Bacon's Rebellion

  • Transition Team Light on Virginia Government Experience

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Picture credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

    Gov-elect Spanberger seems on the verge of repeating a mistake that then Gov.-elect Youngkin made four years ago — surrounding herself with advisers from her former world rather than from Virginia government and politics. 

    Youngkin, a complete neophyte in politics and Virginia government, brought in people from the investment banking world and agency heads, several from out of state. The investment banking world is totally different from Virginia government and politics. Based on reports from long-time state employees, there was a steep learning curve. Youngkin is now on his third Superintendent of Public Schools.

    Spanberger is in danger of going down the same path. Granted, she has more experience with Virginia and government than Youngkin had, but her experience has been in Congress, a whole different world. Also, she spent a year or so going around the state preparing to run for governor. That gave her some exposure to different areas of the state and to members of the General Assembly. But those efforts are not a substitute for years-long familiarity with Virginia government. Here is who she has announced as her chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, and transition team:

    Chief of staff — Bonnie Krenz-Schnurman. Background: Served as Spanberger’s chief of staff for five years in Congress and since she has been a candidate; previously, senior policy adviser at the White House Domestic Council under Obama; before that, managed a national malaria program in Tanzania for the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

    Director of transition team and deputy chief of staff — Karen Mask. Worked as field director in Spanberger’s Congressional campaigns. Before that, was a senior policy analyst at the Virginia Dept. of Health and a special projects coordinator with the Virginia Dept. of Education.

    (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A group of individuals near barbed wire fencing, with a text overlay questioning why people do not flee from capitalism to socialism.

    See more memes at The Bull Elephant.

  • Now the Hard Part Begins

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Overlooked in all the news around the election was some sobering budget news for the next governor.

    As reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Virginia Dept. of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) has forecast that Virginia’s Medicaid costs will increase by $3.2 billion over the next three years. That increase consists of an additional $410 million in the current fiscal year and $2.8 billion in the next two-year budget that Governor Youngkin will present next month.

    In addition to the big increase in Medicaid costs, the state is projecting an increase of $964 million needed to support local K-12 education programs. This is the biennial “re-benchmarking” that takes place, which projects what it will cost to continue existing programs at their current levels.

    In addition to the additional $3.8 billion that will be needed for the next biennial budget right from the beginning will be the costs and revenue reductions stemming from Trump’s spending and taxing legislation passed this year. Based on past experience, it is safe to say that the analysts in the Dept. of Planning and Budget are working overtime these days to develop the two budget bills, the “caboose” for the current fiscal year and the “big budget bill” for the 2006-2008 biennium, that Youngkin must present to the General Assembly by December 20.

    (more…)

  • Pragmatic or Partisan?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Will Abigail Spanberger fight for DEI or for intellectual diversity in her dealings with UVA?

    The Rotunda at the University of Virginia, featuring classical architecture with a domed roof and columns, surrounded by green grass and trees under a blue sky.

    by Joel Gardner

    Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger states that she wants to have an administration that reflects pragmatism rather than partisanship. But her Democrat colleagues in the state senate have already exhibited a degree of partisanship vis-à-vis the University of Virginia and other state universities unparalleled in the history of the Commonwealth.

    A standing committee of the state senate has rejected the last five appointees to the UVA Board of Visitors solely because they were chosen by a Republican governor. While the ability of a committee to act on behalf of the entire General Assembly is now in front of the Virginia Supreme Court, it really doesn’t matter because the Democrat leadership of the state senate has stated that they will flat out reject any appointee made by Governor Youngkin.

    By contrast, for decades when Republicans held either one or both houses of the General Assembly they never once rejected a Democrat governor’s choice for the UVA Board.

    Under the past two Democrat governors, UVA had become a highly politicized institution. This was done under the rubric of so called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” which as Anthony Kronman, the former Dean of the Yale Law School, has said is “a political campaign masquerading as an educational ideal.”

    (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A humorous image of a character resembling a small, green alien with large ears, eyes closed and a pleased expression, with the text 'SMELL BACON, I DO' overlayed.

  • Virginia’s Worst Nursing Home Chains – Part Six – A Picture of Deceit

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Virginia’s Worst Nursing Home Chains – Part Six – A Picture of Deceit

    by James C. Sherlock

    “This nursing home information is confusing, mindbending, and scary.  Please draw us a picture to clarify.” Well, readers are right. It is all three of those things. It is meant to be so by some people in the system.

    Virginia has some excellent nursing homes and chains, but those are not the subject of this article.  

    I offer below a chart of a fictional 12-facility chain whose structure permits bad things to happen, often by design. It shows a commercial real estate structure on which some nursing home chains are modeled. Indeed, many of them have been founded by people with their roots in real estate, partnered with others licensed as nursing home administrators and with an accountant. The structure was designed by the real estate industry to generate fees and to protect assets in court.  

    It is used by the worst of nursing home chain owners to bleed money from the operating companies, leaving little for staffing, building repairs, and other necessities. Annual profits have been seen to exceed 20%. That beats anything else in real estate.

    First, the big picture, and then the explanation.

    (more…)

  • Will Virginia Become a One-Party State?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Image credit: Grok

    by Paul Goldman

    Virginia GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin is vowing to finish “strong.” With all due respect, it might have been better if he had started “strong.” His party just suffered its worse defeat in Virginia’s two-party era. If that’s finishing strong, I’d like to know what he thinks finishing weak looks like. 

    Fact: No Republican connected to Trump’s MAGA has ever or will ever be elected Governor of Virginia. Or U.S. Senator. I wrote months ago on these pages — in my column saying John Reid won the short straw not primary gold — that the historical numbers pointed to Spanberger likely breaking the all-time percentage record for any Dem gubernatorial in the two-party era. I also thought a ticket sweep seemed likely based on my analysis of historical voting statistics. 

    Next prediction: Will the Virginia Democratic Party try to wipe out the Virginia Republican Party if the super partisan redistricting amendment is approved by the voters this spring? My answer: 100% for sure. The path to such destruction is foreseeable. 

    (more…)

  • Trump Lost the Virginia Elections for Republicans

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Hans Bader

    The GOP was crushed in the recent Virginia elections because Donald Trump is terribly unpopular in Virginia. Before Trump was president, the GOP easily controlled the Virginia state legislature, and held 66 of the 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. After Tuesday’s election, it will hold only 34 seats in the House and control neither house of the state legislature.

    Former Richmond mayor Levar Stoney pointed this out:

    A tweet by Levar Stoney discussing the impact of Donald Trump on the Republican Party's performance in Virginia elections, listing election results from 2017 to 2025.

    Trump fans claimed the GOP lost Tuesday’s election because Virginia is a staunchly Democratic state. But it has long been a purple state where Republicans used to control the legislature handily, because suburban voters leaned Republican. Now, the suburbanites in Virginia heavily lean Democratic, and every single legislator representing northern Virginia is a Democrat.

    Virginia isn’t a deep blue state by nature. It is only Trump who makes it so.

    (more…)

  • Almost as Good as It Gets

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Democrats run the table — and then some

    by David J. Toscano

    A campaign bus engulfed in flames on the side of the road, with a visible image of a candidate on its side.

    In the classic film, Network, Howard Beale delivered one of the most remembered lines in movie history: “I’m mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore”. Many voters, from Virginia to California and Maine to Georgia, seemed to feel that way. Frustrated by chaos, corruption, and exhaustion, they turned out in record numbers to deliver sweeping victories for Democrats, winning most every significant contest on the ballot.

    Virginia, Virginia, Virginia, Virginia

    Virginia has again shown itself as a bellwether of change. Abigail Spanberger won by the largest margin since Bob McDonnell’s 2009 victory, as Democrats swept all statewide races in an election with turnout higher than four years ago — a clear sign of Democratic energy.

    Less noticed but equally consequential were Democrats’ massive gains in the House of Delegates, where they flipped 13 seats and will hold a 64–36 margin come January. Speaker of House Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, arguably now the most powerful man in the state and the primary architect of the romp, exclaimed that this “is what a mandate looks like,” while cautioning that “the word of the day is restraint. We can’t overreach.”

    Republicans, meanwhile, imploded. Neither Trump nor mainstream conservatives ever embraced Winsome-Sears, whose campaign was derided by a Trump ally as a “dumpster fire” — a label made literal when her campaign bus caught fire on the roadside. Late GOP money shifted to Jason Miyares, but even that could not save him. Trump supporters unloaded after her loss. Chris LaCivita, longtime Virginia GOP strategist and Trump’s 2024 campaign manager, wrote: “A Bad candidate and Bad campaign have consequences — the Virginia Governor’s race is example number 1.”

    (more…)

  • Enhanced Trifecta Gives Democrats Full Control of Energy Laws

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner,

    The return of the political trifecta Democrats enjoyed during the 2020 and 2021 General Assembly sessions – now bolstered with a 64-36 majority in the House of Delegates – leaves the question of how to deal with Virginia’s energy issues entirely in their hands.  

    Only if the Democrats suffer a significant division within their own ranks will the Republican legislators cast votes in committee or on the chamber floor that decide any issue. And with 64 votes in the House (meaning Democrats will also have at least two-thirds of committee seats), it would have to be a deep Democratic split for Republicans to matter.  

    Most of the new Democratic members including those who ousted sitting incumbent Republicans expressed commitment to the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) and its goal of ending the use of coal, natural gas and oil. Many in Northern Virginia are also eager to slow down the growth of the data center industry, which is driving up electricity demand across the state.  

    Incoming Governor Abigail Spanberger has been short on details about efforts to limit data center development and remained vague in this long piece put together by the anti-hydrocarbon advocacy outlet Inside Climate News. As was the case with the pro-solar Clean Virginia rallies described in this earlier report, supporters of maintaining the VCEA mandates and target dates used their interviews to build a defensive line against any in their own caucus who might waver.   

    (more…)

  • Dissecting the Blue Wave: Turnout

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A playful donkey jumping in the foreground with a smiling expression, while an elephant rests in the background.
    Dem voters energized, GOP voters lethargic. Image credit: Grok

    by James A. Bacon

    Gov. Glenn Youngkin yesterday blamed Tuesday’s shellacking of the Republican Party in Virginia on the government shutdown. “I firmly believe that the government shutdown was a very, very big challenge as we ran into this election,” he told reporters. “We have 330,000 government workers here that weren’t getting paid. That is a real challenge heading into an election.” 

    Youngkin’s proposition is a not-implausible hypothesis of what happened Tuesday. But does it hold water?

    Government workers were never Trump fans to begin with. They have always been true blue. Did the DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) layoffs and then the government shutdown change a lot of minds? Perhaps a few. But I suspect other factors were at play.

    According to Virginia Public Access Project data, the big change between 2021, in which Republicans swept the statewide offices, and 2025 was a decline in voter turnout among predominantly red localities — not a surge in turnout in government worker-heavy blue districts.

    A scatter plot showing voter turnout percentages for 2021 and projections for 2025, with data points in red and blue, and a shaded area representing higher turnout.
    Source: Virginia Public Access Project. Click here to view the interactive graphic that identifies each dot by locality.

    Turnout in Democratic-leaning localities trended more or less the same as four years ago. By contrast, enthusiasm in red localities was down across the board — in literally every locality. Whatever was ailing Republicans Tuesday was statewide in nature. It’s hard to imagine that the loss of 300,000 federal jobs in Virginia weighed heavily on the minds of Republican-leaning voters in, say Patrick County in Southside Virginia (turnout down 8%) or Giles County in western Virginia (also down 8%).

    (more…)

  • Dissecting the Blue Wave: Fundraising

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A donkey and an elephant standing next to large piles of cash.
    Image credit: Grok

    by James A. Bacon

    Democrats swept the statewide races and flipped 13 House of Delegates seats Tuesday — a watershed in Virginia politics. Any analysis of the Blue Wave must take into account the vast discrepancy in fundraising prowess of Democrats over Republicans, not just in the statewide races but in the House races as well.

    Between statewide and House races combined, Democrat candidates reported $149.6 million in contributions as of October 23. Republicans raised $85.9 million.

    The relationship between money raised and electoral success is a complicated one. Spending more money on a campaign does not guarantee a win: Attorney General Jason Miyares outspent the scandal-ridden Jay Jones but lost to him anyway. But all other things being equal, more money is better than less money. It helps build a better campaign organization and buys more cable TV and social media advertising.

    Abigail Spanberger’s money advantage in the gubernatorial race and Ghazala Hashmi’s money dominance in the contest for lieutenant general have been widely reported.

    Table displaying campaign spending and vote totals for various candidates in Virginia elections, including contributions for both Democratic and Republican candidates.
    Donations reported as of October 23. Source: Virginia Public Access Project

    According to VPAP data, Democrats’ fundraising advantage was just as lopsided in the House of Delegates races.

    (more…)

  • It Was Singular

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Not plural

    Cartoon depiction of a man with blonde hair wearing a suit and a crown, sitting on a round object against a blue sky with clouds.

    by Gordon C. Morse

    Jay Jones prevailed. Manic text messages and a lead foot notwithstanding, Jones will be the next Virginia attorney general — and, you know, that’s democracy. Abigail Spanberger is now the Governor-elect. Virginia Sen. Ghazala Hashmi will be lieutenant governor. They racked up big margins, and it was impressive.

    The results in the House of Delegates — the dramatic growth of the Democratic caucus — was a tad beyond impressive.

    Jones had been the source of worry, of course, though you could feel the winds shifting about after revelations of his colorful texting. Dancing phone fingers, even in the service of the scatological, don’t trump the need to trump Trump.

    Election night was destined to be about Trump, and it was Trump. You can do a half dozen “factors” or “13 reasons” or “21 takes.” But it was still one big, inescapable thing in the form of Donald Trump and all the many matters that have animated the president since retaking the White House.

    Gov. Youngkin said it wasn’t Trump. Blame the federal government shutdown, Youngkin said. Ha. I like Youngkin; he’s been great on economic development. But it was Trump.

    (more…)

  • The Blue Tsunami

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    A blue and white sign indicating a tsunami evacuation route with a wave graphic and an arrow pointing left.

    There’s no denying that Virginia was swamped Tuesday night by a blue wave. Make that a blue tsunami.

    The Democrats not only swept the top three statewide offices, but they flipped 13 seats in the House of Delegates. Every corner of the commonwealth was at least tinged blue.

    Looking for a sliver of sunshine, Republicans? The Liberty University precinct reportedly voted 95.11% Republican.

    That’s all I have for you.

    The only folks who had a worse night than Winsome Earle-Sears were the pollsters. As usual, they got it wrong.

    As I pointed out last week, Virginia is a tough place to poll. While pollsters consistently had Abigail Spanberger leading in the governor’s race, few – if any – predicted a 15 point landslide. (Ralph Northam won by less than 10 in 2017.) No pollster that I encountered forecast a 10.5 point rout by Ghazala Hashmi for lieutenant governor. And until the final few days almost all polls showed the Attorney General race within the margin of error. Jones won by 6.5 points.

    So what did we learn from Tuesday’s election results?

    Well, we learned a lot about Virginia Democrat voters. Some of it is troubling.

    We learned that wanting to kill your political opponents, piss on their graves and merrily muse about the deaths of their “little fascist” children is not a deal breaker for Democrats when selecting a top law enforcement officer. Neither is likely lying to a court about the community service a candidate did to avoid jail. Continue reading.

  • Virginia’s Dreadful Nursing Homes – Part Five – Chain Corporate Structures and the Undoing of the Regulatory Structure

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Virginia’s Dreadful Nursing Homes – Part Five – Chain Corporate Structures and the Undoing of the Regulatory Structure

    by James C. Sherlock

    Today, we will examine a big factor in why nursing home regulation fails. It is doomed in part by the organizational structures of chains that mask a deadly lack of corporate ethics. Government regulators not only do not stop it, but are currently helpless to do so for the simplest of reasons. They know nothing about those structures and the internal fees and rents that drain funds from the operating companies and from patient care.

    The problem starts with a federal law.

    The HUD/FHA Section 232 program is an FHA loan product that provides mortgage insurance for residential care facilities. It is a 66-year-old carve-out for the nursing home industry in the National Housing Act.  Section 232 offers FHA guarantees for non-recourse, below-market fixed-rate, long-term loans at up to 80% loan-to-appraised-value ratios. Lender’s fees are generally 3.5%. The cost for new construction can include land purchase.

    The loans may be used to finance the purchase, refinance, new construction, or substantial rehabilitation of a project. A combination of these uses is acceptable – e.g. refinance of a nursing home coupled with new construction of an assisted living facility.

    Every nursing home that is purchased or renovated using a loan backed by a Section 232 guarantee has its own operating company and realty company that serves as the landlord for the operating company. That is a 232 program requirement designed to protect the real estate collateral of the loan from failure of the operating company. The loans are made to the realty company.

    Operating and realty companies are separate LLCs, but the members of each are usually the same people, at least initially.

    That is where many chains get creative, both to protect the assets even further and to generate internal fees with enterprise structures borrowed from the real estate industry.

    (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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