Bacon's Rebellion

  • School Teachers Get Virus? Too Damned Bad!

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    Peter Galuszka

    By Peter Galuszka

    Here at Bacons Rebellion, a favorite blood sport of late has been tearing apart school teachers by ripping up their “values,” their personal courage, their honesty, their intellects and their mindless lapdog following of their commissars at teachers’ unions

    The same is true for college professors and administrators (Golly Darn, Reed Fawell just discovered the 1960s!”)

    The issue is a deadly one, the COVID-19 pandemic that has so far killed more Americans – twice more U.S. military in fact – than were killed in the Vietnam War. Today, there is an understandably complicated and confusing exercise that will try to come up with the safest ways to go back to school.

    I won’t get into that because I am no expert, but I cringe when I read the likes of Kerry Dougherty and James A. Bacon Jr. in their endless attacks on the teaching profession.

    She opines: “Odds that elected representatives will have the courage to  stand up to the teachers and reopen schools? Zero. It seems that some teachers want guarantees that there is no risk. Preposterous. There can never be a risk free environment.” (more…)

  • Another Deceptive Article about Mortgage Discrimination

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Oh, brother, here we go again… Of the 14,700 mortgage applications submitted by black Virginians last year, 11.9% were turned down, reports the Virginia Mercury. By contrast, of the 70,400 applications from non-Hispanic whites, only 5% were rejected. The difference in acceptance rates cannot be attributed solely to differences in income, says the online publication. Racial disparities in loan denial rates exist at almost every income level.

    The Mercury article does not state explicitly that the gap in rejection rates is attributable to racism, bias or discrimination, but it frames the issue as if it is. The article provides this assessment from Alex Guzmán, director of fair housing for the nonprofit group Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia:

    In light of the protests triggered by the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, the latest [Home Mortgage Disclosure Act] numbers take on added meaning because “homeownership is probably the most powerful way to rectify the racial wealth gap.”

    And this from Bruce Whitehurst, president of the Virginia Bankers Association:

    Speaking for myself as a non-Hispanic White, we have to think a lot more about why the differences are there. I just think we’re at this place where we need to address the structural issues. And I think it’s fair for anyone in the Black community to say, ‘What took you so long to figure out what we’ve known for a long time?’”

    As always with racial disparities = racial discrimination stories, there is a lot less to these numbers than meets the eye. Indeed, if there is a guilty party involved, it is the media, in this case the Virginia Mercury, which cherry picks data to push a  left-wing Oppression Narrative that can serve only to inflame African-Americans’ sense of grievance and victimhood, and, thereby, discourage blacks from seeking mortgage financing! (more…)

  • Williamsburg the Locality Most Vulnerable to COVID-19

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    James A. Bacon

    Composite Local Vulnerability Index. Source: “Report on Local Vulnerability Analysis.” Click for larger image.

    The City of Williamsburg is the Virginia locality most vulnerable to the stresses imposed by the COVID-19 epidemic on local governments, according to a report recently issued by Virginia’s Commission on Local Government. Other small cities — Emporia, Colonial Heights, and Norton — follow close behind on the list.

    The Commission based its assessment on three sets of data. The first is the Fiscal Stress Index, which the state already maintains to measure the taxing capacity of local governments and the “effort” they expend in terms of taxes levied. Commission analysts also considered each locality’s dependence upon revenue sources most immediately impacted by the virus: local sales taxes, transient occupancy taxes on hotels, and meals taxes. Thirdly, they used an analysis of job loss vulnerability produced by Chmura Economics & Analytics based on a region’s mix of industries. (more…)

  • Welcome to Illinois

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    The illegal but successful threats not to return to work by teachers associations in Fairfax County Virginia have forced Virginians to confront the issue of public employees’ willful refusals to perform the duties of their employment.

    From the Washington Post, “Teachers in Fairfax revolt against fall plans, refusing to teach in-person,” June 26, 2020:

    A day after one of the nation’s largest school systems announced its proposal for fall learning, teachers within Fairfax County Public Schools rose in revolt and refused to teach in-person, as the (previously announced by the school board) plan demands, until officials revise their strategy.

    Though you would not know it from their actions, Fairfax County school teachers currently are not permitted to bargain collectively. Even when the laws change next year to permit bargaining at local option, such tactics will be illegal.

    Code of Virginia, § 40.1-55, both now and in 2021, is titled “Employee striking terminates, and becomes temporarily ineligible for, public employment’.”   (more…)

  • Richmond Schools as Real-World Social Science Experiment

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    James A. Bacon

    School Superintendent Jason Kamras said yesterday that he will ask the Richmond School Board to remove school resource officers (SROs) from city schools and use the money to hire more mental health professionals. He made no mention of removing school security guards.

    Most of the arrests made in Richmond schools in 2019-20 were for simple assault, marijuana or disorderly conduct, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Marijuana possession has been decriminalized, and it is now illegal to arrest students for disorderly conduct on school property.

    “Talk is cheap, and we need action,” Kamras told a group of students during a Facebook Live event. “I think it’s the right thing to do and it’s what our kids have asked for. (more…)

  • 133 Virginia Petri Dishes for Back-to-School Policies

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Virginia’s 133 school districts are conducting what amounts to an unprecedented experiment on the efficacy of online learning in K-12 education.

    Spooked by COVID-19, local school boards are stampeding toward the emergency exits — hundreds of schools will close this fall, and tens of thousands of Virginia school kids will be educated at home. Here are some headlines compiled by today’s VA News:

    Petersburg schools going virtual for start of upcoming year.

    Fredericksburg schools will be 100 percent virtual when classes start Aug. 17.

    Virginia Beach should start school year online-only, superintendent says. (more…)

  • How COVID Will Transform Higher Ed

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    James A. Bacon

    Better than listening to lectures online? $2,000 per course better?

    by James A. Bacon

    The COVID-19 epidemic will permanently alter the landscape of higher education, one of America’s most broken industries, contends Stephen McBride, writing in Forbes. College costs have ballooned “beyond all reason,” he says, but as recently as a year ago, he held out little hope that anything would change. Why? “It’s a tough sell to convince an 18-year-old kid not to attend the four-year party all of his friends are going to, especially when the US government is financing it through student loans.”

    But the coronavirus, McBride says, “will be remembered for transforming college forever.” Many colleges are moving their courses online next semester. Instead of living on campus and walking to lectures, kids will be sitting in their bedrooms and watching professors on Zoom.

    This is FAR more disruptive than most folks realize. College is about much more than just the learning. There’s the education, and then you have the experience. The learning part has barely changed in a century. Kids still sit in 60-year-old lecture halls listening to professors. But now the “experience” has been stripped away. Do you think teenagers will be willing to mortgage their futures in order to watch college lecture videos on the internet?

    (more…)

  • Limit On Emergency Powers is First Bill

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    Steve Haner

    Aaaaaaand, they’re off. The first five bills have been filed for consideration by the August 18 Special Session, all introduced by Senate Republicans. As the list of proposals fills in rapidly, you can track it here.

    First on the list, surprising no one, is a bill from Senator Steve Newman of the Lynchburg region limiting a governor’s emergency powers by executive order to 30 days, then outlining how the General Assembly may intervene if it chooses (and it may choose not to).  This bill may or may not be ruled germane to the session’s purpose, but I’m glad it is bill number one. (Well, five thousand and one.)

    SB 5001 Emergency Services and Disaster Law; limitation on duration of executive orders.

    Next up, from Senate Minority Leader Thomas Norment of Williamsburg, is bill prohibiting police use of choke holds, a practice that has led to far too many injuries and deaths among arrested individuals, including but in no way limited to the notorious case in Minneapolis. This is very much germane to the session’s official call.

    SB 5002 Law-enforcement officers; prohibition on the use of neck restraints.

    So is Senator Richard Stuart’s proposal for a Commission on Civil Rights and Policing, for a formal dive into these issues. With the House Democrats already holding three public hearings on their ideas, and with the Crime Commission now thoroughly stacked against debate and dissent, this one’s a long shot.

    SB 5003 Civil Rights and Policing, Commission on; established, report, sunset provision. (more…)

  • Bacon Bits: Pigskins, COVID, Unemployment

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    James A. Bacon

    Hail the to Pigskins. The football team formerly known as the Washington Redskins has punted on adopting a new permanent name this season, and will refer to itself for the time being as the Washington Football Team. The pause allows the team to “undertake an in-depth branding process” that incorporates player, alumni, fan, community and sponsor input. the team announced. What a cop-out. I’m still holding out hope for the team to rename itself the Washington Pigskins.

    COVID risk metrics for school districts. The Virginia Department of Health and Virginia Department of Education are collaborating on a new COVID-19 dashboard to guide local education officials when deciding how to reopen schools this fall. The dashboard likely will include eight to 10 local metrics such as confirmed cases, percent-positive rates on tests, hospitalizations, and the number of local emergency room visits for COVID-19-like illnesses. School divisions will be flagged, red, yellow and green to indicate whether they should reopen, adopt a hybrid model, or adopt a distance-learning model, reports the Prince William Times.

    One suggestion: The dashboard should include the number of people testing positive in the age ranges corresponding to elementary, middle, and high school.  Given the different risk profiles for younger and older children, it makes no sense to impose a uniform policy. School boards might consider keeping elementary schools open while going online with high schools.

    Economic health metrics. Meanwhile, another 37,946 Virginians have filed for unemployment claims, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. That’s up 17.5% from the previous week. All told, more than one million Virginians have filed for unemployment benefits for the first time since March. “Virginia’s preliminary weekly change — up 7,896 on a seasonally adjusted basis — was the largest increase among the states,” reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

  • Common Sense and Coronavirus in Virginia

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    djrippert

    by DJ Rippert

    Stepping back. Over the past five months there has been an unending flood of information, guesses, misinformation and politicized ramblings about COVID-19.  Various factions put forth their experts and cherry picked data to support their agendas. It’s time to step back and synthesize all that has been written into a set of common sense observations and preliminary conclusions about COVID-19.

    The virus isn’t going anywhere. Even the most aggressive attempts to contain the Coronavirus will not eradicate the virus. The spread can be slowed and the curve can be flattened but the infections continue and the outbreaks resurge. After a catastrophic bout with Coronavirus in the spring Spain thought it had the contagion under control. The country reopened in what the Spanish thought was a sober and controlled way. Today, cases are spiking – particularly in the Catalan region. In the San Francisco Bay area of California strict lockdown protocols were implemented. The tide seemed to have turned. Reopening commenced.  Now, many bay area counties are seeing a spike in Coronavirus. (more…)

  • Democrats Stack the Deck

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    By Dick Hall-Sizemore

    The Virginia State Crime Commission is a legislative body established in 1966 and set out in the Code of Virginia (Sec. 30-156 et al.). Its purpose is “to study, report and make recommendations on all areas of public safety and protection.” Following is a sampling of its recent topics of study:

    • Sex trafficking
    • Pre-trial programs
    • Fingerprinting of defendants
    • Decriminalization of simple marijuana possession
    • Asset forfeiture

    Virginia law establishes the composition of the Crime Commission as follows:

    • Six members of the House of Delegates to be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Delegates in accordance with the principles of proportional representation contained in the Rules of the House of Delegates
    • Three members of the Senate to be appointed by the Senate Committee on Rules
    • Three nonlegislative citizen members to be appointed by the Governor
    • The Attorney General or his designee

    In recent years, there have been four Republican delegates and two Democrats.  The Senate representatives included two Republicans and one Democrat. (more…)

  • Philanthropist James Dooley Soon to Be Canceled by VCU

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    James A. Bacon

    The Dooley Hospital for Infectious Diseases at Virginia Commonwealth University no longer stands. But the portico/entrance of the original building has been retained as a free-standing memorial on VCU’s medical campus. The name of the Dooley Hospital is etched in limestone.

    The Virginia Commonwealth University’s Committee on Commemoration and Memorials has targeted the Dooley Hospital name for the memory-hole treatment. A wealthy Richmond businessman by the name of James H. Dooley donated the funds during the Influenza epidemic of 1919 for the construction of the hospital. The son of an Irish immigrant, Dooley contributed to the rebirth of Richmond after the Civil War through his investments in real estate and railroads. He was a leading philanthropist, he supported the arts, and he advocated universal public education — which made him pretty progressive for his era. He and his wife also left bequests to establish the Richmond Public Library, St. Joseph’s Villa, and the Crippled Children’s Hospital. Their mansion and grounds, Maymount, is open to the public today as a popular family destination.

    Dooley’s unpardonable sin? He enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private. He was wounded, taken prisoner, released in a prisoner exchange, and discharged due to his disability.

    Unlike the Richmond statues to Lee, Jackson and Stuart, the memorial to Dooley glorified not his service to the Confederacy but his benefaction to the community. The naming of the hospital was not connected in any way to the Lost Cause narrative, the imposition of the Jim Crow regime, or massive resistance to desegregation, the usual explanations for taking down the Monument Avenue statues or other emblems of the Confederacy. (more…)

  • A Different Approach to Opening Schools

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    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    By Dick Hall-Sizemore

    I am struck by the contradictions of some people on this blog. On the one hand, they are terribly troubled, even outraged, by what they see as liberal indoctrination happening in our schools (here and here, for examples). On the other hand, they are outraged at the prospect that the schools may be closed due to the pandemic (here and here, among many others). I suppose these contradictory positions can be rationalized with the idea that liberal indoctrination is better than no education.

    But I digress. It seems to me that rational thought is not being brought to this confusion over the opening of the schools. I would like to pose a solution that I have not seen considered. (more…)

  • Stop Walking on Eggshells

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    R.K. Rowling

    by Kerry Dougherty

    A new study from the libertarian CATO institute supports something I’ve believed for a long time, which – let’s be honest – is why I’m sharing it with you.

    It found that the cancel culture is stifling speech. The result: A growing number of Americans on both sides of the political divide and all races and ethnicities are afraid to share their political opinions.

    “There have been shifts across the board, where more people among all political groups feel they are walking on eggshells,” the CATO survey found, adding, “majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) who all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share.­­”

    There is only one group that feel free to bloviate freely. Care to guess which?

    If you said extreme liberals, you’d be right. The far left is anything but shy. (more…)

  • “Anti-Racism” Is Racism in Disguise

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    Anti-racism demonstrators in Charlottesville.

    by Hans Bader

    America’s colleges, media, and cultural institutions are being swept by the ideology of “anti-racism.” It openly advocates racial discrimination against white people, and promotes bigoted, lower expectations for black people.

    “Rationality” and “hard work” are vestiges of racism, declared the “anti-racism” web site of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. It claimed that virtues like “hard work,” “self-reliance,” being “polite,” and being on time are all a product of the “white dominant culture.” So, too, are normal grammar, the scientific method, and its emphasis on “objective, rational linear thinking,” according to a chart the Smithsonian posted.

    “The ‘anti-racism’ sweeping institutions still ends up rendering black people as somehow different, other, unable to meet even basic standards,” notes Thomas Chatterton Williams, a black writer for the New York Times magazine and Harpers. He points to a recent set of “anti-racist” directives from the English Department at Rutgers University, which deemphasize grammar rules that conflict with black slang.

    Being an “anti-racist” means advocating discrimination to transform society. The bible of “anti-racism” is “How to Be an Antiracist,” by Boston University’s Ibram X. Kendi. The “key concept” from How to Be an Antiracist is that to remedy the underrepresentation of minority groups, you need to engage in discrimination in the opposite direction — i.e., discriminate against whites. (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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