Bacon's Rebellion

  • End the Emergency Orders. Now. Every One.

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Governor Ralph Northam Signals His Virtue

    by Steve Haner

    There is no more COVID emergency. Every single emergency order issued by Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam should be lifted immediately. Not relaxed or revised, ended.

    For the millions of Virginians now vaccinated, this is all just virtue signaling, “pandemic theater.” For the millions of Virginians who have made conscious decisions not to get the vaccine, my level of concern for them has evaporated. They, their families, and their health care providers are on their own, and, frankly, most will be fine until winter stimulates the virus again.

    More Virtue Signaling

    By then, more of them will have come to their senses and gotten the shots.

    The rules in place are really starting to look stupid.  President Joe Biden, Governor Northam and all the others holding onto and consciously modeling needless restrictions are the real anti-vaxxers now. They are the ones clearly rejecting all the scientific evidence of vaccine effectiveness.  (more…)

  • Maskless in Mississippi

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    There’s so much news we could discuss today. But it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

    I’m here to be a little ray of Monday morning sunshine. I want to assure you that a lifetime of living as a free American can’t be wiped out by 14 months of living under the thumb of power-drunk governors.

    Yes, I visited one of the Free States over the weekend. And it was exhilarating. Best of all, re-adjusting to normal was easy.

    No doubt you’ve been hearing about what it’s like in states such as Florida, Texas and Tennessee. Places where governors realize that lockdowns and mask mandates have little impact on the spread of the virus and where they trust their citizens to make their own decisions about how much risk they are willing to take with their health.

    Imagine that.

    Unfortunately, we live in Virginia where one man — Gov. Ralph Northam — decides how many people can watch a ballgame or come to your wedding and whether you can buy an adult beverage after midnight. (more…)

  • More Positive Notes on General Assembly Members

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    I appreciate Jim Sherlock providing a positive view of two members of the General Assembly. He is right that we often dwell on the negative aspects or members of the legislature and neglect the good ones. In that vein, I am offering a supplementary list of legislators who are conscientious and smart and who work hard to advance the interests of their constituents and the Commonwealth. Taking another cue from Jim, the list is bi-partisan.

    Del. Vivian Watts

    Del. Vivian Watts, D-Fairfax, is one of the longest-serving legislators, having first been elected in 1981. In fact, she is the longest-serving woman in the history of the House of Delegates.  She is also the only current member who has served as a Cabinet Secretary. (She interrupted her service in the House to serve as Secretary of Transportation and Public Safety under Governor Baliles. At that time, the two areas were combined in one secretariat.)  She is a true data wonk. She is well-known for her charts and graphs that she uses in floor debate. She has one of the best, if not the best, understandings of the tax code of all the members. Her focus on tax policy and her grasp of the details are evident here in her presentation of her bill reinstating the estate tax in Virginia. From my perspective, she has a tendency at times to seem like a school marm lecturing her charges. That persona has probably prevented her from advancing in party leadership roles. To her credit, however, she can be quite passionate in her defense of people who are hard- working, but less fortunate. That passion comes across in this video of her opposing the tax bill that would increase tax deductions. (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Sunday Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Sunday Funday Memes at the Bull Elephant

  • Chase Aide Pulls Gun in Self Defense

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Screenshot from Chase attending the pro-Trump rally at the National Mall Jan. 6.

    by James A. Bacon

    Sometimes Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, goes out looking for trouble. Sometimes trouble comes looking for Amanda Chase.

    Yesterday the Washington Post published an account of an incident in which Chase’s aide brandished an AR-15 pistol at a man whom Chase said threatened them during a road rage incident. My immediate reaction upon reading the story was, “Oh, no, here we go again. More bat-dung craziness from Trump in Heels.”

    By the time I finished reading the story, I was thinking, “Wow, good thing they had a gun!”

    The Republican gubernatorial candidate and two aides had departed a campaign event in Virginia Beach and were “somewhere around Norfolk,” heading home when the incident occurred. (more…)

  • Corporate Tax Already Exploding in Virginia

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    First published this morning in The Roanoke Times.

    With Virginia’s fiscal year now three-quarters complete, and basically one year since the depths of the COVID-19 recession, state tax revenues are soaring. Despite reports that the boom results from the economic rebound, it remains clear that changes in tax policy under Governor Ralph Northam are the major driver.

    Usually, the state financial reports compare results year over year. Instead, compare the recent data to four years ago. Four years ago it was Governor Terry McAuliffe coming to the end of his term as President Donald Trump began work on what would be his legacy tax bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

    In the four years since the March 2017 report, the state’s overall general fund collections to date are up 26%, almost three times the basic inflation rate for the same period (under 9%.) That is an extra $3.35 billion compared to four years ago at the same point. That is just the General Fund, ignoring all the other ways the state taxes us, such as last year’s gasoline tax increases.

    About half of the added General Fund revenue came from individual income tax withholding, up 17% or more than $1.5 billion. It is the largest revenue category, so you would expect that to lead the pack. But it leads only in dollars, not in percentage growth.

    Corporate income taxes grew 68 % over four years ago. The revenue category that includes the state’s tax on real estate transactions recorded at courthouses was up 72%. State policy didn’t spark the real estate price boom behind soaring recordation taxes. But intentional state policy has increased the corporate income tax harvest by two-thirds, to $315 million more than four years ago.  (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

  • VDOE Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Standards to Use Schools to Create New Leftists

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    The Governor approves leftist SEL standards for public schools

    by James C. Sherlock

    The Virginia Department of Education has posted — sort of — for citizen comment its draft Social Emotional Learning (SEL) standards. (Please note: the link to the VDOE citizen comment page has been corrected.)

    These draft standards represent an overt attempt to turn school children into social justice warriors of the Democratic left. There is no rational defense to counter that observation — the document is awash in evidence.

    It takes considerable curiosity and some experience with the system to find the Draft Standards, the comment page and the Notice of Intended Regulatory Action (NOIRA) page for this particular action. It turns out that there is good reason for the hide and seek.

    VDOE wants no one outside the school system to read it much less comment on it. (more…)

  • VPM and the ACLU Descend into Madness

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Taylor Marie Maloney

    by James A. Bacon

    Only one Richmond news outlet, Virginia Public Media, has written about the controversy engendered by the hateful online language of Taylor Maloney, president of the Virginia Commonwealth University student government. No surprise, the angle of the VPM report was not how Taylor tweeted, “i hate white people so much its not even funny” and advocated the killing of police, but the “harassment” that Taylor, a Black non-binary transgender activist, has received from irate right-wing bloggers.

    Maloney’s propensity for violent and racist rhetoric was outed, so to speak, by Andy Ngo, a conservative journalist writing in an online publication, The Post Millennial.

    Maloney, who goes by the pronouns them/they, has adopted various personas on Twitter, including “fuck off honkeys” and “cancel cultural worker.” When a follower of the black nationalist Nation of Islam group rammed his car into Capitol Police, killing one of the officers on April 2, Maloney celebrated his death. “[L]ove this we need more of this,” “they” tweeted. (more…)

  • VMPI Would Eliminate Tracked Courses

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    No, despite the uncanny similarity, that is not a senior VDOE official. That’s a weasel, commonly found along the James River.

    by James A. Bacon

    Yes, Virginia, it looks like the Virginia Mathematics Pathway Initiative (VMPI) does seek to do away with “tracked” courses in which quicker and slower learners attend separate classes geared to their abilities. Gifted students would be given “extension topics” that would allow them to explore concepts that would not otherwise be covered in the one-size-fits-all math curriculum.

    While insisting that VMPI still will allow “accelerated courses,” which have a different meaning from “tracked classes,” James Lane and the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) officials have studiously avoided telling the public how the initiative would do away with tracked courses. Reporters who regurgitated Lane’s rhetoric during a press conference earlier this week were too dim-witted to ask him what he meant by “accelerated.”

    Now comes a document of “School Board Talking Points,” dated April 26, under the masthead of Fairfax County Public Schools. I am told that it was distributed to every math department in the school system. Here is the smoking gun:

    The proposed design provides students a path to explore mathematics in a way that meets their needs without having to take a different course than their grade-level peers.

    (more…)

  • The Accounting Fraud Behind the Bloated Student Loan Program

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    America’s student loan program has turned into a half-trillion dollar government boondoggle, comparable in scope to the savings & loan scandal that rocked the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of enriching go-go businessmen who gambled hundreds of billions of dollars on real estate, the student loan fiasco has steered hundreds of billions into colleges and universities, subsidizing out-of-control spending and ever-escalating cost of attendance, even while shackling a generation of college kids with debt they can never repay.

    Taxpayers could be on the hook for roughly a third of the $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio, according to an analysis performed by Jeff Courtney, a former JP Morgan executive, for former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The Biden administration has blown off the analysis as biased by DeVos’ conservative political agenda, which all but guarantees that the loan program will not be reformed any time soon. Unfortunately, as a detailed account in the Wall Street Journal explains, the bad loans are metastasizing and the quality of the loan portfolio is deteriorating at an alarming rate.

    If one buys into Courtney’s analysis, the student loan program will have a come-to-Jesus moment of clarity and truth-telling eventually. The current trajectory is not fiscally sustainable. If the system is reformed to operate on an actuarially sound basis, it could create a crisis for higher education in America — and Virginia institutions are no exception.

    According to State Council of Higher Education for Virginia data, 62% of students graduated from Virginia institutions with four-year bachelor’s degrees in 2017-18 borrowed money. They owed more than $34,000 on average. That doesn’t include those who dropped out before graduating. (more…)

  • A Positive View of the Performance of Two Key General Assembly Members

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Jason Miyares speaks on the floor of the General Assembly
    Sen. Chap Petersen speaking on senate floor last year. Credit: Virginia Mercury

    by James C. Sherlock

    Virginia has some dreadful members of its General Assembly. We spend more time writing about them than we do on those who are exemplary.

    I am going to focus on two that I truly admire, Senator Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, and Delegate Jason Miyares, R-Virginia Beach.

    It is hard to relate in words the true impact of Virginia’s elimination of the death penalty.  Jason Miyares is a long-time friend of mine, a former prosecutor, my delegate and a candidate for Attorney General. He recently spoke to this issue on the floor of the House of Delegates in opposition to the bill.

    He never mentioned either party, any other politician or his own candidacy. (more…)

  • State Anthem Controversies: Carry Me Back to Old Virginia

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    James Bland

    by James Wyatt Whitehead V

    In the early 1870s, a young pre-law student at Howard College was inspired by classmate and future wife, Mamie Friend. James Alan Bland would listen to the homesick sentiments of Mamie and her home in tidewater Virginia. During a trip to meet Ms. Friend’s family the two sat down together with pen, paper, and a banjo. Bland composed his song to illustrate the reflections of a freed slave, who in old age, embraced memories of a former life on a plantation. The apologue conjures up memories of a simple agricultural life, the beauty of the natural world of tidewater Virginia, and a strong affection towards a former master.  According to the “Psychology of Music,” Bland uses the key of A to declare innocence, love, cheerfulness, and acceptance of one’s affairs. C minor reinforces key of A with a languishing sigh of a home sick soul. The G major invokes calmness, rustic scenery, faithfulness, and friendship. Using the lens of modern scholarship, it is easy to find flaws of Mr. Bland’s ode. The lines below are difficult, illogical, and subservient to the modern ear.

    “There’s where the old darke’ys heart am long’d to go,
    There’s where I labored so hard for old massa,
    There’s where this old darke’ys life will pass away.
    Massa and missis have long gone before me,”

    In order to understand “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”, the reader must come to know James A. Bland. He was born on October 22nd, 1854 in Flushing, New York, to a free and educated African American family. James’s father was the first African American to graduate from Oberlin College in 1845. The family relocated to Washington, D.C., in the late 1860s where the head of the family worked as an examiner in the U.S. Patent Office. James and his father enrolled together at the Howard College. Father studied law and son studied liberal arts as a pre law major. (more…)

  • Still Unanswered: Will New Math Pathway Allow “Tracked” Classes?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Three days ago James F. Lane, superintendent of public instruction for Virginia public schools, successfully snuffed out a spreading narrative that the proposed Virginia Mathematics Pathway Initiative (VMPI) would eliminate “accelerated” courses for high-achieving math students.

    In a press conference, he stated categorically: “We are not eliminating accelerated courses. We are not reducing the rigor of our courses. … We’re not eliminating any pathways to calculus.”

    The media bought the story, defanging an issue that was alarming Northern Virginia parents who feared their children would be short-changed by the new policy and that was giving ammunition to Republican gubernatorial candidates. According to The Washington Post coverage of the event, Lane said he had no idea how people came to believe that the initiative called for eliminating accelerated math courses. “I don’t know where that came from, but what I will say is I’m worried that people are misinterpreting things.”

    Well, I’ll tell you how people came to think that the Northam administration planned to extinguish accelerated math programs. First, Team Northam saw in math-curriculum reform an opportunity to advance its commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and it drank deeply of literature decrying tracked courses as racist. Second, its messaging repeatedly expressed the conviction that VMPI would promote “equity.” And third, its explanations of how VMPI would work were jargon-heavy, vague, confusing and incomplete. That’s how.

    If the brouhaha arose from a misunderstanding, Team Northam bears much of the responsibility. The burning question now is whether that confusion stemmed from an inability to communicate clearly…. or a deliberate decision not to communicate clearly. (more…)

  • Hospitals 1, Patients 0

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Since January 1 of this year, after a court battle won in late December 2020 by the Trump Justice Department, the Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) has required hospitals to post median payer-specific negotiated rates.

    I figured the fix was in when most hospitals in Virginia still haven’t complied. The Virginia Department of Health’s vhi.org data contractor could have done it for all of them with data it already collects.

    Sure enough, on April 27, the Biden administration’s CMS proposed repealing the transparency requirement. The elimination of this rule will be the latest casualty of the political power of the hospitals, especially with Democratic politicians. (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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