Bacon's Rebellion

  • The Budget Clock is Ticking and It is not Getting Any Easier

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Luke Torian (D-Prince William), Chair, House Appropriations Committee

    Due to economic development announcements and actions by Governor Spanberger, the job of the General Assembly negotiators on the biennial budget just got harder.

    The Governor has vetoed two pieces of legislation which would have produced revenue that each house had built into its budget.  =For the Senate, it was SB 542 (Aird-D, Petersburg), which would have established a framework for the legal sale of cannabis. = The proposed Senate budget includes $71.1 million for the biennium in projected revenues from the passage of that bill. 

    The budget proposals of both houses included projected revenue from the legalization and regulation of “skill games.”  =The House was counting on the enactment of HB 1272 (Hayes-D, Chesapeake) and included $265.3 million in projected additional general revenue from this bill in its budget. Unfortunately for the House budget, the bill got caught up in a dispute between the House and the Senate and a compromise bill agreed to by conferees was narrowly defeated by the House. The Senate took a different approach with another bill (SB 661, Rouse-D, Virginia Beach). The legislation specified that revenue from licensing of skill games be treated as non-general fund revenue and be deposited into a special fund for education. The Senate budget bill projected that $80 million from those revenues would be distributed to local school districts in the second year of the biennium. The Governor vetoed this bill.

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  • The Governor Strikes Back

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Governor Abigail Spanberger

    In addition to previously announced vetoes of high-profile bills with Democrat sponsors (Fairfax casino, skill games, and public employee collective bargaining), Gov. Spanberger has announced her veto of 13 more pieces of legislation.

    All of these bills were ones for which she returned with requested amendments that the Democrats in the General Assembly refused to even take up, thereby daring her to veto them.

    The ones in this batch with the highest profiles were bills establishing a retail marketplace for cannabis products (HB 642 and SB 542); bills significantly revising the process for appointment of members of boards of visitors of institutions of higher education (HB 1385 and SB 494), and those creating a prescription drug pricing system (HB 483 and SB 271). 

    She also vetoed the bills listed below. Where there are two bills listed, they are identical and a link has been provided to only one. For each vetoed bill, the Legislative Information Service will shortly have a link to the Govenor’s veto message that provides an explanation for her veto.

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  • Will Dominion Sale Solve Virginia’s Growing Energy Challenges?

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    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    Welcome to Virginia, soon to be owned and operated by…..

    Assuming Dominion Energy Virginia is indeed absorbed into an expanded NextEra Energy, the more things change the more they may stay the same. The average consumer might see no real difference in their service or their cost. 

    This step was probably inevitable. Credit (or blame) the massive electricity demand growth facing Virginia, especially in the Dominion territory and the member cooperatives inside the same footprint, coupled with the constraints on energy solutions imposed by the Virginia Clean Economy Act.   

    Whether you read the initial news release from the companies, the slide set they released or the transcript of the discussion Monday with investors, what excited the leaders of both companies is the hundreds of billions of dollars in capital (half a trillion dollars was mentioned in one interview) that will need to be invested in the next two decades. Dominion on its own couldn’t do that.   

    The 2026 General Assembly added a battery mandate to the Virginia Clean Economy Act that requires Dominion to acquire almost 21,000 megawatts of battery storage (enough to run its system all by itself some days). Much of it must be long duration batteries, with total capacity exceeding 120,000 megawatt hours. Mandating that level of capital spending may have been intended to attract a buyer for Dominion.  

    Always remember that regulated monopoly electricity providers such as Dominion and NextEra’s Florida Power and Light (FPL) earn a rate of return on their invested equity, on the power plants, transmission lines, distribution lines and now battery installations they own. The capital comes from investors, and the projects are paid off with profit margins over decades by their ratepayers.  

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  • The More Things Change at UVA, the More They Stay the Same

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    James A. Bacon

    Despite the shake-up in leadership at the University of Virginia, at least one senior administrator regards Thomas Jefferson with antipathy.

    Kenyon Bonner, chief student affairs officer at the University of Virginia, delivered the keynote address to the graduating class of 2026 during Final Exercises. The Daily Progress provided this excerpt:

    A portrait of a historical figure with red paint splatters over the image, giving it a dramatic and altered appearance.
    AI-generated image: Grok

    “Graduates, you symbolize the possibilities of Jefferson’s blueprint, even if he did not envision you as a probability,” he said. “I believe there is such a thing as a divine blueprint beyond any one mind, one that exceeds the limits that Jefferson himself could not overcome. For all his brilliance, his unfounded and ethically corrosive claims about human capacity reflected his ignorance and his hubris.”

    Bonner’s negative comments about Thomas Jefferson were not well received in many quarters.

    The Jefferson Council provided the following response.

    The Jefferson Council strongly condemns Kenyon Bonner’s denigration and marginalization of Thomas Jefferson during his address at UVA’s final exercises. His remarks were incongruous, unseemly, and incorrect– and perhaps more than anything, they were an example of psychological projection. 

    Most egregiously, Bonner proclaimed, “For all his brilliance, his unfounded and ethically corrosive claims about human capacity reflected his ignorance and hubris. History teaches us that ignorance precedes injustice.”

    To characterize Mr. Jefferson as uniquely marked by “ignorance and hubris” says less about Jefferson than it does about the speaker. It requires extraordinary hubris and profound ignorance to dismiss one of the greatest minds in the history of Western civilization as a person materially enveloped by those traits. Reducing Mr. Jefferson to such a caricature reflects an unfathomable lack of historical understanding and is nothing less than flawed ideological certainty masquerading as moral clarity.

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  • When Business Packs Up and Leaves

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    James A. Bacon

    by Chris Saxman

    A Warning for Seattle, Olympia — and Richmond

    Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz opens his Wall Street Journal op-ed by celebrating Washington state’s extraordinary economic rise — built over half a century by Microsoft, Amazon, Costco, and Starbucks into a global hub of technology, innovation, and logistics.

    That era succeeded, he argues, because civic leaders understood private enterprise and the public good as partners, not enemies.

    That compact is now broken.

    Schultz catalogs Seattle’s visible decay: chronic homelessness, persistent budget deficits, declining public safety, falling foot traffic, slower tech hiring, and widening downtown vacancies.

    He singles out Mayor Katie Wilson for treating employers as political foils rather than partners, vilifying the very businesses whose tax revenue funds city government. Starbucks has already responded — laying off 61 more Seattle workers on the same day the op-ed published, while pressing forward with a Nashville office slated to employ up to 2,000 people over five years.

    Schultz is easy to dismiss as a billionaire protecting his tax bill.

    But the SuperSonics episode is more than a character footnote — it is the opening chapter of the very story he is now warning about.

    He did, after all, sell the Seattle SuperSonics to an out-of-town buyer after calling the franchise a “public trust,” and he relocated to Florida after Washington passed its millionaires income tax.

    Seattle lost its NBA team because government and ownership could not make a deal on a new arena. Schultz moved on. The team moved on.

    Sound familiar?

    That is where the story stops being just about Seattle.

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  • Lies, Damned Lies, and VPAP: the Myth of Nonpartisan Institutions

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    James A. Bacon

    There’s a reason why nonpartisan anything is the most partisan voice of all, because it always defends a status quo.

    A black and white image of a person sitting against a wall, with a cigarette in their mouth and a pensive expression. They are holding a glass ashtray with their right hand.

    — “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.” — Hannah Arendt

    by Shaun Kenney

    I’ll start with WTKR 6 in Richmond.

    Just last week, Governor Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) signed a bill that would mandate that businesses provide 12-week paid family medical and parental leave to each and every Virginian beginning in 2028.

    Here’s the headline:

    Headline announcing Virginia as the first southern state to offer paid family and medical leave

    I’ll be honest — this is a good bill which focuses on families. This isn’t socialism; this is insurance. For myself, as a committed pro-life Catholic, we do a lot of talking about babies and it is high time we took just as much time talking up and taking care of mothers and families.

    Now contrast this headline with one from last year when Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) announced several signatures promoting small business development:

    Headline about Gov. Youngkin signing bills to enhance Virginia's business environment

    Notice the difference between the two? On the former, the headline is rather positive precisely because it is a good bill. No questioning, no fanfare, no shade.

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  • Fairfax Prosecutor Torched in Capitol Hill Hearing

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    It’s time we talked about building a wall. A big, beautiful wall.

    No, not on the southern border. Around Fairfax County.

    If Fairfax voters are determined to elect and re-elect officials who coddle violent illegal aliens and shield them from deportation, let them live with the consequences. We don’t want their deportable dirtbags down here.

    If you watched Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano’s sputtering and deceptive performance yesterday before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Integrity, Security and Enforcement, you know just how dangerous he is.

    Lawmakers subpoenaed him and Fairfax Sheriff Stacey Kincaid to determine if they were giving preferential treatment to criminal defendants who are here illegally.

    The answer was clearly yes.

    In fact, for the past six years, Descano said so himself.

    Descano’s own campaign website, which he scrubbed last month after it was publicly reported, read: “If two people commit the same crime, but only one’s punishment includes deportation, that’s a perversion of justice and not a reflection of the values of Fairfax County.”

    Continue reading.

  • Back in the Saddle

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    I’m back from vacation and playing catch up. Some of the articles I post on the blog may be a few days behind the news cycle but still are worth reading. If I have time, I may post a couple of my own stories based on impressions from Northern Germany and the Netherlands. Thanks to Jim Sherlock and Steve Haner for keeping things lively during my absence. — JAB

  • A second federal line of inquiry confirmed in the Lucas Lodge case

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    A professional portrait of a smiling older woman with silver hair, wearing a black outfit and a statement necklace.
    Senator Louise Lucas

    As noted in this author’s article “Clown Show” this morning, Louise Lucas’ daughter, in an interview with the Virginian-Pilot published yesterday, revealed for the first time that the FBI seized Lucas Lodge resident medical records in its recent simultaneous raids on that facility and Louise Lucas’ The Cannabis Outlet. Though no indictments have been unsealed as a result of those raids, the disclosure confirms two separate lines of federal inquiry.

    • The first has been known since the day of the raid. It is indicated by seizure of potential evidence at Louise Lucas’ The Cannabis Outlet, adjacent to Lucas Lodge.
    • Now, Lisa Lucas-Burke has confirmed a second. The seizing of medical records may indicate additional federal legal problems for Lucas Lodge, its Medicaid-funded programs for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and its CEO, Louise Lucas.

    Virginia

    While any federal charges can be joined by Virginia, there is at least one potential issue unique to the Commonwealth. A business entity search of the State Corporation Commission Clerk’s Information System for The Cannabis Outlet shows

    Entity ID S3071612, The Cannabis Outlet Fictitious Name, Limited Liability Company, Address 1214 COUNTY ST, PORTSMOUTH, VA, 23704, Agent: VERBENA M ASKEW, Status: Inactive

    A further search shows that Lucas Hospitality, LLC is entity ID S3071612. Open Corporates parrots and summarizes the SCC data:

    Lucas Hospitality, LLC. Company Number: S3071612

    Status: Inactive

    Incorporation Date: 23 October 2009 (over 16 years ago)

    Dissolution Date: 31 January 2024

    Company type: Limited Liability Company

    Jurisdiction: Virginia (US)

    Registered Address; 1214 COUNTY ST, PORTSMOUTH, 23704-0000VirginiaUnited States

    Alternative Names: The Cannabis Outlet (trading name, 2023-03-21 – )

    Business Classification Text: GENERAL

    Inactive Directors / Officers: VERBENA M ASKEW, agent

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  • Clown Show

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    sherlockj

    Clown Show

    by James C. Sherlock

    Statutory powers and responsibilities do not bestow competence.

    The General Assembly created the Office of the State Inspector General (OSIG) within the Office of the Governor in 2011. The powers and duties of that office are defined in Code of Virginia § 2.2-309. The role focuses on detecting fraud, waste, and abuse in the executive branch. Additional duties are assigned, one of which will be the primary focus of this article.

    State agencies, officers, and employees are directed to cooperate with OSIG investigations, and the Governor is prohibited from interfering with any such investigation. OSIG is granted police and subpoena powers.

    Wow, huh?

    Pretty scary. It is meant to be.

    This reporter has found that the issues some might consider government “fraud, waste, or abuse” most often involve misfeasance – carelessness or negligence in the performance of a lawful act. He figures that OSIG must have the same experience. Misfeasance is a mistake, not a crime.

    But State Inspectors General are necessary. The issue in Virginia is that the OSIG’s responsibilities are both overly broad and have not been executed well.

    2019 JLARC assessment

    The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) has not been kind in its reviews of OSIG. The criticism has been strikingly direct.

    In 2019, JLARC found OSIG had failed in three key missions:

    • OSIG is not adequately fulfilling its intended role as a centralized investigative agency
    • OSIG has struggled to build a fully effective performance audit function, and
    • OSIG has not adequately fulfilled its statutory responsibility to oversee behavioral health and developmental services facilities and providers

    A personal note. If the author, twice in command during his naval career, had received such a review, he would have been summarily relieved. He would have deserved it.

    Things have not gotten noticably better since.

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  • Assembly and Spanberger Made Zero Progress on Virginia Energy Challenges

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    What the General Assembly ordered us to buy instead of true power generation.

    In advance of the 2025 election, the Jefferson Forum outlined in this June commentary the energy challenges facing Virginia. New Governor Abigail Spanberger (D) and the General Assembly have now concluded work on the 2026 energy legislation and Virginia has made zero progress – and may be losing ground. 

    Ignore the political posturing coming from Capitol Hill in Richmond. The reliability risk remains, and electricity costs are going to keep rising. 

    It would be nice to report that Jefferson Forum’s efforts, including more time at the Assembly this winter, made a difference. But being closer to the process this year only underlined that the elected officials are working without much understanding of the issues, that most bills are not accompanied by financial analysis or ratepayer impact information, and the various donor groups, such the utilities and those seeking to dictate utility policy, are heard more often than average consumers.  

    The key issue a year ago was the growing disconnection between Virginia’s electricity demand and its internal supply. Projected demand from the exploding data center industry even calls into question whether the multistate PJM Interconnection Virginia belongs to will have enough supply for Virginia in coming years, and it certainly won’t without controversial new transmission lines.  

    The General Assembly session passed nothing that will close the looming supply shortage. Another bitter winter blast like the one early this year, or a summer heat spell requiring an equal energy surge, could bring the dreaded involuntary demands to reduce or cut off the power.   

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  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    A humorous image featuring crispy bacon on a plate with text overlay about only eating bacon on days that start with 'T', referring to Tuesday, Thursday, Thaturday, and Thunday. The image also includes a container of 'Denny's Bacon Salt'.

  • Spanberger Right to Veto Public Employee Unionization Bill

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Derrick A. Max

    Governor Abigail Spanberger

    Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, the sponsor of a sweeping public-sector collective bargaining bill (Senate Bill 378) said Governor Spanberger told him Wednesday that she planned to veto the legislation.  If she does, she will be making the right decision for Virginia taxpayers, local governments, students, public employees and for her status as the leader of her party here in the Commonwealth. 

    According to her amendment justification, Governor Spanberger supports collective bargaining generally, but not the way this bill would implement it.  That distinction matters! 

    The original bill was not a modest reform. It would repeal Virginia’s existing limits on public-sector collective bargaining, create a new Public Employee Relations Board, require public employers to negotiate over wages, hours, and other terms of employment, and establish collective bargaining for individual home care providers through a new state structure. It also would repeal Virginia’s statutory protection declaring secret-ballot votes in union representation proceedings a fundamental right. 

    The Jefferson Forum warned repeatedly that this legislation would move Virginia in the wrong direction. It would weaken local control, increase costs, empower union bosses, inject more politics into public institutions, and impose rigid labor rules at the very moment Virginia needs flexibility and affordability. 

    Governor Spanberger’s proposed amendments recognized many of our concerns. She sought to delay implementation for local governments until 2030, alter the new labor board structure, and preserve more authority for public employers. The General Assembly rejected those changes and sent the bill back to her in its original form.  A clear disregard for the Governor’s concerns and authority.   

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  • The Integrity of Healthcare Programs in Virginia – Part 2 Forests and Trees

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    A smiling woman with gray hair styled in soft waves, wearing a black top and a silver chain necklace, against a blurred gray background.

    Federally-funded programs administered by the states are primary targets of fraud and abuse because of the vast sums at stake.  The amount of money at risk is literally unimaginable. Medicare and Medicaid alone exceed two trillion dollars a year. 

    Federal programs are widely victimized in Virginia because the Commonwealth does not defend them well.  The Commonwealth recovers millions of dollars. Billions escape.

    State defenders against fraud in many federally funded programs run by the Commonwealth have a too-narrow focus. Actively hampered by the General Assembly, they are ignoring the forest as they examine the trees.

    States operate their own programs under federal and state guidelines for:

    • administering Medicaid,
    • licensing and overseeing providers of healthcare and of assistance to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD);
    • managing unemployment insurance systems. Those are funded through a joint federal-state partnership financed by employer payroll taxes — state unemployment taxes (SUTA) for benefits and federal unemployment taxes (FUTA) for administration.  
    • conducting public assistance programs for the needy that are largely funded by the federal government.  Major programs like SNAP (food assistance) and TANF (cash assistance) are funded by the federal government but managed at the state level.

    In Virginia and other states, there are four lines of defense against program fraud, waste, and abuse:

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  • The Single Funniest Thing on the Web May Mask Tragedy

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    The story behind the jokes is true, well-documented, and strange. From X:

    Comedy is funniest when it is based on an underlying truth. Freitas offers a hilarious satire. 

    Attorney General Jay Jones is lit up by Mr. Freitas for actual typos. Virginia (Virgnia) and Senator (Sentator) were misspelled in a court filing seeking a delay in the certification of the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision finding the recent redistricting process illegal under the Virginia Constitution. He also lampoons Jones for the misspelling of Attorney (Attoney) on his official website and Lucas for misspelling Senator (again, unaccountably, Sentator) in her press release about her recent arrest.

    The satire is funny because it is so well done and true. A fascination for the audience that makes it funnier is that the errors are so inexplicable in the modern era.  This author has been forced to override his spell checker to let him even quote each of the misspellings.  

    What is not funny is Jay Jones’ ongoing struggles. Before his election, he made a terrible error in an infamous early morning text that revealed extremely dark thoughts – he expressed a wish for the death of a political opponent’s children.  

    Now this. Were the embarrassing errors that were the subject of the Freitas lampoon committed again in the early morning?  

    (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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