s who we want to give an honorary degree to?” asks co-organizer Skye McCollum, according to the student newspaper, Flat Hat News.

    A fair question. Youngkin might ask the same: Why would he want to accept an honorary degree from a university that embraces values antithetical to his values and to those who voted for him? (more…)

  • Virginia Democrats Cling to Forced Masking of Kids

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Hey, Virginia Democrats, read the room.

    Rather, read the country.

    As Democrats in the Old Dominion lawyer up and throw hissy fits in a mad attempt to keep forced masking in schools, their counterparts in four blue states spent Monday merrily rolling back the mandates.

    New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced Monday that mandatory masking would end in the Garden State on March 7. Connecticut’s Gov. Ned Lamont said he’d scrap school mask mandates on Feb. 28, although he’ll leave decisions up to school divisions. In Delaware, Gov. John Carney declared that mask mandates will be reversed on February 11, with school mandates ending March 31. And in Oregon — Oregon! — health officials announced that school mask mandates would be lifted statewide on March 31.

    Coincidence? Not a chance.

    These Democrats can read a room. The polling on mask mandates must be atrocious. They know that the November mid-term elections are going to be a bloodbath for their party if forced masking of kids — the most visible sign of gubernatorial overreach — stays in place through the 2022 school year. (more…)

  • The Petersen Death Star Strikes Again

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    James A. Bacon

    Letter from state Senator J. Chapman Petersen, D-Fairfax, to Scott Braband, superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools. — JAB

    On Friday evening, February 4th, in my capacity as a parent, I received the attached press release from Fairfax County Public Schools which announced the ruling of the Arlington County Circuit Court on the Governor’s Executive Order No. 2 regarding “parental option” for any child masking policies.

    The press release begins by lauding the Court’s ruling as an “immediate action to protect the health of the community and also reaffirms the constitutional rights of the school boards.” It then states that FCPS will indefinitely continue its policy of Forced Masking for” all students, staff and visitors, a regulation which is overwhelmingly supported by our staff and families” which “has been a critical safety measure during the pandemic, especially during the most recent surge.”

    No evidence is cited for any of these statements, which are clearly opinions – not facts. Since FCPS has circulated its opinions via a public forum, I will respond in kind on the two key presumptions: (more…)

  • Budget Actions to Implement the Methods of the Nation’s Most Successful Educators of Poor, Minority and Special Needs Kids into Virginia Public Schools

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    sherlockj

    Ex-Curry School at UVa

    by James C. Sherlock

    I am a graduate of the University of Virginia. I am not a proud one on this subject.

    I have just completed yet another review of the centers, labs and projects of the UVa School of Education and Human Development (ex-Curry School).

    The review highlighted two major issues.

    1. UVa’s School of Education has shown an utter absence of scholarship in ignoring the most proven effective methods for improving public education of poor, minority and educationally handicapped kids, upon whom it claims to be centered. Those methods are the ones employed in public schools by the nation’s most successful non-profit charter management organizations (CMOs), starting with New York City’s Success Academy. Shriveled by dogma and fear of the Twitter mob, UVa will not even mention their names.  Yet that school of education is called out by name and disproportionately rewarded in the budget in front of the General Assembly.
    2. We need to study and implement the methods of the CMOs, which specialize in educating poor and minority kids and accept special education kids without any barrier, into all of Virginia’s public schools, not just charters.

    I will offer specific fixes for both issues that the Governor and the General Assembly can implement in the budget before them. (more…)

  • What Was More “Political”: Heaphy’s Firing or His Hiring?

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    James A. Bacon

    Tim Heaphy, pictured in 2017. Photo credit: The Cavalier Daily.

    by James A. Bacon

    The Richmond Times-Dispatch ramped up the mainstream media’s criticism of Attorney General Jason Miyares in a story published over the weekend. The headline: “Jason Miyares removed the head lawyer at 3 state colleges. Professors and Democrats say he’s wielding excessive influence.”

    The initial wave of Miyares-critical stories, most prominently in The Washington Post and The New York Times, focused on the firing of Tim Heaphy as counsel at the University of Virginia. The articles suggested that the removal was an act of political retribution for Heaphy’s service, while on unpaid leave from UVa, as lead investigator into the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol last year.

    That charge has dissipated in the face of vehement denials from Miyares, the total absence of any corroborating evidence, and the fact that Heaphy was not singled out for removal. His counterparts at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University were sacked as well, suggesting that perhaps a different motive was at play.

    Whatever that motive is, the RTD found someone to say it was “political.” Reporter Eric Kolenich quotes quotes Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor: “Universities need to be free, open places and not be politicized by the appointment of counsel who are loyal to the attorney general but not loyal to the university.” (more…)

  • Arlington Judge Rules in Favor of Forced Masking of Kids

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    James A. Bacon


    by Kerry Dougherty

    Amidst the cacophony of leftist celebrations Friday — the high fives, the gloating — over an Arlington County Circuit Court judge’s ruling that the forced masking of school children can continue in Virginia, one important wrinkle went unexplored by the mainstream media.

    Once again, only Luke Rosiak, a reporter for The Daily Wire, had the curiosity to dig a little deeper.

    That’s when he discovered that it appears the judge’s husband may be employed by one of the plaintiffs in the case.

    If so, she never should have heard this case. (more…)

  • Welcome to Reality, Governor!

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Sen. Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond) Photo credit: Bob Brown, Times Dispatch

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    As reported in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, Senate Democrats are pretty much making mincemeat of Governor Youngkin’s Day One agenda.

    The Governor’s reaction? “I’m disappointed at the partisan politics that I see being played in the Senate.” What? Did he actually expect the Democrats to roll over and go along with his proposals because he had been elected Governor? And, what about the united opposition of Republicans to Democratic bills in previous years? Why wouldn’t that be considered “partisan politics”?

    The Governor went on to say, “This is why I won — to actually get things done.” Well, that is how Democrats felt two years ago. The big difference between then and now is that they had the votes to get stuff done and they actually did get things done and they see no reason to allow the Governor and his allies in the General Assembly to undo those things.

  • Infrastructure Bill, Meet Richmond’s United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit

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    sherlockj

    United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Richmond, Va.

    by James C. Sherlock

    The President and members of Congress have celebrated the enactment of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act into law.

    In Virginia and the other states (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia) of the federal Fourth Circuit, good luck with that.

    The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit just published two related decisions on January 29th and February 4th, 2022 decided by the same three-judge panel, all appointees of Democratic presidents.

    Both decisions remanded to federal agencies for reconsideration years of federal assessments that have supported the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Those agencies are now run by Biden appointees. They won’t be back.

    The court is populated with a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents. There is a vacancy awaiting a Biden appointment. The Chief Judge faces mandatory retirement next year.

    So no relief in sight except the Supreme Court.

    The decisions clearly demonstrate what will happen to Virginia public infrastructure projects that are opposed by the greens and/or protected classes or both, which will be nearly all of them.

    Roads, bridges, pipelines, large solar panel projects, airport expansions, new rail lines, you name it. Flood control? Forget it. They are headed into the federal and state bureaucracies and then to court and then back again.

    For years. (more…)

  • How to Befuddle an Old Lady

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    James A. Bacon

    My 92-year-old mother takes this COVID business very seriously, as one would expect from someone in a high-risk group. She’s double vaxxed and boosted. And she is assiduous about testing herself and others who enter her house. At the same time, she’s frugal, and a testing two-pack costs about $25 at the drug store. So, when the federal government promised to send every American two free test kits, she jumped at the offer.

    The test kits duly arrived a few days ago, and my mother had an occasion to test herself. As she pored through the instructions, she came across Step 5, pictured above, which says, “Start the timer by clicking the ‘Start Timer’ button….”

    By referring to the Start Timer button, the instructions implied that such a button was to be found in the kit. But it wasn’t. (more…)

  • If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

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    James A. Bacon

    by Matt Hurt

    On January 29, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published an op-ed written by the patrons of HB319 and SB616 (The Virginia Literacy Acts). In this article, the legislators wrote that we must implement strategies adopted by other states if we wish to improve the reading abilities of our students.  

    While there is always room for improvement, one should always consult the data to determine to what degree our process should change in order to realize that improvement. If you’re at the bottom of the heap, you probably should change your approach dramatically. If you’re one of the top performers, maybe subtle tweaks are the more reasonable approach.

    Consult the Data!

    When it comes to early elementary reading, the most relevant dataset we have to compare our performance in Virginia to those of other states is the Reading 4 NAEP test. When we consider our results relative to the other 49 states, it appears that Virginia as a whole has performed admirably. Given that Virginia has achieved near the top very consistently, it is not apparent that we should make radical changes to our statewide reading program. (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

    I don’t normally comment on memes, but this one provides a jumping off point to ask, what the hell were they thinking when they picked that name? Half the country is sick and tired of the self-righteous edicts, diktats and decrees  emanating from Washington, D.C. — and the Washington football team names itself the Commanders? As in.. those who issue commands… Basically, the team is signaling that it stands with the ruling political class over us taxpaying helots and hoi polloi. (more…)

  • COPN’s Regional Monopolies Helped Boost Virginia Hospitals’ Operating Margins to more than 3x National Median in 2020

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Virginians have been assured forever by the hospital lobby that the non-profit regional monopolies established and protected by COPN nearly everywhere but Richmond:

    • are benign public servants with a charitable mission;
    • certainly don’t drive up costs;
    • that competition does not matter;
    • that the State Medical Facilities Plan on which COPN is based, like government 5-year industrial plans everywhere, is both well- managed and prescient; and
    • that limiting capacity is the key to cost containment. (It turned out that limiting capacity was also the key to hospitals being overwhelmed by COVID. Clearly disaster preparedness is not among COPN criteria.)

    Well. The median operating margin for Virginia’s 106 hospitals in 2020, the latest year for which data are available, was 9.2%. Nationally, that margin was 2.7%.

    Virginians paid over $1.5 billion more for hospital visits than they would have if our hospitals had cumulatively posted a 3% operating margin, which has been at or near the national median  for years. (more…)

  • Weather Writer/Climate Warrior Defends RGGI Tax

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    by

    Steve Haner

    Sean Sublette, staff meteorologist for the Richmond Times Dispatch.

    by Steve Haner

    The Richmond Times-Dispatch weather reporter has entered the political debate over Governor Glenn Youngkin’s efforts to exit the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). But is he really a weather reporter, or a climate warrior?

    Sean Sublette’s on-line report on RGGI is packaged as a simple recitation of facts, but it is the selection of which facts to include and exclude that makes it interesting, and he gets many facts wrong. At the start, he makes one central claim which I have disputed: that Virginia entered RGGI “through an act of the General Assembly.”

    Virginia entered RGGI through a regulation adopted by the Air Pollution Control Board, which was followed by Virginia signing a contract. The legislature authorized but did not mandate RGGI participation and the carbon tax. It mandated carbon reductions, but not the method. His opening assertion takes a side in the argument, against the current Governor.

    Actually this is his opening assertion, after noting that the program exists to reduce carbon dioxide releases: “These gasses are directly tied to observed planetary warming.” From the same level of scientific certainty that brought you cloth masks against a virus.

    No one should be surprised that this is his first premise. Sublette came to the newspaper last year from an organization called Climate Central, part of the climate catastrophe-industrial complex that promotes the wind and solar industries. Here’s a pretty typical example of his output there, this on “the hottest global year on record.” (more…)

  • Things Fall Apart: Peoples’ Republic of Charlottesville Edition

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    James A. Bacon

    The Corner

    by James A. Bacon

    While various student groups at the University of Virginia are calling for defunding local law-enforcement programs, some parents of UVa students support a stronger police presence around the university after a wave of shootings last year.

    An open letter addressed to UVa President Jim Ryan and university police chief Tim Longo voices support for bolstering UVa police patrols in areas adjacent to the university, such as the retail strip known as the Corner, the fraternity row along Rugby Road, and the residential neighborhoods around the university.

    Noting that the City of Charlottesville police department is significantly understaffed, the letter states that since May 2021, the 2,000 students living on the W. Main corridor “have lived under the constant threat of automatic gunfire and faced the risk of being struck by stray bullets.” Charlottesville crime reports show that gun violence escalated in 2021, and members of the public reported “more shootings in the year to date than in the entirety of 2020,” the letter said. (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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