Bacon's Rebellion

  • In Memory of Stuart Connock

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Stuart Connock (left)
    Photo Credit: Joe Mahoney, Richmond Times-Dispatch

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    A legend in Virginia government passed away this past Sunday.  Stuart Connock  dominated state government finance in the 1970s and 1980s.  Before that, he was the one that Governor Mills Godwin tapped to implement the new sales tax. His influence was felt long even long after he retired.

    Stuart (everyone who worked with him felt they could call him by his first name) was quiet and self-effacing. He was not well-known to the general public, but he once was viewed as more influential than the governor. He was liked, respected, and trusted by all legislators, whatever the party.

    Stuart’s influence and power came about in the old-fashioned way — his knowledge of the budget and state government in general and taxation and revenues in particular. His understanding of the budget was unmatched. This gave him a leg up on those, to use Jeff Shapiro’s phrase, “part-time legislators often incurious about budget arcana.”

    Above all, Stuart was a nice person.  He always took time to listen to others and to patiently explain complex budget issues to neophytes, as I can personally attest.

    To some on this blog, Stuart may be regarded as part of the “plantation elite.” He was courteous, knowledgeable, nonpartisan, cared about good government, and cared about Virginia. The Commonwealth could do a lot worse if it had more Stuart Connocks around.

    Jeff Shapiro’s column on Stuart Connock’s legacy is here.

  • Vacation Homes as Virginia Rural Resource

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Vacation-home share of housing, 2018. Credit: StatChat blog

    by James A. Bacon

    Virginia has more than 88,000 vacation homes, about 2.5% of all homes in the Commonwealth, according to the University of Virginia’s Demographics Research Group. These “seasonally vacant homes” intended mainly for recreational use are overwhelmingly located in amenity-rich rural locales along the Chesapeake Bay, the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains, or man-made lakes.

    Moreover, reports StatChat, the vacation share of housing has increased since 2018 in most jurisdictions — more than 7.5 percent in some cases.

    Bacon’s Rebellion has argued that Virginia’s rural counties should position themselves as destinations for retirement and vacation housing as an economic development strategy. Retirement and rental properties boost the tax base and create service jobs in localities where employment opportunities are otherwise scarce. (more…)

  • All You Need to Know

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Three consecutive stories in today’s VPAP VaNews:

    Matt Jones in the Daily Press.

    “75% of Virginia parents fear their children are falling behind in the pandemic, new poll says”

    Kenya Hunter in the Richmond Times Dispatch.

    “Virginia Education Association calls for classrooms to close across the state”

    Gregory Schneider in the Washington Post.

    “Northam proposes major effort to reimagine public space around Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond”

    Sometimes, things are exactly as they seem.

     

  • What Do We Do “For the Children” Now?

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Flickr: Don Harder

    I just read Jim Bacon’s column. In it he revealed:

    “Most Virginians (64%) said they were somewhat or very satisfied with how school officials have handled instruction this fall. Only 22% were dissatisfied.

    At the same time, an even larger majority is worried that their children will fall behind:

    53% very concerned
    22% somewhat concerned
    8% not too concerned
    16% not at all concerned

    Really? Wanna bet?

    That will last until the Spring 2020 SOLs currently required by the federal government. The SOLs themselves will be a dumpster fire. Parents will look for the arsonist, and they won’t look in the mirror to find him.

    Now the cynic/realist in me says that in the first two weeks of the Biden administration the federal law requirement for progress testing will be cancelled for Spring 2021 just like it was for Spring 2020.  The teachers unions and Democratic Governors will insist.

    But the SOLs do not fix a problem, they just measure it. (more…)

  • Virginia Parents Fear COVID in Schools, Also Worry Children Are Falling Behind

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Credit: Don Harder on Flickr

    by James A. Bacon

    If today’s Wason Center poll results are any indication, more than half of Virginia parents have children in school systems delivering instruction online, about one fourth have children in hybrid online/in-person schools, and only one in eight have children receiving in-person education.

    The Northam administration has released no estimates of its own, an exercise that would entail tabulating figures from the state’s 134 school system. The Wason Center, affiliated with Christopher Newport University, conducted 906 interviews in mid November. Thirty-four percent had children in schools. Of those:

    12% had children receiving in-person instruction only
    56% had children receiving online instruction only
    27% had children receiving a mix of online and in-person
    3% were home schooling their children

    With an effective sample of only 300 or so parents, there’s probably a fairly wide margin of error, but that’s the only statewide estimate I’ve seen so far. (more…)

  • Wow, Huge Majority of Virginians Supports Public-Sector Bargaining

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Chicago teachers strike, 2019. Credit: Orinoco Tribune

    by James A. Bacon

    The Wason Center at Christopher Newport University issued a new poll today which finds, among other things, that Virginians favor collective bargaining rights for public employees by a whopping 68% to 25% margin.

    If that’s not scary enough, the poll likely understates the support for public-sector collective bargaining. Thirty-six percent of poll respondents identified themselves as Republicans compared to 34% Democrats — clearly under-sampling Democrats in a state which voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump for president by a 54% to 45% margin. Equally disturbing, 44% of the respondents identified themselves as various shades of “conservative” compared to 4o% who described themselves as various shades of “liberal.”

    How is it possible that a strong majority from this particular pool of people supports allowing public employees to join unions and negotiate for higher wages and pensions — a practice that is laying waste to state and local finances in states from California to Illinois, New Jersey to Connecticut? 

    Something has gone very, very awry. (more…)

  • Reminder: Virginia Imports 31% of Its Electricity

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Credit: U.S. Energy Information Administration

    On a percentage basis, Virginia is the fourth largest electricity importer in the United States, following California, Ohio and Massachusetts, according to data published this week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. On a net basis, the Old Dominion imports 31% of its electricity from other states.

    Why does that matter? That’s economic activity, along with local multiplier effects, that we’re shipping outside the state.

    Environmentalists argue that if Virginia moves to a 100% renewable electric grid, most of that electricity will be produced in the form of solar farms and wind turbines located within the state, paying leases to landowners, generating taxes for state and local governments, and supporting Virginia jobs. I think there’s something to that argument. While the 100% renewable grid will cost Virginians billions in higher electric rates and create challenges for maintaining reliability, the repatriation of energy-related economic activity to Virginia would be a silver lining. 

    — JAB 

  • What Fresh Hell Awaits Virginia Today?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Shhhh. Listen carefully.

    Hear that? That’s the sound of 8.5 million Virginia sphincters tightening as we anticipate how Gov. Ralph Northam will punish us today for a surge in COVID-19 infections.

    We deserve it. The virus is spreading and it has to be our fault. It couldn’t possibly be that a respiratory virus is damned near impossible to stop.

    As Virginia waits to learn what fresh hell is waiting for us at Northam’s presser we get to experience an American dictatorship, where all power rests in a single individual.

    What liberties will His Excellency stomp on today? (more…)

  • EPA: PM 2.5 At Current Levels is No Threat

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Source: EPA Website.  Click to expand.

    By Steve Haner

    “Everything is a poison, nothing is a poison. It is the dose that makes the poison” – Paracelsus (1493-1541 AD)

    A micron is a tiny thing. A grain of beach sand is about 90 microns, and a human hair 50 to 70 microns in diameter. In the coming session of the General Assembly, you are about to hear that micron-sized particles are sickening and killing you. Do not believe it.    (more…)

  • High Housing Costs and Virginia’s Brain Drain

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Hasta la vista!

    Between 2010 and 2018 Virginia’s population grew by more than half a million residents, ranking 9th in the nation, due to strong natural increase (births over deaths) and steady international immigration. But the Old Dominion was only one of two states in the top 10 — the other was California — to experience negative net domestic migration, reports Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist for the Virginia Realtor’s Association in the Realtors’ blog.

    Nearby southeastern states have shown strong domestic in-migration. What’s Virginia’s problem?

    According to Sturtevant, the state’s biggest challenge is recruiting and retaining young workers. In continuation of a decade-long trend, about 6,00 more 25- to 34-year-olds moved out of Virginia in 2018 than moved in 2017 and 2018. These young people aren’t fleeing economically deprived rural areas. They’re leaving the high-cost areas, particularly Northern Virginia.

    Says Sturtevant: “Even though professional opportunities are attractive and wages are high, home prices have gotten so high that it is increasingly challenging for young adults to buy homes. Many have been moving to places where jobs are still good but the cost of living is lower and it is easier to buy a home.”

    — JAB

  • Richmond Schools Discover that the Shutdown Magnifies Mental Illness

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Richmond Superintendent Jason Kamras visiting a school in pre-COVID days. Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

    by James A. Bacon

    The downside of the COVID-19 school lockdown has become fully apparent to Richmond Public School officials. Richmond schools are experiencing an “alarming surge” in mental health issues — depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation — among the district’s 21,000 students in depression, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

    The impact of social isolation, fear of the virus, and the deaths of loved ones is magnified, school officials say, among students who have already experienced extensive childhood trauma. “Experts” fear that an underfunded mental health system is not equipped to handle the situation.

    As Robert Bolling, CEO of ChildSavers put it, the pandemic has added a new layer of trauma where trauma was already the most severe.

    “We are dealing with children who had, by the time they turned 9 years old, experienced significant traumatic events in their lives” such as poverty, neglect, abuse, sexual assault or witnessing violence, Bolling said. “Toxic trauma happens when a kid experiences that four times in their lives. Our children average six.” (more…)

  • Virginia’s Soft-on-Crime Parole Board Releasing Another Killer

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Perfect timing. Just as Terry McAuliffe is set to announce another run for governor, Virginia’s pathetic parole board, full of Governor Ralph Northam’s and McAuliffe’s soft-on-crime appointees, is releasing a strangler.

    This one is a real sweetheart.

    On May 15, 1988 Gregory Joyner murdered 15-year-old Sarah Jamison after attempting to rape the Lynchburg teenager. He buried her in a shallow grave near her parents’ home where she was unearthed a couple of weeks later.

    According to news reports, Joyner confessed to killing the girl, but said sex between the two was consensual. In June of 1989 he was sentenced to life plus 10 years for his grotesque crimes. According to an April 6, 1989 story in the Staunton News-Leader, prosecutors initially planned to charge him with capital murder, but couldn’t prove rape.

    Now, just 31 years later, the 48-year-old murderer is set to be freed. According to news reports, the board in 2017 and 2019 refused to release him, citing Joyner’s “extensive criminal record,” a “history of violence,” and “the serious nature and circumstances of his offense.” Releasing Joyner would “diminish the seriousness of the crime” of which he was convicted, the board concluded. (more…)

  • Richmond’s Infamous Icon

    Posted on

    by

    Peter Galuszka

    Credit: National Geographic

    By Peter Galuszka

    Since 1890, the Robert E. Lee Monument has dominated Richmond’s grand Monument Avenue and has stood as a striking protector of the state’s long history of systemic racism.

    True, other Confederate heroes such as Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart also found a memorial spot on the Avenue but Lee has always been the main one. He has been a sentimental touchstone for romantics of the Lost Cause and of derision about people hurt by the system.

    Now, Richmond and Virginia are paying a price for more than a century of refusing to own up to what it all really meant.

    The famed National Geographic magazine has made a cover photo of the defaced Lee statue repurposed as a memorial to George Floyd, the Black man who was killed by police after he was arrested and handcuffed.

    The Geographic was listing the top photos of 2020, a wild and depressing year that brought the coronavirus pandemic, riots in cities and the constant chaos of Donald Trump.

    That’s not all. In October, The New York Times Magazine proclaimed that the defaced Lee monument was the most influential work of art since World War II. (more…)

  • Chronic Absenteeism and SOL Failures in Virginia Schools

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    James Lane
    Superintendent of Public Instruction

    Sometimes common sense is not so common as we think.

    Common sense will tell you that if a kid misses too much school, he or she is not going to keep up with the academics. That apparently has not occurred to the Virginia Board of Education or the Department for which it sets policy.

    Chronic absenteeism in Virginia is defined as missing 10 percent or more of the school year – more than 18 days.

    The chronic absenteeism that VDOE reports to the federal government correlates directly with SOL math, reading and writing failure rates for all students, white students, black students, Hispanic students and economically disadvantaged students. Directly. In each subgroup. In every subject.

    Yet the Board of Education did not see fit to deliver that information to the Governor or the General Assembly in its 2020 Annual Report on the Condition and Needs of Public Schools in Virginia. The word absenteeism appeared nowhere in that report in which structural racism, teacher quality and money were featured as causes of minority academic failures.

    (more…)

  • NoPlan Northam Readies Random Restrictions

    Posted on

    by

    djrippert

    Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

    By DJ Rippert

    Here we go again. The Richmond Times Dispatch is reporting that Governor Ralph “NoPlan” Northam signaled a possible increase in COVID-19 restrictions during an interview with CNBC yesterday (Dec 7). Northam is quoted as saying, “We’re actively discussing on how to mitigate the numbers, and we’ll take further measures if we need to this week.”

    The actual interview was even more embarrassing than the RTD article would have you believe. At about the 1:50 point in this video David Faber does something Virginia’s gutless media has so far refused to do. He asks NoPlan Northam to describe his plan. “What are the numbers that are going to trigger you, governor, to take further measures” is the specific question asked by Faber.  The same question I have been asking on this blog here, here and here.

    Northam declares it to be a “great question,” insists he is “data driven,” and reminds everybody that he is a physician. He then proceeds to evade and avoid the question in a stumbling, bumbling soliloquy to nowhere. He explains that the spread is happening where people are gathering, sometimes in homes and sometimes in places of worship. He keenly cuts through the fog by declaring that places of worship will be advised to take things seriously. He concludes by insisting that “the decisions we make will be data driven in Virginia.” NoPlan Northam skates a simple question he should answer. His obviously cavalier attitude toward the people of Virginia is disgraceful. (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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