Bacon's Rebellion

  • A Sociological Mystery: Why Are Black Women Dropping Out of the Workforce?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Ever-alert to unexplained sociological phenomena, Bacon’s Rebellion has taken note of a just-published Brookings Institution article based on the November 2021 jobs report. Unemployment is declining for most major demographic groups — Whites, Asians and Hispanics, both men and women, and even for Black men. But the unemployment rate increased in November for Black teens and, most alarmingly in the minds of the Brookings authors, for Black women.

    “Between October and November, the labor force participation rate for Black women dropped to 60.3%, effectively erasing the impressive gains reported in August,” reports Brookings. “This reversal in labor force participation is unique to Black women, as women in other racial-ethnic groups continued to regain their footing in the workforce.”

    Don’t dismiss the possibility that we’re looking at an anomalous one-month blip that signifies nothing in the long run. But for purposes of discussion, let’s accept Brookings’ premise that there is reason to be worried. How do we explain Black women (and not Black men) dropping out of the workforce? (more…)

  • Law Enforcement Shortages Come to Small-Town Virginia

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    The Town of Leesburg had a population of 49,157 as of July 1, 2021. Its police force has an authorized strength of 90 sworn officers. Twenty-one of those positions are vacant.

    The Loudoun Times posted an article that headlined the town’s vaccine mandate as a potential contributor, but a close reading of the article showed that is not the case, at least not provably. Most vacancies existed before the mandate. Many  losses since the mandate were scheduled retirements. Other officers did not cite the mandate as the cause of their departures. So, maybe the mandate contributed, but not much.

    What, then, are the issues? (more…)

  • Add Affordability to List of Higher-Ed Priorities

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Higher-ed governance is a Rubik’s Cube of complexity.

    by James A. Bacon

    Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin has an opportunity to restore Virginia’s public universities as beacons of free speech, free inquiry and intellectual diversity by making strategic appointments to Boards of Visitors over the next four years. As he refines his vision for higher education, he should also prioritize making Virginia colleges and universities more affordable and accessible — through productivity and cost-cutting, not bigger state subsidies.

    Both of these goals — freedom/intellectual diversity and affordability — are inter-related. A major reason higher-ed institutions have become so expensive is the profusion of costly bureaucracy over the years. Increasingly, Virginia’s four-year higher-ed institutions are run by unaccountable, self-perpetuating oligarchies that have allowed administrative positions to proliferate. As it happens, many of those positions are designed to advance a social-justice agenda that enforces stifling ideological conformity.

    Traditionally, the political class has addressed the affordability issue by increasing financial aid: making it easier for students and parents to borrow and providing targeted financial aid for lower-income students — in other words, by dumping more money into the system. Universities have never been forced to engage in spending discipline, and as a result the cost of attendance — not just tuition but fees, room and board — has escalated far faster than the cost of living. The massive accumulation of student debt has created a national social crisis, and college remains as unaffordable as ever. (more…)

  • Youngkin to Withdraw From RGGI, End Carbon Tax

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    The RGGI member states.

    By Steve Haner

    First published by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.

    Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin told a business audience Wednesday afternoon that he intends to withdraw Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. His decision came two days after Dominion Energy Virginia filed a petition to increase the RGGI tax on its bills by 83% next year.

    “RGGI describes itself as a regional market for carbon,” Youngkin told a meeting of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce. “But it is really a carbon tax that is fully passed on to ratepayers. It is a bad deal for Virginians. It is a bad deal for business and as governor, I will withdraw us from RGGI by executive action. I promised to lower the cost of living in Virginia and this is just the beginning.”

    The Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy sought to dissuade the state from joining RGGI and imposing this carbon tax and has reported often on the development and imposition of Dominion’s bill adder to collect it. We applaud this decision, knowing that Youngkin may face a struggle to implement it.

    Virginia has been part of the interstate tax, cap and trade compact for a year now. Every large electrical generating facility in the state must buy allowances in a multi-state auction equal to the number of tons of carbon dioxide its operations will emit. With the only large fleet of Virginia coal and gas generators, this is basically about Dominion Energy Virginia and its 2.6 million customer accounts. (more…)

  • New Praxis Circle Contributor: Jim Bacon

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Praxis Circle is a community building worldviews to renew free society. We do this primarily through our online content and interviews of expert thought leaders on worldview topics. Today, we are thrilled to welcome as our newest Contributor a very familiar person to all regular Bacon’s Rebellion readers—founder, editor, and publisher James A. Bacon himself!

    What to say about Jim? At his core, he is a dedicated Virginian. Jim graduated from the University of Virginia, obtained a masters at John Hopkins University, and promptly began his journalism career in southwest Virginia. He eventually settled in Richmond as editor of Virginia Business magazine where he became the editor-in-chief as well as its publisher.

    After feeling bureaucratically stifled while witnessing the internet’s revolutionary explosion of news & opinion, Jim started Bacon’s Rebellion in 2002 as an email newsletter. It has since developed into a highly regarded online news portal and is consumed by thousands of Virginians as their primary source for state and local news as well as balanced editorial opinion.

    *** sponsored content ***

    (more…)

  • The Memory (Hole) Project

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Walter Smith

    “And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.” — George Orwell, “1984”

    Charlottesville City Council recently voted to give the city’s Robert E. Lee statue to The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. The “Jefferson Center” (a deceptive name for a school that hates Jefferson) proposes to melt the statue and remold it into a new piece of public art that “expresses the city’s values of inclusivity and racial justice. … Our hope … is to create something that transforms what was once toxic in our public spaces into something beautiful and more reflective of our entire community’s social values.”

    According to WINA News Radio, The Memory Project of the Democracy Initiative of the University of Virginia and other persons and entities, including the George Soros Open Society Foundations are listed as the first sponsor of this initiative. (more…)

  • Budget Maneuvering

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    One of the quirks about Virginia’s governing system is that an outgoing governor gets to submit a budget proposal for the upcoming biennium, when he will not be around to execute it.

    It would be difficult for any new governor trying to deal with a budget that he had no part in developing. When the new governor is not of the same party as the outgoing governor, it gets even trickier because the new governor’s priorities will almost certainly be different.

    The situation becomes even more interesting when the majority of at least one of the legislative chambers switches as well. The new party in power will have less than two months to try and unravel the outgoing governor’s budget and substitute its own priorities.

    That scenario is beginning to play out in Virginia, of course. The Republican Glenn Youngkin will be replacing the outgoing Democrat Ralph Northam and the Republicans will replace the Democrats as the majority party in the House of Delegates.

    Meanwhile, Governor Northam is doing his best to tie up the large projected additional budget revenue in ways that would make it politically difficult for the Republicans to undo. (more…)

  • Bacon Bits: People’s Republic Update

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    How’s this for irony? The only thing saving the City Council of the People’s Republic of Charlottesville from increasing dysfunction in the future is dysfunctional governance today. City Council wants to draft an ordinance that would outline collective bargaining rights for employees, enabling them to negotiate for higher salaries and changes to working conditions — creating new spending pressures, new labor tensions and new areas for conflict. In August Council directed the city manager to research how much money would be needed to support the human resources department in such an endeavor. Trouble is, Charlottesville can’t hire a city manager. The announced interim city manager just resigned. And it turns out that City Hall has no human resources director either. So reports the Daily Progress.

    The cultural cleansing shall continue. City Council has approved the sale of Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue to a group that will melt it down and turn it into new artwork. After the city took down the statue of the Confederate hero over the summer, it received six proposals from arts groups, historical societies and individuals” with offers up to $50,000 for the bronze sculpture, reports The Washington Post. City Council chose instead to give the statue to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to advance a project to “allow Charlottesville to contend with its racist past.” I’ve only got one question: If the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center is so distraught about the racism embodied in statues and memorials, why is it still named the Jefferson School?

    The no-solar solar capital. No part of Virginia outdoes the People’s Republic when it comes to enthusiasm for renewable energy, at least in the abstract. Charlottesville and Albemarle County are home to numerous renewable energy companies — Sun Tribe, Hexagon Energy and Apex Energy among them, not to mention the Clean Virginia pro-renewables advocacy group. Charlottesville/ Albemarle is an ideal location for solar projects in at least one way: proximity to high-capacity electric transmission lines. But the Department of Environmental Quality’s “environmental data mapper” shows only two utility-scale solar projects in Albemarle — and neither are producing. (more…)

  • Diversity “Training” Coming to VMI

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    In the waning days of the Northam administration, the Virginia Military Institute has issued a Request for Proposal for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Consultation and Training.” The due date for submitting proposals is December 14. The period of the contract will extend from the date of the award through June 30, 2023.

    The services solicited in the RFP include:

    • DEI training that includes “guidelines, cultural sharing, … bias intervention programs, and DEI language that best fits the VMI community.”
    • Opportunities for individuals to “embrace DEI concepts, explore allyship, and a framework for lifelong learning.”
    • Discussions of cultural and identity oppression in the context of current culture as it relates to VMI.
    • Design and execution of an “organizational DEI cultural assessment” while “understanding the VMI philosophy.”
    • Ongoing DEI support within the ranks of Institute executives.

    (more…)

  • What Does FJB Stand For, Anyway?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Photo credit: Teri Hodson / Virginian-Pilot

    The Yorktown Lighted Boat Parade awarded Best in Show over the weekend to a 50-foot vessel festooned with bright lights proclaiming, “FJB” and “Let’s Go Brandon.” The boat inspired chants of “Let’s Go Brandon” among some shoreline spectators, but offended others. Declaring insults to the president of the United States to be inconsistent with the Christmas spirit, organizers stripped the vessel of its title and declared a new winner: a boat featuring singing angels, reports The Virginian-Pilot.

    I’m just hoping that “FJB” didn’t stand for “F— Jim Bacon.”

    — JAB

  • What Higher-Ed Reformers Are Up Against

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Source: “Virginia” magazine, University of Virginia Alumni Association

    by James A. Bacon

    The incoming Youngkin administration didn’t campaign on reforming “woke” public colleges and universities in Virginia, but I am getting plenty of signals that pushing back against the leftist indoctrination and conformity on campus follows close behind fixing Virginia’s public schools as a priority.

    The first step will be appointing board members sympathetic to conservative goals. Youngkin hasn’t talked much publicly about how he would define his objectives. But he needs to give this careful thought. If he aims to convert the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, and other state institutions into secular versions of Liberty University or Regent University, he will fail spectacularly. If he sets an agenda that appeals to a broad range of the ideological spectrum, he stands a good chance of succeeding.

    The first thing to consider is that Virginia’s public universities are dominated by the left and are becoming intolerant intellectual mono-cultures as the baby boomer generation of scholars, which leaned liberal but included many moderates and conservatives, retires. On college campuses today, faculty members are almost all shades of blue, administrators are shades of blue, and  the most vocal students who dominate the campus culture are shades of blue. Red-hued Boards of Visitors will meet furious resistance if they adopt ham-handed tactics. (more…)

  • Accidental Activists

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Asra Q. Nomani

    In most of our lives as mama bears and papa bears facing activists in a campaign for the soul of America’s children, we had a moment of awakening. A moment when we knew that we had to speak up.

    Mine came on June 7, 2020, when Ann Bonitatibus, the principal of my son’s high school, told our mostly Asian, mostly minority, mostly immigrant parents that we needed to check our “privileges.”

    I wanted to share our journey — including my journey — as accidental activists whom the National School Boards Association and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland started investigating for “domestic terrorism” in the fall of 2021.

    My tips to you are very simple: be unapologetic, speak from the heart and document, document, document your evidence of the political corruption, indoctrination and bureaucratic shenanigans penetrating your school systems. (more…)

  • Which School Districts Are Losing, Gaining Enrollment?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Credit: Jim Weigand

    The school districts showing the biggest drops in enrollment this year are, for the most part, in rural, non-metropolitan areas, according to Virginia Department of Education data shared by Bacon’s Rebellion reader Jim Weigand.

    Ironically, the same can be said of the school districts showing gains in the face of statewide trends. (more…)

  • Let Us Remember

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    U.S.S. Arizona, Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941

  • Who Is the “Irrational Majority” Here?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) has declined to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for school employees and students on the grounds that it lacked the “clear statutory authority” to do so, reports The Virginia Mercury. Federal agencies have yet to add the vaccine to its childhood immunization schedule. “While recommended, it’s not been formally added,” said Dr. Lauri Forlano, deputy commissioner for population health.

    Here’s another reason not to compel COVID vaccinations for students: they’re not needed.

    According to the VDH’s own data, here’s how COVID-related hospitalizations break down by age group:

    Fewer than 1,200 Virginians under 20 years old have been hospitalized for COVID. Only 16 have died. (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.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

About

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.

Fund the Rebellion

Shake up the status quo! Your contributions will be used to pay for faster download speeds and grow readership. Make a one-time donation by credit card or contribute a small sum monthly.

Can’t wait until tomorrow

For your Bacon’s Rebellion fix?

Enter your email address to receive immediate notifications of new posts by email.

SUBSCRIBE

Search Bacon’s Rebellion

Categories

Archives

The Jefferson Council

Protecting Thomas Jefferson’s Legacy at the University of Virginia

Forgot Your Password?

Shoot me an email and I’ll generate a new password for you.

Latest