Monthly Archives: June 2021

Why Mandate COVID Vaccinations for Low-Risk Populations?

Posted on June 23, 2021 by | 47 comments

by James A. Bacon

The University of Virginia announced Tuesday that it was extending its COVID-19 vaccination mandate from students to faculty and staff. The university will provide exemptions for religious and medical reasons, but non-vaccinated faculty and staff will be required to submit to weekly COVID-19 tests if they are to return to the university grounds this fall, reports UVA Today.

As in the past, UVa officials offered no medical or scientific justification for the mandates. Rector James Murray has said that the university followed “advice from doctors, infectious disease specialists and public health experts at the UVA Medical School and Health System.” But the university has refused to release documents detailing that advice on the grounds that they are President Jim Ryan’s “working papers.”

Presumably, the mandate could be justified on the public health grounds that unvaccinated individuals are potential carriers of the COVID virus, strains of which are significantly more infectious than a year ago. If students and employees wish to participate in the university community, they need to be vaccinated to protect others, if not themselves. But college-age students are at significantly lower risk of infection than the general population, and some evidence suggests that students who have caught the virus are as protected from reinfection as people who have received the vaccine. Continue reading →

47 Comments

Posted in Public safety & health

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Virginia’s Parole Board Squirts WD-40 on That Revolving Door

Posted on June 23, 2021 by | 10 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

A guy commits murder and is sent to prison for decades. Like everyone else in the pen he insists he’s innocent. Finally, a gullible, soft-on-crime parole board buys his sob story and turns him loose on society. Next thing you know the ex-con’s committed more felonies and is back behind bars.

This was an everyday story in Virginia prior to 1995 when the commonwealth abolished parole.

But ever since the Terry McAuliffe/Ralph Northam appointees took over the Parole Board, more and more violent criminals have found their way back onto the streets. Predictably, some are back behind bars, including at least one sex offender.

Looks like the Virginia Parole Board squirted that revolving prison door with WD-40. Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement

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Fairfax Group Forms to Defend Police

Posted on June 22, 2021 by | 32 comments

Action, reaction. Police Officers’ Defense Coalition organized to defend policy officers from super-woke prosecutors.

by James A. Bacon

When Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano ran for office in 2019, he promised to reform the county’s criminal justice system by offering defendants greater transparency about the evidence against them. “Virginia’s rules force defendants to try to craft a defense without most of the information one would need to do so,” he wrote in his election platform.

But Descano’s office has adopted a very different stance in its prosecution of a White Fairfax police officer accused of using excessive force, including a Taser, against a Black man.

As the trial date approaches in September, an attorney for Officer Tyler Timberlake wrote in a motion that prosecutors have yet to turn over a lengthy police report, a 911 call, a bystander video of the incident, and an interview with the victim. “The Commonwealth has repeatedly dragged its feet and has deprived Officer Timberlake of his due process and right to a fair trial,” the attorney wrote. Continue reading →

32 Comments

Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Uncategorized

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Stay-In-Place COVID Policies Lead to More Excess Deaths

Posted on June 22, 2021 by | 16 comments

This graph shows a correlation between the number of weeks that Stay-in-Place measures were implemented in a state (horizontal axis) and the number of excess deaths (vertical axis). Overall, more SIP equals more deaths, although the correlation is weak and there are plenty of exceptions, including Virginia (highlighted in red.)

by James A. Bacon

A new study comparing “excess deaths” across 44 countries and the 50 U.S. states finds that Stay In Place (SIP) policies enacted to control the COVID-19 epidemic were counterproductive. Overall, the added number of lives lost to non-COVID more than offset the number of lives saved from slowing the spread of the virus.

What’s more, the Stay In Place policies enacted in the U.S. had the most negative impact on African Americans.

“We fail to find that SIP policies saved lives. To the contrary, we find a positive association between SIP policies and excess deaths,” write Virat Agrawal with the University of Southern California and three co-authors in “The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Policy Responses On Excess Mortality.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Public safety & health, Regulations and Government Oversight

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Silver Line Phase II — Now Four Years Late

Posted on June 22, 2021 by | 17 comments

Back when work began on the Washington Metro’s Silver Line under the Kaine administration, planners expected Phase II to be complete by 2018. Here it is, mid-2021, and the officials in charge now are hoping to open in early 2022. Phase I went relatively smoothly, but Phase II, which extends the commuter rail system to Loudoun County, has been a fiasco. Press coverage of the incessant delays has taken on a fatalistic tone — oh, well, another delay. Stories enumerate the problems — more than 100 design changes, defective panels, flawed rail ties, bad concrete — but no one seems interested in the underlying cause of so many failures, which, one suspects, can be attributed to terrible project management by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA).

The opportunity costs of the four-year delay continue to mount. Reston Now highlights the plight of Weird Brothers Coffee which opened at Worldgate Metro Plaza in anticipation that the Herndon station nearby would open in 2019 and generate foot traffic. Meanwhile, traffic congestion in Northern Virginia, which the multibillion-dollar project was designed to mitigate, is returning to the hellish pre-COVID conditions. Twenty years ago when Virginia Department of Transportation projects were running late and over budget, it was a statewide scandal. Today? Virginians are so inured to incompetence that there’s not a peep from anyone.

But, hey, government is something we all do together! We’re looking forward to Congress enacting a trillion-dollar infrastructure package to shower free money on the state. What could possibly go wrong?

— JAB

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Posted in Infrastructure, Transportation

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Virginia’s New Ruling Class: How Exploitation Works in the Real World

Posted on June 21, 2021 by | 32 comments

Graphic credit: Axios

Medical debt, which comprises 58% of all debt collections in the U.S., is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Between January 2018 and July 2020, hospitals filed tens of thousands of lawsuits and other court against against patients, according to AXIOS,  which drew upon Johns Hopkins University data. Until a public outcry compelled them to stop suing patients last year, the two most aggressive debt collectors in the country, by a wide margin, were the VCU Medical Center in Richmond (17,806 court actions) and the University of Virginia hospital in Charlottesville (7,197 court actions).

What do the VCU and UVa hospitals have in common? Several things. First, both enjoy nonprofit status. Second, both generate significant profits. Third, both are teaching hospitals affiliated with large research universities. Fourth, both universities are governed by self-perpetuating oligarchies accountable to no one, least of all to patients. Fifth, both are incentivized to suck every dime they can out of their customers to fund the thing that confers institutional prestige — medical research.

This is what social injustice looks like in the real world: Academic elites exploit the medical patients in their care to bolster profits and research funding. The fixation on racial injustice — obsessing over memorials named after slave holders and Civil War veterans, apologizing for sins that occurred a hundred years ago — is a dodge and a distraction.

— JAB 

32 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed), Health Care, Poverty & income gap

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Inexplicable — What Could Be Causing the Surge in Violence?

Posted on June 21, 2021 by | 55 comments

Portsmouth resident Ebony Pope was hospitalized after being struck by random gunfire. Still suffering from some nerve damage and pain with digestion, she avoids crowds and standing by windows. Photo credit: Daily Press

by James A. Bacon

Wow, you know the crime surge is getting bad when the wokest newsroom in the Commonwealth — which apologized for the whiteness of the reporters writing a series about continued racial segregation in Hampton Roads — starts publishing articles about it.

What’s hilarious about today’s article in The Virginian-Pilot is that reporters and the experts they quoted are baffled about what might be causing the crime wave. Could it be tied to COVID? High unemployment? Social anxiety? Too much free time? It’s such a mystery!

The numbers are clear enough. Sentara Norfolk General, the region’s Level 1 trauma center “pulled out more bullets, stitched more stab wounds and treated more assault victims than in recent history,” the Pilot tells us. In 2020 — a year mostly spent in lockdown, the article notes — the hospital saw 38% more violence-related trauma patients than the year before. Patients with gunshot wounds jumped from 328 to 466. That may be just a bad weekend by Chicago standards, but its a stark reversal from two or three decades of declining violence in Hampton Roads.

The numbers for 2021 — a year when COVID receded and the lockdown eased, I would add — are even worse. Continue reading →

55 Comments

Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement

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Another Distraction from the Hard Work of Teaching

Posted on June 21, 2021 by | 15 comments

Coming soon: Halal nachos? Image credit: “9 fun new K-12 school lunch menu items kids will devour“

by James A. Bacon

A horrifying percentage of Virginia public school children may be functionally illiterate, but never fear, Governor Ralph Northam has a new plan to help them. He has announced the formation of a task force charged with identifying “best practices” for implementing culturally and religiously inclusive school calendars and school meals.

“When our school environments reflect the history, values, cultures, and traditions of the communities they serve, our students are better positioned to learn and thrive,” Northam said in a press release.

Yes, you read that right. Northam is justifying the initiative on the practical grounds that it will help children “learn and thrive.” Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), Uncategorized

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Jeanine’s Memes

Posted on June 20, 2021 by | 14 comments

Jeanine’s Sunday memes at The Bull Elephant.

14 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

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The Real Fascists Next Door

Posted on June 20, 2021 by | 20 comments

Hitler, animal lover, with his dog Blondi.

by James A. Bacon

If you read the recent post, “The Fascists Next Door,” you would see that serious people at the University of Virginia — people who get paid actual salaries, not people who store their worldly belongings in stolen grocery carts — peddle the notion that middle-class Americans are fascists. Not all middle-class Americans, perhaps. Not the ones who think like them. Just those who wave the flag on the 4th of July, believe in the sanctity of the traditional family structure, and/or vote for Republicans. Apparently, such people are rooted in the mythic white-people past that gives rise to racism, sexism, and homophobia — in other words, fascism.

The Brainiacs who espouse such views about fascism, a doctrine that elevates the ideal of the all-powerful state, ignore the part where most middle Americans yearn to curtail the powers of the state. They also overlook the fact the fathers and grandfathers of these middle Americans, in all their toxic masculinity, waded ashore on D-Day into a hail of Nazi bullets on their way to, you know, overthrowing Adolph Hitler. Waving rainbow flags would not have chased the Nazis out of France. Indeed, if America had been counting on the snowflakes who melt from contact with college-campus “microaggressions,” we’d all be speaking German now. Continue reading →

20 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

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I Still Miss Dad After 23 Years

Posted on June 20, 2021 by | 3 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

I wrote this column in June of 1998, just weeks after my father’s sudden death of a heart attack. (He died riding his exercise bike at age 74.) In many ways, this post is dated. Yet I hope it still is meaningful. I loved the guy.

To make sense of the piece it’s worth noting that on May 7, 1998 — the day Dad died — the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 8,976. Morrison’s Cafeteria in Virginia Beach closed many years ago. The round-trip toll on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel is now $36, not $20. Worse, they no longer give you a coupon for a free thimble full of Coke. I guarantee you that would have ticked off my father.

This is the first year in my life that I have no one to call or send a card to on Father’s Day. My dad died six weeks ago.

Then again, the card thing always posed a problem, as Hallmark never produced one that captured the spirit of my father. He was a child of the Depression, a character out of a Jimmy Stewart movie. He was a cross between Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and Norman Vincent Peale. He was a man who had eaten in some of the finest restaurants in America but preferred dinner with his grandchildren at Morrison’s Cafeteria.

Wherever he ate, he always said grace first. Continue reading →

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Posted in Uncategorized

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The Fascists Next Door

Posted on June 19, 2021 by | 24 comments

Displaying dangerous fascistic tendencies… Photo credit: DailySIgnal

by Ann Mclean

Want more evidence that the University of Virginia has become an impermeable thought bubble where people can say the craziest things without fear of contradiction? Consider this: Two University of Virginia professors —Manuela Achilles and Kyrill Kunakhovich — taught a history course this spring that portrays American conservatives as fascists. They weren’t being hyperbolic. They really meant it.

In their analysis, the wellspring of fascism is not worship of the all-powerful, totalitarian state — which conservatives totally reject — but the traditional American virtues of family and patriotism.

I first learned of this class from a young friend of mine. Here is her description: 

Recently, I enrolled in a fascism class thinking it would be a great way to weed through the constant accusations that politicians make about who is fascist and who is not. The class started out great. We studied Hitler and Mussolini and other fascisms in Europe, then moved to Asia to look at Japanism, but the more the course progressed, the more I was confused about what fascism actually is. My professors chose to leave fascism undefined and allow each student to come to their own conclusion. That seems pretty reasonable, right? I thought so, too. Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

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Yes, Virginia, There Is Critical Race Theory In Our Schools

Posted on June 18, 2021 by | 36 comments

by Elizabeth Schultz

School districts across Virginia have been expending resources, directing staff time, and hiring consultants to address “equity” in curriculum delivery and for professional development of teachers and other employees. Fairfax and Loudoun County, the two largest counties in the Commonwealth, have set the lead in driving the changes in education and embracing critical race theory and “anti-bias” in their respective divisions.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) pushes the distorted concept that the most important thing about a person is his or her race. It divides people by those who are “minoritized” and those who are “privileged” and “oppressors,” advancing Marxist ideology that, by default, all interactions are derived from racism, our history and nation is built on racism, and all inequities are, yes, ascribed to racism. The color of one’s skin defines whether they are racist, not their beliefs or actions.

As a result, to undo the professed mantle of inherent racism in all aspects of society, CRT demands “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, addressing “justice”, and, according to activists like Ibrahm X. Kendi, the Center for Antiracist Research director at Boston University, requires people to become “anti-racist.” Continue reading →

36 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Race and Race Relations

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Wind Power Is Beautiful But Expensive

Posted on June 18, 2021 by | 41 comments

by James A. Bacon

Offshore wind turbines are works of engineering beauty. Soaring as high as the Washington Monument, they are a magnificent sight to behold, as I saw for myself on an excursion Wednesday to view Dominion Energy’s two experimental wind turbines up close. The towers are also very expensive — not just the two pilot turbines, which no one pretended at $300 million for the pair would produce economical electricity, but the fully built-out wind farm with 180 turbines at a cost currently estimated at $7.8 billion.

If the only cost you consider is the expense of erecting a turbine itself, offshore wind can look competitive with solar and combined-cycle natural gas. Dominion officials estimate their wind turbines will generate electricity at a cost of 8 cents to 9 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s less than the average rate of $10.83 cents per kilowatt hour Dominion charges its customers.

But the turbines don’t generate electricity in a vacuum. They are part of an electrical-generating system. And you can’t build a system around turbines that generate electricity only when the wind blows. Dominion must build a major transmission line to plug into the grid and maintain backup power sources to kick in when the winds fall still. Continue reading →

41 Comments

Posted in Energy

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Packing the UVa Law School Faculty

Posted on June 18, 2021 by | 63 comments

Risa Goluboff, dean of the University of Virginia Law School

by Ann McLean

Earlier this week UVA Today touted the addition of 17 high-profile professors — packed with former U.S. Supreme Court clerks, Rhodes Scholars, and even a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship genius grant recipient — to the University of Virginia Law School.

“Our new and incoming faculty are either already academic superstars or superstars in the making,” said Dean Risa Goluboff. They are “highly influential voices in their fields whose scholarship will have an impact at UVA Law, both inside and outside of the classroom, and well beyond it.”

The law school’s run of prestigious hires, who include nine women and seven “people of color,” have sparked envious praise on Twitter, gushes the article, written by Eric Williamson, associate director of communications for the law school. “I feel like they must be amassing this incredibly all star faculty for a reason,” one woman is quoted as tweeting. “A new Marvel series? Avengers: Endgame 2?”

The article omitted one salient fact of interest to the broader UVa community — there is no intellectual diversity in the group. Every new hire tilts to the left ideologically. There’s not a conservative among them. Continue reading →

63 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Uncategorized

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