Bacon's Rebellion

  • The Honor Code Is the Heart of the VMI Experience

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Carmen Villani

    Honor does not see color of skin. Honor does not see gender. Honor does not see socioeconomic status. What it does see is the “dream” of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — judging a person based upon content of his or her character.

    Honor is not a casual word that is tossed around and then largely ignored at the Virginia Military Institute. It is the essence and foundation of the VMI Experience. This system is predicated upon character and starts with the Honor Code — a cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those that do. That code is not “suspended,” waived by granting “amnesty,” or compromised by circumstance. It is the moral compass for those who currently wear the VMI uniform and those who have. It is fiercely guarded by the Corps of Cadets and alumni alike. Violation of the Honor Code is not an option if a cadet expects to graduate from VMI. (more…)

  • Hey, Mount Trashmore, Top This!

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    James A. Bacon

    by Bill Tracy

    According to WJLA-TV7, The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has approved the next phase in the evolution of the former Lorton landfill off of Interstate 95: It will become a 1,700-foot ski slope. That’s right, a ski resort. In Northern Virginia. Only 10 minutes from my home.

    The project, Fairfax Peak, will be a 450,000-square-foot indoor snow sports facility with a 100-room luxury hotel, sky bar, restaurants, and a bunny slope. The first of its kind in the United States, it will have not have only the longest indoor ski slope in North America but one of the longest in the world.  

    The project will be super-green too. Aside from the obligatory solar panels, the planned facilities will use waste heat from the adjacent county Waste-To-Energy plant. In other words, the incinerator will serve as bona fide co-gen plant.

    Interestingly, per a Google search, Landfills-to-Ski Slopes is a global trend.  The picture above is an artist rendering of a Denmark power plant that will incinerate trash while using the energy produced to power the city and the ski slope. (more…)

  • Centuries of Energy Already Sitting in Cans

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    “Slightly Used” Nuclear Fuel Storage Casks.

    by Steve Haner

    First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy.

    If you are serious about making electricity without carbon emissions and also serious about making enough electricity to run a real economy 24-7-365, the discussion keeps coming back to nuclear energy. It is the obvious choice if you believe we must eliminate natural gas soon.  (more…)

  • Another Depressing Ralph Northam Presser

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Gov. Ralph Northam’s ability to gaslight Virginia was on display again at his Tuesday press conference.

    He indicated that he and his wife had visited schools that had recently reopened and that they were happy to see kids masked up and maintaining social distances from each other.

    Maybe the sight of kids in masks warms Northam’s heart. To many of us it’s a sign of heartbreaking overkill.

    He indicated that school reopenings were going great thanks to the data that showed schools were a safe place for children during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Unfortunately, that bit of “science” has been known since at least last June. Yet Northam’s original rules for school reopenings were so bizarre and unworkable that many districts just gave up and kept remote learning in place in the fall.

    There was more. (more…)

  • RIP E. Morgan Massey

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    James A. Bacon

    E. Morgan Massey

    by James A. Bacon

    Virginia lost one of her greatest sons today when E. Morgan Massey passed away after a brief battle with cancer. As author of the Massey family history, I had the good fortune to get to know him these past three years. At 94 years, he was a kind man, and a gentle man, and the people who knew him loved him.

    One of the U.S. coal industry’s great innovators, he presided over the transition of the family-owned A.T. Massey Coal Co. into a subsidiary of the publicly owned St. Joe Minerals, and then through a series of mergers and acquisitions into a partnership between Royal Dutch Shell and the Fluor Corp. Under his leadership, A.T. Massey Coal became the third-largest coal company in the U.S. Then, when forced to retire at 65, he struck out on his own in competition with the world’s biggest energy giants to build new coal-mining enterprises in Venezuela and China. The Venezuela gambit was only modestly successful but the Daning mining project was a home run. He surely was one of the oldest start-up entrepreneurs in the history of American business. Before he died, he was coming into the office every day to work on his latest venture, Minerals Refining Company, which utilized Virginia Tech-developed technology to capture microscopic coal fines.

    But Morgan was more than a successful businessman. He was a prophet, and that is how I hope people will remember him. Nearly 30 years before the Business Roundtable issued its famous “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” articulating corporations’ obligations to stakeholders, Morgan had written “The Massey Coal Company Doctrine,” which served as a business and ethical guide for A.T. Massey Coal. It was the intellectual achievement of which he was most proud, and rightfully so. (more…)

  • Confessions of a Virginia Whistleblower

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    State Inspector General Mike Westfall

    I decided last week in a paroxysm of good citizenship to contact the Virginia Inspector General (IG) to report wrongdoing by state officials.

    I have a considerable list centered around the failure of many state officials to carry out their longstanding, formally-assigned duties pre-COVID to plan for a pandemic emergency and exercise those plans to mitigate the effects of such an occurrence.  

    My complaints are based on Virginia Executive Order No. 42  Promulgation of the Commonwealth of Virginia Emergency Operations Plan and Delegation of Authority. It was issued by Governor McDonnell and reissued by Governor Northam.

    An actionable component of that Order is Hazard-Specific Annex #4 Pandemic Influenza Response (Non-Clinical) was published in August of 2012 (the Annex).  It contained prescient predictions about the course of a pandemic and directed specific agencies to prepare and exercise specific plans. Despite the clear language of the Annex, the plans were not written, personnel were not trained, exercises could not be conducted and systems were not tested under simulated stresses of a pandemic.

    Those failures cost unnecessarily severe losses of life, suffering and economic distress among the citizens.  

    (more…)

  • Introducing The Jefferson Council Website

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    A fabulous new website (edited by yours truly), The Jefferson Council, tracks governance and culture-war issues at the University of Virginia. Much of the content is recycled from Bacon’s Rebellion, but we’re hoping that The Jefferson Council will grow into a vibrant stand-alone forum for the exchange of views about UVa’s future that generates loads of its own content. Here follow the three most recent posts…

    Show Us the Plan!

    Parents Petition to the University of Virginia Administration

    Dear UVA Administrators and Board of Visitors

    We write to you today as a large, rapidly expanding coalition of UVA stakeholders including parents, students, and alumni who are increasingly concerned about the current living/learning conditions at the University of Virginia. Continue reading “Show Us the Plan!”

    (more…)

  • Dissecting the Washington Post’s Latest Hit Job on VMI

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    The Washington Post needs to adopt a new motto: “We cherry pick the news so you don’t have to.”

    The Post, the newspaper with the largest circulation in Virginia, committed itself last year to the narrative that Virginia Military Institute is a place where African-Americans are subjected to “relentless racism.” The WaPo’s reporting prompted Governor Ralph Northam to hire the Barnes & Thornburg law firm to conduct an “equity audit” and “investigation” of racism at VMI.

    Barnes & Thornburg released its interim report Monday. It was a nuanced document, presenting testimony of eight individuals who had either been called the n-word or heard the offensive term used over the past 25 years, but also quoting alumni and cadets as saying that they have never heard the word used at VMI. Moreover, the investigators raised the possibility that attitudes among cadets, which some have interpreted as bias against African-Americans, might also be understood as resentment against athletes, predominantly African-American, who enjoy privileges and exemptions that other cadets do not.

    Post writer Ian Shapira shamelessly extracted from the report statements that reinforced the narrative that he’d created in previous articles that VMI is a racist hell hole, and ignored statements that conflicted with the narrative. Here was the lead to his story: (more…)

  • Racism Investigators Report Use of the N-Word at VMI

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    After interviews with 46 Virginia Military Institute alumni, ten members of the Board of Visitors, 14 current and past faculty members, five cadets and four parents, Barnes & Thornburg, the law firm appointed by the Northam administration to probe racism at the military academy, has identified eight individuals who said they either were called the n-word or overheard the use of the n-word over the past 25 years.

    On the other hand, “many” cadets and recent alumni told the investigative team they “never heard racial slurs such as the n-word or saw or experienced racial intolerance,” states the interim report of the equity audit and investigation.

    Moreover, the report notes that when VMI administrators were alerted to racial incidents, they investigated them and often meted out punishments. An internal VMI document cited in the report described 17 incidents between 2014 and 2020 that had a racial component, most of which entailed use of racial slurs, including the n-word. Thirteen allegations were substantiated, and in each case, offending cadets were punished. Punishments ranged from five to 50 “penalty tours” (an hour’s worth of supervised marching while carrying a rifle), to confinement to barracks, cultural awareness training, written apologies, and loss of rank. (more…)

  • Fairfax County School Board Has the Upper Hand – But Never Mind

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Ricardy Anderson, Chair, Fairfax County School Board

    by James C. Sherlock

    Just because I am interested and think you might be, I checked job satisfaction among the roughly 13,500 teachers in the employ of Fairfax County Public Schools — very few of whom have stood in front of live students in the last year.

    I did that the real way, not opinion surveys but demonstrated supply and demand.

    I first computed the number of classroom teachers in the FCPS system by dividing the number of pupils — 188,000 by the FCPS-advertised pupil to teacher ratio — 14 – 1.

    I had to do that calculation because I could not find on the FCPS website any statistic on how many classroom teachers that system employs. That is where the 13,500 classroom teachers estimate come from. It is close enough.

    I then examined the number of open teacher positions – less than 130 — being advertised by FCPS for the 2021-2022 school year on its website today. (more…)

  • OSIG: Virginia’s Watchdog for Waste, Fraud and Abuse

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    James A. Bacon

    Number of cases opened by OSIG’s Investigations Unit.

    by James A. Bacon

    The Northam administration is embroiled in its biggest scandal since the blackface blunder: a flap over an Office of the State Inspector General (OSIG) report into the allegedly improper release of prisoners by the Virginia Parole Board.

    Here’s what went down: OSIG wrote highly critical draft findings of the parole board… which were leaked to the Attorney General’s Office… which allegedly redacted and watered down the report… which was released to the public… inspiring senior Northam administration officials to summon Inspector Michael Westfall and investigator Jennifer Moschetti for a round of allegedly hostile questioning… which prompted Moschetti to file a lawsuit alleging that the meeting “was intended to intimidate the State Inspector General and the investigators tasked with making fact findings related to members of the Parole Board.”

    I hope I got that right. Read the Associated Press summary here.

    That got me to thinking. What does the OSIG do? (more…)

  • McAuliffe’s Health Plan: More Subsidies, More Regs

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Terry McAuliffe at the YMCA Early Learning Center in Charlottesville

    by James A. Bacon

    Once and potentially future Governor Terry McAuliffe stopped in Charlottesville yesterday to describe his plan for health care in Virginia if he is reelected governor this fall.

    “COVID has decimated us, and this COVID will be with us for years to come,” he said, as reported by The Daily Progress. “We cannot tinker around the edges in Virginia. We’ve got to go big.”

    And how does McAuliffe propose to “go big”? In a nutshell: more subsidies and more regulation.

    Yup, that’s what ails Virginia’s healthcare system, all right. Already the most heavily regulated and subsidized sector of the economy, healthcare needs more regulations and more subsidies!

    Here’s what McAuliffe has in mind, according to the Daily Progress: (more…)

  • Welcome Your New Neighbors: Black Bears

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Virginia’s black bear population has made a tremendous comeback. Having dwindled to about 1,000 at midcentury, black bears in the Old Dominion now number between 18,000 and 20,000, reports The Virginia Mercury. Indeed, their numbers are increasing despite the fact that hunters are “harvesting” about 3,000 a year.

    Personally, I can’t begin to understand how anyone would derive any pleasure from shooting a bear. If you want to take down a bear armed with a knife, you earn my respect. Shoot a bear from a safe distance, and I’m just appalled. But the fact is, bears have no natural predators (other than humans), and without hunters to cull them, before long they’ll be like deer — overrunning the state. Unlike deer, which spook easily, you might find bears rooting through your trash cans, eating from your bird feeders or wandering onto your porch.

    — JAB

  • Critical Race Theory Is Taking Over Virginia Beach Schools

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Victoria Manning

    A Virginia Beach High School government teacher and finalist for teacher of the year recently posted on social media that “capitalism is racist.” An assistant principal in a different Virginia Beach high school advocated teaching critical race theory, sharing an article about the 1619 project. A Virginia Beach high
    school history teacher at a different school commented that he teaches critical race theory every year. A downtown instructional specialist in the social studies department promoted on Twitter that we should re-write all social studies curricula to be “social justice oriented,” referencing the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center’s document on the topic. He also stated that all schools should celebrate Black Lives Matter Week (not Black History Month).

    Are these views common and accepted practices in Virginia Beach Schools?

    In September 2020, the Virginia Beach School Board adopted a controversial equity policy. Dozens of people showed up to the meeting on both sides to speak on the topic. Some called me a racist for not supporting the policy. I had a lot of questions about this five-page document that would mandate staff training and teach students about “culturally responsive practices.” It also set no dollar limit on the superintendent’s spending to implement the policy.

    When I asked for details about who would be conducting the training and what curriculum would be used, I was told that it had not yet been decided. I was being asked as an elected official to mandate training that had not yet been created, and I was not provided a cost. (more…)

  • Last Week in Virginia Politics

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Chris Saxman

    Just another big week in Virginia politics.

    Or as my wife often says, “Jiminy Hootie!”

    On Tuesday, I sent out some early observations of our Candidate and Issue Surveys of the Republican and Democratic fields for the top three statewide offices in Virginia’s government.

    In those top line observations, I saw that the race for the Democratic nomination for Attorney General could be an upset in the making in that rising star Delegate Jay Jones was performing well against incumbent Mark Herring. Recent polling showed that the name ID of Jay Jones is very low but Herring was only in the low 40s on the ballot question.

    That was a red flag since Jones had a name ID in the low single digits. 50% undecided for a two term incumbent Attorney General? Not good, Maverick…this is not good.

    Our survey — yes, not a poll — shows Jones performing very well. Hence, the Upset Alert. Naturally, I immediately got some texts saying “No way. Not going to happen.” etc.

    (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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