In the last episode of this series, the author wrote about what citizens should do to choose a nursing home. He made the case that a search should use Medicare Compare to make a list of facilities in the vicinity of your search area and then use the Staffing rating to whittle it down to facilities with at least a three-star staffing rating. In some regions of Virginia, that doesn’t leave very many options, but so be it. Do not seek admission to an understaffed facility.
The November 20, 2025, the latest Provider Information was released by CMS. The attached spreadsheet contains key elements of that data for every Medicare- or Medicaid-certified Virginia facility. The author recommends that regulators use this format. It is color-coded to permit assessment of the state’s portfolio of facilities in a few minutes.
The first thing to know when seeking a nursing home is that the Social Security Act spells out nursing home requirements relating to residents’ rights. See here subparagraph (c).
Once informed of the rights you or your loved one will have, Medicare Compare is by far the best source available to most Virginians when evaluating a nursing home before a necessary personal visit. But it is imperfect. The author will share with readers here his experiences on what information in Medicare Compare is useful and what is not.
In the next article, the author will report on important information for analysts that is not in Medicare Compare. But today we’ll work with information that CMS designs for everyone.
To facilitate public consideration, this is the first of several articles on bills pre-filed by Democrats for the 2026 General Assembly. This one presents pre-filed amendments to the Constitution of Virginia.
It will include the official summary of each and a link to the bill as filed. Some summaries are reasonably complete, some are not. So, if an issue is important to you, you are recommended to read the full bill.
I hope readers who comment will take a moment to consider the importance of thoughtful responses, approving or not, on this serious subject.
HJ1: Constitutional Amendment Fundamental Right to Reproductive Freedom.
Patroned by Delegate Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, Constitutional amendment (second reference).
Provides that every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom and that such right shall not be, directly or indirectly, denied, burdened, or infringed upon unless justified by a compelling state interest, as defined in the amendment, and achieved by the least restrictive means. The amendment specifies that, notwithstanding the other provisions of the amendment, the Commonwealth may regulate the provision of abortion care in the third trimester, provided that in no circumstance shall the Commonwealth prohibit an abortion
It is important that Virginians understand early what the total control of the Virginia Government by Democrats will mean in legislation, whether they support the bills or not.
In pursuit of that effort, the author will post each of the General Assembly Democrats’ priority bills that are pre-filed. The format for each post will use the title of a bill as the title of the post. The text of each article will include the summary of that bill as filed. A link will be provided to the full text of the bill as filed.
This author will make no comments on the individual bills.
He will note here that campaign finance reform is the one issue that most matters to the integrity of the legislative process. But the General Assembly has proven in the past to be too corrupted by the current system to change it meaningfully.
The photo at the open is of a former Democratic candidate who could not raise enough money the traditional way.
The corruption at the state level extends down to city and county officials who campaign for office under the same lack of constraints. The Virginia Beach City Council is, for example, owned and operated by commercial development interests that contribute the bulk of campaign donations from all sources. The result was seen in the scandalous story of the new Atlantic Park.
I expect that 98% of Virginians are unaware that we have no state law that limits campaign contributions. Thus, there is no public pressure to pass one.
New: Virginia House Democrats announce their first priorities during the 2026 session.
They include protecting abortion and LGBTQ rights, redistricting, raising the minimum wage, paid sick leave, and more. @8NEWSpic.twitter.com/Ikaby5v2D7
The Miami Independent blog reports on the inquiries of a Virginia citizen affiliated with the Virginia Voter Roll Maintenance Movementinto possible voting-registration irregularities in Arlington County. — JAB
Google Maps view of 1405 South Fern Street
Voter Registration At UPS Store In Arlington, Virginia by Eduardo Vidal
A Virginia resident reports that he has been stonewalled by Arlington County election officials after raising questions about dozens of voter registrations allegedly linked to a UPS Store address on 1405 South Fern Street.
The resident first contacted Arlington County General Registrar Gretchen Reinemeyer to flag what appeared to be potential irregularities with registrations listing 1405 South Fern Street, which is a UPS Store providing private mailboxes—not a residential building. Thus far, the resident says, the registrar’s response has been “woefully inadequate.” …
The poll pad listed multiple pages of voters registered at 1405 South Fern Street—one page with 39 active voters and another with 30. Some entries had unit numbers, others did not. One record listed no address at all. At least 12 names appeared more than once, suggesting possible duplicates or record-keeping errors. Unit designations varied from three digits to five, without a clear pattern.
🚨Mary Baldwin U is cutting 17 minors & multiple faculty positions. The president resigned August 2025.
Students protested at the private Staunton, VA campus, which has about 700 residential undergrads plus online & commuter programs, and a female Corps of Cadets. Tuition:… pic.twitter.com/yCScepHhSB
Jim Bacon chats with Matt Thornhill, founder of Cozy Homes Community.
Millions of aging Americans have too much money to get government assistance but not enough to move to an upscale independent-living community. In any case, most would like to age in place in their own home. If Thornhill’s middle-market housing solution gets off the ground, it could revolutionize where and how older Americans live.
James Bacon: Hello, everyone! I’m Jim Bacon, and this is the Oinkonomics Podcast.
About 15 years ago, I worked for the Boomer Project, a research marketing firm that specialized in studying the baby boomer generation. A major preoccupation at that time was what happened at Woodstock, but what would happen when tens of millions of boomers got old and had trouble living on their own? Aside from the question of who was going to pay for their Social Security and Medicare, who is going to care for all those octogenarians and nonagenarians? What kind of quality of life would they enjoy as they became increasingly dependent upon caretakers?
Well, here I am, a boomer who reached senior citizen status several years ago. Once upon a time, anyone over 65 was considered old. But guess who’s older? My 96-year-old mother and 89-year-old mother-in-law. They require a lot of assistance. Elder care is not an abstract, sometime in the future concern like it seemed 15 years ago. My wife and I worry about our aging parents every day, and we spend a lot of time thinking about where the best place is for them to live.
That’s all prelude to me bumping into my old Boomer Project boss, Matt Thornhill, recently at a social event. Turns out, while I was scratching out a living as a journalist and blogger. Matt was converting the insights he’d gained from his market research into a real estate venture aimed mainly at aging boomers. Although, it probably won’t be too long before it appeals to Gen Xers, too. As founder and CEO of Cozy Home Community. Matt is developing a very specialized type of housing for communities of aging middle-income boomers.
Welcome to the Oinkonomics Podcast, Matt. Or should I just say, OK, Boomer!
Fork in the road. Image credit: Bing Image Creator
by Andrew Rotherham
A lot of people are asking: What’s going to happen on education in Virginia? It’s a good question. And it matters beyond Virgina’s borders. The commonwealth took several big steps forward on schools over the past few years — some initiated by the legislature (science of reading and assessment reform), and some by Governor Glenn Youngkin (innovative public lab schools across the commonwealth, more ambitious standards, transparency, and a real accountability system).
Enter Abigail Spanberger. A moderate Democrat, perhaps more by temperament than politics. She worked for the CIA before winning one of Virginia’s vanishingly few swing districts to serve in Congress (she was my member of Congress for a time before retiring to run for governor).
She enters office with the wind at her back. Virginia’s countercyclical off-year election cycle, Trump’s abysmal numbers in the state, a non-Trump on the ballot electorate, and the government shutdown all handed Spanberger a legit landslide. Even seasoned observers and Democratic leaders were surprised by how well the party did — picking up 13 House seats and giving the incoming governor a commanding 64–36 majority. The state senate, not on the ballot, remains closely divided, though Democrats now hold a tiebreaker with the lieutenant governor’s seat.
Twenty-four years ago, when I entered the Assembly as an unlikely Democratic challenger, the Republicans controlled 66 seats in the House of Delegates, as well as the State Senate — and 8 of 11 Congressional seats.
A mansion tax? That will go over big in Northern Virginia.
As a new Democratic Party trifecta looms in Virginia, a progressive policy group has floated a long list of old and new ways to soak Virginia’s upper income residents through taxes in order to fund additional state spending.
The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis doesn’t use the word “spending,” of course, but speaks of “investments” in “quality public education, health care, affordable housing, access to food.”
According to the most recent report on state government spending trends, from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the state’s payments to localities for school operations have grown 7% annually, about double the rate of inflation, and the cost of the Medicaid program has grown 12% annually, more than three times the rate of inflation. Those two by themselves have added $22 billion to the state budget in ten years.
But the appetite for more is on full display following the election. Later this week the money committees for both the House of Delegates and Senate will hold retreats away from the capital to hear likely warnings that the projected revenues are inadequate for a host of “unmet needs,” what a Republican Finance Committee chairman used to call “bills in the drawer.”
The Commonwealth Institute has the path to financial salvation:
On November 16, the author revised previous articles on the nursing homes in the Eastern, Central, and Southwest regions to provide better data and explain it better in a much-revised spreadsheet.
The format the author chose previously wasn’t getting the job done, so he changed it.
The new one should provide more clarity. The spreadsheet is designed to be self-explanatory. The sums and averages line at the bottom of each shows regional results.
Changes in the text were made only to reflect the updated spreadsheet.
Increased enrollment of economically disadvantaged students seems to have had only a minor impact on academic performance.
by John Butcher
Responding to discussions (here, here, here, and here) of a new admissions policy and a decline in the US News ranking of TJ (aka Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology), I posted an analysis of the end-of-year test (“SOL”) data through 2025. Since then, I’ve had a chance to try to think more clearly (says he), with the following results.
But first: VDOE reports pass rate averages for “economically disadvantaged” students (“ED” here)(mostly those who qualify for free/reduced price meals, i.e., this is the bureaucratic euphemism for “poorer”), their more affluent peers (“Not ED”), and all students. ED students generally perform less well than the Not ED, see, e.g., this. Most of the VDOE reports and, it appears, the new Accreditation system (and, also, the US News rankings, see below) look at the all students averages. That serves to unfairly penalize the schools and divisions with large ED populations (and to benefit those, such as TJ, with a small ED group). A fair system would look at both groups and probably would emphasize the performance of the group that needs more attention, the ED. This post looks at the recent ED and Not ED data for TJ, in addition to the all students results.
VDOE scores SOL tests on a 600 point scale. Passing is 400. As well, there are two “pass” classifications. Scores above 500 are counted as Pass/Advanced; those from 400 to 500, Pass/Proficient. The sum of those two rates in the overall pass rate.
The 2021 testing was voluntary so that year’s data surely are not reliable measures. I’ve omitted them here.
To start, a helpful VDOE database gives us the “Fall Membership.” Here is the dataset for TJ:
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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