Bacon's Rebellion

  • Mayor Stoney and His Left-Wing Critics

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    James A. Bacon

    Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

    by James A. Bacon

    Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney published an op-ed in the New York Times a few days ago defending his actions last summer during the tumultuous protests and riots  following the George Floyd killing. I was thinking of writing a post this morning critiquing the piece from a conservative perspective. But then I read an analysis in the Richmond Times-Dispatch blasting Stoney from a left-wing perspective, and I found that more interesting.

    While Stoney has adopted social-justice rhetoric the past year, by the standard of City of Richmond electoral politics, he is a centrist. During his mayoral re-election campaign last year, he had strong, credible challengers from both the right and left, and he threaded a narrow needle between backing the protesters’ social justice causes while also trying to maintain a semblance of public order. In his NY Times editorial, he focused on his role in removing 14 pieces of Confederate “iconography” from city property and working for racial justice, while apologizing for the “unintentional” release of tear gas during one of the demonstrations.

    The mayor has been criticized from the right for allowing protesters to gather unmolested for months in a virtual police-free zone around the Lee Statue on Monument Avenue even as they harassed and terrified nearby residents. But that was never a consideration for RTD reporters Ali Rockett and Chris Suarez in their take-down of the Stoney column. (more…)

  • Layne Going to the Dark Side

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    I do not know if this is good news or bad news for Jim Sherlock’s campaign, but Aubrey Layne, currently the Secretary of Finance, will be joining Sentara on July 1.  (This is about the time during an administration that Cabinet members start jumping ship.)

  • Virginia Democrats Are Stuck with the Parole Board Scandal

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Looks like someone’s trying to defuse what’s going to be a red hot campaign issue this fall:

    Public safety.

    Gov. Ralph Northam yesterday boasted that Virginia had one of the lowest recidivism rates in the country. He claimed that only 24% of the commonwealth’s convicts reoffend within four years of release.

    That is good news, but not for the reasons the governor cited.

    Here’s Northam’s statement, accordion to CBS:

    “Our success is the direct result of effective reentry programs and strong partnerships across our Commonwealth. I remain grateful to the hardworking professionals at the Virginia Department of Corrections who are dedicated to rehabilitation, transforming lives, and building safer communities.”

    Notice the governor gives absolutely no credit to Virginia’s tough-on-crime “no parole” law passed in 1995 as part of former Gov. George Allen’s Truth in Sentencing initiative. (more…)

  • Math and Reading Remediation Coming to Richmond Public Schools

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    I spent the past couple of days writing about thousands of human tragedies playing out in Richmond Pubic Schools (RPS), their complexity and the large bureaucracy responsible for fixing it.  

    Half of the Black kids in fourth grade in RPS schools could not read in 2018-19.  Nine year olds. Half could not multiply. Discipline problems were severe. Ten percent of black RPS middle schoolers who started school in the fall of 2018 were arrested for in-school violations of the law. Large numbers of kids, 13% on the average day, were absent. Now two school years interrupted by COVID.

    Someone has to start somewhere. RPS is starting with a program to mitigate deficient student reading and math skills. (more…)

  • Dishonoring the Dead

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    James A. Bacon

    by Jake Spivey

    Earlier this month, the Virginia Military Institute Board of Visitors voted to “expand the symbolism” of the Virginia Mourning Her Dead statue that memorializes the 10 VMI cadets who died in the Battle of New Market to include all former cadets who have died in battle. The board also approved a motion to “devise a program of contexualization for the painting The Charge of the New Market Cadets, a 21-by-18-foot oil-on-canvas painting showing the VMI Cadet Corps advancing across a wheat field at the pivotal moment of the battle.

    In 1893 VMI had requested the VMI alumnus and internationally famous sculptor Moses Ezekiel to design a memorial for the New Market cadets. It was never meant as a memorial to alumni who died since the Civil War. The painting by Benjamin W. Clinedinst, a VMI alum and member of the National Academy of Art, conveyed the traits of duty, honor, country, and selfless service by showing the Cadet Corps doing together what no one cadet could do individually.

    What does it mean to “contextualize” a work of art celebrating timeless virtues? Does it not strip away the original meaning and intent? What anyone living today the right to reinterpret the intentions of the original artists? (more…)

  • Virginia Project Sues for Defamation

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    James A. Bacon

    The Virginia Project, a Northern Virginia organization that exposed the existence of an online effort to harass and discredit foes of Critical Race Theory in Loudoun County, has filed suit against Jaime Ann Neidig-Wheaton for defamation.

    In a March 18 livestream podcast, Neidig-Wheaton accused The Virginia Project of encouraging or “spurring” unnamed people to threaten her, other members of Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County, and their children, the lawsuit alleges.

    According to the lawsuit, she said, “As a matter of fact, the Virginia Project, who has been a vocal force in this is spurring other people to threaten us. … We’ve been threatened with kidnapping; our children have been threatened. … They’ve gone after my business; they’ve gone after our jobs. … Again, we are being threatened. … The threats are real; the FBI has been notified.” (more…)

  • Teachers’ Unions Frightened by Implications of Remote Learning

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Well, never mind.

    Mayor de Blasio announced Monday that New York City schools will be all in person this fall with no remote options.

    Surprised?

    If you haven’t been keeping up, the teachers’ unions have discovered that a lot of their members are replaceable by remote instructional content from commercial sources.

    A lot of schools nationwide tried it this year and found it was not only better content, but way cheaper to pay for these services from commercial vendors than to pay their own teachers to provide it.

    The National Guard won’t be able to keep many formerly stay-at-home teachers from their classrooms next year.

  • Paul Marik: COVID Quack or Pandemic Hero?

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    James A. Bacon

    Dr. Paul Marik

    by James A. Bacon

    Across the state of Virginia, the fatality rate for COVID-19 patients entering hospitals has been 37.7%. Put another way, nearly two of every five patients died, according to Virginia Department of Health data. But in Norfolk, only 25.8% died. What accounts for that disparity? One possibility is that the dominant hospital in Norfolk is Sentara General Hospital… which is affiliated with the Eastern Virginia Medical School… where Dr. Paul Marik, an EVMS professsor, may have co-developed an inexpensive but highly effective treatment for COVID-19.

    Marik is virtually unknown to Virginians. The only local news story I could find about him, dated about a week ago, tells how he was reprimanded by the Virginia Board of Medicine for prescribing controlled substances to five people who were not his patients. That article noted only in passing that Marik has written more than 400 peer-reviewed journal articles, 50 book chapters, and four books about critical care, and that he has developed a new treatment for sepsis.

    You will get a very different picture of the 63-year-old South African native by reading, “The Drug that Cracked COVID,” written by Michael Capuzzo and published in Mountain Home, a Pennsylvania magazine. Other than to say that Capuzzo obviously did an enormous amount of research for the article, I cannot testify to its fairness, balance or accuracy. But from a surface reading, the reporting seems credible enough that Marik’s story at least warrants telling.

    Marik and four U.S. colleagues who are experts in critical care developed an early treatment protocol for COVID-19 centered on the generic drug Ivermectin they dubbed I-MASK. If the article is to be believed, the protocol has saved millions of lives in poor, developing countries desperate for affordable ways to respond to the pandemic. But the protocol, developed through trial and error in front lines of hospital treatment, did not meet the gold standard of randomized clinical trials demanded by COVID guru Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and Big Pharma. With the active cooperation of the masters of the media/social media universe, the “follow the science” crowd has worked to suppress the findings of Marik and his colleagues. (more…)

  • The Complexity of Richmond Public Schools

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Yesterday I wrote a column  about the broad and deep failures of the Richmond Public School (RPS) system in educating the children in its care.

    Today I will present RPS’ organizational structure, budget and headquarters staffing for managing the complexity of the system. I suspect RPS’ level of complexity is similar to other urban school systems in Virginia.

    It will show that whatever is done to improve the schools faces management challenges in addition to the student achievement and school climate problems discussed yesterday. (more…)

  • Bacon Bits: Snitchers and Whingers

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    James A. Bacon

    The only good snitch is a woke snitch. The Loudoun County School Board has introduced a “Bias Reporting” form as part of its “Detailed Action Plan to Combat Systemic Racism,” reports the Washington Times. “The specific reason behind this action step is to utilize it as a means to amplify and elevate student voice,” a schools spokesman told the Times. A 2019 “systemic equity assessment” had revealed that some students “felt marginalized or had experienced bias.” A Loudoun County parents group, Fight for Schools, termed “Orwellian” a system where students and parents can anonymously report other students for “bias.”

    Whinging about women’s rights. Mary Sue Terry, the first woman elected as Attorney General in Virginia, is still stumping for women’s rights — and she sounds as if little has changed in a hundred years. “A 100 years ago a man could beat his wife with impunity, women weren’t allowed to own property, they couldn’t vote, it was ingrained in them at a sub-conscious level to feel like they were not powerful,” Terry told a Martinsville-area gathering Sunday, reports the Martinsville Bulletin.

    Balderdash. Women have been able to own property in the U.S. since the 18th century, and in an unrestricted way since 1900. In my history of the Massey family, I recounted how Wilmoth Massey, who owned a farm adjacent (or very nearby) the Terry family farm in Patrick County inherited the property after her husband’s death around the turn of the 20th century. As for the right to vote, women’s suffrage was enacted in 1920– 101 years ago. Do I really need to recite all the ways — mental illness, suicides, over-medication, dropout rates, college attendance, life expectancy, the denigration of dads as dolts, legal rights for children — in which men get the short end of the stick? Can you imagine all the blubbering we would hear if the disparities were reversed?

  • School Closings Negatively Affect Female Employment

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    djrippert

    Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

    by D.J. Rippert

    Mom at home. An article from The Center Square summarizes a number of studies relating COVID-19, school policies during the pandemic, and the number of women in the workforce. A study by the journal “Gender & Society” characterized the matter as a “tidal wave of women” leaving the workforce in 2020. Center Square notes that, “Researchers found that women primarily left the workforce (in addition to layoffs and job closures) to help educate their children when schools reverted to virtual learning and children were no longer physically at school.” Statistics indicate that the employment gap between mothers and fathers was less in states where the schools stayed open for in-person instruction, either full-time or part-time. As the article states, “But the gap grew by an average of 5% in states where only virtual learning was offered, such as in California, Delaware and Virginia.” (more…)

  • Richmond’s Disastrous Public Schools Expose Hypocrisy of State Equity Policy

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    I am, tomorrow, going to report a hopeful note about the City of Richmond Public Schools (RPS).  

    It will relate the story of an impressive woman who is working hard to turn around the absolutely horrendous reading and math capabilities of RPS students. But in order to put her challenge in context, I feel I must set the stage for the challenges she faces.

    They are monumental.

    But this is not tomorrow, and RPS is a disgrace. It is ruining thousands of children’s lives every day it operates under current conditions.

    The Governor lives a seven-minute walk away from RPS headquarters on North 9th Street, but he seems not to know that school system exists. His famously aggressive equity czar, Janice Underwood, takes no notice.  

    Neither does his Department of Education, although VDOE is directly responsible to the federal government for the annual improvement of most Richmond schools in return for receipt of Title I funds.  

    That neglect is not for lack of evidence. (more…)

  • Virginia Needs More Brave Teachers Like Christel Coman

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    James A. Bacon

    The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) closed out comments on its proposed new guidelines for evaluating teachers on its Regulatory Town Hall two weeks ago. Jim Sherlock critiqued the standards on Bacon’s Rebellion, but nary a peep was heard anywhere else in the media.

    If accepted in the current form, teachers will be evaluated on their willingness to incorporate left-wing dogma about racial and gender identity into their classrooms. One of the “performance indicators” will require teachers to “eradicate discrimination and bias” while addressing “classroom  power imbalances (based on race, ethnicity, gender, identity, ability and/or socioeconomic status) that perpetuate fear and anxiety of difference.”

    Thanks to the media blackout on the imposition of Cultural Marxism in Virginia schools, the Regulatory Town Hall received only one comment, submitted by Christel Coman. But it’s a doozy. I replicate her comment in full. — JAB

    Today is Mother’s Day — which gives me a perfect vantage point from which to reflect on the children and grandchildren in our family. It also brings to mind a 5th grader in my school who gave me a gift the other day — one of those multi-colored “rubber-band” rings. My reflections and that simple gesture — that silly little multi-colored “rubber-band” ring — said it all. For you see, that student walked with classmates of all persuasions and they liked each — some perhaps loved each other in the sense that good, lasting friendships have built-in. So you see….

    NO — I will not be bullied by this push to assert that group membership defines the essence of humanity. (more…)

  • Fredericksburg Incident Exposes Tactical Divide Between Black Activists

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    James A. Bacon

    Moe Petway. Photo credit: Free Lance-Star

    by James A. Bacon

    Back in April, Isiah Brown made a 911 call to the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office concerning a domestic dispute. Brown told the dispatcher that he was going to kill his brother but also said he was unarmed. When a deputy arrived, Brown was walking down the street away from his house with an object in his hand. According to body-cam footage, the deputy yelled at Brown to “show me your hands” and to “drop the gun.” He then shot Brown seven times. As it turned out, the object was not a gun but a cordless house phone.

    Brown survived the shooting but was hospitalized and has undergone multiple surgeries. A special prosecutor has been assigned to the case, which is still under investigation.

    The incident has done more than open up the divide between Black Lives Matter and defenders of the police, it has revealed a divide in the African-American community.

    Moe Petway, president of the Spotsylvania Branch of the NAACP, jumped on the case. The NAACP negotiated the release of the video and 911 recording of the shooting and pressed for the investigation and special prosecutor. He has established a working relationship with local law enforcement authorities, he says, that allows the NAACP to accomplish things that street protests cannot. (more…)

  • Good News for Corruptocrats

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Listen closely.

    Hear that?

    That’s the sound of champagne corks popping as local corruptocrats and sleazy businessmen celebrate the continued demise of local newspapers.

    I’m talking, of course, about The Virginian-Pilot. Or what’s left of it.

    And The Daily Press.

    Perhaps you heard. On Friday, shareholders of The Tribune Company, which owns The Pilot, The Press, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The New York Daily News, The Orlando Sentinel and about 70 other newspapers, approved a sale of the company to Alden Global Capital — a hedge fund that Vanity Fair once described as “the grim reaper of American newspapers.”

    Terrible news for Southeastern Virginia. (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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