Bacon's Rebellion

  • Commonwealth on Fence for Transportation Funding

    Posted on

    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

    Posted on

    by

    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

    Posted on

    by

    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.

    (more…)

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

    Posted on

    by

    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.  

    (more…)

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

    Posted on

    by

    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…)

  • The End of Science! Lives Will Be Lost!

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Image credit: ChatGPT

    by James A. Bacon

    Don’t question university overhead costs or thousands will die!

    That is essentially the message of Virginia’s big three research universities — Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University — in response to a National Institutes of Health initiative capping reimbursable overhead costs to 15% of the research grants it dispenses.

    And I’m not exaggerating about the “thousands will die” part.

    “Lives will be lost due to the corresponding reduction in the pace of biomedical research,” Tech President Tim Sands actually said Monday. So reported the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

    So, what horrendous thing has NIH done at the behest of DOGE meister Elon Musk? It says that for every $100 of a research grant, only $15 can be diverted to cover the cost of university overhead: buildings, labs, IT support, a swarm of administrative staff, and the like. The rest must go to the scientist actually doing the research.

    Last year, the NIH disbursed $392 million to Virginia colleges for health research, according to an estimate by the nonprofit Education Reform Now. If their “indirect” funds are reduced to 15%, UVA could lose $39 million, VCU $19 million and Virginia Tech $11 million.

    (more…)

  • “Hottest Year Evah!” Must Be Over

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Each point is the January monthly average for Virginia back to the 1890s, per NOAA.

    You may be starting to pine for a return to the hottest year evah! A recent data dump from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that January 2025 was in the running for one of the coldest Virginia January average temperatures in more than a century.  The graph above captured on their tracking website is clear, and the ranking table the search also creates shows only 19 years out of more than 130 tracked Januarys were colder. Too soon to say the temperature spikes in 2023 and 2024, which were real, will be followed by more normal temps. But that is what weather does, it varies. Were January among the warmest the alarmist media would have been all over this, but the unusual cold is not what they are being paid to report. Bacon’s Rebellion again fills the gap.

    — SDH

  • Va. Lawmakers Ban Phones in School, Remove Punishment for Breaking The Law

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    In principle, legislation is usually preferable to executive orders. I’m talking at the state and federal level. They can’t be overturned with the flash of a pen by the next executive, for one thing.

    This is why Congress needs to act quickly to enshrine President Trump’s executive orders in law.

    But when legislators act, they can make things worse.

    Case in point: The Virginia General Assembly, currently in Democrat control.

    Last summer Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order telling schools that student cellphones must be banned during the school day. Exceptions were carved out for kids with disabilities that might require them to be able to use a phone for emergencies.

    For reasons that are unclear, a number of school districts took their sweet time implementing Youngkin’s order, as if it required a great deal of work at the local level to tell the kids to leave their damned phones powered off and in their backpacks.

    Next, the General Assembly decided to get in on the act and codify the rule. Democrats even lavished lukewarm praise on the governor, agreeing that cellphones were a distraction and don’t belong in the classroom. Neither do smartwatches.

    Excellent! A rare flash of sanity from the far-left kooks in Richmond.

    It was too good to be true, however.

    Continue reading.

  • Not a Satire: Refracting the Black Reproductive

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    I bring to your attention a flier promoting an event — “Refracting the Black Reproductive” — held at the University of Virginia last week. My intent is not to critique the substance of what Samantha Pinto, an English professor from the University of Texas at Austin, had to say. To discuss her thinking, I would have to understand her… which I do not. Rather my point is to illustrate how the language of academic leftists has gotten so inbred and arcane — and Ms. Pinto is a teacher of English, mind you — that it has become incomprehensible to ordinary Americans.

    Here’s how Pinto described what she planned to discuss:

    I ask: How might a transnational feminist politics represent the multiple demands on the Black womb through rather than against the tensions of individual and collective rights? How might we turn toward African, Caribbean and US-based Black feminist expressive culture for models of engagement with the reproductive that center vulnerability, ambivalence, uncertainty, disutility, and temporariness, all of which challenge ideals of autonomy and community?

    In case you had difficulty deciphering the meaning, the flier contains this helpful context:

    (more…)

  • Mark Warner Needs A Thesaurus

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    For years, they’ve worked as an adjunct to the Democratic National Committee, obediently trotting out talking points and providing their critics with hilarious montages of these mid-wits spouting the exact same lines.

    With their heads spinning since Donald Trump became president, the left has latched onto a tired word to characterize what most of us believe to be an energetic swamp draining.

    They describe it as “chaos.”

    Here’s a small sample of the Democrat lickspittle’s headlines:

    Continue reading.

  • Why Did Tax Bill Die? It’s a Governor’s Bill!

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Delegate Joe McNamara

    By Steve Haner

    Virginia will remain out of step with the rest of the United States on how it taxes service-providing businesses after General Assembly Democrats voted in lockstep to once again kill a logical income tax reform.  

    There was absolutely no partisan angle to the policy debate, yet party line votes killed it. It is impossible not to consider that one fatal flaw for the idea was that Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin supported it and suggested the Assembly make the change.  But the idea has been knocking around for years, long before Youngkin. A respected tax department official told the House Finance Committee she had been working on the issue for 15 years. 

    “It shifts the burden from in-state companies to out-of-state companies,” Kristin Collins of the Department of Taxation told legislators.  You would think this would be a bipartisan winner.  

    The tax rule Democrats rejected by defeating House Bill 1866 in House Finance on January 31 has been adopted by at least 39 of the 48 states that have corporate income taxes. The senate version, Senate Bill 1456, was killed January 28.  

    Most of the states Virginia competes against for business locations and expansions use what is called “market based sourcing” in calculating the tax on income from services. According to the fiscal impact statement prepared by the Department of Taxation (very detailed, as usual) “none of the states contacted reported an unexpected revenue loss as a result of market-based sourcing.” 

    (more…)

  • VCU Loses DEI Grant

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Virginia Commonwealth University is one of three universities to have a federal grant canceled in the latest step by the Trump administration to defund Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

    The education schools of VCU, California State University-Los Angeles and the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota had received a series of grants under a larger $1 billion Biden administration initiative. Reports The Washington Free Beacon:

    Ostensibly meant for teacher training and development, the grants were in fact used to support courses and workshops on DEI concepts—including “white privilege,” “systemic racism,” and “linguistic supremacy”—as well as the establishment of a “social justice” center.

    The VCU education school, which has explicitly included “social justice” in its mission statement, hosted workshops on “decolonizing the curriculum” and “becoming an antiracist educator.”

    (more…)

  • Political Infighting Over VMI’s Board of Visitors Puts Cadets at Risk

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Lightning strikes VMI. Image credit: The Cadet

    — The Cadet editorial staff

    The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) has long stood as a symbol of discipline, leadership, and service. However, recent political disputes over Board of Visitors (BOV) appointments have placed cadets in the crossfire of a battle they neither sought nor deserved.

    Former BOV President Tom Watjen, who remains on the Executive Committee, lamented the July 2024 appointees, stating, “I am disappointed in how politicized the board appointment process has become, impacting board experience and continuity.” His concern extends beyond VMI—politicizing governance at the expense of cadets undermines the Institute’s core mission.

    Dedicated Leaders Denied Without Justification

    Two highly qualified and committed alumni, Quintin Elliott ’85 and Clifford Foster ’93 were appointed to the BOV by Governor Glenn Youngkin in July 2024. VMI Superintendent Maj Gen. Cedric Wins praised their appointments, noting, “Each individual brings a unique set of skills and experiences that will help us continue to move the Institute forward.” Despite their strong credentials, the Virginia Senate rejected their appointments, with the House expected to follow suit, leaving the BOV short of experienced leadership just before one of its three annual meetings.

    (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

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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