Bacon's Rebellion

  • End the Coalfield Boondoggle

    Posted on

    by

    Peter Galuszka

    Alpha Natural Resources mine facility

    By Peter Galuszka

    The General Assembly’s auditing watchdog has recommended the elimination of  two coal tax credits that have been a bonanza to Virginia coal companies worth $315 million from 2010 to 2018 but have created only 10 jobs.

    The report by the Joint Legislative and Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) studied 16 different tax credits to boost the state’s economy but recommended  only eliminating the ones involving coal production.

    Those credits involve the Coalfield Employment Enhancement Tax Credit, formed in 1995, and the Production Incentive Tax Credit, formed in 1986 to help with electricity generation.

    Virginia’s coal production peaked in 1990 and has been declining since. In 2000, for instance, it had been 33 million short tons but in 2019, it had dropped to 12 million short tons.

    (more…)

  • Ray of Hope in Virginia Senate

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    It’s not much. But it’s something. An anemic attempt to rein in some of the unfettered emergency powers that are being exercised by Virginia officials.

    I’m referring to the unanimous vote to pass SB5025 late last week by the Virginia Senate. This is one of the very few measures before the General Assembly that legitimately deserves debate during this special session. It deals with Virginia’s ongoing and seemingly endless state of emergency.

    The bill would curb the power of Virginia’s Health commissioner, Dr. Norman D. Oliver.

    You know, the unelected official who refused to release details about Virginia’s nursing home carnage, by invoking a bizarre claim of privacy rights to conceal that information.

    You know, the man who scared the bejaysus out of all of us in April when he speculated that the oppressive Phase One of Virginia’s reopening would last “at least two years.”

    You know, the health chief who recently said that when a Covid-19 vaccine became available he’d make it mandatory. (more…)

  • VCU Health to Launch Voter-Registration Drive on Hospital Premises

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Image from a VotER voter registration kit.

    by James A. Bacon

    The Virginia Commonwealth University Health System has informed employees that it will participate in the VotER Initiative to encourage patients to register to vote and vote by mail.

    “A large body of research tells us that sick Americans are less likely to vote,” commences the communication from Sheryl L. Garland, chief of health impact for the health system. “This is especially true of individuals who also have significant social needs, such as a lack of stable food and housing. All to often, these voices are not heard when decisions that affect their health are made.”

    The email explicitly tied the initiative, which will start today, to VCU’s commitment to diversity and inclusion: “VCU Health’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement states that ‘we will actively work to dismantle systemic racism and inequalities that may be entrenched in our health system.’ VCU Health’s participation in this initiative is a small but meaningful step toward fulfilling this commitment.”

    According to the communique, VCU will place flyers in clinic waiting rooms and larger posters in high-traffic areas within the hospitals.  (more…)

  • Media Waters Getting Colder and Colder

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    The shrinkage of newsrooms at Virginia’s commercial newspapers continues apace. Lee Enterprises, owners of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Daily Progress, and Roanoke Times, among other newspapers, have confirmed another round of layoffs.

    The RTD has eliminated positions for a business reporter, a photojournalist, a multimedia content provider, and a sports producer. Meanwhile, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises has cut 10 copy editing and design jobs at the Roanoke Times as part of  plan to centralize page design. And the Daily Progress has lost two news staff, including a digital content coordinator, reports Virginia Business.

    Also, disclosed Virginia Business, the Daily Progress‘ four-person copy desk in Charlottesville will be laid off in October as part of Lee Enterprises’ centralization of copy editing functions. While those important functions will continue to be fulfilled, there is no way that out-of-state copy editors can replicate the local knowledge of home-based editors. (more…)

  • The Albemarle County School Board “Didn’t Ask Many Questions.”

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Atif Qarni, Virginia Secretary of Education, is pleased

    by James C. Sherlock

    As sure as the sun rises in the east, the coming woke fix for achievement gaps in schools will be modified grading standards as part of antiracism policies.

    Albemarle County is already there. The School Board is poised to approve a new grading policy at its meeting September 24. “During the meeting, board members were pleased with the policy and didn’t ask many questions.”

    Readers can be for that or against it, and it may prove a good thing, or not. Proof will be in the execution.

    There is no word how college admission offices will perceive and evaluate the grades of applicants from Albemarle County high schools.  Also none on how students transferring from Albemarle County schools to another district or state will be evaluated for proper class placement in their new schools and their grades translated for transcript purposes.

    Details to be worked out.

    (more…)

  • Protesters, Stay Away from Hospital ERs

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Since Virginia’s lawmakers are determined to waste our money and their time on a special session in Richmond where they’re ramming through laws that should wait until they officially meet again in January, here’s one more to put on their list:

    How about making it a felony — with mandatory prison time — to demonstrate, protest or in any way interfere with the entrance to a hospital emergency room? I’ve combed the Code of Virginia and can’t find a statute to cover this.

    You might remember that back on June 28th something went down outside the Atlantis Apartments in Virginia Beach. There were conflicting accounts. All of them disturbing.

    According to The Virginian-Pilot, a man was badly injured in a motorcycle accident there. When rescue workers arrived, they were hassled by some in the crowd who had gathered around the injured man. In a later Pilot story, the fire chief walked back the account a bit, saying that the crowd was merely “emotional” when someone kicked and pushed fire fighters.

    (more…)

  • Will Virginia Teach Critical Race Theory to Kindergartners?

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    Robin Diangelo, critical race theorist.

    by Hans Bader

    This week, the Virginia Board of Education will meet to discuss a report that may promote destructive racial ideologies — the August 2020 “Report from the Governor’s African American History Education Commission.”

    James Sherlock laments “the fiercely negative approach to the teaching of African American history offered by the Governor’s Commission.” He says its “Report is critical race theory brought to life. It represents the most thoroughly negative view of America’s history and pessimism about its future as a nation that I have ever encountered in a government document anywhere. Many universities have had success at radicalization. This recommends an earlier start. Kindergarten.”

    After reading his assessment at Bacon’s Rebellion, I read the Report and was dismayed by it as well. Three authors cited in the Report — Robin DiAngelo, Ibram Kendi, and Glenn Singleton — give harmful advice which, if followed, will lead to civil-rights violations and spread racism in our schools.

    So in comments I emailed to the Board of Education at [email protected], I objected to their inclusion. They are currently listed in Appendix F of the report, as “Scholars and Partners for Collaboration,” and their works are cited as “Resources to Support Implementation.” (more…)

  • Teaching African American History in Virginia

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Frederick Douglass

    By James C. Sherlock

    I fully support integrating African American history into the broad sweep of history taught in the nation’s primary and secondary schools.  

    On September 17, there will be a Virginia Board of Education meeting with an agenda item titled “Report from the Governor’s African American History Education Commission, August 2020”  (the Report). 

    I will offer here a positive, optimistic approach.

    But first, the fiercely negative approach to the teaching of African American history offered by the Governor’s Commission.

    (more…)

  • School Closings Reflect Ideology, Not Safety

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Hans Bader

    Schools in liberal northern Virginia and the state’s other metropolitan areas are currently educating students only online. In Virginia’s most conservative counties, students usually have access to some instruction in-person.

    In-person instruction is easier for elementary school students. They often have difficulty with remote learning, which can require mastery of electronic devices and concentrating for hours a day on a computer screen or tablet.

    For that reason, some counties, mainly in conservative areas, give in-person learning to students in the earliest grades (such as Kindergarten and first and second grade), while offering only online instruction or a mixture of online and in-person instruction to older students.

    Decisions to keep schools closed to in-person learning don’t seem to be based on safety risks to children. As Steven J. Duffield notes, “There have been zero deaths in Virginia under age of 20” from the coronavirus, according to the Virginia Department of Health.

    Yet, Virginia has considerable regional variation in school reopenings, with decisions linked more to school boards’ ideology, than student safety. (more…)

  • Act 9: Free Toby Cole

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Philip Shucet

    Toby Cole had something to say.

    Students with VIP administrators on the drill field, April 1970. Toby Cole in the circle. (Special Collections, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, unidentified photographer.)

    In early April 1970, you had to push tension out of your way when you walked across the drill field at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia.

    Tucked between the Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountains, Blacksburg was slow to experience the unrest of the 1960s. In October 1965, when David Miller burned his draft card in New York City, there was barely a ripple in Blacksburg.

    But in that first year of a new decade the full force of student angst was bearing down on this small college town. (more…)

  • Trump’s ICE Scandal in Farmville

    Posted on

    by

    Peter Galuszka

    By Peter Galuszka

    In a remarkable display of incompetence, the Trump Administration this summer transferred dozens of undocumented aliens being held in detention centers in Arizona and Florida to a private prison in Farmville just so special federal tactical officers could beef up crowd control in Washington, D.C.

    Consequently, some 300 inmates at the Farmville Detention Center operated by the privately held Richmond-based Immigration Centers of America contracted the COVID 19 virus and one died.

    The action, reported this morning by The Washington Post, prompted U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine to call for stricter oversight of the Farmville facility that operates under a contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to hold undocumented aliens while their cases are being reviewed or while they await deportation.

    Jennifer Boysko, a Democratic state senator, called for changes in state law to allow greater regulation of private prisons.

    According to the Post, the Trump Administration wanted more protection from generally peaceful protests that were being held near the White House that called attention to police slayings of African Americans while in custody. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser declined to call for federal help. (more…)

  • Systemic Inequity on the Virginia Beach Schools Equity Council

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    The Superintendent of Virginia Beach Schools has some work to do now that the Equity Policy he signed off on has been approved. The policy was developed with the assistance of the Virginia Beach Schools Equity Council.

    I have recommended today to the School Board and the Superintendent that they make the first order of business changing the membership of the Equity Council to make it more equitable in compliance with the new policy. It will need either to be expanded into uselessness or reconstructed with new membership.

    The current leadership of the Council consists of two members of the school board and the Virginia Beach Schools Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Each is black, as are the majority of the members.  I frankly don’t care about that, but now Virginia Beach Schools officially does.

    (more…)

  • Qarni’s War on Meritocracy Gets Personal

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Atif Qarni demeans activist Muslim mom as member of an anti-Muslim hate group.

    by James A. Bacon

    Wading deeper into the controversy over admissions policies at the elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, Secretary of Education Atif Qarni is now at odds with the school’s PTA and one of its more outspoken members, Asra Nomani.

    According to the PTA, Qarni has falsely accused Nomani, whose essay on TJ admissions policy Bacon’s Rebellion published here, of being part of an anti-Muslim hate group. Qarni, according to the Associated Press, has barred the PTA and Nomani from participating in an upcoming “listening session” on the admissions controversy.

    Qarni has organized a task force to study equity-and-inclusion issues at TJ and 18 other Governor’s Schools across Virginia. Racial bean counters are concerned that the magnet schools have insufficient numbers of African-American and Hispanic kids. The racial disparity is especially lopsided at TJ, a math and science school, where 70% of the students are of Asian origin. Nomani and other parents have argued that the admissions process is race-blind and based upon academic aptitude as gauged by a test. Rather than reduce admissions standards, they have argued, Virginia schools need to work on developing mathematical and scientific aptitude among blacks and Hispanics earlier in their educational development. (more…)

  • The Homeschool Surge

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Home schooling has been on the rise in Virginia for many years. The number of homeschooled students reached nearly 45,000 in 2019; if homeschoolers were a school division, they would have comprised the seventh largest of Virginia’s 133 school divisions. Demographer Hamilton Lombard at the Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia, expects the homeschool trend to continue.

    There still are significant barriers to homeschooling, particularly the time commitment required by one or both parents, but other barriers are falling. Even before the COVID-19 epidemic, thousands of parents were making the switch every year, pulling their children out of school and educating them at home. COVID-19 likely will accelerate the trend by increasing acceptance of working at home and introducing many families to virtual learning. Writes Lombard in the StatChat blog:

    Prior to the pandemic, Milton Gaither, who studies the history of education at Messiah College, observed that the best way to make sense of the explosive growth in homeschooling is to recognize that it is part of “a larger renegotiation of the accepted boundaries between public and private, personal and institutional.” This can been seen in the growing popularity (even before the pandemic) of other home-based trends, such as working from home, home-based healthcare, and even home birthing. (more…)

  • A Sad Emblem of Our Times

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    By Dick Hall-Sizemore

    A venerable Richmond-based printing company closed last May. Somehow, that really saddened me. Perhaps because it was located not far from where I live. Perhaps because it had been around for so long.  Perhaps because it had a niche business that seemed sort of neat to me. Perhaps because its closing seemed so emblematic of the times.

    I meant to comment on it then, but other topics and activities kept bumping it down the list. Then, Jim’s post yesterday about the Virginia economy and some of the follow-up comments brought it back to my mind.

    The William Byrd Press was founded in 1913. In 1984, it merged with a North Carolina company and was renamed Cadmus. By 2007, it had 500 employees and was the world’s largest printer for publishers of scientific, technical, and medical journals. It was the fifth largest printer of periodicals in North America. (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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