Bacon's Rebellion

  • A Victory for Transparency

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    James A. Bacon

    Kudos to Danny Avula, City of Richmond mayor, for upholding government transparency in the release of documents sought by the Richmond Times-Dispatch that had been withheld on the grounds that they were executive “working papers.”

    The University of Virginia should pay heed. Just because you legally can refuse to turn over working papers doesn’t mean you have to. (See my previous post for the blanket use of the working-papers exemption to withhold information on how decisions are made at UVA.)

    The documents sought by the RTD shed light on the use of taxpayer dollars to fund nonprofit organizations. The city’s practice was to grade the groups seeking financial support and to fund those scoring over 75. The city auditor found that many groups receiving taxpayer dollars fell short of the score, but the city’s FOIA officer refused to turn over spreadsheets with the details. The working-papers exemption, she said, shields records and correspondence “prepared by or for a public official … for his personal or deliberative use.” 

    (more…)

  • Fog and Shadows

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    James A. Bacon

    Decision-making at the University of Virginia is shrouded in secrecy — and leadership is just fine with that.

    by James A. Bacon

    Last week the University of Virginia Board of Visitors faced a history-making judgment: how to respond to Trump administration demands to dismantle its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion programs. Tensions during the meeting, held in the Rotunda conference room, ran high. The exchange of views got heated. And a momentous decision was reached: to shut down the university’s DEI apparatus. But the discussion was conducted in closed session, and board members are sworn to keep their deliberations confidential. The public has no idea what facts and logic impelled the Board to make one of the most consequential decisions it will ever grapple with.

    Virginia’s flagship university has a huge transparency problem — one that goes far beyond Board of Visitors making critical decisions in closed session. Presidential task forces conduct their business in secret. Investigative reports paid for with taxpayer dollars are withheld from the public. And efforts to pry open information using the Freedom of Information Act are routinely blocked.

    As culture wars play out nationally, UVA has reached a critical juncture in its storied, 200-year history. The Board of Visitors appointed by Governor Youngkin is seeking to overturn policies and practices that have defined the institution for years. Regardless of where they stand in this controversy, UVA students, employees, alumni, taxpayers, and even the general public have a right to see how these decisions are being made, who is making them, and why they’re making them.

    The culture of fog and shadows runs deep. President Jim Ryan is part of the problem. The Board of Visitors is part of the problem. Even the university counsel’s office, which answers to Virginia’s attorney general, is part of the problem. The transparency issues plaguing UVA are likely endemic across Virginia’s system of higher education. But some manifestations of secrecy are unique to UVA, its organizational culture, and decisions made by its leadership.

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  • Unless Targeted, Extra Math Funds Will Be Wasted

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    by

    Steve Haner

    Chris Braunlich

    by Chris Braunlich,

    Writing in the blog Bacon’s Rebellion, Arlington parent and self-described “Obama Democrat” Todd Truitt has come out swinging against a Virginia budget amendment to spend $12 million extra “to improve student performance in mathematics.”

    His argument?  Without Governor’s amendments, these extra funds won’t help math outcomes and will probably hurt.

    Mr. Truitt’s main point is that it offers school divisions “blank checks totaling almost $10.2 million … to continue promoting the math-ed equivalent of whole language/balanced literacy.”  That’s a lot of money that runs the risk of following millions more tossed down a rabbit hole of faddish math pedagogy over the last nine years opposing, for example, memorizing the “times tables.”.

    But as noted in 2023 by the late Rick Nelson, who served as a Visiting Fellow at the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, “University of Virginia cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham explains that math is about more than fact memorization. but as a foundation, because of the brain’s structure, for all the basic arithmetic facts (such as 8 + 7 and 42/6), answers must be “not calculated but simply retrieved from memory.”.

    Yet, as former teachers union president Nelson documents, in 2016 Virginia moved away from the practice of practicing math facts.  The result was that, by 2024, Virginia ranked 46th in Math recovery from the effects of not teaching math facts and from school shutdowns during Covid.

    (more…)

  • Blame the Nurses — or the Nursing-Home Profiteers?

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    James A. Bacon

    by Jim Wright

    Image credit: Bing Image Creator

    So, who’s the real culprit?

    Eighteen nurses were recently arrested at Colonial Heights Nursing Home, charged with elder abuse and falsification of records. Surely, there was wrongdoing here, but does the blame belong to 18 nurses only?

    In my experience as a nursing-home medical director, I’ve learned that sometimes the first “culprit” you identify is really not the culprit at all. If you want to get to the root of a problem, you have to keep asking the question “why?” Why did 18 nurses falsify records?

    When nurses give bad care, it’s not necessarily because they’re bad people, but very often because they become demoralized and jaded in a setting where they simply do not have enough staff.

    Colonial Heights is known to staff at levels far below what is considered safe. A government study performed in 2001 found that once a facility’s nursing-aid presence drops below about 2.5 hours per patient per day, residents experience an increase in disease and harm. Colonial Heights supplied nurse’s aides for only one hour and 38 minutes per resident per day. Registered- nurse presence should be 33 minutes per patient per day. Colonial Heights supplied only 18.

    So, let’s keep asking: Why would Virginia allow nursing homes to operate with staffing levels that have been shown to harm residents?

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  • Virginia’s Nursing Homes and the Courts

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    sherlockj

    Virginia’s Nursing Homes and the Courts

    by James C. Sherlock

    Readers have stuck with me for a long time as I have reported on the dire state of many of Virginia’s nursing homes.  

    Recently the employees of one of the worst have been charged with abuse and neglect in the death of a patient. Her suffering was what can only be called medieval.

    Virginia political corruption. I have focused heretofore almost entirely on the failures of state and federal regulators and videotaped corruption in the Virginia General Assembly.

    The nursing homes, like the hospitals and other interests, get influence in the General Assembly the old-fashioned way. They buy it.  

    Virginia is one of only five states with no limit on campaign donations.  

    The state regulator, the Virginia Department of Health, has been sabotaged by bipartisan majorities in that Assembly for decades.  

    • The General Assembly this year passed a bill to deny the Health Commissioner authority to levy penalties. They left her with the authority to grant state licenses to nursing homes but not to revoke them for cause. I must admit the bill showed imagination. I have never heard of such an arrangement in any other state or situation other than this attempt to shield Virginia healthcare facilities from regulatory oversight. I have recommended the Governor veto it
    • The VDH inspection staff for licensing of healthcare facilities and services is the Office of Licensure and Certification (OLC). It also serves under contract to the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to survey Virginia hospitals, nursing homes and home health agencies to ensure compliance with federal regulations. That staff has purposely been starved of funding by the General Assembly for nearly five decades. It has less than half of the highly experienced people necessary to do its job.

    The feds. CMS refuses to use their vast data troves on nursing homes for enforcement of regulations. It instead has based its system of federal sanctions on the results of what are expected to be highly specified and detailed annual health surveys of each facility by the state regulator staffs who look for violations of federal regulations. But CMS takes that to an absurd level. For but one example:

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  • Regulate It, Make It Unaffordable, Subsidize It

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    James A. Bacon

    Luxury daycare… great if you can afford it. Image credit: Bing Image Creator

    by James A. Bacon

    “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” So said former President Ronald Reagan in one of his pithier takedowns of government intervention in the economy.

    I don’t believe that daycare providers were ever singled out for taxation, but here in Virginia, they certainly have been regulated. Now the cost of daycare is burdensome to many parents of young children. Unsurprisingly, the General Assembly wants to subsidize it.

    The legislature passed a bill setting aside $25 million for a pilot project to reimburse businesses that contribute to the childcare costs of their employees, reports WRIC. The bill, supported by groups as diverse as the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation and the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, awaits action by Governer Glenn Youngkin.

    Let us posit for the moment that the cost of daycare is a very real social problem. I know because I hear about it from my daughter and son-in-law, both working professionals, who pay burdensome sums for their two children. I can’t imagine how difficult life is for households that lack their means. So, let me be clear, I do not minimize the dimensions of the challenge facing young parents today.

    But I’ve lived long enough to see how programs like this proposed $25 million subsidy evolves. The program starts small, as a pilot project. Then it becomes institutionalized. Once the principle has been established that daycare is a “right,” subsidized childcare expands incrementally to encompass more and more families until a $25 million pilot project becomes an entrenched $250 million entitlement.

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  • Dominion’s IRP Becoming Moot as Federal Rules Pivot

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    Steve Haner

    Rendering of Chesterfield project from Dominion’s public website.

    by Steve Haner

    The expanded use of natural gas as a fuel for electricity is the key debate in Dominion Energy Virginia’s integrated resource plan pending before the State Corporation Commission. Not waiting for the decision in that case to come later this year, the utility has now filed an application to start building the first of those gas plants.  

    Dominion’s Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center would include four small gas turbines designed to run only when needed to meet peak demand, both for Dominion or for other utilities in the PJM Interconnection region. Dominion had previously announced it would start its gas expansion with that project, to be built near a retired coal plant along the James River on ground already zoned for the use.    

    The entire integrated resource plan, (IRP), prepared before the November election, now rests on several false premises and should likely be scrapped entirely. If the recent changes in federal energy policy are then met with a change in direction for the state, Dominion could then proceed with the far more cost-efficient choice of a full baseload combined cycle gas plant in Chesterfield, instead of the smaller gas turbines being proposed now.  

    The integrated resource plan and the Chesterfield plant application both hinge on the question of whether additional natural gas generation is required to maintain reliability. Protecting system reliability is the only loophole in Virginia’s 2020 Clean Economy Act (VCEA), which otherwise prohibits new hydrocarbon plants and demands the existing facilities all close.  

    You can watch the paper record on the integrated resource case build here, with a hearing set for next month, or read Dominion’s full application for the Chesterfield plant here. The company and opponents have already lined up experts with impressive credentials testifying that natural gas is either needed or not needed to maintain reliability. The three SCC judges will have to choose whom to believe.  

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  • Breaking – Colonial Heights Rehab and Nursing Center Closed to New Admissions

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    sherlockj

    Breaking – Colonial Heights Rehab and Nursing Center Closed to New Admissions

    by James C. Sherlock

    This is the best nursing home news in this space in a long time. A phone call to the facility today confirmed that the infamous Colonial Heights Rehab and Nursing Center is closed to new applicants.

    This reporter is not sure of the driving force behind this specific action, but that facility has made headlines for a series of arrests and indictments of staff.  

    It also was absolutely hammered by a 340-page complaint inspection report from the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) Office of Licensure and Certification (OLC) dated January 3rd that was recently released. It was incredibly thorough — the best I have ever read.  The author of that report clearly felt strongly about what he or she wrote.

    That report detailed 105 violations of federal regulations in a survey of the records of only 33 of 186 residents. Sampling is the normal process for a very good reason — the time it takes understaffed inspector teams to thoroughly review and investigate patient records. But it begs the question of violations in the cases of the other 153 residents.

    We offer both the report of the results of that inspection and a compilation of them into an attached spreadsheet. It makes for scary, riveting reading. I recommend starting with the spreadsheet and going to the actual report for additional detail.  

    I sincerely hope that the new patient shutdown was directed by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services based upon that January 3rd report. But it should not have taken nearly that long.

    As previously described here, the Governor submitted a bill to the General Assembly that would have let VDH take the action directly and in a more timely manner to deny new admissions, but a corrupt General Assembly negated it with a substitute that utterly frustrated its purpose. I have recommended that the Governor veto the substitute.

    We all retain concern for the remaining patients. The facility was at 95% occupancy when the latest inspection commenced.

    But all of that said, it is time for celebration. Thanks to local and state governments for getting us to this point.

    The author has asked VDH for comment and will ask the Virginia Association of Health Plans to do so as well.

    This is a continuing story. It will be updated as new information is available.

  • Is DEI Done? Not Yet.

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    “DEI is done at the University of Virginia,” said Governor Glenn Youngkin in a Saturday interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingram.

    “This is a big day for the University of Virginia,” the governor said a day after the UVA Board of Visitors voted unanimously to abolish the university’s office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and end practices that discriminate on the basis of race. “It also, I think, makes a huge statement for the rest of universities across the nation.”

    The UVA decision indisputably represents a milestone in the battle to create a color-blind society in Virginia, but it is an exaggeration to say that DEI is “done.” DEI advocates have been stunned by recent events, but they have not converted. They haven’t even submitted.

    Youngkin expects Virginia’s other public universities to follow UVA’s lead. We won’t know if they will until their boards convene. The threat of losing federal funding combined with Youngkin-appointed majorities could be sufficient to get UVA-like resolutions passed. But responsibility for carrying out the resolutions will fall upon leaders who constructed or maintained the DEI systems in the first place. They will have plenty of support from staff, faculty, students, sympathetic media, and Democratic legislators.

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  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • How to Spend $10 Million for Worse Results

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Todd Truitt

    The Virginia joint conference committee budget report contains an additional $12 million intended to bring much needed improvement to Virginia K-12 math education.

    The budget language is purported to be a first step to repeat the great improvements that the Virginia Literacy Act is making with evidence-based instructional methods. However, the wording does nothing of the kind. The budget provides blank checks totaling almost $10.2 million to school districts to continue promoting the math-ed equivalent of whole language/balanced literacy.

    These non-evidence-based math instructional methods have led to flat National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math scores for decades. Activities based on math “reform” ideology — predominant in K-12 math ed for the past 30+ years — still lacks any evidence basis.

    As I detail below, the Virginia K-12 math ed establishment has been fervently promoting non-evidence-based instructional methods to Virginia school districts and teachers. Virginia had the worst NAEP math recovery in the nation. Conversely, Alabama had the best NAEP math recovery in the country after enacting legislation promoting evidence-based instructional methods.

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  • Statement of Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins ’85

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia Military Institute Superintendent Cedric T. Wins, whose contract the Board of Visitors declined to renew, published a statement March 6 in defense of his tenure. Given all the commentary we have published that was critical of Wins, I thought it appropriate to share his perspective. — JAB

    I am extremely proud of what my team accomplished over the past four years. We worked tirelessly to restore VMI’s reputation as one of the nation’s top-rated institutions. As a result, I am disappointed by the Board of Visitors’ decision not to renew my contract as superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute. This decision was not based on my performance or the tangible progress we achieved. It is the result of a partisan choice that abandons the values of honor, integrity, and excellence upon which VMI was built.

    When I assumed this role amid a worldwide pandemic, intense public scrutiny, and an enrollment crisis, I pledged to protect and modernize VMI while preserving its unique method of education and right traditions. We achieved extraordinary results over the past four years:

    • Securing and Modernizing Resources: We increased state funding by 50% and secured over $321 million to upgrade our facilities.
    • Strengthening Academic and Financial Foundations: We reversed a 10-year decline in admissions, boosted Pell Grant enrollment with a $3.8 million grant, and maintained budget surpluses when most people expected deficits.
    • Taking Care of People: We fought for the resources to implement salary adjustments that addressed compression and competitive factors for the VMI workforce.
    • Enhancing Cadet Life and Leadership: We launched the Call to Duty scholarship program — awarding $2.4 million to 172 cadets — and reinforced our class and regimental systems, including the historical appointment of our first female regimental commander in 25 years.
    • Upholding Tradition with Modern Excellence: Under my leadership, VMI earned a five-star ranking from Money Magazine — the only senior military college to receive this honor — and our athletic teams achieved milestones, including our first conference championship since 1977.
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  • Wins. VMI. And a Pronounced Exit

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    James A. Bacon

    Shown the door, Gen. Wins Vents

    by Gordon C. Morse

    General Cedric Wins at VMI

    When it comes to angry exits, you really cannot beat Woody Allen’s close in the 1976 film, “The Front.”

    Ordered to testify before a congressional committee of some sort, Allen’s character faces a demand to cough up the names of communists among his friends and colleagues. The committee wished to keep America “just as pure as we can possibly make it.”

    Allen holds his head in his hands. He’s in agony. How can this be happening?

    Suddenly, Allen smiles to himself and stands up at the witness table. He firmly denies the committee’s authority to do what it’s doing and “furthermore” invites the members to have sex with themselves.

    It’s more crudely expressed than that, which only makes it better. Everyone’s dream moment.

    The next scene finds Allen kissing his girl good-bye at the train station, handcuffed to a U.S. Marshall.

    Exits can be entertaining. “Exit, pursued by a bear” is Shakespeare’s stage direction in “The Winter’s Tale.”

    The other day, while saying a few things about VMI, I brought up Gene Nichol’s 2008 exit from the William & Mary presidency. Denied a contract renewal, Nichol gave contemporaneous expression to his displeasure but waited until 2023 to fully clear his throat.

    In his introduction to “Lessons From North Carolina,” Nichol declared that North Cackalacky was his “place” and “not Virginia, whose fawning embrace of its past, stifling and self-deluding classism and noblesse oblige which turns out to carry neither nobility nor obligation but only pretense and privilege, is the opposite of uplifting.”

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  • UVA Board Dissolves DEI Office

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    James A. Bacon

    The University of Virginia Board of Visitors passed a resolution today dissolving the university’s Office of Equity, Inclusion, and Community Partnerships and ordering a review of university programs and policies to ensure that they conform with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Trump administration guidance.

    By way of explanation, the resolution referred to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order titled, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” as well as a “dear colleague” letter citing specific federal civil rights statutes.

    The university review of practices will include “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies and all other aspects or student, academic and campus life.”

    Additionally, the resolution makes it clear that circumventing the law by employing proxies for race would not be tolerated.

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  • The Social Cost of Free Lunch

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    by

    Steve Haner

    By Derrick Max

    After failing to pass legislation last year that would have made breakfast and lunch free for all public school students regardless of income (at a staggering cost of $201.5 million), state Senator Danika Roem, D-Manassas,) pared down that bill to focus solely on funding a universal free school breakfast program this session. Fortunately, the pared-down bill also failed in the final days of the General Assembly.  

    Still alive, and on the way to the Governor’s desk, is Senator Roem’s bill to have student unpaid school lunch debts forgiven (and paid for by local school systems, aka, local taxpayers). This bill, while less objectionable than the others, is a camel’s nose under the tent to broader school meal programs and should be vetoed by Governor Youngkin.  

    To be clear, Senator Roem is right on the importance of food for improved health and academics. The failed bills, however, replace important parental roles, increase “food deserts,” and contribute to government dependence. The school-debt bill creates a moral hazard that will undermine existing lunch programs and divert funds from educational purposes.

    The daily ritual of packing a school lunch, a mundane and inexpensive task, holds a wealth of benefits for both children and parents. While the convenience of a school’s hot lunch program is undeniable, the non-dietary benefits of a packed lunch are both great and rarely discussed.  

    (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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