Bacon's Rebellion

  • Basic Child Literacy Cannot Be too Much to Ask of Richmond City Public Schools

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Half of Black 4th graders in Richmond public schools couldn’t read in 2019. That is not OK.

    It is way past time to demand both better performance and accountability. Clearly neither the city of Richmond nor the Commonwealth has done that effectively.

    So I have filed formal complaints with the federal government to see if the Departments that provide federal money to the Richmond City Public School District can establish accountability for how all of that money has been spent.

    Jason Kamras currently serves as the Superintendent of Richmond Public Schools (RPS). He has first-rate credentials — National Teacher of the Year in 2005, undergraduate Princeton, masters in education from Harvard. Worked in leadership positions in D.C. Public Schools before coming to Richmond.

    He is the highest-paid superintendent in Richmond history at $250,000 annually. His initial three-year contract was slated to expire this summer. ย He just received a 4-year extension on a split 6-3 vote by the Richmond School Board.

    The performance of Mr. Kamrasโ€™ Richmond School District is cataclysmically bad. ย  (more…)

  • The Mythology of Robert E. Lee

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    Peter Galuszka

    By Peter Galuszka

    With excellent timing, the former head of the history department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has come out with a book about the mythology of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and much of the White โ€œSouthernโ€ culture.

    Retired U.S. Army Gen. Ty Seidule, a former paratrooper, has deep Virginia roots and his analysis goes right to the heart of the problems plaguing Virginia, Civil War memorabilia, Richmond, Charlottesville, the Virginia Military Institute and more.

    He grew up in Alexandria and had ties to the Episcopal prep school where he expanded his desire to be a โ€œSouthernโ€ gentleman while worshipping the likes of Lee and Thomas โ€œStonewallโ€ Jackson.

    Hereโ€™s a link to my review of his book in Richmondโ€™s Style Weekly. The Post also reviewed the book this past Sunday.

  • Fixing the Outcome by Fixing the Rules?

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    What are the rules of the game in the state’s investigation of racism at the Virginia Military Institute?

    That question is now front and center, as has been revealed in an interim report released by Barnes & Thornburg, the law firm selected to pursue the investigation. Investigators have been sparring over whether VMI’s lawyers should be allowed to be present when investigators are questioning cadets, faculty and staff.ย 

    The stakes are huge. Barnes & Thornburg will gather evidence, present its conclusions, and make recommendations with the potential to transform the culture of the military academy. The outcome of the investigation is potentially a matter of life and death, institutionally speaking, for the military academy.ย 

    VMI has every reason to regard the investigation as an adversarial proceeding. The inquiry arose from a series of Washington Post articles alleging “relentless racism” at the military academy. Governor Ralph Northam then expressed his “deep concerns about the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism.” Structural racism, not alleged structural racism. Then, when selecting a firm to conduct the investigation into VMI, the administration picked a Washington, D.C., law firm that publicly proclaims its commitment to combating racism and “the larger social forces” responsible for it. (more…)

  • Counting Teacher Licenses: An Exegesis on Bureaucracy

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    James A. Bacon

    by John Butcher

    Anย earlier post discussed the remarkably large number of unlicensed teachers in Richmond City public schools, as reported in the 2018 USDoE Civil Rights Data Collection.

    An email from the Richmond public schools chief of staff responded that only four of about 2,100 Richmond teachers now are unlicensed, unless you also count 38 whose paperwork is hanging at VDOE because of COVID-related backups.

    If true, that would show an astounding improvement in just three years. Unfortunately, it was not true, at least in the sense of the federal data. (more…)

  • Follow the Voodoo

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Can we all agree that the halftime show at this yearโ€™s Super Bowl was a real stinker?

    Unless dancing men in sequined jackets with underwear on their heads is your thing, that is. (Yes, I know those were supposed to be bandages, but they looked like tighty whities headgear.) As my radio partner, Mike Imprevento, quipped Monday, The Weekend should change his name to Tuesday Night.

    Can we also agree that Tom Brady was magnificent? And that after the first series, the Bucโ€™s offense found a rhythm and just clicked all night? And that the Buccaneerโ€™s defense was on fire and left the super-talented Patrick Mahomes looking hapless as he picked grass out of his face mask?

    Can we also agree that the Super Bowl commercials were underwhelming? And that the most cloying was the public service announcement by Jill Biden, AKA Joeโ€™s Ventriloquist, reminding us to wear a mask?

    โ€œPlease keep wearing your mask,โ€ she says, patting Champ and Major. โ€œEVEN WHEN YOUโ€™RE WALKING YOUR DOG.โ€

    Sorry, Dr. Jill, but thatโ€™s a hard NO. (more…)

  • Senate Taxes Less PPP, House Bill Almost All

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    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

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

    Majorities in both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly agree with Governor Ralph Northam and have voted to tax the federal Payroll Protection Plan grants that saved Virginia jobs in the pandemic. They only remain at odds over how much to tax.

    The Virginia Senate has passed a bill 39-0 that allows employers, who used the money to maintain their workforce, to exempt the first $100,000 of their PPP grant from 2020.ย The rest is taxed.ย The bipartisan compromise allowed the bill to pass with the emergency clause it needs to go into effect immediately upon approval, in time for this tax filing season.

    The average Virginia PPP grant was about $107,000, state officials reported. More than 20,000 employers would still see some taxes on their grants under the Senate bill. This state and its localities have received multiple billions of dollars of direct federal funding during the COVID pandemic, with more on the way, yet Governor Northam also wants to skim 6% off the top of what Virginia employers received.

    It is that simple. (more…)

  • VMI, Investigators Sparring Over Rules of Racism Investigation

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Barnes & Thornburg LLP, the special investigator selected to probe racism at Virginia Military Institute, released its first progress report today, as required by contract. The law firm has not had enough time to draw any conclusions, but the report does describe the testy relationship between the firm and VMI administrators as the investigation unfolds.

    VMI has hired its own law firm as counsel, and disagreements have arisen over how to conduct the investigation. The two parties have sparred over VMI’s request that legal counsel attend an administrative briefing and sit in on interviews of faculty, staff, and cadets. Also, Barnes & Thornburg has sought assurances that individuals speaking to investigators will not be retaliated against.

    “The Team firmly believes that the presence of VMI representatives will undermine the independence and effectiveness of the investigation, and may well deter the cadets and faculty being interviewed from being as forthcoming as they might otherwise be,” states the report.

    It’s not surprising that VMI administrators are feeling defensive considering the origins of the inquiry. The investigation arose from a series of Washington Post articles accusing the military academy of “relentless racism.” Decrying what he called the โ€œclear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism,โ€ Northam announced in October that he would hire an independent outside investigator to probe the charges. To some VMI officials and alumni, it appeared as if the fix was in. (more…)

  • Federal COVID Funding to Virginia K-12 Schools

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    The federal government allocated a great deal of money in each of two different pieces of legislation in 2020 to provide COVID-related relief to K-12 schools.

    I will endeavor here to explain briefly what that means to Virginia.

    The two pieces of 2020 federal legislation that provide funding to K-12 schools were:

    • Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act signed into law on March 27, 2020; and
    • Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2021 (CRRSA)ย signed into law on December 27, 2020

    Two of the major program elements under each of those two bills are :

    • Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER and ESSER II) funding – Virginiaโ€™s allocation is $1.2 billion dollars, 90% of which is to be sub-allocated by formula to school districts.
    • Governorโ€™s Emergency Education Relief (GEERS and GEERS II) funding – $132 million to be allocated to the neediest public schools and non-public schools at the Governorโ€™s discretion. ย Money for the Emergency Assistance for Non-Public Schools (EANS) program is part of the Governorโ€™s Emergency Education Relief Fund. ย Virginiaโ€™s EANS allocation was $46,618,019.ย For comparison, total Virginia K-12 school spending from all sources was estimated by the NEA at $17.8 billion in 2018-19.

    By way of comparison, the federal government sent $1 billion to Virginia for K-12 schools in 2019, including big money from the Department of Agriculture for the National School Lunch program ($247 million) and other non-educational programs, so the 2020 COVID supplementals already exceed the original annual federal appropriations for Virginia. (more…)

  • Time to Double Fines for Littering

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Credit: Onthecommons.org

    by Robin Beres

    It isnโ€™t often that a Virginia legislator files a bill calling for increased fines that one is tempted to stand up and cheer for, but a recent piece of legislation submitted by Del. James Edmunds, (R-Halifax), is pretty close.

    Edmundsโ€™ bill, HB 1801, calls for increasing the minimum fine for โ€œdumping or disposing of litter, trash, or other unsightly matter on public or private property,โ€ from $250 to $500. (The maximum fine of $2,500 would remain the same.) The bill would also require litterers to perform 40 hours of community service, four times as much the current mandatory minimum of 10 hours.

    Edmunds, who has long been a participant in the Virginia Department of Transportationโ€™s Adopt-A-Highway program, says he has seen an increase in litter. His theory is that since restaurants have been closed during the pandemic, more people are ordering food to go and eating in their vehicles. When done, many are simply tossing the empty containers out car windows. Virginia roads have become eyesores.

    โ€œThe roads are the worst Iโ€™ve ever seen them,โ€ Edmunds recently told The Virginia Star. โ€œThe status quo is not doing any good. This bill will hopefully bring attention to a terrible problem.โ€ (more…)

  • Hey, APCo, Let Schools Build Rooftop Solar

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Photo courtesy Secure Futures LLC

    by Aaron Sutch

    In another life, I was a middle school teacher. I taught for four years at a public school. Itโ€™s a hard age group. But I found the antics of my 7th and 8th grade students more amusing than frustrating. Perhaps I was well-prepared, having worked at a zoo before entering the classroom.

    As a teacher, I enjoyed working with students, but was constantly frustrated as we faced shrinking budgets.ย Administrators were forced to decide between paying for rising energy costs or investing in resources for my students.

    It broke my heart to see tight funds diverted from students to cover rising electricity bills. It happened all the time.

    So itโ€™s exciting that Virginia schools are installing solar power to generate electricity and save on energy costs. The Commonwealth now ranks among theย top 10ย states for solar on K-12 schools with more than 34,000 KW of installed solar capacity. This is enough to power 3,700 Virginia homes. (more…)

  • Reinventing Roanoke as Virginia’s Outdoor Capital

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    The Roanoke Valley doesn’t have any natural amenities more special than those of other communities along Virginia’s magnificent Blue Ridge Mountains. What it does have, at a very propitious time when the COVID-19 epidemic is scrambling the traditional calculus of where businesses and individuals decide where to locate, is an organizational infrastructure to the promote assets it does have.

    Founded as a Norfolk & Western railroad town in the late 1800s, the City of Roanoke has been traumatized by the loss of N&W industrial and headquarters facilities over the past two decades. Reinventing the economy hasn’t been easy. The dynamics of the Knowledge Economy have long favored large metropolitan areas with deep labor markets, and with a population of about 220,000, the Roanoke Valley (Roanoke City, Roanoke County, and Salem) lack critical mass. The main exceptions to the “urban agglomeration” trend were towns with research universities, such as Virginia Tech. But Tech, separated by a mountain range and 45 minutes travel time, was almost in another world.

    The Roanoke Regional Partnership (RRP), the local economic development organization, recognized years ago that it needed to rebrand the region. What did the region have that other small metro areas did not? Among other assets, it has the Appalachian Trail, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and, nearby, Virginia’s second largest lake, Smith Mountain Lake.ย  “We’ve had these assets,” said Beth Doughty, RRP director. “We treated them like wallpaper instead of an economic sector.” But under Doughty’s leadership, that thinking changed. (more…)

  • Dominion VCEA Plan Review Ends with Questions

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    A near year-long review of Dominion Energy Virginiaโ€™s plans to meet service obligations while abandoning fossil-fueled energy has ended with a pile of data, a list of unanswered questions, no real decision and plenty of reason to fear future electricity cost increases.

    The review of Dominionโ€™s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) started March 9, 2020, and the State Corporation Commission issued a final order February 1:ย  โ€œThe Commission, however, cannot conclude โ€ฆ that Dominion’s 2020 IRP, as filed, is reasonable and in the public interest for purposes of a planning document.โ€ย ย  (more…)

  • How Fair Is Virginia’s System for Distributing Vaccines?

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Virginia has done a much better job in recent days in administering the COVID-19 vaccine. Out the nearly 1.4 million vaccine doses received from the federal government, according to the Becker Hospital Review, 68.7% have been given as shots. But the criteria for distributing the vaccine within the state has not been clear.

    According to data published yesterday on the Virginia Department of Health COVID-19 dashboard, vaccines have been distributed unevenly across the state. At one extreme, the Norfolk Health District has received 81,300 doses. Using the VDH’s population estimates for its health districts, that translates into 33.2 vaccines delivered for every 100 population.

    At the opposite end of the scale, the Hampton Health District has received only 7,075 doses, or 5.2 doses per 100 population.

    “Vaccine distribution within the Commonwealth is opaque,” wrote Virginia Beach City Manager Patrick Duhaney in an email that a third party shared with Bacon’s Rebellion. “[I] cannot find anything that talks in any manner as to the decision process of who gets what percentage of vaccine received from the Federal Supply Chain and who/how those decisions are made.” (more…)

  • Unlikely to Go Well – Unimaginable Amounts of COVID-Related Money and the Rush to Spend It

    Posted on

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    sherlockj

    Awards made by HHS using emergency supplemental appropriation funding appropriated in March and April 2020.

    by James C. Sherlock

    The federal government is charged to distribute $7 trillion in supplemental COVID-related supplemental funding already appropriated or pending. ย 

    Real money, and we will have borrowed every penny.ย 

    Hard to comprehend that much money.ย That is 7 million million dollars.

    I will try here to reduce that to human scale.ย  At full scale, as is the point here, no government system that we have in place can manage it well.

    To illustrate the point, I drilled way down into data from a single federal department, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to see for all of us how some of the ocean of federal COVID money has been distributed so far.

    You see on the map that the total amount of grants alone made by HHS alone from the COVID supplemental appropriations passed in March and April of 2020ย alone is north of $26 billion; $470 million of that has gone to Virginia governments and private entities to date. (more…)

  • What’s the Point?

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    By Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Republicans in the General Assembly refused to go along at the beginning of the session with the customary practice of extending the “short session” from 30 days to 46 days.ย  They said that the Democrats had a long enough time during the very long special session to enact legislation.ย  Although they were in the minority, they had the upper hand because the state constitution requires approval of two-thirds of each house to extend a session.

    So, what was the ultimate agreement?ย  The organizing resolution required each house to complete action on its bills by February 5 (last Friday), the budget committees to report their respective versions of the budget bill by February 7 (today), and the General Assembly to adjourn on February 11 (next Thursday).ย  That would have provided four days to accomplish what it usually takes about two weeks to get done.ย  Knowing this would be unrealistic, the organizing resolution provided for “legislative continuity”, which means that any bill can be carried over to a 2021 Special Session that the resolution explicitly assumes will be called.ย  Only one House Republican voted against this awkward approach, while nine Senate Republicans (half of them) objected. (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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