-
Bacon Meme of the Week
-
The Governor’s Race
Polls, common sense, Eskimo Pie, $$$, tonsils
by Gordon C. Morse
Just like that, Virginia Lt. Gov. Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate for governor, has seen a significant improvement in her race with former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat.
This news came via Roanoke College, whose polling folks calculated a few months ago that Earle-Sears trailed Spanberger by 17 points. That seemed to be a sizable gap – sizable enough to make you wonder if Earle-Sears would enter the fall as a viable candidate. Virginia’s quadrennial exercise in gubernatorial selection could conceivably lay an egg.
Now the chicken, the egg, whatever, has recovered and Earle-Sears trails by only 7 points, says Roanoke College.
The other preferred metaphor involves resuscitation or even resurrection. She’s not flatlining anymore; she’s not comatose; there’s a pulse.
Then again, another recent poll – this one from Old Dominion University and completed online – invites Earle-Sears back into the ER. Furrowed brows all around.
(more…)
-
A Cautionary Tale for Republican Appointees
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
Todd Gilbert Photo credit: Roanoke Times In a surprise move, Todd Gilbert has resigned his position as acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia. Gilbert, a stalwart conservative Republican and former Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, had been in the position for a little over a month. Gilbert offered no explanation for his resignation.
Brandon Jarvis, who publishes the Virginia Political Newsletter, reports that the story among insiders is that Gilbert was forced out by the Trump administration because he dared to buck the leaders in Washington.
Time for a little background. Virginia’s Senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, had submitted two recommendations to the Trump administration: Gilbert and Rober Tracci, former Commonwealth’s attorney in Charlottesville. Trump nominated Gilbert, who was then sworn in as the interim U.S. Attorney, awaiting confirmation by the Senate. Gilbert called it the opportunity of a lifetime.
According to Jarvis’ sources, “the White House wanted him to replace an employee who worked in the office under the Biden administration and hire Robert Tracci, who was the other person in contention with Gilbert for the appointment.” Gilbert pushed back, citing his prerogative to hire his own choices for his staff. He eventually gave in and hired Tracci as the number two official in the office.
Gilbert’s display of independence must have irked or alarmed someone in the White House, because word soon came down that the President would withdraw his nomination unless he resigned.
Tracci is now acting U.S. Attorney.
-
Maybe Ryan Should Have Toughed it Out
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
The Trump administration has found that George Mason University (GMU) has violated federal law with its DEI policies. A spokesman for the Dept. of Education said, GMU “waged a university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race.”
The penalty? The president of the university, Gregory Washington, must publicly apologize for his actions and pledge to follow the law. In addition, the Richmond Times Dispatch reports, “the school must review its policies and documents, such as instructions for hiring panels and scoring rubrics for resumes, to ensure they comply with Title VI. And Mason must conduct an annual training for administrators who make hires and promotions.”
Wow! That’s it for such serious offenses? All he has to do is apologize and promise not to do it again? At UVa., the president had to resign. At Harvard, Columbia, and Brown, fines are in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. The administration is seeking a $1 billion settlement against UCLA. Trump is obviously going after schools with deep pockets and lots of federal research grants. There is not that kind of leverage against a large, public university that has a relatively small research budget. In addition, thumping GMU does not generate the national headlines.
(more…)
-
There’s Drama in Small- Town Virginia School Districts, Too
Two superintendents and a school board chair step down amid allegations of wrongdoing.
by Victoria Manning
Large Virginia school districts like Loudoun and Fairfax public schools aren’t the only ones in trouble — they’re just the ones making the headlines.
School superintendents in Essex and Northumberland Counties were recently removed as state police conduct investigations. Plus, the Essex School Board Chair, Garlyn Bundy, stepped down amidst a police investigation and accusations of defamation.
Essex County Schools investigation
Reports indicate potential financial mismanagement by Essex schools. In 2022–23, the reported special education program expenditure amount was different than what was reported to the state. That left the small division of Essex, a small county in eastern Virginia on the Rappahannock River, owing over $450,000, a large chunk of its $20 million budget.
Earlier this year, accounting director Elizabeth Franklin was removed by the school board. The board also put Superintendent Dr. Harry Thomas III on administrative leave; he ultimately retired from the position. In a letter to the community, Thomas acknowledged a “litany of mistakes, miscues, and missteps along the way. . ..” The Rappahannock Times further reported financial issues related to salary payments and retirement benefits currently under investigation.
Drama seeped into an Essex school board meeting in June when Garlyn Bundy, who was scheduled to step down from her position as board chair, instead pointing fingers at others and refusing to step aside. She is accused of making defamatory statements against acting Superintendent Doranda Scott during that meeting.
(more…)
-
Barbara Jean Monaco: Still Missing After 47 Years
by Kerry Dougherty
This is a story I could write in my sleep. After all, I’ve penned some version of it almost every year since 1985.
The first installment appeared in The Pilot on Sept. 1, 1985, after Pauline Monaco called the newspaper to ask us to write again about her daughter – Barbara Jean – who’d been missing for seven years.
I just happened to answer the phone that day. I didn’t know that decades later, the story would be still be a cruel mystery.
Barbara Jean Monaco Intrigued, I found a file and a series of front-page stories about an 18-year-old from Connecticut who came to Virginia Beach for a week’s vacation in the summer of ’78 and never went home.
Since then I’ve written about the case so many times I’ve almost memorized the details.
The pretty majorette from Derby, Conn., her older sister Joanne and a friend arrived in town on Aug. 20, 1978, and checked into the old Aloha Motel on 15th Street.
They hit the beach during the day, the clubs at night. Early on the morning of Aug. 23 — a Wednesday — Barbara Jean left the motel to meet a bartender at Peabody’s who was finishing his shift.
She walked along Pacific Avenue. Yet somewhere between 15th and 21st Streets, Barbara Jean vanished.
Her frantic sister went to the police in the morning, but the cops made her wait 48 hours to file a missing person’s report.
By then, it was already too late. Continue reading.
-
Dark Money Activists Behind Key Virginia Redistricting Lawsuit
A lawsuit could increase Democrat influence in the state’s largest city, and that’s by design.
by Hayden Ludwig
A far-left Beltway group is behind a lawsuit to boost Democrat control of a major Virginia city by redrawing its voting maps, Restoration News has learned.
The Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a D.C. litigation group once bankrolled with millions of dollars from infamous crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, is representing two Virginia Beach plaintiffs in a lawsuit to change how residents elect their city council and school board officials. If successful, the lawsuit could carve out new Democrat-controlled “majority-minority” seats, or districts whose residents are mostly non-white.
The lawsuit centers on Virginia Beach’s complex “7-3-1” voting system, which is divided into seven single-member council districts—where candidates must reside to run for local office in order to properly represent those neighborhoods—and three at-large council seats, whose eligible candidates may live anywhere in the city. Residents also elect a mayor city-wide, hence “7-3-1.”
In practice, voters might cast their ballots for 5 councilmembers total: One member for their district plus one member per at-large seat, in addition to the mayor. This system is embedded in Virginia Beach’s city charter, which also requires the local school board follow the same system—meaning the stakes are high for controlling the future of Virginia’s largest city.
(more…)
-
Mother Of Dead Infant Pleads Guilty To Child Neglect
by Kerry Dougherty
Norfolk’s Commonwealth Attorney Ramin Fatehi promised to talk to us about what appeared to be a lenient plea agreement in the case of a dead infant after the mother who’d been charged with murdering her 9-day-old daughter had her day in court.
He kept his word.
And Fatehi’s explanation for comparatively mild sentences for both parents of the battered baby makes sense.
Still, it doesn’t sit right. It doesn’t seem that justice was served. Neither parent confessed to killing the baby, neither pointed the finger at each other.
They’re both culpable.
And if jurors have been given a glimpse of that tiny child’s broken body, if they’d seen what must be a harrowing autopsy report, they may very well have sent both of these monsters to prison for life.
As it is, the father, Hilary Darnell Johnson II, pleaded guilty to second degree murder and according to a plea agreement accepted by the judge, will be sentenced in October to no more than 19 years in prison. (The maximum sentence is 40 years.)
On Tuesday, the mother of Iijayah Johnson, Z’Ibreyea Parker, pleaded guilty to felony child neglect and could face up to 10 years behind bars.
Here’s an explanation from the prosecutor: Continue reading.
-
A Trusted Source Crawls Out on a Political Limb
By Steve Haner
One nice thing about detailed economic prognostication is that the predictions can later be checked and compared to reality. But the grim forecast for Virginia produced recently by the Weldon-Cooper Center for Public Service will have done its political damage long before the results are tallied.
The predictions of job losses and at best a flat state economy for 2026 were highlighted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch front page and gave Cardinal News editor Dwayne Yancey fodder to predict it will hurt Republicans in the coming election. The spin will intensify when Democratic campaign messaging kicks in, with a heavy dose of blame placing on President Donald Trump.
Weldon-Cooper has long been the trusted repository of key economic and U.S. Census data. It has earned quite a bit of brand impact and that is why this report is potent political ammunition.
Weldon-Cooper is new to the economic forecasting game. It started publishing what is planned to be a quarterly analysis in February, “as a useful resource for the good of the Commonwealth.” The rule on economic models is the same as on all the others out there: all models are wrong, but some models are useful. Many economists count themselves as good at predictions if they successfully call four of the next two recessions.
Weldon-Cooper is not displaying any genius in predicting that federal government layoffs and the wave of new tariffs will have a disproportionate impact on Virginia. Virginia is home to major federal agencies, huge federal contracting operations, and a major deep channel port.
But this new August report is already proving its April report was too pessimistic. The April report predicted Virginia would lose 32,000 jobs overall during 2025 and the August report has already retreated and now predicts 11,700 fewer jobs this year. Too late however — the higher 32,000 figure is already highlighted in Democratic attack ads on Republicans and expect it to stay there despite Weldon-Cooper’s downward revision.
(more…)
-
Will Richmond Tackle Corruption or Pretend It Doesn’t Exist?
by Jon Baliles
Image credit: Bing Image Creator Inspector Generals are (and should be) vital cogs in any governmental or organizational machine. Many federal agencies have them, state governments use them, and local governments depend on them. They bring to light the waste, fraud, and abuse that can permeate and be hidden so well at the local level they aren’t caught for years, and deprive localities of millions of dollars that could be used for needed city services.
Take for example the ongoing case in Richmond where Reginald Thomas, a former employee, over the course of several years set up three fake businesses and used city credit cards and purchase orders. The news of that scandal at City Hall, however, broke not from the release of an Inspector General (IG) report but because of Samuel Parker at the Times-Dispatch.
When Parker first reported the story in May, he had uncovered almost $840,000 in highly questionable expenses (like $75,000 for custom cabinets). In June, Parker kept digging and reported the amount of alleged fraud had grown to $2 million that began in 2017 and apparently went undetected for eight years. Now that it is a known story and in the media but there are still invoices to be examined and uncovered and that amount could easily pole vault past $2 million. The city cut Parker’s FOIA requests off after that, but recently agreed to again allow him to examine other invoices related to the spending — but only after the Times-Dispatch sent a copy of a lawsuit they were preparing to file against the city.
That is why the not-so-distant history of the IG office and the recent turmoil this summer is something the city simply cannot afford to continue. IG Jim Osuna was fired/resigned/relieved by City Council in May at a surprise personnel meeting with no explanation or comment. This week, the latest news is that Craig Johnson, the former Deputy IG, is no longer with the city and, once again, no one knows why (personnel decisions are usually not commented on) and unsurprisingly, no one on City Council responded for comment.
(more…)
-
Selling JMU to Itself
Academic department puts million-dollar mark on football field
by Joe Fitzgerald
Image credit: Helix Steel There either is or should be a rule that says if your organization is doing something that makes absolutely no sense to most of the people outside and many of the people inside, you should explain it better or do it differently.
Specifically, if one of your academic departments is paying a million dollars to the athletic department to advertise on the football field, you might want to explain it as more than a partnership. But first, you’d have to figure out what it is.
Paraphrasing the Daily News-Record story, with sponsorship logos on the playing surface now allowed by the NCAA, the JMU School of Professional and Continuing Education had purchased the right to place its logo at each 25-yard line at Bridgeforth Stadium. JMU SPCE will pay JMU athletics $1,066,675 total through the 2028-29 academic year.
Images in JMU’s marketing of this deal show just the name of the SPCE painted on the field. Nothing about what the school does or what it can do for the average football fan. Just the name.
(more…)
-
Another Violent Immigrant Caught
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
On August 8, ICE officers arrested and detained another violent immigrant in the Richmond area. Arman Momand, a 19-year old rising senior at Henrico’s J.R. Tucker High School, had been charged by Henrico police with reckless driving, evading police, and driving without a license following a driving incident last December. However, the Commonwealth’s attorney had downgraded some of the charges and dropped others. He pled guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct and reckless driving charges, with no jail time ordered by the judge.
He was arrested by ICE shortly after his court appearance and eventually transferred to a detention facility near Farmville.
These intrepid officers did not let the fact that Momand was in the United States legally deter them from protecting Henrico citizens from this dangerous criminal. He has a special visa granted for his family’s help to the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
Henrico citizens can sleep better knowing that this violent criminal has been caught and detained.
-
All Dominion’s Solar Plants Are Failing Their Energy Promises
The average number of minutes Dominion customers lost power in 2023, compared to various peer utilities, including Appalachian Power and PEPCO. Source: SCC testimony by Steve Haner
Every solar facility in Dominion Energy Virginia’s expanding fleet of silicone panels is failing to perform up to its initial energy promises, according to a State Corporation Commission staff analysis. In many cases the shortfalls are dramatic.
The data popped up in testimony that is part of the utility’s application for a base rate increase. There are dozens of issues in that pending case, set for a public hearing September 2. One issue is whether the company has earned a bonus on its profit margin due to good performance, and the SCC staff has recommended it not get it, in part because of the poor solar performance.
Neil Joshipura of the SCC staff wrote in his testimony:
Based on the data provided, all of the Company’s solar facilities had average actual capacity factors that were lower than their respective design capacity factors. The absolute differences between the design and actual values ranged from 1.2 to 10.3 percentage points, with an average difference of 4.3 percentage points. Piney Creek Solar had the largest absolute difference; its design capacity factor was 22.6 percent, while its actual capacity factor for 2024, the only year with available data, was 12.3 percent. This represents a 48 percent shortfall relative to the design value.
Capacity factor is a measure of how often a power plant produces electricity, and it is never 100% over time. When the plant is advertised as producing 100 megawatts or 500 or more, that is the nameplate value at 100%. That must then be multiplied by the capacity factor, and in the case of solar fields here in Virginia, that capacity factor is a very low number, usually below 25%.
-
Virginia Feminists Resist the Gender Borg
by Margot Heffernan
It’s a dangerous time to be a woman, a female, regardless of age. I’ll tell you why: “Transgenderism,” the grand ideology that has corrupted virtually every corner of our society is a straight up threat to everyone, but especially to women and girls.It is a lie, a hoax, a jacked-up scam promoted by medical societies and corporations alike, a dangerous scheme that goads the most vulnerable into believing that their troubles are caused by a misalignment between one’s sex and a mythical “gender identity.”
And, no, Virginia, Loudoun County has not gotten the message. In fact, the commonwealth represents a microcosm of the problem writ large as scandal after scandal brings more real-world harm to women and girls each day in Loudoun and four other counties that define northern Virginia.
Hysterical? Overblown? Hyperbole you say? No, no, and no again.
When Governor Ralph Northam released the original set of “Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools” in 2021, red flags were raised by those concerned about women’s rights and private spaces. These policies crush the material reality of human biology by elevating the illusory concept of gender over sex.
(more…)
-
Virginia’s Unaffiliated Numbers
And the limits of partisanship
by Gordon C. Morse
He’s at least consistent.
And so is the press.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin told General Assembly members last week that Virginia’s economy is as strong as ever and concerns that federal employment reductions (thanks to the Trump administration) would drag down Virginia’s overall fiscal condition were exaggerated.
Every news story that followed – as best I can tell – expressed skepticism and, let’s face it, it ain’t skepticism at all. It’s flat out political opposition. The uniformity of press opinion, as expressed in the news columns (not the opinion spaces) is stunning.
“Rosy picture,” reported the Virginia Mercury.
“Rose-colored,” said the Associated Press.
“Looks rosy,” declared the Virginia-Pilot.
“Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously. Moses he knowses his toeses aren’t roses, as Moses supposes his toeses to be!”
Those are lyrics from “Singing in the Rain” and at least song-writers Adolph Green and Betty Comden made roses fun.
In point-of-fact, Youngkin and his fiscal managers have been saying this since last year, that the impact of federal job reductions would not be so severe and they have numbers to support this conclusion.
In response, the Democrats appear to not like these numbers and the press scribes nodded in unison.
(more…)
