Bacon's Rebellion

  • 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.    

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  • 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

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    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.

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  • Monopoly Beer and Electric Vehicles

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    Steve Haner

    By Brett A. Vassey, 

    Spoiler alert! This is not an article about a new board game, but about a game in which the Virginia General Assembly writes the rules and picks the winners.

    House Bill 2087 was introduced by Delegate Irene Shin, D-Fairfax. It cleared the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee on a narrow 7-6 vote Monday and is pending in the full Senate. At first glance, it looks like the usual game—an electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure subsidy. However, the bill creates an entirely new game of monopoly for Virginia’s consumers. The bill gives existing investor-owned electric utility monopolies the entire transportation fuel sector to monopolize as well. 

    How is that possible?

    The bill expressly allows only two existing electric monopolies to produce the electricity, distribute the electricity, and retail the electricity for transportation fuel (a.k.a., fast chargers) to consumers. The bill’s core is the “transportation electrification” of all “passenger vehicles, trucks, buses, trains, boats, or other equipment that transport materials, goods, or people.”

    Why should you care if you do not drive an electric vehicle?

    By 2035, you may only be able to purchase zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) in the Commonwealth. In 2021, the Virginia General Assembly passed a ZEVs law governing the sale of motor vehicles with a gross vehicle weight of 14,000 pounds or less beginning with the 2025 model year. Specifically, politicians created a mazelike set of rules that directed the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board to create regulations that would force Virginians to be subject to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations for new vehicle sales under § 177 of the federal Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. § 7507). CARB has now mandated that all new passenger cars, trucks, and SUVs sold must be ZEVs by 2035, and this applies to Virginia. Although Governor Youngkin and AG Miyares have temporarily removed Virginia from this mandate, it is still the law, and advocates are simply waiting until this fall’s gubernatorial election to reinstate California’s ZEV mandates on Virginians.                     

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  • Tapping UVA’s Strategic Investment Fund to Drive Restructuring

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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. 

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  • Interesting Poll on School Choice, But Timing Off

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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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    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.

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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