Bacon's Rebellion

  • Bidding Up the Price of Buying Virginia’s Legislature

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    Speaker Don Scott, $1.55 Million from Dominion Energy

    As of the last round of campaign finance reports, Dominion Energy Virginia is smoking its political nemesis Clean Virginia in donation totals, with more than $11 million given compared to $3.2 million. At $14.3 million in combined donations, the two are well on their way to matching or exceeding the $23 million they spent two years ago.  

    What is this unrestrained bidding war accomplishing? A powerful monopoly utility is getting much more powerful, and Virginia’s political process is taking on a deeper odor of corruption. It is important for those who think facts and arguments and public input decide issues at the General Assembly to get a dose of realpolitik. 

    The reports available on the Virginia Public Access Project track giving through the end of June, and the next round of reports will add in the totals for July and August.  Those are due September 15, just as early voting starts.  The amounts discussed here are just for this election cycle, donations in 2024 and for 2025 through the primary.

    Attorney General Nominee Jay Jones,
    $1.1 million from Clean Virginia

    The House of Delegates and the three top statewide offices are on the ballot this year, but the state Senate is not. Despite that, Dominion has made large contributions to several senators in both parties, mainly those in leadership positions or on committees that consider energy bills. 

    Virginia law allows all this. Virginia’s voters tolerate all this. Nobody really tries to make it a political issue because the powerful floor leaders and committee chairs in their own parties are the ones taking the money. Some cash has gone to campaign accounts and some to leadership political action committees, used to reinforce their power with their peers.  ‘Tis a distinction without a difference.

    (more…)

  • Norfolk Baby Killer Gets 19 Years Max

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Little Iijayah Johnson spent only nine days on earth. 

    Her short sojourn was hell. Death, when it came, may have been a relief to her tiny battered body.

    According to news reports, when Iijayah’s parents brought her lifeless body to Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters in Norfolk on the 4th of May the infant had several broken ribs, deep “partial thickness burns on her feet,” a blunt force trauma to her head, “healing cuts on her face and head” and bruises on her back.

    When asked the date of the baby’s birth, her parents reportedly laughed, as they “struggled to remember.“

    Are you sick yet?

    It gets worse. 

    On Wednesday Norfolk Circuit Court Judge Jamilah LeCruise accepted a guilty plea from the newborn’s father, Hilary Darnell Johnson II. In it, the 24-year-old pleaded guilty to 2nd degree murder. In exchange Norfolk prosecutors dropped charges of child abuse and neglect and agreed to a prison sentence that “shall not exceed 19 years.”

    Nineteen years. 

    He will be sentenced in October. The judge could give him fewer than 19 years.

    Unthinkable.

    In Virginia, 2nd degree murder carries the possibility of 5 to 40 years. If the killing of a helpless newborn doesn’t cry out for a maximum sentence, what does?

    Iijayaj’s mother, Z’Ibreyea Parker is scheduled for trial on August 19. 

    Norfolk Commonwealth Attorney Ramin Fatehi just won the Democrat primary despite Mayor Kenny Alexander and other prominent Democrats supporting his opponent because they saw the city’s top prosecutor as soft on crime. He will almost certainly be elected to a second term as the city’s top prosecutor.

    Fatehi is a self-described “progressive prosecutor” who opposes cash bail, long prison sentences and who took $200,000 from George Soros PACs when he ran for office last time. Continue reading.

  • The Colonial Heights Scandal – the Tip of a Very Large Iceberg

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    The Boys from Lakewood

    by James C. Sherlock

    Most of them are quite young.  They have a lot in common.

    • They are friends in many cases. Some grew up together. More are related through blood or marriage. Many have worked together. Some are a second generation of their families in the nursing home industry;
    • To address the elephant in the room, virtually all are ultra-Orthodox Hasidic (Haredi) Jews. Most are graduates of Touro University‘s New York or Skokie campuses or Lakewood, New Jersey’s Haredi Beth Medrash Govoha (BMG). BMG, with 9,000 students is the second largest Yeshiva – rabbinical school – in the world. We note that Israel has its own issues with the Haredi. So has New Jersey and the federal government. For Jewish people everywhere, my Reformed Judaism grandsons and many of my best friends, I sincerely wish that were not the case. But it is. And it is necessary to air it.
    • Many worked together for friends and family in the industry before starting their own companies. Most get nursing home administrator credentials working in a facility for a year or two before moving into chain management;
    • After a few years of experience there, they start their own chains. The junior managers become CEOs and the young accountants CFOs, usually before the age of forty;
    • The sources of their seed money are not banks or other traditional financial institutions but rather a relatively few number of trusts and LLCs. Private equity. Perhaps the money is not fully reported. Nothing else is.

    Today we will discuss one Lakewood partnership that operates nursing homes in five states. It is the largest chain in Virginia.  

    • It displays a business model that consistently features extreme understaffing combined with far above average occupancy rates.  
    • Onsite-assessments by facility staff on average show their residents to be in truly exceptional need of care. That spikes insurance per diems and authorized lengths of stay.
    • Low costs, high occupancy and high reimbursements have led to extraordinary profits. 
    • But their facilities have been documented repeatedly by state inspectors to produce resident humiliation, horrible suffering and premature death because of what happened to them in the nursing homes not because of the afflictions with which they arrived.  

    Here I will show rather than just tell readers what is wrong with government oversight at its core to demonstrate how they get away with it. It is a long story  It needs to be told.

    (more…)

  • To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Photo credit: Cardinal News

    A Virginia corporation is one of a handful of companies involved in developing an energy alternative that, if successful, will render the debates over solar, wind, and fossil fuels moot. The alternative is miniaturized nuclear power.

    Not to be confused with the small modular reactors (SMRs) being explored by Dominion Energy, these reactors, as described by the Washington Post, would be “small enough to be packed in a shipping container and loaded on a truck.” The fuel for these microreactors would be uranium sealed in poppyseed-sized pellets coated with layers of heatproof material. The U.S. Dept. of Energy describes them as “meltdown-proof.” Instead of using water as a coolant, these reactors would use helium gas, molten salt, or air-cooled alkali. They can be designed to generate as little as a single megawatt of power—enough for a single manufacturing plant. One of these reactors next to every data center built in Virginia would go a long way toward resolving the Commonwealth’s future power needs.

    (more…)

  • Where Do Candidates Stand on a Discredited Environmental Law?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by J. Kennerly Davis

    Three monkeys in suits mimicking the 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' pose, seated at a table.

    With statewide elections coming up this fall, all candidates have an opportunity, indeed an obligation, to state clearly their position on a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation passed during the Northam administration: the net-zero greenhouse gas emission goals contained in the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA).

    The VCEA mandates Virginia reductions in the emission of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gasses such as nitrous oxide to the point where Virginia greenhouse gas emissions are completely offset by the amount of such gases removed from the atmosphere in Virginia. The VCEA sets goals to achieve net-zero emissions for electric generation by 2045 and for the entire Virginia economy by 2050.

    These utopian milestones cannot be achieved. Enormous economic and social damage will be done in the futile attempt to do so. The Electric Power Research Institute, the respected research arm of the American utility industry, published a detailed study showing that no combination of existing or feasible technologies -– wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, battery storage, energy efficiency, atmospheric carbon dioxide removal –- can get our country to net-zero by 2050. The study estimates that attempts to achieve the impossible goal will cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

    Even if these milestones were achievable and achieved at enormous cost to the lives and livelihoods of Virginians, the result would do absolutely nothing to reduce the global emissions of the greenhouse gasses said by environmentalists to be the primary cause of global warming.

    (more…)

  • SCC Faces Dueling Experts, Models on Future Energy Reliability

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Rendering of Chesterfield project from Dominion’s public website.

    By Steve Haner

    The State Corporation Commission’s (SCC) decision on whether Dominion Energy can build a new natural gas-fired power plant will depend on which expert or set of experts it believes, and which of the many computer models that dominate the testimony it judges best predict Virginia’s energy future.  

    Dominion has filed testimony to the SCC from its outside expert backed by computer modeling that concludes there is a risk to the reliability of our electric grid unless additional “dispatchable” generation resources are built. “Dispatchable” means that they are under operator control, can be turned on or off as needed, and are not dependent on the weather. 

    The wind, solar and battery resources that are demanded under the Virginia Clean Economy Act are not considered “dispatchable,” at least not as dispatchable as a natural gas plant that starts on ten minutes notice. But opponents of the gas plant application have hired several experts of their own, armed with their own models, who assure the SCC those generation assets coupled with heightened efforts to limit demand will be adequate to keep the lights on in the next decade and beyond. 

    On behalf of Attorney General Jason Miyares, who participates in utility regulation as the state’s consumer counsel, an expert witness that office often uses endorsed the Dominion application. Scott Norwood did not dive into the reliability debate, however, and noted Dominion only expects the plant to run about 16% of the time. It is designed to be a “peaker” plant, running only at times of constrained electricity supply.   

    (more…)

  • Oops! We Forgot About That.

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Abigail Spanberger

    The Republican National Committee (RNC) and Winsome Earle-Sears have attacked Abigail Spanberger for receiving a $50,000 campaign donation from an individual whom they claim is a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

    There is one little detail that the Republicans fail to mention. The individual, Pin Ni, has also donated to a long list of Republicans, including the RNC and the National Republican Campaign Committee.

    Ni is the president of Wanxiang America Corporation, a Chinese-owned auto parts company based in Chicago.

    Republicans claim Spanberger broke the law by accepting donations from a foreign national. However, according to the Virginia Political Newsletter, Ni has had a Social Security number since 1992. That would mean that he is at least a green card holder, making political contributions legal. Even if that were not true, then Sen. Steve Daines (R-Montana), the RNC, and other Republicans are also guilty.

  • A New President for The University

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    And oh so many to manage and lead.

    A close-up view of a circular seal for Virginia, featuring a figure holding a sword and a spear, surrounded by the phrase 'SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS' and decorative elements.

    by Gordon C. Morse

    The University of Virginia, it announced on Monday, has an interim president. His name is Paul G. Mahoney and he’s been around for a while – living and working within the body of the beast – and that’s promising. He has friends; he knows the culture. He might do some good while the 28-member search committee looks about for a permanent person.

    Mahoney is a former dean of the UVA Law School, a product of MIT and Yale Law School, a corporate law scholar -– securities regulation, financial derivatives, contracts, stuff like that — and a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

    Interesting, huh? Interesting is good. Interesting may help get people to listen.

    Mahoney can’t just occupy space, breathing. Not while matters continue to throb and roll. He should wield complete leadership, even if over a limited tenure. Between the existing UVA faculty, the existing governor, the existing state legislature and all the rest of the things that exist -– the students start returning soon -– calm seas hardly beckon.

    We know about the Department of Justice, of course. It seeks to enforce the Supreme Court’s 2023 Harvard ruling which bars racial discrimination as a categorical factor in the admissions process. Logic leads to an obvious conclusion: collegiate race-based administrative dictums are kaput.

    (more…)

  • No, Spanberger Did Not “Embrace” Natural Gas, But Earle-Sears Does

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    by

    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    A recent headline indicated that Abigail Spanberger, Democratic nominee for Governor of Virginia, had “embraced” natural gas in an interview. A reading of the text left a very different conclusion, as in reality what she embraced was the anti-natural gas Virginia Clean Economy Act.

    Abigail Spanberger

    Spanberger did tell Inside Climate News that natural gas will be “part of the energy mix into the future,” which is a statement of the obvious. The reporter noted her support was “for now.” But then the reporter quoted her saying:

    “However, I think when it comes to new natural gas infrastructure, that’s where we really need to be focused and sort of thinking carefully about the lifespan of those projects and whether indeed they are the most cost-effective solution.”

    Let’s break the code on that one. Dominion Energy has an application pending to build a new, 944-megawatt natural gas plant in Chesterfield County. The plant would open in 2029 and under the Virginia Clean Economy Act, it would have to close by 2045. One major argument the opponents are raising is that it would become a stranded asset, far too expensive to build with the assumption of a mere 15-year life span. 

    The Sierra Club and others fighting the plant read that line and knew they have an ally in Spanberger, as if they didn’t already know. The fight over that application at the State Corporation Commission is the ultimate test case on natural gas’s future in Virginia, although the law only prohibits utility-owned generation, not merchant generators.

    Winsome Earle-Sears

    A few days before the Inside Climate News report, Republican nominee Winsome Earle-Sears provided a guest editorial column to the Washington Examiner. She was quite clear in her endorsement of Dominion’s application for the Chesterfield County plant. “The Spanberger-Hashmi-Jones ticket will kill this project, and consumers will suffer. It’s not just expensive, it’s offensive,” she wrote.

    The Earle-Sears column was the longest exposition on energy she or her campaign has produced, but apparently it was only distributed on social media, and that by the Examiner itself, not her campaign. It was not picked up and shared in the daily news feed of the Virginia Public Access Project, which reaches thousands of key inboxes. In fairness, VPAP might not have seen it. 

    (more…)

  • So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Two dolphins leaping out of the water with text overlay that reads 'SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH'.

    I’ve been publishing Bacon’s Rebellion since 2002 (with one short interlude). My goal has been to create a platform for quality conservative journalism and commentary on Virginia-specific issues that allowed for civil dialogue and contradicting views. It’s been a good run. The blog has been a huge part of my life, and I have made many wonderful friends both in person and through correspondence. For entirely personal reasons, I have decided it is time to step aside. It’s not a decision I make lightly, but it is one that I must make.

    I want to thank the many people who supported me along the way — readers, donors, and collaborators. Your encouragement is what kept me going these many years.

    The blog isn’t going away (not yet anyway). Just me. I will continue to maintain Bacon’s Rebellion as long as there is interest in it. You’ll still be able to read Steve Haner, Dick Hall-Sizemore and regular outside contributors.

    But I will say this: If anyone is interested in acquiring and investing in the blog with the aim of nurturing the spark of independent reporting and commentary on state and local issues in the great commonwealth of Virginia, please contact me at [email protected].

    To borrow the great Douglas Adams line that conveys parting in a spirit of gratitude and a light heart, let my final words be, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

  • Off the Interstate

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Here are some notable signs from my travel through parts of Southside Virginia last week.

    No, I was not in California. This is advertising a Martinsville movie theater at the top of a hill, known locally as “Hollywood Mountain.”

    I passed up getting lunch here. (Outside Martinsville)

    Yard sign in Mecklenburg County.

  • Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Life Support

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    On Friday some happy-but-not-unexpected news broke: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is about to go kaput.

    It’s on life support for two more months.

    That’s because Congress defunded the body that awards public funds to National Public Radio and the Pubic Broadcasting Service. The left-wing non-profit expected to be showered with $1.1 billion in tax dollars, but the Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress last month zeroed it out.

    Unsurprisingly, PBS itself misreported the news. 

    No, PBS, Trump didn’t claw back the funds. Congress did.

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul made a similarly misleading announcement. Continue reading.

  • Four More Dominion Rate Hikes Hitting By Sept. 1

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    The State Corporation Commission Friday approved two separate increases in Dominion Energy Virginia’s rates; one caused by the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) and the other related to regional transmission services. Combined they add more than $5 to a 1,000-kilowatt hour residential bill effective September 1. 

    The VCEA driven increase is an additional $2.99 on what is called Rider RPS, for “renewable portfolio standard.” The case ended with Dominion approved to collect the $609 million over one year that was pending earlier this year. The money is not for electricity or power lines or operating cost, but for intangible “renewable energy certificates” Dominion must buy because it missed the VCEA’s goals for its own renewable production.

    The transmission increase is another $2.10 which is passed through to pay the regional PJM Interconnection energy marketplace, in this case for transmission and for the demand reduction programs it operates. The SCC doesn’t set transmission rates but accepts those imposed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC.)  That is imposed on bills through Rider T1. (You can find a list of all Dominion riders, costs in addition to base rates, here.)

    The two rider increases come in addition to an increase in the portion of the monthly bill dedicated to collecting fuel costs, which is Rider A. Effective July 1, the basic fuel charge for Dominion customers – in this case all types of customers pay the same per kWh – rose from $20.74 to $29.68 per 1,000 kWh, a healthy 43% jump.   That should just be hitting bills now.

    (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A classroom scene featuring a group of diverse students, including a man at the front resembling a well-known political figure, with laptops open and engaged expressions, captioned humorously about attending an Ivy League university.

    See more memes at The Bull Elephant.

  • Domestic Migration: Virginia’s Lost Decade

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A map of the United States illustrating domestic migration trends from 2012 to 2022, with states colored to indicate varying net migration rates.
    Map credit: Vote With Your Feet

    by James A. Bacon

    Virginia lost a net of 120,000 residents through domestic migration (excluding foreign immigration and emigration) over the decade between tax years 2011-12 and 2021-22, according to the Unleash Prosperity “Vote with your feet” database. That was the 9th worst performance among the 50 states.

    That out-migration translated into a loss of $14 billion in adjusted gross income, or an average of $117,000 per person — not per household, but per person. On average, the households leaving Virginia were affluent. The loss of prime taxpayers translates into roughly $800 million in lost state income-tax revenue.

    No surprise to anyone paying attention: Florida, Texas and North Carolina were the big winners. New York, California and Illinois were the big losers. Sadly, Virginia was the only loser on the South Atlantic Coast, one of the fastest growing regions of the country.

    “The single most important thing that is going on in this country, economically and demographically, is the massive shift in migration that’s happened over the last 10 to 20 years, and it is accelerating,” economist Steve Moore told attendees at the launch of the Unleash Prosperity website.

    Interestingly, Gov. Glenn Youngkin took time out of his schedule to speak at the unveiling. According to The Daily Signal, he attributed the population shift to what the news outlet described as “a virtuous cycle in red states of cutting or eliminating state income taxes, which led to a greater influx of people and jobs, which created a larger tax base and more revenue for state budgets.”

    (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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