Bacon's Rebellion

  • BR’s COVID-19 Parallel Universe

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    by

    Peter Galuszka

    By Peter Galuszka

    Almost every morning, I wake up a little before dawn, make coffee, let the dog out and feed her and start reading the news.

    I take The Washington Post in print along with The New York Times, Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Virginian-Pilot, NBC News, various television stations and, of course, Bacon’s Rebellion online.

    Later in the morning, I check out Blue Virginia, Virginia Mercury and RVA.

    When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, every morning I step into two different universes.

    One gives me the global and national view that jumps right in and explains where we are with the virus and who and what are at risk.

    The other view, that of Bacon’s Rebellion, mostly paints a very different picture. This view insists that the pandemic is exaggerated and overrated, needless regulations are being enacted by a dictatorial governor, our school system and housing trends are at risk and we should open everything up right now. (more…)

  • Where Are the Other 52 Nursing Homes with Outbreaks?

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    James A. Bacon

    by Carol J. Bova

    The governor’s Long Term Care Facility Task Force list shows 179 nursing home and assisted living facilities with outbreaks of COVID-19. There are 52 more, according to the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) Outbreaks tab on the daily COVID-19 data, but no explanation why they’re missing from the Task Force list.

    It took a little digging to narrow down where those facilities are located. The Task Force list can’t be downloaded or copied or sorted. But by adding its info to the CMS nursing home COVID-19 dataset and tagging each entry with the locality the Task Force used, I could compare the faciliity locations to the VDH Outbreaks Data Downloads and compile a list breaking down the number of missing outbreaks by Health District.

    Alexandria – 4
    Arlington – 3
    Central Shenandoah – 3
    Chesapeake – 1
    Chesterfield – 2
    Chickahominy – 2
    Crater – 2
    Eastern Shore – 2
    Fairfax – 14 (more…)

  • Open the Schools

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    sherlockj

    By James C. Sherlock

    I have written here multiple times about the terrible and disproportionate effects that school shutdowns are having on poor children in Virginia.

    The public school is an enterprise that has no admission standards. We do it that way on purpose, to try to give every American child as much opportunity to learn and develop into a successful citizen as we can. Public schools represent a core value of the American way of life and provide foundational support to our republic.

    Virginia Guidelines vs. CDC Guidelines

    On June 9, 2020 Governor Ralph Northam announced guidance for a phased approach that allows Virginia schools to slowly resume in-person classes for the coming academic year. There were two sources for the Governor’s guidance, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) and the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). Both dropped the ball.

    VDH summarized and truncated the published CDC school considerations to slow the spread of COVID-19 to the point that they are at best unhelpful. It is difficult to imagine why they did not just publish the CDC guidelines, but they did not.

    That flawed guidance was absorbed into the VDOE reopening guidelines.

    One of the core recommendations that originated in VDOE — remote learning for large classes of K-12 students— has been shown in every study to have been ineffective in April and May. An alternative schedule will prove in practice unexecutable. (more…)

  • Nursing Homes Most at Risk from Virus are Bigger, Urban

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    James A. Bacon

    Die, virus, die!

    Three out of five of the 1,645 Virginians who have died from COVID-19 have been residents of long-term care facilities — one of the highest percentages of any state in the United States. There has been considerable speculation why. Vincent Mor, a research scientist with the Brown School of Public Health, has found that nursing-home staffing levels aren’t the issue. Neither is the source of funding, whether Medicaid or private insurance.

    Mor argues that the size and location of long-term care facilities are the most decisive factors. Facilities most likely to have COVID-19 cases tend to be (1) located in larger urban areas with large populations of Hispanics and African-Americans, who are disproportionately likely to have the virus, and (2) the size of the facility, or, more specifically, the greater the number of employees coming and going.

    “It’s all about the traffic,” he says in this PowerPoint presentation summarizing his research. “The bigger the building, the more people enter. … So, it’s NOT about the facility but the virus.”

    I had never made these connections, and I think they are worth exploring here in Virginia. If the same pattern holds, it may influence how public health authorities prioritize the allocation of resources in the battle against the virus. (more…)

  • The Post-COVID World: More Home Schooling

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    The Home Educators Association of Virginia has seen a dramatic increase in inquiries about home schooling since the advent of the COVID-19 epidemic. In the past three months there have been 3,000 new members to the association’s Facebook page and 2,000 new requests to join through the website.

    “Since [the pandemic], people are trying to figure out what to do. They’re very concerned now that the regulations and procedures on classrooms have been announced,” Anne Miller, president of the Home Educators association, told WYDaily. “Many parents are concerned about anxiety in the classroom and the threat of resurgence in the fall.”

    Perhaps most notably, home schooling among African-American families is on the rise. Home schooling, say many African-American parents, helped their children learn about black history and culture. Home-schooled black children also out-perform their peers nationally, scoring above the 50th percentile in reading, language math and other core subjects, according to a 2015 National Home Education Research Institute study.

    By accelerating the acceptance of the work-from-home norm, the COVID-19 epidemic may give parents more flexibility to home school their children. “I don’t believe as many people are going to want to go back to the office,” Miller said. “If you want to home school, there’s almost always a way to make it work with a working parent and working from home.” (more…)

  • American Art and Culture Under Attack

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Francis Scott Key.

    Ulysses S. Grant.

    George Washington.

    Thomas Jefferson.

    Teddy Roosevelt.

    Andrew Jackson.

    Abolitionist Matthias Baldwin.

    Juan Ponce de Leon.

    St. Junipero Serra.

    Lincoln Memorial.

    World War I memorial.

    World War II memorial.

    Denver monument to the victims of Armenian genocide.

    Boston’s Shaw Memorial to the 54th Regiment: The African-American Union soldiers depicted in the movie “Glory.”

    This is just a partial list of statues and monuments that have been defaced, beheaded or toppled in the frenzy of unbridled anarchism that is sweeping the nation.

    (more…)

  • COVID Regs Unclear, Unneeded, Contradictory

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    More than two dozen Virginia business associations have asked that the state’s Safety and Health Codes Board reject proposed workplace regulations to prevent COVID-19, stating they are unclear, contradictory, and not needed in light of other existing worker protections.

    Some of the largest statewide associations, such as the Virginia Manufacturers Association, National Federation of Independent Business, and Virginia Retail Federation are on the list. So are some regional chambers of commerce and the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. You can read their 13-page submission here. The conclusion reads:

    “It is unreasonable to apply “one size fits all” COVID-19 regulations to all employers and employees.  Codifying guidance is not a reasonable replacement for regulation. It is confusing why after three months, the Regulations are being pursued through an emergency procedure, especially after OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) rejected the AFL-CIO’s petition for an emergency temporary standard for COVID-19 and the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied their petition for a writ of mandamus to compel OSHA to issue an Emergency Temporary Standard for Infectious Diseases.”

    The draft rules (here) and a related 200-page briefing package (here) have only been available since June 12. The public comment period closes tonight, and the board is set to meet Wednesday, in a format where the public can only watch. More details are provided in a Bacon’s Rebellion post from this weekend.

    (more…)

  • Updates from the Higher-Ed Apocalypse: VSU, RU, and JMU

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    VSU President Makola Abdullah

    by James A. Bacon

    Accelerated by the COVID-19 epidemic, the wrenching restructuring of the higher-ed industry is moving from small, private liberal arts colleges to the weaker public universities. Here’s the latest news from Virginia State University and Radford University.

    VSU, a 138-year-old historically black institution, faces a 10% drop in enrollment, big losses in dormitory and cafeteria revenue, and a $26 million operating deficit, reports the Richmond Free Press. President Makola M. Abdullah has told the board of visitors that the university likely will have to dip into its $21 million reserve fund to cover some of the deficit, including debt payments for residence halls and buildings.

    Like other historically black higher-ed institutions, VSU has struggled in a marketplace where larger, more prestigious institutions offering more financial aid are competing for African-American students. The university has teetered on the brink of financial collapse before but has always managed to fight its way back. The Northam administration’s response to the COVID epidemic has undermined the business model of every Virginia institution by limiting the number of students who can reside in dormitories, and VSU is no exception. (more…)

  • Are Guns Finally OK Now that Lefties Carry Them?

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

    by James A. Bacon

    A loosely organized group of men and women with handguns and rifles are patrolling the Lee Statue on Richmond’s Monument Avenue “intent on keeping visitors safe,” reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Asked why she needed to carry a gun and participate in a volunteer security force, 19-year-old Jasmine Kelley replied, “I don’t want to die.”

    That sounds paranoid to me, but as long as Ms. Kelley and her gun-toting friends are obeying the law, I don’t have a problem. The residents of the immediate neighborhood might feel nervous, and I wouldn’t blame them, but Virginia is a right-to-carry state.

    I wonder what the tut-tutters who disapproved of the show of arms by peaceful protesters at the gun-rights rally in the state capitol last January might have to say.

    — JAB

  • A New Look at COVID-19 Hospitalization Trends

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    The Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association has introduced a new data visualization graph at its COVID-19 dashboard. The chart shows the steady decline in hospital utilization by COVID-19 patients since early May.

  • Why Hasn’t Northam Acted Yet on the Great COVID News?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    What makes Ralph run?

    by James A. Bacon

    A flood of COVID-19 test results were reported to the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) over the weekend — more than 45,000 tests — and the news is good. While 1,652 new cases were confirmed over Saturday and Sunday, the seven-day moving average of the percentage of people testing positive declined to 6.5%, which may be the lowest since VDH started reporting the data.

    Meanwhile, we see continued declines in the number of people sick enough to warrant admittance to the hospital . The seven-day average of new hospitalizations per day now stands at 24. You have to go back to March in the earliest stages of the epidemic to find such a low number. Same story with the number of deaths.

    The prevalence of the virus in the population is falling. Hospitalizations are falling. Intensive hospitalization as measured by ICU occupancy and ventilator use is falling. And deaths are falling.

    Even the Virginia Mercury, an online publication with a progressive slant, is moved to explain in its COVID-19 coverage why the Northam administration isn’t opening up the economy more rapidly. After all, every criterion Governor Ralph Northam announced a month ago has been met: more testing, a falling rate of confirmed cases, and fewer hospitalization. (more…)

  • Virginia Nursing Home Deaths Top 1,000

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Anyone here remember the very beginning of the nursing home crisis in Virginia?

    Remember when we learned that a home in Henrico County, a facility where some residents reportedly had been stacked for a time like cordwood – three to a room – was in the midst of a deadly outbreak?

    Last time I checked 51 residents of the Canterbury Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center had died. For a while it was the deadliest place in America.

    Intelligent people demanded more information on nursing homes. They wanted to know which homes were having outbreaks, how many people were sick in each and how many people had succumbed to the virus.

    The governor stubbornly refused to divulge that data even though he had it. Instead, like an oblivious doctor writing off the elderly, he claimed that privacy rights of nursing homes where people were dying trumped the right of the public to know what was going on behind closed doors.

    His attorney general Mark Herring – another alum of the Virginia Democratic Blackface Club – backed him up. (more…)

  • The Systemic Racism of Monument Avenue

    Posted on

    by

    Peter Galuszka

    By Peter Galuszka

    Richmond’s grand Monument Avenue, a double lane, tree lined thoroughfare, has been the epicenter of the Black Lives Matter campaign that has focused on the statues of several Confederate figures one the road, including Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Jefferson Davis.

    All are up for removal, but the same foot-dragging that has for years protected the statues that some consider racist is at work today. Protestors have torn down Davis and have defaced the rest. On Sunday night, they nearly ripped down the Stuart statue as two city council members urged that it be removed on an emergency basis.

    Lee’s statue has been ordered down by Gov. Ralph Northam, but the effort has been tied up in lawsuits by several property owners. One claims either that the original deed that gave the state the site for Lee included language that it could not be removed. Other plaintiffs, most anonymous,  claim that removing the statues would hurt their property values and their special tax status.

    If anything smacks of white privilege and entitlement, this is it. But for more perspective, this article in The Atlantic neatly sums up the history behind the statues and the Avenue, noting that the issue has everything to do with rewriting Richmond’s history and making a marketing play to sell expensive and exclusive real estate decades after the Confederacy was suppressed. (more…)

  • Incompetent, Dangerously Incompetent, and the Virginia Department of Health

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Clark Mercer

    By James C. Sherlock

    It is very hard to recommend a career in politics these days. Elected officials are at the mercy of the competence of bureaucracies they did not create and over which, under civil service protections, they have little control.

    Yet never have we needed dedicated, smart and effective political leaders more than today.

    Clark Mercer, Governor Northam’s Chief of Staff, and I don’t vote the same way, but that doesn’t color my view of him. He is very smart and, if you see him on the Governor’s press conferences, he is a breath of fresh air, regularly elevating the discourse like no other person on the stage. He has a bright future.

    I have been documenting the failures of the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) in these pages and on the editorial pages of Virginia newspapers for more than a decade. I offer the title of this essay as a useful way to describe the hierarchy of incompetence in Virginia.

    Well, VDH just reached up and bit Mr. Mercer.
    (more…)

  • Stoney Proposes Overhaul of Richmond Policing

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

    by James A. Bacon

    The Richmond Police Department received more than 80,000 calls for service in the first five months of 2020, writes Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney an a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed. Police respond to every type of crisis, from homelessness to mental health to substance abuse.

    “We need officers to respond to violent and criminal acts,” Stoney says. “We cannot expect our police officers to serve as social workers, psychologists, child trauma experts and mental health workers, responding to every noncriminal call for service because America hasn’t properly prioritized other service providers. It does not make our country, or our city safer.”

    Now it’s time to “reimagine” public safety, he says. Accordingly, he has created a Task Force on Reimagining Public Safety to come up with actionable steps within 90 days. Measures might include reallocating police funding to allow social workers to respond to non-violent calls, creating a Civilian Review Board to hold officers accountable for misconduct, and using evidence-based policies and practices.

    I’m not convinced that the Richmond Police Department is broken. There have been few instances of police brutality, and the RPD has one of the highest murder-clearance rates in the country — a sign that police have a reservoir of trust and good will in the community. Further, I don’t know if these reforms are being driven by the residents of Richmond’s more crime-afflicted neighborhoods or by leftist activists and intellectuals. Still, some ideas may be worth pursuing, even if they come from the Left — at least if executed carefully without wrecking the morale of the police. (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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