Bacon's Rebellion

  • Dressing Up Garbage

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    James A. Bacon

    by Deborah Hommer

    In the fall of 2020 news media were highlighting the drastic increase in suicide/mental health issues among teenagers. Most accounts blamed the social isolation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

    I think there’s more to it than that.ย 

    Our 9th graderโ€™s required English book last year celebrated two teens who had to learn the โ€œart of killingโ€ in a dystopian world. One teen stated, โ€œIt is the most difficult thing a person can be asked to do. And knowing that it is for the greater good doesnโ€™t make it any easier. โ€ฆ The ending of life used to be in the hands of nature. โ€ฆ We are its sole distributor .. how necessary the work is.โ€ (“Scythe” by Neal Shusterman).

    Three years ago, our 12th graderโ€™s required English book, “Jazz” by Toni Morrison, contained sexual activity between a man and an older teenage girl, a father stomped to death, a mother burned, revenge, obsession, and fantasy killing. The other required book, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” by Tennessee Williams, contained alcoholism, homosexuality, sodomy, frustrated sexuality, infidelity, jealousy, seduction, lying, insulting remarks, and threats to kill.

    Could there be a connection? (more…)

  • Step Aside Gypsy Moths, There’s a New Bug in Town

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    James A. Bacon

    by Bill Tracy

    The next bug infestation: Spotted lanternflies.

    Have you seem them yet? If not, you probably will in the next few years.

    The Winchester region is already a quarantine area. Prince William County has them. Yesterday someone found a dead one in Fairfax County — in a grocery-store produce shipment. (more…)

  • McAuliffe Tries to Change the Subject

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Lemme get this straight, a band of far-right fanatics held a rally in Glen Allen Wednesday night and the governor of Virginia held a press conference the next day to demand that GOP candidate for governor Glenn Youngkin denounce them?

    News flash, Gov. Northam: Youngkin wasnโ€™t there. It wasnโ€™t his rally. He had nothing to do with it.

    Nice try, though.

    At this point Ralph Northam is nothing more than a lame duck political hack trying to breathe life into Terry McAuliffeโ€™s lackluster campaign. Never mind that during the 2019 Blackface Scandal McAuliffe told Northam to resign.

    Thatโ€™s just shoe polish under the bridge now. (more…)

  • How Does Virginia Budget Early-Childhood-Education Money Wind Up in a Park in Detroit?

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock –ย updated Oct 15

    Iโ€™d like to report an organized crime. Itโ€™s just not illegal in Virginia.

    The political Left, fully in control of Virginia government, sends taxpayer money to leftist non-profits, who take their cuts and then send it on to local government entities and yet more nonprofits.

    It is unethical, but that does not matter to Virginiaโ€™s elected Democrats.

    But they have set themselves up for a fall. They may not know enough about nonprofit reporting laws to understand it opens the tax money transfers up to public examination.

    Federally required independent accountants of nonprofits wonโ€™t play along. When non-profits touch the money, they have to report it to the IRS on their annual Form 990โ€™s,ย where we mere taxpayers can see it.

    In this case we will trace early childhood education money from the Virginia budget to a park in Detroit. (more…)

  • COVID, School Closings and the Real Racism

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    James A. Bacon

    Click thumbnail for full image.

    by James A. Bacon

    If you’re looking for evidence of “systemic racism” in Virginia schools, you can find it in a table produced by Matt Hurt, executive director of the Comprehensive Instructional Program, and published in the previous post. The table shows the extraordinary decline in in-person instruction that took place in the 2020-21 school year.

    The Code of Virginia requires 990 hours of instruction yearly. The statewide average of in-person learning for White students was 439 hours. The statewide average for Black students was 338 hours.

    Put another way, Black students received 100 fewer hours of in-person instruction on average than White students, and 59 fewer hours than the statewide average for all students. By all accounts, distance learning was a massive failure for poor children, and hybrid learning not much better.

    If you define “racism” by differential outcomes, that’s about as racist as it gets.

    But the reason for this racial disparity has nothing to do with the usual left-wing bogeyman — ubiquitous white racism — and everything to do with “progressive” politics. The racial disparities in in-person learning were the direct outcome of school-closing policies driven by COVID hysteria and the teachers, teacher unions, parents and politicians most sensitive to that hysteria. (more…)

  • How COVID School Closures Impacted SOL Test Scores

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    James A. Bacon

    Table 1: 2021 In-Person Instructional Hours (and percentage of 990-hour standard) by Virginia educational region.

    This is the fourth in a series of articles discussing Virginia’s Standards of Learning assessments.

    by Matt Hurt

    The Code of Virginia requires school divisions to provide students a minimum of 990 hours of instruction yearly. During the COVID-19 epidemic, the Virginia Department of Education waived that standard, allowing local school districts to offer remote learning and hybrid remote/in-person alternatives as they found expedient. Local practices varied widely.

    Earlier this year VDOE surveyed public school divisions to determine the number of in-person instructional hours offered during the academic year. The table above displays the results collected, broken down by region, race (Blacks and Whites only), and by disability status.

    Some broad conclusions emerge from this data.

    • Statewide, only 40% of students experienced full in-person instruction. (No student experienced a full school year. Even divisions that offered in-person five days per week did so on an abbreviated school day.)
    • Southwest Virginia schools provided the most in-person learning (60%), and Northern Virginia schools the least (34.7%).
    • Statewide, Black students experienced far less in-person learning (338 hours on average) than Whites (439ย  hours) — a gap of more than 100 hours. (more…)

  • A New Form of Sexual Identity Enters the Lexicon: Gender Fluid

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    James A. Bacon

    Scott Smith, whose daughter was raped in a Loudoun County school, is shown here being escorted out of a Loudoun County school board meeting. He was subsequently charged with two misdemeanors and sentenced to 10 days in jail, all suspended.

    by James A. Bacon

    Loudoun Now has confirmed key details of the Daily Wire expose describing the ordeal of plumber Scott Smith and his family after his daughter was sexually assaulted in a high school bathroom by a boy dressed in a skirt.

    Yesterday I refrained from going ballistic on this story, which was based on the reporting of a single, conservative news outlet. The account of a girl being assaulted by a transgender student given admittance to the girls’ restroom fit the conservative anti-transgender narrative so perfectly — the incident is exactly what conservatives have predicted — that I wanted to see reporting from another source before passing judgment. Other conservative publications have jumped into the fray, but we now have confirmation from the home-town paper.

    One telling detail in the Loudoun County account warrants greater attention. According to Smith, who professes to be largely apolitical and not part of the conservative protest crowd packing school board meetings, the youth who raped his daughter identified as “gender fluid.” (more…)

  • Big Lessons from Government Data on Virginiaโ€™s 286 Nursing Facilities

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Nursing facilities in Virginia offer an incredible mixed bag. There are heroes and villains. Much to see here.

    This column will offer expansive ย views of government data on each of the 286 nursing facilities in this state. ย 

    I found out a lot things that really matter to the quality of a nursing facility in Virginia. And a lot of things about government oversight.ย  nd government insurance payments.

    From the visualization aids I provide, so will you.

    • You will find absolutely outstanding facilities. ย 
    • You will find others that have fallen so short of government standards for so long that you will wonder why Virginia does not revoke their licenses. ย 
    • You will see the nursing homes in your region. ย 
    • You will see which chains deliver excellent facilities and which do not, apparently as business models in both cases. Many chains tend to be consistently good or consistently bad. They are color coded in the โ€œGroup Ownershipโ€ column based upon the overall performance of the chain. ย 
    • Take a look at the staffing star ratings. Those are based on quarterly filings of data that is linked to payrolls, so it is relatively up to date and relatively accurate. One- or two-star staffing is a very bad sign.
    • You will see the stunning outperformance of nursing facilities in continuing care facilities in Virginia, also as a function of business models.
    • Nursing home inputs — people — enter nursing homes in much different physical conditions and ages. You will see that where you live is a statistical predictor of health. And therefore of the nursing home challenges in areas of poor health. Which tracks with areas of poverty. And low government insurance payments.

    Finally, take a look at the Inspection activity. ย 

    It reflects the massive understaffing of the VDH inspectors.ย Look at the โ€œLast standard (full) health inspectionโ€ column. You will see coded in red that 42 (15%) of Virginiaโ€™s nursing facilities have not been fully inspected since 2018.ย  The federal requirement is once a year. ย 

    You will be convinced by the data that strict and timely government oversight is required to ensure, and ensure Virginians of, of nursing facility quality. ย 

    The state must fix the statutory and budget issues that have resulted, purposely, in Office of Licensure and Inspection staffing shortfalls. (more…)

  • Northam Plastics Order Will Backfire

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    James A. Bacon

    Vassey

    by Brett Vassey

    Governor Northam recently issued Executive Order 77 (EO 77) mandating all state agencies (including colleges and universities) to ban purchasing or using certain plastics products (primarily foodservice and trash bags) by October 2021, ban plastic bottled water, phase out all single-use plastic items by 2025, source and use non-plastic alternatives, and compost or recycle alternative products.

    EO 77 falsely assumes that alternatives to plastics will always be environmentally preferable — which is not the case. In fact, we can demonstrate that EO 77 will lead to increased landfilling, more greenhouse gas emissions, less food safety, fewer healthy food/beverage choices, accessibility barriers for the differently abled, and increased littering.

    The mandate to use and procure only non-plastic alternatives does not require assessments of their environmental impacts, costs to taxpayers or consumers, recyclability, compostability, increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, small business impacts, accessibility impacts, or the unintended consequences because EO 77 bypassed public participation by sidestepping compliance with the Virginia Administrative Process Act.

    We estimate that replacing 14.4 million metric tons of plastic packaging would result in more than 64 million tons of other material. This would result in a significant increase in total energy demand, water consumption, solid waste by weight and by volume, global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, smog formation, and ozone depletion. Not exactly a net environmental benefit. (more…)

  • VB School Board Shoots Down Resolution

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Last night the Virginia Beach School Board voted down 4-to-7 a proposal that would clarify school board policy regarding training and teaching about race and racism.

    Among other guidelines, the resolution would have prohibited teachers from training, teaching or promoting, among other propositions, the ideas (a) that any individual by virtue of his or her race or skin color is inherently racist, privileged or oppressive, (b) that any individual bears responsibility for the actions committed by other members of his or her race, skin color or religion, and (c) that the United States is an inherently racist country.ย (Read the full documentย here.) (more…)

  • No Need to Call in Feds, Says Virginia School Board Association

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    James A. Bacon

    Protest at a Loudoun County school board meeting. Photo credit: Loudoun Now.

    by James A. Bacon

    It became national news when the National School Board Association (NASB) asked the Biden administration to investigate threats and violence against school board members around the country. The Justice Department announced it would collaborate with the FBI and local law enforcement to prosecute criminal behavior. The views of the national association did not reflect the views of at least 13 state organizations, including Virginia’s, reportsย National Review.ย 

    The Virginia School Boards Association made clear in a letter published last week that it provided no information to the national organization and was never informed that a letter would be sent. The NASB was not the first decision with which the Virginia association disagrees, the Virginia group wrote, and it “probably will not be the last.” (more…)

  • Bacon Bits: The Political Class in Action

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    James A. Bacon

    Is Charlottesville governable? Charlottesville City Manager Chip Boyles has announced his resignation, making him the fifth interim or full-time city manager to leave the city since 2018, reports the Daily Progress. “The public disparagement shown by several community members and Mayor [Nikuyah] Walker has begun to negatively effect [sic] my personal health and well-being,” he wrote to City Council. Walker responded by saying Boyles should have been fired. “You shouldn’t have been able to sleep at night because you are a liar,” she said in a Facebook video. Walker, who gained notoriety for penning a poem likening Charlottesville to rape, has herself said she will not run for re-election. Boyle and Walker butted heads over many issues, including his firing of the city’s female, African-American police chief. One councilman told the Daily Progress that in the opinion of an executive search firm contacted last year, “we were not likely to be able to hire anybody with council as dysfunctional as it is.”

    It was an innocent mistake, yer honor. Chesapeake Board Chair Victoria Proffitt, who had been laid off from her adjunct math teaching job at Tidewater Community College, has returned $984 in unemployment benefits she was overpaid by the Virginia Employment Commission. She attributed the error to a VEC oversight, but a special prosecutor had contended she was “either being intentionally dishonest or was just exceedingly careless,” says the Virginian-Pilot. Meanwhile… (more…)

  • Did Loudoun School Officials Cover up a Rape?

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    In the winter of 2020 I had several heated arguments about HB257, which was introduced by Newport News Democrat Mike Mullen, approved by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Ralph Northam.

    Hereโ€™s a news story where Mullen proudly touted his soft-on-crime bills.

    One of those abolished the requirement that all criminal activity on school property had to be reported to the police.

    Proponents of the measure claimed that principals were calling the cops to break up fistfights and as a result, minor skirmishes were escalating into criminal matters.

    On March 12, 2020 Ralph Northam signed the bill into law, over the objections of many, including Virginia Beachโ€™s Victoria Manning, according to WAVY-TV 10.

    Virginia Beach School Board member Vicky Manning feels the law doesnโ€™t help the lack of trust in the disciplinary process. (more…)

  • Descent into Madness: Loudoun County Edition

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Two weeks ago the National School Boards Association (NASB) appealed in a highly publicized letter to President Biden to do something to stop the “threats and acts of violence against public school children, public school board members, and other public school district officials.” Attorney General Merrick Garland said the FBI would respond to the challenge. “Threats against public servants are not only illegal,” he said, “they run counter to our nation’s core values.”

    What heinous events prompted the intervention of the FBI into local law enforcement matters? The NASB spelled out numerous “acts of malice, violence and threats” by parents irate about the rise of race demogoguery, transgender politics, masking policies, and pornography in libraries.

    One individual in Illinois was arrested for aggravated battery. In Michigan an individual yelled a Nazi salute (undoubtedly in the same sarcastic spirit of the Nazi salute that set off a Twitter Outrage Mob in the Netflix series “The Chair”), and another “prompted the board to call a recess.” In Virginia, elaborated the NASB letter, “an individual was arrested, another man was ticketed for trespassing, and a third person was hurt during a school board meeting discussion.”

    According to the news story the NASB linked to, the individual in Virginia who “was arrested” was a certain Scott T. Smith. The video clip below shows what kind of threat he posed to Loudoun County School Board members.

    (more…)

  • Another Straw in the Wind…

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    James A. Bacon

    With all due recognition that fund-raising emails are calculated to stir emotions (either positive or negative) for the purpose of inspiring donations, I find this appeal from the McAuliffe campaign to contain a remarkable confession.

    Iโ€™m flabbergasted, Jim โ€ฆ

    Weโ€™ve been sending you email after email about just how important this race is, but itโ€™s October, and itโ€™s looking like a tossup right now.

    I thought folks would be fired up to get out the vote, but at this point, it seems like enthusiasm is at an all time low.

    The default mode of candidates is to feign optimism even if they don’t feel it. They maintain the pretense of enthusiasm in the electorate, even if it doesn’t exist. If the McAuliffe campaign admits openly that enthusiasm seems to be at “an all time low,” it might well be.

    — JAB

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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