Bacon's Rebellion

  • A Compromise for Confederate Statues

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    James A. Bacon

    I was visiting Berryville this weekend to attend my niece’s wedding when I happened upon this statue at the Clarke County courthouse. My thought: That’s one way to handle the Confederate statue conundrum. Don’t take it down. But never prune the tree growing all around it. In a couple more years, the statue still will be there — it just won’t be visible.

    I do say, the sight of that branch protruding between the fellow’s legs makes me a tad uncomfortable. The branch may explain the odd expression on his face!

    — JAB

  • Richmond Schools’ Flawed Data Threatens Federal Funds

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    sherlockj


    by James C. Sherlock

    The massive flows of federal and state funding to local school districts are based largely on data reported by the schools to their districts, the districts to the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), and VDOE to the U.S. Department of Education.

    In Fiscal Year 2018, the U.S. Department of Education sent more than $820 million to Virginia in support of K-12 education. Every dollar was allocated based on data collected and quality assured at the local, state and federal levels. 

    The City of Richmond Public Schools (RPS) has massive problems that result in outsized contributions by the federal government. One of those problems — a serious and potentially consequential one — could imperil federal funding.

    We will explore a recent event that illustrates that issue. (more…)

  • The Left Acknowledges Virginia’s Violent Crime Spike

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    James A. Bacon

    Norfolk Police Chief Larry Boone. Photo credit: The Virginia Mercury

    by James A. Bacon

    It’s good to see that our colleagues at The Virginia Mercury understand that Virginia does have a crime problem. As an article by Graham Moomaw acknowledges in the lead paragraph, Virginia’s homicide rate hit a 20-year high in 2020, and violent crimes are trending even higher in some cities this year. Indeed, the problem is so impossible to sweep under the rug that Democratic activists and politicians are debating what to do about it.

    Not surprisingly, however, our friends on the left aren’t blaming the criminals, much less the enactment of sweeping new laws designed to reduce “mass incarceration.” For the most part, they are defining the issue as too many guns.

    The new thinking on the left — gun-control groups, community activists, and health providers joined in a Community Violence Coalition — is to devote millions in COVID-relief dollars on community-based “violence intervention programs.” (more…)

  • Chaos In the Streets, er, In the Sidewalks

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Sidewalks are going to get very crowded, and now is the time to start thinking about what to do about it.

    We all know that self-driving cars soon will become a common sight, but a white paper, “The Last Block,” by Canadian Bern Grush, an occasional contributor to Bacon’s Rebellion several  years ago, contends that small robotic vehicles — delivering food and packages, sweeping, removing snow, measuring, monitoring, surveilling, repositioning dockless scooters — will precede them.

    Dozens of companies from Amazon and FedEd to Starship and Uber, are building small sidewalk-bound robots to deliver food and parcels over the “last mile.” The arrival of these vehicles will require a significant re-thinking of the function and design of streets, sidewalks, and parking.

    Virginia is not ready to accommodate a swarm of delivery bots. But there is still tie to get prepared. (more…)

  • Equity Innuendo

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    James A. Bacon

    Where’s the beef?

    by Carol J. Bova

    In 1984 the Wendy’s fast food chain launched an advertising campaign in which the catchphrase was, “Where’s the beef?” The phrase entered the popular lexicon as a way to question the substance of an idea or claim. The time has come to dust off the phrase in this age of fast, loose and often-baseless charges of systemic racism.

    In a July 8 article in the Gazette Journal, “Let’s talk about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” Mathews County Supervisor Melissa Mason slammed the county and its school system. “In our small, rural utopia of Mathews County, due to location, declining population and demographics,” she wrote, “we must be intentional with how we address ‘D-E-I”.’ We lack in these areas in our public school system and in our government.”

    Oh, yeah? Anyone can say anything. What, specifically, is lacking? Where’s the beef to this accusation? (more…)

  • No, Chief, “We” Didn’t Fail Accused Teenaged Killer

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    In the early hours of Sunday morning, 47-year-old Glenn B. Kreps was shot to death on A View Street, in Norfolk’s Ocean View.

    Details about the dead man are scarce.

    One thing we do know: A 14-year-old has been arrested and charged with his murder.

    I don’t know about you, but my thoughts are with the dead man. Who was he? Why was he killed? Did he leave behind a family? You know, the sort of questions ordinary, law-abiding people ask when they hear of a violent crime.

    You’d expect the chief of police to express similar concerns about the shooting victim.

    Ah, but this is in Norfolk, where the top cop is apparently more concerned with perps than victims, like so many lefties. (more…)

  • Constitutionality of Vaccination Mandate

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    There has been much opposition expressed on this blog regarding UVa, and, by extension, other higher education institutions, requiring students and staff to be vaccinated against COVID as a requirement for attending class in the fall.  The policy has been said to be, among other things, unconstitutional.

    Not surprisingly, a judge has spoken. Today, a federal district judge ruled in favor of Indiana University in a suit brought challenging that university’s vaccination mandate. The court said, “The Fourteenth Amendment permits Indiana University to pursue a reasonable and due process of vaccination in the legitimate interest of public health for its students, faculty and staff.”

    Of course, this is only one judge and it is not unusual for judges in different parts of the country to rule differently on similar points of law. Also, a district court’s ruling is generally applicable only in that district, but the case is likely to have some precedential value elsewhere.

    The challengers have vowed to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  • More Clarity, Please, About Vaccinations for COVID Survivors

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Since late January, when COVID-19 vaccines became available to the general public in Virginia, 99.4% of the cases, 99% of hospitalizations, and 99.3% of deaths have occurred in people who have not been vaccinated, according to the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association (VHHA).

    “The scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that the COVID-19 vaccines prevent people from becoming seriously ill, requiring hospitalization, or dying from the virus, as well as spreading it to others,” states the hospital lobby organization in a statement released this morning.

    VHHA now supports hospitals and health systems amending their vaccine policies to require vaccinations for employees. Acknowledging that each hospital and health system is “unique,” VHHA leaves it up to each organization to determine the appropriate time to implement a requirement.

    I have no doubts about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the United States. For many segments of the population (including 68-year-olds such as myself), it makes eminent sense to get vaccinated. My big question is whether it makes sense for people who have already survived the virus — at least 685,000 confirmed cases in Virginia — and who can demonstrate that they are protected by antibodies. (more…)

  • Another Free Speech Fiasco at UVa

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    James A. Bacon

    Charlottesville attorney Charles L. Weber Jr., represented University of Virginia student Morgan Bettinger in legal proceedings involving the University Judiciary Committee, which condemned her for words that allegedly constituted a “risk” to other students. This incident is a case study in how leftist, “anti-racist” students at UVa wield processes and procedures, with the complicity of the administration, to repress free speech and chastise those who offend them. I republish here a letter from Weber to UVa President Jim Ryan asking for redress. We’ll soon find out how sincere Ryan is in his commitment to free speech and expression. — JAB

    Dear President Ryan,

    I am writing to urge you to correct a grave injustice perpetrated by
    the University of Virginia (the University) against a student during this
    past academic year.

    Morgan Bettinger was unfairly punished by the University
    Judiciary Committee (UJC) for speaking words protected by the
    Constitution. However, because UJC appeals are limited to process, not
    substance, the Judicial Review Board (JRB) concluded that the UJC
    decision whether erroneous or not was unreviewable. (more…)

  • Some Peoples’ Pain Matters More than Others’

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Robert E. Lee statue on Richmond’s Monument Ave. Photo credit: Jay Paul/Reuters.

    by Catesby Leigh

    After George Floyd’s fatally brutal arrest, dozens of Confederate monuments were banished from civic settings throughout the South. And their ranks were further thinned last weekend, when Charlottesville’s equestrian statues to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were finally hoisted off their pedestals after a prolonged legal battle.

    But the fate of what may be the most important Confederate statue of all has yet to be determined. The magnificent equestrian tribute to Lee on Richmond’s Monument Avenue — the old Confederate capital’s principal venue for Lost Cause commemoration — is still standing. Its majestically rusticated granite pedestal, 40 feet tall, was hideously defaced with obscenity-laced graffiti during last year’s Black Lives Matter–Antifa agitation. Rings of graffitied jersey barriers and chain-link fencing eight feet high now gird the monument, situated on a turfed circle 200 feet wide. Despite some splashes of paint, the bronze statue itself appears undamaged, and its handsome silhouette, when viewed from a distance, is unimpaired. (more…)

  • Northam Administration Neglects Virginia’s Mentally Ill

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    You would think that with a medical doctor occupying Virginia’s Governor’s Mansion, Virginia would have topped the nation in COVID testing and COVID-19 vaccine rollouts and would be setting the standard for care for the mentally ill.

    You would be wrong on all counts.

    At the risk of plowing old fields, Virginia was close to dead last in both COVID categories for months. Shoot, even former Gov. George Allen was forced to cross our Southern border — along with hordes of other Virginians — to get a vaccine in North Carolina back in February when the commonwealth’s vaccine program was a convoluted mess. (more…)

  • Only the Courts Are Protecting Virginians – Again

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Barton Swain explores a topic in the Wall Street Journal that bears examination in Virginia. He makes a profound observation:

    “The sheer illogic of (the Texas election laws) controversy captures something essential about culture-war progressives. They are able to embrace a cause, condemn dissenters and doubters as monsters, and experience no cognitive dissonance despite having themselves held the contrary view a short time ago.”

    It is evidence of a rejection by many of their own personal and political histories — of positions they once claimed on moral grounds. They dismiss citizens as beneath contempt for beliefs that until recently they held themselves. 

    Sackcloth and ashes are not often in evidence, unless you count black face. (more…)

  • A Genuine Free Lunch

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    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Some people commenting on my recent post regrading the G3 Program for community colleges challenged my characterization of it as being a free community college education for some people. They contended that it really was not free; the student may not have to pay tuition, but the money for the program came from taxpayers. Therefore, it was not free because taxpayers were paying for it. That is a valid argument.

    But I am here to tell you that there really is a free state program for some Virginia residents, which I suspect not many people are aware of. If you are at least 60 years old and have lived in Virginia for at least one year, you can take up to three courses per semester in a Virginia institution of higher education and not have to pay any tuition or fees. (Sec. 23.1-639 et seq., Code of Virginia) (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Jeanine’s Memes at the Bull Elephant

  • The Authoritarian Nature of DE&I Training

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Stay in step…. Or else.

    TO: The President, the College Board, the Faculty, the Staff, and the Constituents of Northern Virginia Community College

    FROM: Dr. A Schuhart (DACCE), Professor of English, NVCC-Annandale

    DATE: 04/19/2021

    RE:  Letter of Dissent

    After completing the required DEI training, it is clear to me that the claims of this training are a direct expression of Critical Race Theory (CRT). There is also absolutely no question that CRT is a scholarly claim, not an objective truth; therefore, it is a tentative, constructed truth about which individual Faculty may rightly and legally have professional disagreement, and whose construction and communication is governed by principles of academic discourse; and, that among these principles are:

    • the individual scholar’s right to determine the truth of any scholarly claim independently,
    • and, that truth is created through democratic consensus, and it cannot be imposed through process or force or law without invalidating the claim itself, nor can a scholar be required to enact such a truth against individual belief or conscience without infringing on that right of independent evaluation;
    • and, that the majority opinion cannot impose its view upon the minority using institutional process or force or law, and that the principle of Academic Freedom specifically and intentionally protects minority opinion in every scholarly claim;
    • and, that these rights are asserted not for the scholar alone, but also for the Citizens in our classes. (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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