Bacon's Rebellion

  • Tapping UVA’s Strategic Investment Fund to Drive Restructuring

    Posted on

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    James A. Bacon

    This is the second part of a new three-part series exploring the influence of UVA President Ryan’s Strategic Investment Fund. Part 1 can be found here.

    by James A. Bacon

    UVA is one of the most expensive public universities in the U.S. to attend. It provides significant financial aid to lower-income students, but the rising cost of tuition is pricing out the middle class, especially students from out of state. Chief Operating Officer J.J. Davis has hired consultants to achieve efficiencies through procurement reforms, IT implementation and other administrative tweaks, but cost savings are measured in the millions of dollars while spending leaps yearly by the tens of millions. No one has challenged the underlying cost drivers.

    The Jefferson Council believes that there is massive waste and redundancy in UVA’s vast and growing bureaucracy, that teaching productivity of tenure-track professors is abominable, and that UVA is supporting too many academic departments where enrollment is eroding. Not only has the administration refused to address these issues, it has withheld information from board members who seek to conduct their own analysis on the grounds that staff doesn’t have time to perform busy work. The administration has a deep vested interest in continuing to fend off such discussions, and by its intransigence has forfeited the right to lead a reform effort.

    Counter-intuitively, it appears necessary for the Board to add another administrative cost in order to tackle the issue of administrative costs: The Board should tap the Strategic Investment Fund to employ an independent staff, answerable to the Board, to respond to information requests and conduct analysis on how to cut costs. It could also hire outside consultants for specific projects as needed. 

    (more…)

  • Interesting Poll on School Choice, But Timing Off

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    by

    Steve Haner

    Artillery is of limited use after the battle is over. Governor Glenn Youngkin’s proposed state subsidy program for low-income students opting for a private school is dead, but a poll has just been released showing public support for the idea. 

    The Virginia General Assembly’s 2025 session may be just days away from ending, but the end of the session is the opening bell for the 2025 election season. Supporters of the $5,000 Virginia Opportunity Scholarships the Republican proposed are hoping to keep the issue alive in the elections.

    Is this big news now? No. But those interested in the topic may wish to review the poll, which found broad support for the program, 57% to 28%. It also found a general feeling that while Virginia overall was moving in the right direction, its education system was not (35% right, 42% wrong).

    The pollster, Cygnal, reached 600 registered voters by different communications methods and then weighted the results to reflect the state’s political balance. The weighted sample reflects the majority vote for Democrat Kamala Harris and includes more self-identified Democrats than Republicans. The interviews took place January 31 and February 1, the same weekend legislators were adopting budgets that deleted the tuition scholarship program. 

    The client for the poll was a national organization promoting school choice, 50CAN, and it was shared in Virginia by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy with this news release. Last year, 50CAN did another poll to reach 20,000 registered voters in all states, not just Virginia. The long national results summary is also worth reading as the questions went deep into what is going on in schools, and also has a section focused on Virginia’s results (see page 204).  

    — SDH

  • He Who Controls UVA’s Strategic Investment Fund Controls Its Strategic Direction

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    This is the first part of a new three-part series exploring the influence of UVA President Ryan’s Strategic Investment Fund.

    by James A. Bacon

    Back in December, University of Virginia President Jim Ryan unveiled a major philanthropic gift at the Board of Visitors meeting: Board member John L. Nau III had committed to donating $20 million to fund fellowships for College of Arts & Sciences graduate students. The sum, Ryan added, would be matched by $10 million from the University’s Strategic Investment Fund (SIF). The combined $30 million impact, he said, would support 30 to 35 grad students per year. Fellow board members gave Nau a round of applause.

    The SIF, which is throwing off roughly $65 million a year that the University can spend any way it wants, is UVA’s secret fundraising weapon. It has helped UVA surpass its $5 billion “Honor the Future” campaign 18 months ahead of schedule. With matching dollars from SIF, Ryan reeled in mega-donations such as a $50 million gift creating the Karsh Institute of Democracy and a $100 million donation launching the Manning Biotech Institute. Few public universities have anything to compare.

    Ironically, during the same meeting in which they lauded Nau for his generosity, some UVA board members made it clear they wanted to exercise tighter control over the SIF. They didn’t take issue with any of Ryan’s decisions on how to spend the income. Indeed, board member Doug Wetmore described the program as “very successful,” and he said the overwhelming majority of the administration’s proposals likely would meet board approval. But the board would be failing to exercise its financial duty, he said, if it neglected to review spending of such magnitude.

    What went unsaid during the board meeting is that he who controls the SIF controls the strategic direction of the University of Virginia. 

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  • Biting the Steady Hand That Lights Your House

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Three western Virginia politicians have penned a press release masquerading as a serious proposal. They seek to decertify a major monopoly electric utility which serves 540,000 Virginia accounts, the Appalachian Power Company, a division of American Electric Power.  

    The letter was sent to the State Corporation Commission and then released, with probably the best coverage provided by the online Cardinal News. It reported:

    Citing “ever increasing bills,” Sens. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County; Todd Pillion, R-Washington County; and Travis Hackworth, R-Tazewell County, said that “our region deserves better than an out-of-state company who doesn’t work with [its] struggling customers and continually works to extract maximum profit for an essential utility service.”

    The letter asks a series of questions about how the territory and customers could legally be taken away from the Appalachian Power Company, also known as APCO. But then what? Will APCO’s service territory be given to Dominion Energy instead? Be converted into a very large member-owned cooperative?  How much might Appalachian customers be paying to the AEP shareholders (which include many APCO customers) in compensation for taking their assets and dividends? The “be careful what you ask for” warning has never been more relevant.

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  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    Steve Haner

    Sunday Memes–Doesn’t it feel great? – The Bull Elephant

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

  • Battery Bills Still Charging Toward Passage

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    The Virginia General Assembly is still poised to pass a vastly expanded mandate for future utility battery storage systems, but the bills are no longer passing unanimously.  At least some discussion of the ratepayer cost impact has come up in committee and floor discussions since being raised by Bacon’s Rebellion.  Most Republicans are now on record as opposed.

    A battery storage facility: not nearly as photogenic as solar panels and wind turbines

    The effort was given a strong cheerleading push from Virginia Mercury in a story Thursday that made no effort to estimate that customer cost (but also no effort to dispute Bacon’s Rebellion’s figures.)  The Mercury article also glossed over the incredibly important detail that battery storage in megawatts is a useless measurement, and the real metric is megawatt hours.

    The cost should be calculated in dollars per megawatt hour.  At this point, the legislative histories on the bill still do not show any official estimate of the capital costs or ratepayer impact. On that front, legislators still seem to enjoy not hearing any bad news. 

    The bill is being pushed by Dominion Energy Virginia, among others, and Mercury quoted one of its contract lobbyists saying the bill gives the regulatory State Corporation Commission “full authority to agree with the targets set in the code or alter them up or down and we think that is the right approach.”

    What she ignores, and she avoided this point in committee testimony witnessed by Bacon’s Rebellion, is that question is the only discretion being left to the SCC.  Elsewhere in the Virginia Clean Economy Act, the regulators are all but mandated to approve the first 3,100 megawatts of battery storage as being “in the public interest” by law.  The traditional tests of reasonableness, prudence and necessity are not applied.  The General Assembly already decided those questions and didn’t set any cost cap, either.

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  • FEI gets DOA

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A once vaunted institution joins the choir invisible.

    by Gordon Morse

    News of the demise of the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville arrived on Monday and unexpectedly. What happened there? What sins were committed?”

    According to the executive order signed by President Trump, “bureaucratic leadership over the past half-century has led to Federal policies that enlarge and entrench the Washington, D.C., managerial class, a development that has not benefited the American family. The Federal Executive Institute should therefore be eliminated to refocus Government on serving taxpayers, competence, and dedication to our Constitution, rather than serving the Federal bureaucracy.”

    Those are different thoughts welded together to make a point that makes little sense, but welcome to 2025. It doesn’t take much for a federal agency to run afoul of the new mentality. Maybe someone at the Cato Institute called and the FEI hung up the phone on them? That alone would probably do it.

    The Federal Executive Institute has sat on a rise above Route 29, just north of Barracks Road Shopping Center, since the Johnson Administration. Its white arches frame the entrance to what, in 1951, was first opened as the Thomas Jefferson Inn and, as a result, there’s a pool.

    Pools were important as my brother and I were growing up. No hotels without a pool. Period.

    I knew that road in the 1950s well because it carried us to Amherst and our grandparents. Headed south (there was no bypass then), you would see the hotel – there were fewer trees then – to the right up the slope. The shopping center arrived later and all that land, as I recall, sat within Albemarle County. It would be annexed into Charlottesville in the 1960s.

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  • A Public Health Crisis in Central Virginia

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    sherlockj

    A Public Health Crisis in Central Virginia

    by James C. Sherlock

    A terribly injured 33-year-old homeless male schizophrenic recently was found lying hidden in a church in Chesterfield County.

    He was discovered with multiple displaced fractures in the lower pubic bone, a break on the left side of the sacrum (base of the spine), a large amount of blood in his pelvis, a nondisplaced fracture in the back part of the T5-T6 vertebrae and many other serious injuries. He was wearing both a catheter and a colostomy bag.

    He had previously been admitted to and discharged from Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center (VCU) with those injuries. It is at least unusual, and in most cases prohibited, for nursing homes to accept patients with schizophrenia. Yet upon discharge from VCU, the man had been admitted to and discharged from two skilled nursing facilities, Hanover Health and Rehabilitation Center (Hanover) and Colonial Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing Center (Colonial Heights).

    Each is run by New Jersey-based Medical Facilities of Virginia (MFA). Each, thus unsurprisingly, is rated one star of five by Medicare for staffing. Neither has recently reported having mental health support capabilities.

    The medical journey of that unfortunate patient would be literally unbelievable had it not occurred.

    • He was transferred from VCU to a skilled nursing facility without a history of providing mental health services, from there to another skilled nursing facility with a similar history, and finally discharged from that one onto the street with his horrific and life-threatening injuries;
    • He was not transferred from VCU to Hiram W. Davis Medical Center (Davis) in Petersburg. That state hospital had the distinct advantage of actually being able care for him.

    The Medical Journey of A Patient

    So many questions.

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  • Commonwealth on Fence for Transportation Funding

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    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    The U.S. Dept. of Transportation has issued an order that “updates and resets the principles and standards underpinning U.S.Department of Transportation policies, programs, and activities.” The order provides that all “DOT grants, loans, contracts, and DOT-supported or -assisted State contracts shall proioritize projects and goals that (among other issues) “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”

    The Commonwealth of Virginia may be on the bubble as far as these criteria are concerned.

    Virginians are married at a higher rate than the national average. The Census Bureau defines the marriage rate as the number of women per 1,000 women over the age 15 who were married. In 2022, the national average was 16.7. Virginia was tied for 19th place with a rate of 17.8.

    Birth rate is a different story. In 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the national birth rate (births per 1,000 women) was 11.0. The birth rate for Virginia was 11.0, therefore not “higher than the national average.” (see table 8 in the publication.)

    The order does not address how priorities are set if a state meets only one of the criteria.

  • The Chainsaw Cometh. Be Not Afraid, Virginia

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Musk the bureaucracy slayer. Image credit: ChaptGPT

    by James A. Bacon

    Over at Cardinal News Dwayne Yancey makes a stab at calculating the economic impact on Virginia if President Trump and his chainsaw-wielding demiurge Elon Musk succeed in their goal of hacking down the size of the federal workforce by 60%. His concern is that two-fifths of Virginia’s personal income tax revenue comes from Northern Virginia, that a significant amount of those funds are redistributed to school districts in his corner of the state, and that, therefore, even Southwest Virginia potentially has a lot to lose.

    Meanwhile, at the Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Jeff Schapiro explores the political implications as Democrats seek to turn the impending bloodletting to their favor against Virginia Republicans, who seem unable to oppose the draconian Trump-ordered mayhem or articulate a rationale for why the cuts might actually be a good thing for the Old Dominion.

    Adding to Virginia’s peril, suggests Yancey in a line of logic sure to be adopted by Democrats, is that the Muskian chainsaw also could devastate federal contractors who round out most of the Northern Virginia economy not comprised of federal bureaucrats. Factor in the multiplier effect of all those lost jobs and all that lost spending and NoVa could enter into a recession the likes of which it has never seen before and could drag down the rest of Virginia with it.

    Expect apologists for the status quo to elaborate upon that line of argumentation. Virginians will be hearing how economic apocalypse is just around the corner.

    Permit me to spin an alternate scenario. While there will be short-term pain for sure, chain-sawing the federal budget could be the best thing to ever happen to Virginia. It could be just the trauma NoVa needs to emancipate itself from dependence upon federal largesse, deconstruct its cost-plus-contract culture, and develop a truly innovative technology sector.

    (more…)

  • How to Create a Leftist Monoculture: Rising Scholars

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    The University of Virginia’s “Rising Scholars” program in the College of Arts & Sciences, which dispenses graduate fellowships exclusively to racial, ethnic, sexual and gender minority students, has ceased accepting applications, according to a posting on its website.

    The website provides no explanation, but the notice coincides with Trump administration initiatives to terminate Diversity, Equity & Inclusion dictates in federal rules and contracts and to enforce the principle of “colorblind equality before the law” across government and higher education. 

    Funded in part by a university-wide grant from the Mellon Foundation, Rising Scholars recruits graduate students whose research, practice and teaching center “race, justice, and equity, specifically in relation to Black and Indigenous Studies of the United States.” It is consistent with the recommendations of the Racial Equity Task Force, adopted as official policy by the UVA Board of Visitors in 2020, to recruit more minority graduate students and faculty.

    Provost Ian Baucom, who was dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the time, laid out the thinking behind the program in his “Race, Place and Equity” grant application to the Mellon Foundation, which he submitted in November 2020. It’s worth quoting at some length:

    As UVA commits to graduating students prepared to sustain a flourishing, anti-racist and equity-driven democracy, we also need to play a key role in advancing the research and teaching of race, justice, and equity if we are to advance our vision of becoming a vehicle for social mobility, inclusion, and racial justice, simultaneously changing ourselves and contributing to change nation-wide. …

    (more…)

  • Legislating in the Budget

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    The members of the General Assembly money committees have something in common with President Trump. They, like him, love “one big beautiful bill.”

    OK, admittedly, that is a little exaggerated. However, those committees have reported out budget bills loaded with non-budget-related items. “Legislating through the budget” is somewhat of a pejorative term used to describe the inclusion of policy items in the budget bill. However, that term needs some context.

    At its core, the budget bill is a policy document. It does more than appropriate money. It includes language instructing agencies on how that money is to be spent. Although this language is not included in the Code of Virginia, it is law. Sometimes, the language is lengthy, detailed, and specific. One infamous section dealing with the Department of Medical Assistance Services (Medicaid) consumes more than 30 pages of the budget bill.

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  • Trump’s Interior Dept. Asked to Stop Dominion Wind Construction

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Part of the $6 billion already spent on CVOW. Dominion photo.

    Citizens and groups who opposed the push to develop offshore wind under former President Joe Biden have now asked President Donald Trump to rescind even the wind projects already under construction.  Dominion Energy Virginia’s $10.7 billion project off Virginia Beach is among those they want to pause and possibly cancel.  

    The Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, an original opponent and continued skeptic of the Dominion project, did not sign the request, which you can read here.  With the project close to halfway finished, according to the utility, the amount spent to date exceeds $6 billion and costs would continue even if pending supplier contracts were cancelled.  Even a pause will add to costs.  

    At the time of Trump’s executive order pausing permit reviews for future projects, many assumed projects already approved and underway would not be affected.  That assumption is being tested. This could be very bad news for Dominion’s ratepayers, the reason for Thomas Jefferson Institute’s reluctance to join the effort.  

    Under traditional rules for regulation of a monopoly provider like Dominion, the ratepayers could be on the hook for all those stranded costs. With the project cancelled it would be $6 billion for nothing.  An independent look at the possible cost of closing the project is needed, probably from the State Corporation Commission.  

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  • Staffing in Selected Nursing Homes in Virginia – a Graphic Comparison

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    sherlockj

    Staffing in Selected Nursing Homes in Virginia – a Graphic Comparison

    by James C. Sherlock

    The featured graphic above and here is my attempt to produce an infographic without cartographer skills.  

    It integrates a lot of information from different sources and internal calculations in an effort to show both:

    1. how nursing home staffing in Virginia varies; and
    2. how it has or has not complied with current federal minimum safe standards.  I have employed stoplight colors to indicate compliance or lack of same.

    That picture tries to tell a complex and dangerous story.  

    We will walk through it and see what we can learn.

    (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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