Bacon's Rebellion

  • Team Youngkin Flexes Muscles at UVA Board Meeting

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    James A. Bacon

    Image credit: ChatGPT

    by James A. Bacon

    In a special meeting called Friday, the University of Virginia Board of Visitors made it crystal clear who was in charge of setting university policy — the board, not the president. It was the most forceful assertion of board authority since the board under Rector Helen Dragas ousted former president Teresa Sullivan in 2012.

    The putative issue was how UVA should respond to an executive order from President Trump threatening the withdrawal of federal funds from institutions engaged in the “chemical and surgical mutilation” — alternatively referred to as “gender-affirming care” — of children under the age of 19. Shortly after, a federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of the restrictions.

    In response to the executive order, UVA’s administrative leadership suspended the treatment of transgenders and then, in response to the judge’s order, reversed the suspension. The primary concern expressed in the BoV resolution was not the transgender policy itself but the administration’s usurpation of authority to decide university policy.

    The resolution claimed sweeping authority, not over just the final wording of high-level policies but the process by which policies are made, and even the appointment of members to committees and task forces formed to study and make recommendations (my emphasis):

    (more…)

  • End of Watch

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    We don’t pay police officers enough.

    Then again, there isn’t enough money in the world to fairly compensate these men and women who put on the uniform and wade into the cesspools of our cities — areas most of us avoid — so we can sleep soundly in our beds at night.

    Let me ask, exactly how much money would you need to earn to risk your life making a routine traffic stop?

    Officers Christopher Reese and Cameron Girvin were murdered Friday night by a convicted felon driving a car with expired tags. Initial reports suggest he shot each officer twice before fleeing the scene and killing himself.

    “Those officers fell to the ground,” Police Chief Paul Neudigate said at a Saturday press conference. “While on the ground, defenseless, he shot them each a separate time.” Continue reading.

  • Don’t Let LaRock Rock the Boat

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    James A. Bacon

    Dave LaRock

    By Ken Reid

    In “The Bull Elephant” blog last week, former State Delegate and defeated state senate candidate Dave LaRock explained why he wanted to run for Governor, noting, “I was approached by many conservatives from across the state who see the need for, perhaps, a different candidate” than Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears.”

    Now, there is a campaign to get him the 10,000 signatures by April 3 to challenge Sears in the Republican state primary on June 17.

    Without a doubt, a lot of Virginia Republicans are not happy with Sears being a holdout on supporting President Trump’s re-election – and her failure to quickly endorse him in February 2024 when he all-but-secured the GOP presidential nomination. A number of party regulars also wonder if she can raise the money and run a winning campaign to defeat former U.S. Rep Abigail Spanberger, the presumed Democrat nominee.

    I personally would have preferred A.G. Jason Miyares running for governor and Sears for Lt. governor.

    However, Dave LaRock is not the right alternative to Sears, largely because he broke the Republican Pledge – which we activists are required to sign – support all Republican nominees on the ballot. LaRock, out of sour grapes because he lost a primary for state senate in June 2023 to Timmy French (District 1), waged a write-in campaign for himself in the November 2023 election.

    (more…)

  • Biden Dumped 20,000 Unaccompanied Minors in Virginia

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    James A. Bacon

    by Victoria Manning

    School districts across the Commonwealth are sanctuaries for illegal aliens. They openly defy Virginia law that requires schools to notify law enforcement when any person enrolling a pupil fails “to present a certified copy of the pupil’s birth record.” The number of English language learners has skyrocketed in Virginia schools—including nearly half of the student population in two school districts.

    Every student in Virginia must provide proof of age by presenting a certified birth certificate upon enrollment in school. Otherwise, they must provide an affidavit explaining the inability to produce the birth record. Those affidavits must be promptly turned over to law enforcement, but it appears districts around the state have chosen not to follow that law.

    The number in Virginia have exploded.

    The number of English language learners in each school district is astounding—a statewide increase of more than 25,000 from 2021 to 2024. Even though nearly half of Harrisonburg’s students are English language learners, they have provided no reports to law enforcement regarding students not having certified birth certificates. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that 41 percent of babies born in developing countries go unregistered and therefore cannot get a birth certificate.

    2023, the Office of Refugee Resettlement lost track of over 85,000 unaccompanied minors. Out of that group, 70 percent were males ages 15 or older. Many of the so-called minors crossing the border are considered adults in their own nations, and some are hardened criminals. In El Salvador, the term adult is defined as someone who has reached puberty. In Honduras, the age of criminal responsibility is 12.

    In June 2024, the Biden administration admitted they do not seek criminal history information on minors under 18.

    Continue reading.

  • Data Centers Escape Assembly Session Unscathed

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Microsoft data center in Boydton

    Despite great public angst and political theater, the data center industry has emerged from the 2025 General Assembly unscathed. Virginians will continue to compete with Internet and cloud customers from all over the country and the world for electricity, as the data centers continue to proliferate here.  

    One bill dealing with the land use considerations of siting future plants did pass, House Bill 1601. The final substitute version is focused on a site assessment the utility will have to provide localities before adding a new data center with a 100-megawatt peak demand. Plenty of existing and planned projects will not meet that high threshold. It is a paper tiger bill, with a Senate companion paper tiger.

    A second successful bill merely directs the State Corporation Commission to do something it already has the power to do and was probably already planning to undertake. The approved version of House Bill 2084 reads:

    …no later than July 1, 2027, the State Corporation Commission (the Commission) shall, under its existing authority, determine whether the Phase I or Phase II Utility is using rates, tolls, charges, or schedules that contain reasonable classifications of customers. In making this determination, the Commission shall consider whether new or separate customer classifications are reasonable. (Appalachian Power is “Phase I” and Dominion “Phase II”).

    A third bill that sailed through the Assembly with far too little attention was one the data center industry must like, House Bill 2644 and Senate Bill 1197. They probably should be on the “veto bait” list of bad energy bills discussed Friday. They allow member-owned electric cooperatives to make deals with a data center with more than 90 megawatts of demand on an unregulated basis.

    (more…)

  • Gaza Gala: This Sunday at UVa

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Let’s speak plainly today, shall we?

    Charlottesville — and the once-great university there, UVa — is preparing to host a Palestinian-fest on Sunday. It’s being billed as a “charity banquet” sponsored by the radical Students For Justice in Palestine, or SJP. 

    In case you’re unfamiliar with the SJP, the organization was founded at Berkeley (so you know it’s good) and became active and energized on many college campuses after the Hamas terror attacks on October 7, 2023.

    The American Jewish Committee describes the SJP this way:

    In the days following Hamas’ terror attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, SJP chapters on multiple campuses led protests and other actions that openly praised Hamas terrorists and the death of innocent Israeli citizens. People participating in these protests also bullied, intimidated, and harassed Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus, behavior which is consistent with SJP activities more broadly. This led to several American universities suspending or banning SJP and affiliated groups from their campuses.

    Oh, the fun these terror-supporting folks will have! If you’re going to the Gaza gala remember to don your best formal wear or preferably, your “cultural attire,” which I assume means a bedazzled Palestinian scarf and a ski mask. 

    Continue reading.

  • Waking up to Woke

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    James A. Bacon

    Rip van Winkle awakens to Drag Queen Story Hour. Image credit: ChatGPT

    by Joe Fitzgerald

    The nearest analogy might be the spelling bee. No double-elimination, no second tries. One wrong and you’re out.

    That’s what woke means to some of us.

    Defenders of wokeness will tell you, with some sincerity, that its goal is the comfort and safety of everyone. So you eat up the first five minutes of every meeting reciting pronouns as the price you pay for not mis-gendering someone later in the meeting. It also makes everyone feel good about themselves before the meeting gets started.

    And if the party of Trump and Youngkin spends the first five minutes of their meeting discussing how to eat your political lunch, that’s the price you pay for virtue. Extremists in the party of Biden and Harris are probably ready to call me transphobic. Six different ways. And they’ll spend another five minutes of the meeting saying it.

    Morris Udall once described an endless legislative session this way. “Everything had been said, but not everybody had said it.” That’s the story of discussion in the only party left to pull us out of the mire. Everybody in it is really good at talking to each other.

    (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    James A. Bacon

  • Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Report

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Picture credit: New York Times

    Below are two instances of waste, fraud, and abuse of federal funds that have been recently identified and dealt with in Virginia:

    Hurricane Helene aid—The Virginia Creeper Trail and the tourist revenue associated with it are important to the town of Damascus and the rest of Washington County in southwest Virginia. Hurricane Helene destroyed a significant portion of the trail. Congress included $660 million in recent legislation for repairs to the trail.

    Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) recently told Cardinal News that the money “is not flowing. I am very worried that this money is either part of on-off freeze or just a completely screwed up bureaucracy that has now eliminated people and can’t do its job.”

    Sen. Warner is not the only one concerned about how the funding for the trail has seemed to stop. Vice-President J.D. Vance was in Damascus about a month ago and commented on the slow response. According to Cardinal News, the Vice-President said that the administration needed to figure out what was causing delays.

    In the meantime, five technicians with the U.S. Forestry Service responsible for repairing walking trails, campgrounds, and other recreational facilities damaged by Hurricane Helene have been fired.

    (more…)

  • Do No Harm

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    sherlockj

    Do No Harm

    By James C. Sherlock

    One translation of the Hippocratic Oath reads:

    “I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is (harmful).”

    That will prove cold comfort to the thousands of Virginia patients subjected to unnecessary danger, pain, indignities and death at the hands of Virginia’s worst nursing homes.

    Virginia hospitals, with a discharge signed by a doctor, transport patients to nursing facilities every day. Government data richly reproduced in this and previous BR series on Virginia’s nursing homes show many of those facilities to be dangerous.

    The proper response to anyone enquiring about who could have predicted the twin tragedies charged as crimes at Colonial Heights Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center (Colonial Heights) is: “Anyone charged to oversee nursing homes and the health and safety of patients”.

    (more…)

  • Key Energy Issues of Customer Cost, Reliability Often Ignored

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    The Virginia General Assembly has approved a long list of bills to reinforce its previous commitment to ending the use of hydrocarbon fuel in Virginia.  It ignored warnings that natural gas is essential for energy security from the regional electricity marketplace, the Virginian who now chairs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and even its own hired expert.

    Governor Glenn Youngkin now has the final say and should apply his veto vigorously.    

    Most of the bills passed on party line votes, with Youngkin’s fellow Republicans opposed, but not all of them. What is true for all is that none of the bills were subject to any formal written analysis of their ratepayer impact from either the State Corporation Commission (SCC) or the newly reconstituted Commission on Electric Utility Regulation (CEUR).   

    When CEUR was revived by the legislature, one of its promised roles was to provide that impact analysis.  Instead, it has become a cheerleader for some of the worst ideas now before the Governor, but no one should be surprised.   

    For its part, the SCC’s impact statements often focused on its own bills to raise a utility consumption tax by up to $4 million per year to pay for all the staff and outside experts it will need to add.  Maybe if the Governor vetoes enough of the bills that add to the SCC’s workload, he can also veto the two bills raising their utility tax.    

    (more…)

  • Attack of the Killer Swine

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    James A. Bacon

    it was a lifelong dream come true — swimming with the pigs. On Pig Island. Off the coast of Eleuthera in the Bahamas.

    Well, I didn’t actually swim with the pigs. I stood in shallow water enticing the pigs with skewers of hot dogs while the pigs came swimming — furiously, I might add — around me in tight circles, grunting, oinking, hard piggy hooves thrashing.

    Let me tell you, never stand between a pig and a piece of meat. (I was assured that the hot dogs contained chicken meat, by the way, so there was no cannibalism involved.)

    Reportedly, the weather has been awful back home and the news even worse. I’m in no hurry to return. — JAB

  • A Conscious Veto of the Unconsious Bias Bill

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Senator Mamie Locke

    By Derrick Max,

    Senator Mamie Locke (D-Hampton) and the Progressives in the General Assembly have again sent a bill to Governor Youngkin’s desk requiring doctors in Virginia to complete training in “unconscious bias and cultural competency.” Last year, when Governor Youngkin vetoed a similar bill, Sen. Locke took to X (formerly Twitter) to smear the Governor: “It is a shame unconscious bias drove this veto.” 

    This shameful response not only exposed Sen. Locke’s own unconscious bias to assume anyone who opposed her bill is themselves biased (or worse, racist), but it also fails to understand that this bill may actually “do more harm” than good. This bill was worthy of the veto it received last year and is worthy to be vetoed again.

    As background, unconscious biases (often called implicit bias or in earlier times, stereotypes) are the automatic and often unintentional associations we hold about groups of people. Unconscious biases can be positive or negative, but it is argued that biases worsen medical outcomes, particularly for black patients. The evidence for this, however, is weak.

    The academic article cited in support of this belief, most notably by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her confirmation hearing, is the 2020 National Academy of Science article claiming that black newborns experience lower mortality when attended by black physicians after birth. Thus, it was assumed, there must have been some hidden bias in the white doctors that led to the negative outcomes for their black infant patients. 

    (more…)

  • Tapping the Strategic Investment Fund to Assess Research Spending

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    James A. Bacon

    This is the third part of a new three-part series exploring the influence of UVA President Ryan’s Strategic Investment Fund. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.

    by James A. Bacon

    UVA has established the goal of boosting its status as a research university. Sponsored research now accounts for roughly $714 million a year in a $5.4 billion total budget (including both academics and the healthcare division). The strategic case for chasing more research dollars has not been presented to the Board of Visitors, nor have the implications of expanding sponsored research for tuition & fees been explored.

    The Ryan administration has identified five “grand challenge” focus areas for research: democracy, environmental resilience, precision medicine/health, brain & neuroscience, and digital technology and society. A common theme running across all focus areas is Artificial Intelligence: not research on AI per se but exploring the implications of AI for good and ill. 

    The competition is keen for professors whose research can win sponsored grants from the foundations, private industry, or the federal government. One way to recruit star faculty is to raise their pay by means of endowed professorships. Another is to assign them graduate students to assist in teaching and research. Another is to allocate lab space, office space, and computer resources. Meanwhile, UVA in recent years has been bolstering its spending on administrative support, mostly for grant writing, on the theory that it’s better for researchers to focus on their research rather than file paperwork.

    (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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