Bacon's Rebellion

  • Virginia Has a Prayer

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Updated Aug 27 at 9:46 AM

    From the latest weather forecast:

    Hurricane Laura is expected to strengthen into a Category 4 as it heads for a destructive landfall near the Texas and Louisiana border Wednesday night into early Thursday morning. A catastrophic storm surge and damaging winds will batter the region and a threat of flooding rain and strong winds will extend well inland. …

    The hurricane is now a Category 3 with 125 mph winds and is expected to continue strengthening. Laura is forecast to become a Category 4 hurricane later today as it approaches the northwest Gulf Coast.

    Laura’s maximum sustained winds jumped from 75 mph to 125 mph in the 24 hours ending 10 a.m. CDT Wednesday. That increase in maximum sustained winds easily meets the definition of rapid intensification in a hurricane.

    Laura has prompted hurricane and storm surge warnings for the northwest Gulf Coast.

    A huge amount of money over the past 13 years has been spent to create hurricane protection systems not only for Northwestern Texas, but especially in Louisiana. The Louisiana projects have been led by the Corps of Engineers and Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority and have completely transformed that region, not only with levees and pumping stations, but also with restoration of nearly 48,000 acres of land and 60 miles of barrier islands and berms. In Texas, the Galveston District of the Corps of Engineers has built seven major federal levees.

    This storm will likely test the systems like no other.

    So, while this is of interest to all Americans, why highlight it on a Virginia blog?

    We care here because the two areas of the United States other than in Texas and Louisiana most threatened by a combination of sea level rise and storm surge are Miami and Hampton Roads.  The great Chesapeake and Potomac hurricane of 1933 flooded downtown Norfolk streets six feet deep — before the last 87 years of sea level rise and subsidence. (more…)

  • Now They Want to Ban Tear Gas

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    James A. Bacon

    Tear gas deployed against Richmond protesters earlier this summer. Photo credit: Commonwealth Times

    by James A. Bacon

    A House of Delegates subcommittee has passed a bill, the Best Equipment for Law Enforcement Act, that would ban law enforcement use of tear gas, rubber bullets and beanbag rounds. In a party-line vote, Democrats supported the bill and Republicans opposed it, reports the Virginia Mercury.

    “It’s currently legal for police in Virginia to use chemical weapons against civilians that we don’t even allow our troops to use in warzones,” said Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, who sponsored the legislation. Rubber bullets and beanbag rounds, he said, “are known to pose significant risk of death and permanent disability.”

    The wording of the HB 5049 bans the “use of kinetic energy munitions,” which include rubber batons, bean bag rounds, foam baton rounds, and plastic, wax, wood or rubber-coated projectiles. In a clause banning the use of tear gas, phosphene and other gases, the bill deletes  a sentence exempting the use of tear gas by police officers. The bill also restricts the acquisition of surplus military equipment by law enforcement agencies.

    Bacon’s bottom line: The principle argument against tear gas, rubber bullets and other nonlethal means of crowd control is that they can hurt people and cause injury.

    Yeah, that’s right. Inflicting pain is the whole point. If a particular crowd control method doesn’t cause discomfort or pain, it won’t work! (more…)

  • Elmer Gantry In Lynchburg

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    Peter Galuszka

    Jerry Falwell, Jr., and wife Becki

    By Peter Galuszka

    The resignation of Jerry Falwell Jr. amid a series of scandals may have a strong impact in Virginia where his late father built an extraordinary, ultra-conservative evangelical university in Lynchburg that later became highly politicized lightning rod supporting President Donald Trump.

    Falwell has been caught up in a number of controversies including limiting speech on campus, going after The New York Times for trespassing when it reported he insisted that student ignore wearing anti-viral pandemic masks and so on.

    What happened with Falwell Jr is as  an American story as apple pie topped with a Cross. It might have some straight out of the pages of Elmer Gantry.

    After touting strict school policies that forbid students from drinking alcohol, watching “R”-rated movies or engaging in pre-marital sex, Falwell was pictured aboard a NASCAR mogul’s yacht half dressed with a semi-clad, pregnant woman who was said to be his wife Becki’s assistant. Falwell was holding a wine glass with a liquid in it but Falwell said it wasn’t wine.

    Shortly afterwards, he gave an interview to the right-leaning Washington Examiner stating that his wife had been involved with a multi-year sexual affair with Giancarlo Granda, a former Miami Beach pool boy whom Falwell funded to set up a hostel business. (more…)

  • Hey, Commish, Not So Fast on the COVID Vaccine

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    James A. Bacon

    GeraldFordgettingvaccine.jpeg

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Well, he did it again. Virginia’s Commissioner of Misinformation, er Health, shot off his mouth and alarmed the public, and then state government factotums had to do damage control.

    On Friday,  WRIC ABC News reported that Virginia State Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver “plans to mandate coronavirus vaccinations for Virginians once one is made available to the public.”

    Virginia state law gives the Commissioner of Health the authority to mandate immediate immunizations during a public health crisis if a vaccine is available. Health officials say an immunization could be released as early as 2021.

    Dr. Oliver says that, as long as he is still the Health Commissioner, he intends to mandate the coronavirus vaccine.

    “It is killing people now, we don’t have a treatment for it and if we develop a vaccine that can prevent it from spreading in the community we will save hundreds and hundreds of lives,” Oliver said.

    Under state law, only people with a medical exemption could refuse the mandate.

    With that, Oliver became the first state official in the US to threaten compulsory COVID vaccinations.

    (more…)

  • Reform K-12 Education to Increase Diversity in Virginia’s Colleges — and in Life

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Much is appropriately made of the relative lack of diversity in Virginia’s state-supported colleges and universities. Some trace that exclusively to racial discrimination. My research indicates it may also reflect the educational disadvantages of being poor.  

    Here I will offer a path to begin to fix both.

    I have researched and written a good bit about the wide variations in K-12 student SOL pass rates among Virginia’s poorest school districts. See Rev 1 Reading and Math Virginia 2018-2019 SOL results by State and Division by Subject by Subgroup.

    Some students, parents and school districts in Virginia’s poorest communities exhibit extraordinary success in those standardized tests across all races and among economically disadvantaged students. That success is measured not against other poor districts, but among districts statewide.  

    (more…)

  • Bringing Analytical Clarity to the COVID Shutdown Debate

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    While we’re on the subject of lazy, undisciplined thinking about COVID-19 vaccine mandates (see previous post), let’s address the topic of lazy, undisciplined thinking about economic shutdowns. The Wall Street Journal‘s Greg Ip brings some refreshing analytical clarity to the debate.

    Ip addresses public policy responses to the COVID contagion around the world. Options can be viewed on a spectrum from a heavy authoritarian hand (China quarantining entire city populations) to an almost libertarian approach (Sweden restricting only large gatherings). The response of most countries, including the United States, has been between the two extremes.

    Unfortunately, the U.S. response has been confused, vacillating and sub-optimal. Polarized between “protecting lives” and “protecting the economy,” Americans don’t really know what they’re trying to accomplish. Writes Ip: (more…)

  • It’s Way too Early to Discuss a Vaccine Mandate

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Four days ago State Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver said he planned to mandate a COVID-19 immunization once it’s safely released to the public. Yesterday Governor Ralph Northam said he’s not planning a mandate, despite what his top health official said.

    When asked why the the Governor wasn’t embracing the stance of his top health official, Northam spokesperson Alena Yarmosky said in a statement, “We are focused on accessibility, affordability, and fair distribution of a vaccine—not on a mandate.”

    “When a vaccine becomes available, we’re confident that Virginians will seek it out. That’s why we don’t have plans for a mandate,” Yarmosky continued in a separate email, reports WAVY TV.

    I’m no expert on the subject of vaccines, to be sure, but it strikes me as way too premature to begin discussing a mandate. Many potential vaccine candidates are being tested, we don’t which one (or ones) will be approved, and we know nothing about the efficacy, side effects and trade-offs of each. (more…)

  • Boomergeddon vs Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

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    djrippert

    by DJ Rippert

    Saving America’s bacon. In 2010 Jim Bacon, blogrunner of this site, wrote a book titled Boomergeddon. The sub-title of the book is, “How Runaway Deficits and the Age Wave Will Bankrupt the Federal Government and Devastate Retirement for Baby Boomers Unless We Act Now.” The book is well written and contains considerable supporting detail but that sub-title pretty much sums things up. At the time of publication Bacon’s book amplified the conventional wisdom of the day — deficits are bad and, as our president might say, big deficits are bad bigly. That traditional belief has come under scrutiny lately. One leading critic of the theories espoused by Boomergeddon is Stephanie Kelton, an economics professor at Stony Brook University and former advisor to the Sanders campaign. Her new book, published in 2020, is titled, The Deficit Myth.  One paragraph from the description of Kellon’s book on Amazon.Com sums up her thesis vis-a-vis Boomergeddon. “Kelton busts through the myths that prevent us from taking action: that the federal government should budget like a household, that deficits will harm the next generation, crowd out private investment, and undermine long-term growth, and that entitlements are propelling us toward a grave fiscal crisis.” Kelton believes the United States has considerably more room to incur debt without causing economic harm and we should get about the business of incurring more debt. Paying homage to her Democratic-Socialist roots, Kellon sub-titled her book, “Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy.”

    (more…)

  • Police and People in a Mental Health Crisis

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    By Dick Hall-Sizemore

    The Senate Judiciary Committee reported many of the Democrats’ criminal justice reform bills at its meeting last week. I will discuss the most important ones, in some depth, in installments, rather than all at once. This first installment is on the interaction between police and mentally ill folks.

    For many years, police officials and sheriffs have warned of the problems posed by mentally ill persons committing crimes, often petty ones, as well as by those having a crisis and acting more violently. This problem has been increasing over the years. (The reasons for this increase are beyond the scope of this post as well as beyond the scope of the knowledge and expertise of the author.) Law-enforcement officials have said publicly, repeatedly and correctly, that their officers have not been trained to deal appropriately with these folks. (more…)

  • Trees, Temperatures and Racism

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    James A. Bacon


    by James A. Bacon

    The New York Times has drawn a straight-line linkage between the redlining of neighborhoods in Richmond nearly a hundred years ago and the fact that African-American neighborhoods have higher average temperatures than mostly white neighborhoods. Black neighborhoods, often comprised of public housing, have fewer trees “to shield people from the sun’s relentless glare.” Writes the NYT of Richmond’s Gilpin Court housing project:

    More than 2,000 residents, mostly Black, live in low-income public housing that lacks central air conditioning. Many front yards are paved with concrete, which absorbs and traps heat. The ZIP code has among the highest rates of hear-related ambulance calls in the country.

    There are places like Gilpin Court all over the United States where neighborhoods can be 5 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit hotter in summer than wealthier, white parts of the city, the Times says.

    And there’s growing evidence that this is no coincidence. In the 20th century, local and federal officials, usually white, enacted policies that reinforced racial segregation in cities and diverted investment away from minority neighborhoods in ways that created large disparities in the urban heat environment.

    It’s certainly true that there was redlining in the 1930s, and the NYTimes makes a good case that many of the redlined neighborhoods remain predominantly African-American today. Trouble is, when you interpret everything through the lens of race, every disparity looks like a racial inequity. (more…)

  • Put Your Mask Where Your Mouth Is

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    James A. Bacon

    There’s a running debate over who is more responsible for the spread of COVID-19 in the United States: MAGA Country individualists refusing to wear masks as a silent political protest… or social justice collectivists refusing to wear masks while engaging in loud political protest. Here’s a data point to contribute to that discussion…

    FXBG Free, a coalition of racial-justice groups in Fredericksburg, has postponed all in-person gatherings after five of its organizers tested positive for COVID-19. The organizers are self-isolating for two weeks. After making the announcement, FXBG Free reminded followers that masks and social distancing are “mandatory practices at our events and protests.”

    However, notes the Free Lance-Star, the cover photo on its Facebook page (shown above) shows a crowd of mostly young people in protest mode, many of whom are maskless.

    Shouting protest slogans, I’ve noticed, just doesn’t have the same impact when you’re wearing a mask.

    — JAB

  • UVa Grad Students Want to Unionize

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    A group of University of Virginia employees comprised mainly of graduate students want to form a union, reports the Daily Progress. If successful, the workers would be affiliated with the Campus Workers of America.

    UVa last year committed to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, so economic issues don’t appear to be at the top of the list. The unionists’ main concern at the moment is safety and health during the COVID-19 virus as students return to the grounds.

    “With students coming in, everybody is worried about getting coronavirus,” said Evan Brown, a biology department doctoral student and member of the union steering committee. The group “demands” that the University abandon its hybrid in-person/remote learning model for the fall and cancel undergraduate move-in, according to a statement released two days ago.

    But the demands of United Campus Workers-Virginia members extend beyond working conditions. The union also admonishes the administration “to end its relationship with Charlottesville police and cut funding for its own police department as part of its stated mission to address pervasive racial inequality at the University.” (more…)

  • Hey, College Kids, Take a Gap Year

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    I’m delighted to no longer be part of the parental tuition-check-writing cohort. Because if I were, I’d have to tell my kids that my checkbook was closed.

    Take a year off, I’d tell them. A “gap year.”

    That way they could escape the dystopian nightmare that colleges and universities have become as they over-react to the danger COVID-19 poses to college students. It would also exempt them from a world where newspapers are so desperate to gin up virus-shaming with headlines like this: “Six Students Sent Off Campus at Roanoke College.”

    At the risk of sounding callous, why is this a news story?

    Chances are these students have no symptoms or they’re experiencing something like the flu. Funny, I don’t remember hair-on-fire headlines when H1N1 was rampaging across college campuses, killing some and sickening thousands, including my son who was quarantined in his Marshall University dorm room for more than a week in 2009.

    The implication is, of course, that these naughty Roanoke students engaged in “risky” behavior, which at this point amounts to ordinary college activities such as going to a party or riding in a car with four other students without wearing hazmat suits.

    It gets worse. (more…)

  • Virginia Educational Reform – Place, Class, Race — Or All Three?

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    I am an optimist by nature. Optimism wins elections, and optimism can bring about democratic change.  

    Governments at their most basic level are created by people to protect themselves from outsiders and to minimize conflicts within their own ranks. From a condo association to Congress, that is a core role.   

    I believe that representative government is the only form of democracy that scales and the form most likely to protect the weak. I believe in the rule of law and in traditions and institutions as stabilizing forces. I defend the individual rights embedded in our constitution.

    I believe our republic needs to help Americans ensure they and theirs are secure in the basic necessities of life and their are children educated. Call me a class theorist. People of good character can and do get in fierce arguments about what constitute the basic necessities of life and whether assistance should be couched as a helping hand or a new bill of rights.  

    I believe that self reliance is a core value of America. So is compassion. I support a policy of writing checks to help the disadvantaged in a crisis, but long-term policies that help them pull themselves up. There is dignity in that. People need dignity.

    I oppose a distorted rationalism that seeks to put every responsibility on government and a rationalist government that inevitably settles on picking favorites and attacking religion. 

    I regret the cascading failure of the regional newspapers as perhaps the biggest internal threat to representative government in my lifetime.

    On June 17, 2020 in Areo magazine , Gabriel Scorgie wrote: (more…)

  • Nursing Home PPE Shortages and Deaths Still Rising

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    James A. Bacon

    Deaths in cases originating at Virginia long-term care facilities.

    by Carol J. Bova

    After a review of over 15,000 nursing home reports submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), Brian E. McGarry, David C. Grabowski, and Michael L. Barnett published a paper in Health Affairs on August 20th. In “Severe Staffing and Personal Protective Equipment Shortages Faced by Nursing Homes During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” they concluded, “Despite intense policy attention and mounting mortality, the shortages have not meaningfully improved from May to July of 2020.”

    While six fewer Virginia nursing homes reported nursing staff shortages as of August 9,  there were more reports of all other staff shortages and supplies of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) between the weeks ending June 7 and August 9 according to the CMS COVID-19 Nursing Home Dataset. Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to rise. (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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