Category Archives: Blogs and blog administration

And You Thought 2021 Couldn’t Be Any Worse than 2020…

Posted on January 10, 2021 by | 37 comments

Jeanine’s memes

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Posted in Blogs and blog administration

Big Changes Coming to Bacon’s Rebellion

Posted on January 8, 2021 by | 198 comments

Dear Readers,

There has been considerable activity behind the scenes here at Bacon’s Rebellion as we work on elevating the blog to the next level. We see a tremendous market opportunity as newspaper newsrooms continue to shrink, skewing consistently leftward in their editorial coverage as they do so. We believe that there is a large audience for a publication with a moderately conservative center of gravity that delivers Virginia news and commentary while maintaining a diversity of perspectives and a civil exchange of views. And we believe that Bacon’s Rebellion is the logical candidate to fill that niche.

As believers in free-market capitalism, we are not seeking foundation grants to propel us forward. And we hate to rely upon your charity (although we will ask for your help). Instead, for the foreseeable future, we will generate revenue from advertising. That means you soon will be seeing ads on the blog for the first time. I promise that they will not be intrusive. I can’t predict exactly when the ads will first appear, but the day is not far off. So, don’t be shocked.

Our next initiative will be to publish a newsletter. Initially, as we get our bearings, we will publish only two or three times a week, but eventually we hope to blast it out daily. Besides highlighting blog posts on Bacon’s Rebellion, we plan to aggregate a wealth of content you can’t access by subscribing to VA News, The Virginia Mercury. Virginia Business or The Virginia Star. This, too, will be supported by advertising. Continue reading →

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Jeanine’s Memes

Posted on January 3, 2021 by | 1 comment

Jeanine’s week in memes.

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Posted in Blogs and blog administration

COVID, Stimulus Checks, and Babies with Guns

Posted on December 27, 2020 by | 18 comments

Every week Jeanine Martin with The Bull Elephant publishes a compilation of the week’s memes and cartoons. Just as the late night shows are funnier if you’re a Democrat, it helps to be a Trump fan — or at least lean Republican — to find the humor in Jeanine’s Memes. I thought the one above was hilarious. The Internet has liberated comic genius that would never make it in corporate media. — JAB

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Note to Readers Re: Technical Issues

Posted on October 16, 2020 by | 19 comments

A week or more after a major disruption in our hosting service, Bacon’s Rebellion continues to experience technical difficulties. I am hearing from many of you that when you call up the blog, you land on an out-of-date page and can find no way to find the current posts. The solution is simple: Click on the “Home” button.

In the meantime, we will continue to try to get to the root of the problem.

— JAB

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Time to Be Honest about COVID-19

Posted on October 2, 2020 by | 115 comments

By Peter Galuszka

Two remarkable stories dominate headlines this morning – Donald Trump has COVID-19 and some 5,000 Virginia college students also have the virus.

The infection of Trump throws an already chaotic presidential race into further confusion. State colleges are scrambling to find what to do about viral infections since the numbers have exploded from about 500 a month ago to 5,000 today.

This is no time to say, “I told you so,” but many on this blog really need to ask themselves about their efforts to minimize the worst health crisis the nation has faced. Already 205,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus, but somehow that has not deterred the naysayers.

We have seen a steady and often snarky campaign to reopen Virginia Beach, send kids back to school too soon, reopen business and blame Gov. Ralph Northam for trying to take needed precautions that just about every other state governor has done. Continue reading →

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Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Health Care, Politics

Systemic Racism? What’s That?

Posted on August 4, 2020 by | 139 comments

By Peter Galuszka

At Bacon’s Rebellion there’s a constant, grating mantra debunking the concept that the U.S. has a serious problem with “Institutional” or “Systemic” Racism.

Slavery? Jim Crow? Irrelevant! We’re treated to commentary after commentary that Blacks just need to try harder. They are lazy. They do not support family values. They get too much wasted money in school spending and health care. Their constant abuse by law enforcement is imaginary. Black Lives Matters is a hateful, racist movement. BLM jeopardizes our values. Students interested in the movement were not “indoctrinated” enough. It’s bad enough if it comes up in public schools, but let BLM come up at a toney private institution in a wealthy, mostly White suburb, then it is a blood libel against every private school headmaster in the country.

For a partial list of blog postings with ideas, please see the URLs at the end of this column.

Ok. So what? Well, this morning I saw a small story in The Washington Post that shocked me since it went right to the heart of Institutional and/or Systemic Racism. If you still don’t believe it exists, read on. Continue reading →

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Posted in Bacon and pigs, Blogs and blog administration, Children and families, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Public corruption, Public safety & health, Race and race relations

Check out My Political-Economy-of-Healthcare Webinar

Posted on July 21, 2020 by | 1 comment

I’ll be talking about the political economy of healthcare in Virginia 7:00 p.m. Wednesday (tomorrow) in a webinar hosted by Your Freedom Hub. Bacon’s Rebellion readers recalling the posts that Jim Sherlock and I have written about the power of hospital cartels will find the subject matter familiar. But I’ll be previewing some new data showing precisely how oligopolistic market power translates into higher charges for everything from colonoscopies to tonsillectomies.

Click here to sign up for the webinar.

— JAB

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Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Health Care

BR’s COVID-19 Parallel Universe

Posted on June 24, 2020 by | 88 comments

By Peter Galuszka

Almost every morning, I wake up a little before dawn, make coffee, let the dog out and feed her and start reading the news.

I take The Washington Post in print along with The New York Times, Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Virginian-Pilot, NBC News, various television stations and, of course, Bacon’s Rebellion online.

Later in the morning, I check out Blue Virginia, Virginia Mercury and RVA.

When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, every morning I step into two different universes.

One gives me the global and national view that jumps right in and explains where we are with the virus and who and what are at risk.

The other view, that of Bacon’s Rebellion, mostly paints a very different picture. This view insists that the pandemic is exaggerated and overrated, needless regulations are being enacted by a dictatorial governor, our school system and housing trends are at risk and we should open everything up right now. Continue reading →

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Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Demographics, Disaster planning, Government Oversight, Health Care, Media

The Systemic Racism of Monument Avenue

Posted on June 22, 2020 by | 54 comments

By Peter Galuszka

Richmond’s grand Monument Avenue, a double lane, tree lined thoroughfare, has been the epicenter of the Black Lives Matter campaign that has focused on the statues of several Confederate figures one the road, including Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. Stuart, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Jefferson Davis.

All are up for removal, but the same foot-dragging that has for years protected the statues that some consider racist is at work today. Protestors have torn down Davis and have defaced the rest. On Sunday night, they nearly ripped down the Stuart statue as two city council members urged that it be removed on an emergency basis.

Lee’s statue has been ordered down by Gov. Ralph Northam, but the effort has been tied up in lawsuits by several property owners. One claims either that the original deed that gave the state the site for Lee included language that it could not be removed. Other plaintiffs, most anonymous,  claim that removing the statues would hurt their property values and their special tax status.

If anything smacks of white privilege and entitlement, this is it. But for more perspective, this article in The Atlantic neatly sums up the history behind the statues and the Avenue, noting that the issue has everything to do with rewriting Richmond’s history and making a marketing play to sell expensive and exclusive real estate decades after the Confederacy was suppressed. Continue reading →

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Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Consumer protection, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Demographics, Electoral process, Federal, Housing, Labor & workforce, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Transportation

“Systemic Racism?” Damned Right!

Posted on June 9, 2020 by | 131 comments

By Peter Galuszka

There has been much debate on this blog regarding whether there is “systemic racism” in Virginia and the rest of the country.

It’s a crucial question in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, an unarmed and handcuffed African American who was killed on video by a white Minneapolis police officer two weeks ago. The killing sparked nationwide demonstrations, some rioting and a big rethink of race relations.

Regarding is “system racism,” my answer in a resounding “yes” although I agree there has been significant progress in race relations since the since the 1960s.

A few examples:

  • Virginia was the embarkation point for American’s first slaves.
  • Slavery was a key social, economic and political institution for several hundred years.
  • The Civil War was fought over slavery. Most battles were in Virginia.
  • The state embraced Jim Crow laws and kept them for years. These made it crimes for people of different races to go to school together, go on public transit together, sit together in restaurants, get married and so on.
  • There were plenty of lynchings in Virginia. Many went unpunished.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Demographics, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Individual rights, Media, Politics, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Scandals, Social services, Transportation

Our Gutsy Governor

Posted on June 5, 2020 by | 33 comments

By Peter Galuszka

On June 24, 2015, Nikki Haley, a Republican who was South Carolina’s first non-white governor, called for the removal of a Confederate flag that had been flying over the state’s capitol grounds for years.

“This flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state,” she said. Her action came a few days after an avowed white supremacist walked into an African-American church and opened fire, killing church members attending a service.

I was watching the news on TV when she made her gutsy move. I was deeply impressed.

And now, Ralph Northam, a Democrat who is governor of Virginia, has taken a similarly gutsy move. He has ordered that the state-owned statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee be removed from its stand on Monument Avenue in Richmond. It has been there for about 130 years, erected by white supremacists with deep sentiment for their romantic myths of Southern history.

“I believe in a Virginia that learns lessons from our past and we all know that our country needs that example right now,” Northam said. Continue reading →

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Posted in Bacon and pigs, Blogs and blog administration, Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Defense, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Efficiency in government, Elections, General Assembly, Governance, Government Oversight, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Individual rights, Media, Politics, Race and race relations, Transparency

Beware Fake Tweets

Posted on June 2, 2020 by | 9 comments

The Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Russia

By Peter Galuszka

Around midnight Monday, reporters in downtown Washington D.C., stood by ready to cover the next round of protests about the slaying of African Americans by police.

They started getting tweets marked #dcblackout suggesting that internet service was being interrupted because of a secret program presumably run by the government that would cut them off.

The curious thing, NBC News reported, is that the reporters’ cell phones worked just fine. Later Twitter was contacted and began to investigate. It was curious that the questionable tweet seemed to be coming from the left-wing ANTIFA group that is said to have helped organize protests around the country.

A tweet labeled as been sourced with ANTIFA proclaimed “Tonight’s the night, comrades. Tonight we say F&*^The city and we move into the residential areas, the white hoods and we take what’s ours.”

Twitter quickly uncovered the problem. The tweets were fakes put out by a far-right white nationalist group called Identity Evropa. Twitter took down the sites because they violated the company’s policy against using social media to incite violence, NBC reported. Continue reading →

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Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Business and Economy, Correction, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Defense, Elections, Electoral process, Federal, Government Oversight, Individual rights, Infrastructure, Media, Money in politics, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Telecommunications, Transparency

Construction: Virginia’s Quiet, Strong Man

Posted on May 27, 2020 by | 18 comments

Scene from Micron’s $3 billion construction project in Manassas. Photo credit: Inside NoVa

By Peter Galuszka

For all the complaints about the COVID-19 pandemic in Virginia – the shut-down restaurants and (temporarily) closed beaches – one industry has been working steadily and quietly all along – the state’s construction sector.

Builders haven’t missed much of a beat since the “state at home” orders started going out a couple of months ago.

In Pentagon City, works still progresses on the two, 22-story towers for Amazon’s new eastern headquarters. In suburban Chesterfield County near Richmond, workers toil adding new drain pipes and four-laning once- rural roads. Four-story apartments overlooking Swift Creek Reservoir are taking shape for the over-55 crowd.

At a loud and garish protest next to the State Capitol against Gov. Ralph Norham’s work-stoppage plans last month, Mark Carter, a contractor from Hanover County, made his views known. “We‘re still working,” he told me. “I’m not for Trump and I’m not a Democrat. People need to work.”

In Virginia, some are. After all, New York state and Boston stopped construction work due to the pandemic. Continue reading →

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Posted in Agriculture & forestry, Blogs and blog administration, Budgets, Business and Economy, Consumer protection, Culture wars, Demographics, Economic development, Energy, Entrepreneurialism, Environment, Federal, Individual rights, Infrastructure, Land use & development, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Science & Technology, Social services, Taxes, Telecommunications, Transparency, Transportation, Unemployment

Seeking Social Media Expertise

Posted on May 17, 2020 by | 2 comments

Thanks to the generosity of our readers, Bacon’s Rebellion has accumulated enough cash to pay a starving college kid or out-of-work bartender a decent stipend over the summer to ramp up a social media campaign for the blog.

I’m looking for someone who:

  • Has experience in social media. Familiarity with Facebook is more important than with youth-oriented platforms.
  • Is comfortable with (or at least not antithetical to) the editorial orientation of the blog.
  • Is a self-starter and willing to work independently with only modest supervision.
  • Resides in the Richmond area, or is willing to travel to Richmond for occasional face-to-face contact with the publisher.

Compensation will be in the form of an hourly wage plus a performance bonus based on clickthroughs generated.

If you know of someone who might be interested (or if you’re interested yourself), please contact me at jabacon@baconsrebellion.com.

— Jim Bacon

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Posted in Blogs and blog administration