Category Archives: Governance

Why They Fought — and Deserve to be Remembered

Posted on April 19, 2023 by | 46 comments

Units descended from both Confederate and Union forces are now part of the Kentucky Army National Guard’s 138th Field Artillery Brigade. These campaign streamers, from the brigade’s colors, commemorate that service. Streamers with a gray top commemorate Confederate service, blue tops honor Union service.

by Donald Smith 

Soldiers go to war for many reasons — home, country, duty, glory, personal adventure. But, in the midst of battle, soldiers fight for their comrades — “the man to the left of me, the man to the right of me,” as the saying goes. Good soldiers are driven by an intense desire to not let their comrades down. That drive is one of the main reasons why Americans have always honored combat soldiers. Now, the United States Congress has arguably left out one segment of America’s past fighting force — Confederate soldiers — and indicated that those men don’t deserve the same level of respect from today’s military. Continue reading →

46 Comments

Posted in Defense and National Security, Governance

Tagged

Snow Day in April: Something in the Water

Posted on April 19, 2023 by | 2 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

When the first Something in the Water Festival came to Virginia Beach in 2019, some lemon-sucking locals balked at allowing school buses to be used to transport revelers  from satellite parking to the resort area.

How will bus drivers be able to drive festival goers until 11 p.m. on Sunday and be rested enough by Monday morning to safely transport kids, they fretted.

As if bus drivers were toddlers who need 10 hours of sleep.

What if the festival goers leave their drugs or guns on the buses and the kids find them on Monday morning? whispered others.

Puh-leez. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Economic development, Education (K-12), Governance, Leadership, Transportation

Tagged

You Want to Teach? Wait in Line.

Posted on April 10, 2023 by | 20 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Last September, Governor Youngkin issued an executive directive addressing teacher shortages in Virginia. That directive laid out numerous actions to be taken by the Superintendent of Public Instruction and other  agency heads with regard to reducing the teacher shortage. In his remarks upon releasing the directive, he called the actions “transformational.”

It turns out there was a basic action that the Governor forgot about: processing licensure applications from would-be teachers in a timely manner. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports today that it is taking at least six months for the Department of Education to process licensure applications. In some cases, it takes much longer. The article tells of an applicant with seven years of service in the Army, a master’s degree, and three years’ teaching experience still waiting after a year for his application for a provisional license to be processed. (He teaches at Benedictine Prep School in Goochland County, and the school does not require its teachers to have Virginia teaching certificates.) Continue reading →

20 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), Governance, Uncategorized

Tagged

Public Corruption Transacted in Public

Posted on April 3, 2023 by | 32 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Want that country club membership but don’t want to write the check for the initial membership fee?

How about the down payment on a vacation home?

Run for office in Virginia. Pay for it with campaign money. You don’t even have to win as long as you spend it during the campaign.

And it’s legal.  Because it’s not illegal.  Just claim that both are meant to host campaign strategy sessions.  Donor confabs.  Anything.

If you win, especially in one of Virginia’s single-party-dominated districts, you can do it every time you run.

Sweet.

Virginia is the only state that allows candidates to raise unlimited funds and spend that money on personal expenses. The only one.

General Assembly Democrats and Republicans take turns killing legislation to change the law. Bipartisan at last.

That is public corruption transacted in public.

And they don’t care. Continue reading →

32 Comments

Posted in Campaign finance reform, Ethics, General Assembly, Governance

Tagged

Move Over Covid: Sharks Are Back

Posted on April 3, 2023 by | 7 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Great news!

Sharks are swarming off the coast of the Outer Banks. Nine great whites so far. One, named Breton, is a 13-foot adult male weighing over 1,400 pounds according to a story in Saturday’s Virginian-Pilot.

Why is this good news?

Because it’s a sign that Covid is truly over. The general public may not be aware of this, but shark stories are a staple of digital news outlets because they generate thousands of clicks. Anyone else remember the summer of 2001? The news media were full of shark attack and Chandra Levy stories.

Until the terrorist attacks of September 11 bumped the clickbait off the front pages, that is.

We haven’t been reading a great deal about sharks for the past three years because the news media found something better to scare the bejabbers out of the public: “scary-new-variants-are-coming” and “Covid-isn’t-over” stories.

Think about it: since 2020, anything with “Covid” in the headline — especially stories stoking the fear factor — were hot tickets for news outlets. The fact that newspapers, including the all-Covid-all-the-time New York Times, have finally ditched their tedious daily Covid tracking charts is a sign that the public long ago lost interest.

In fact, Congress finally acted last week to terminate the executive emergency powers that the pandemic gave to Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

The U.S. Senate voted 68-23 to officially end the Covid emergency, even though Biden planned to “wind it down” beginning May 11. Only 23 Senate knobturners voted against the measure, including the usual far-left suspects: Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker. Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Governance, Health Care, Media, Politics

Tagged , ,

A More Appropriate Management Model for State Mental Health Facilities

Posted on March 29, 2023 by | 27 comments

Central State Hospital Petersburg

by James C. Sherlock

I always find it disturbing when state agencies operate institutions that they are also responsible for regulating and inspecting.

It almost cannot work.

I have brought this up with regards to the VDOE operation of a virtual learning program when that same agency oversees private providers of the exact same services.

That is small ball compared to the issues at the state’s mental health facilities.

Now we have a very recent tragic example at Central State of decades-long problems at state-run mental hospitals including overcrowding and inadequate staffing.

A 2021 Associated Press article used Central State as the leading example of overcrowding. The reporter wrote, prophetically:

Virginia sheriffs are reporting being stretched thin after responding to psychiatric emergencies that require them to hold people and transport them for treatment.

‘I’ve had deputy sheriffs tied up for days at a time,’ John Jones, executive director of the Virginia Sheriffs’ Association, told the newspaper in an interview on Tuesday. ‘We’re at a crisis point.’

Now seven sheriffs deputies and three Central State staffers are charged with murder in that same scenario.

I view the current management model in which a single state agency oversees, operates and inspects its own facilities as untenable.

There is a proven alternative. Continue reading →

27 Comments

Posted in Corruption and Scandals, Efficiency in Government, Governance, Health Care, Mental illness and substance abuse, Regulations and Government Oversight

Tagged

Crime in Virginia — the Statistics of Race and their Causes

Posted on March 27, 2023 by | 121 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Crime, especially violent crime, is a constant topic in private conversations and in public politics, and thus here on Bacon’s Rebellion.

Comments on BR crime-related articles turn quickly to race, often without basis in fact.

I will offer below the actual crime statistics by race from 2021, the latest available year, in an attempt to cure that.

Then I will write about the causes.

I will almost certainly be called a racist. Continue reading →

121 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Corruption and Scandals, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, General Assembly, Governance, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Land use & Development, Mental illness and substance abuse, Politics, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations and Government Oversight

Tagged

Correction on Departure of Balow

Posted on March 23, 2023 by | 15 comments

Jillian Balow, ex-Superintendent of Public Instruction

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

In comments to the post about the resignation of Jillian Balow as Superintendent of Public Instruction and her severance pay, I asserted that her appointment was subject to the pleasure of the Governor.  I was wrong.

The heads of almost all agencies, by law, serve at the pleasure of the Governor.  (There is one exception, but more on that later.) However, the position of Superintendent of Public Instruction is established in the Virginia Constitution, which provides that the appointment shall be “for a term coincident with that of the Governor making the appointment.”  The constitution does authorize the General Assembly to modify the term of office.  However, the Virginia Code section mirrors the language in the constitution.  Accordingly, as The Washington Post noted, Balow may have had grounds to sue if she had been fired.

The agency head who is not appointed by the Governor and does not serve at his pleasure is the Director of the Department of Wildlife Resources (formerly Game and Inland Fisheries).  That person is appointed by the Board of Wildlife Resources.  The story on that goes back into the mists of time (early 1970s).  Suffice it to say that hunters and fishermen in Virginia were a strong lobby.

15 Comments

Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Education (K-12), Governance

Tagged

You’re Fired!

Posted on March 22, 2023 by | 78 comments

Jillian Balow, ex-Superintendent of Public Instruction

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

So, what almost everyone suspected is now confirmed: Governor Youngkin fired his Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jillian Balow.

However, to avoid embarrassment over having to fire his own hand-picked state leader of public education, the governor asked her to resign, instead. She agreed to do so in exchange for a payout of almost $300,000, as reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

So, state government is acting more and more like a business, as many conservatives say it should. Top executives screw up and, instead of being sacked, they are given a golden parachute.

78 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), Governance, Leadership

Tagged

The Left’s New DEI Bureaucracies at Virginia’s Colleges and Universities – What Do They Do All Day?

Posted on March 21, 2023 by | 106 comments

Dean Stephanie Rowley, UVa School of Education and Human Development

by James C. Sherlock

We are left to imagine what Dean of the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development Stephanie Rowley would possibly do without the assistance of LaRon Scott, her Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

How in heaven’s name without Mr. Scott could she keep reactionaries like Catherine Bradshaw, Nancy Deutsch, Scott Gest and Stephanie van Hover and the Center on Race, Public Education, and the South and Youth-Nex Center to Promote Youth Development from preaching white supremacist doctrine and organizing torchlit marches on NAACP offices?

I am not singling out UVa for special criticism. I just know a lot more of the details about my alma mater than other schools. Virginia Tech reportedly has a very aggressive program.

Virginia has 41 public colleges and universities, so we are paying for a lot of DEI personnel.  UVa alone has 84 DEI staffers.  Let’s estimate 1,000 statewide.

The point is that we have to try to figure out why modern American universities in 2021 suddenly needed large and growing DEI bureaucracies. And what they do all day?

And if we need them, how many is enough?

The left had won the war in academia before DEI. It would be unkind to think the DEI apparatchiks are formed as a paramilitary wing to execute enemy survivors.

So, if not that, what do they do? Continue reading →

106 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Governance, Race and Race Relations

Tagged

Rosalyn Dance Can Help Interpret Democratic Election Laws

Posted on March 19, 2023 by | 107 comments

Rosalyn Dance – courtesy Daily Press

by James C. Sherlock

Governor Youngkin has appointed former state Senator Rosalyn Dance, D-Petersburg, as vice chairman of the state Board of Elections.

As vice-chair, she is the highest ranking Democrat on the board.

She will perform an absolutely vital role.

She will be asked to help interpret the complete overhaul of Virginia’s election laws conducted by Democrats who controlled state government in 2020 and 2021.

While Sen. Dance was not in office for that revolution, interpreting it for the purpose of developing regulations will require experience, a Democratic mindset and a strong stomach.

She qualifies. Continue reading →

107 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Elections, Electoral process, General Assembly, Governance, Virginia Law

Tagged

Virginia Republicans Should Run in the Fall on the Virginia Senate Silencing of Suparna Dutta

Posted on March 18, 2023 by | 57 comments

Suparna Dutta – Courtesy Yahoo.com

by James C. Sherlock

Virginia Republicans, not noted for organization, common approaches or dexterity, have been granted a gift by Democrats if they will accept it.

The Democratic majority in the General Assembly rejected the appointment of Suparna Dutta, a mother, engineer and an immigrant from India, to the Board of Education.

This happened because Senate Democrats, stalwarts of the left flank of the culture wars, were badgered and finally whipped into a unanimous vote against Ms. Dutta by a strange but tight-knit political relationship between leftists and Muslim activists centered in Northern Virginia.

Leftists, led by Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers outpost, Virginia Educators United, considered Ms. Dutta too patriotic. And anti-socialist.

The Muslim cabal, led by the Virginia Council of Muslim Organizations and Gov. Northam’s notorious (too many Asians) Secretary of Education Atif Qarni, considered her, well, too Hindu.

The Virginia Council of Muslim Organizations, vocal in support of freedom of speech for the highly controversial Abrar Omeish, does not offer the same to Ms. Dutta.

Her offense? She had been in a board meeting with Anne Holton, the wife of Sen. Tim Kaine. They were discussing the K-12 History Standards of Learning.

Ms. Holton said that she was “not comfortable” with calling the Constitution and the Declaration remarkable documents without qualifiers. And she defended strong central government planning and socialism as compatible with democracy and freedom.

Ms. Dutta debated her on those points.

That led, as such things do in modern America, to Ms. Dutta being called a “white supremacist” by progressives.

And officially designated as one by the unanimous vote of General Assembly Senate Democrats. Continue reading →

57 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Governance, Political Influence, Politics, Property rights

Tagged

RVA 5×5: Heard the Noise, Seen The Light

Posted on March 18, 2023 by | 2 comments

by Jon Baliles

Well, it seems Mayor Levar Stoney has finally picked up on a problem on Richmond’s streets that many of us have known about for three-plus years. If you live downtown, or in the Fan, Oregon Hill, Jackson Ward, the Museum District, Randolph, Scott’s Addition, Byrd Park, Malvern Gardens, parts of Northside, Monroe Ward, or several other neighborhoods, the sound of jet-like roaring from annoying packs of motorcycles has permeated the air at night (usually on weekends) in a way that would wake Rip Van Winkle with ease.

And for three-plus years, nothing has been done. I have talked to those in public safety who have been told for years that these insanely loud gatherings of cyclists, noisemakers, and idiots — whatever you want to call them — are off limits for stopping or arresting, even if they gather by the dozens (even during the day) and violate the city’s un-enforced noise ordinance or dozens of traffic laws in and around Bryan Park, Byrd Park, or on Broad Street.

But this past Thursday afternoon, several noisy riders caught the mayor’s attention in Shockoe Bottom. He not only called the police chief to track them with an airplane, but he also later made sure that all the local media outlets (all three TV stations and the Times-Dispatch) knew about it. The result was three young men from the Tri-Cities area were arrested (ages 19, 18, 17), one stolen gun was recovered, and one teen escaped.
Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Governance, Leadership, Uncategorized

Tagged

Public School Climate Lessons Terrorize Virginia’s Children

Posted on March 17, 2023 by | 115 comments

Courtesy of the BBC

by James C. Sherlock

A headline from the home page of Save the Children:

“Climate Change Is a Grave Threat to Children’s Survival.” 

Climate change is thus not a “challenge.” Not a threat to children’s happiness. But rather a threat to their “survival.”

That is what children are being taught in many Virginia public school classrooms. Kids, being sponges, have learned that lesson, and are understandably severely depressed about it.

Parents and the Board of Education, take note. That cannot be allowed to continue.

For years, studies have shown the existence of psychological distress about climate change that has dimensions within feelings, emotions, cognition and behavior. That stress has been demonstrated to disproportionately affect young people.

The largest and most international study of climate anxiety in young people was peer-reviewed and posted in The Lancet in December 2021.

Regardless of one’s personal feelings about climate change, no caring adult would want, as revealed in that study, children feeling “very or extremely worried” (46% of children in the United States) or, worse, negatively affected in their ability to function (26% of children in the United States).

None would want near half or more than half of children reporting feeling “sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty” and “betrayed” about anything, much less a phenomenon that is measurable as a current event with which we are dealing but arguably is overstated by progressives as a future prospect.

Climate change can, and should, be taught to children. But it must be done without terrorizing them. That cannot be too much to ask.

Scaring children to turn them into political activists is child abuse per se.

It must stop. Continue reading →

115 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Environment, Governance, Health Care, Mental illness and substance abuse

Tagged

Feeding Petersburg

Posted on March 3, 2023 by | 34 comments

Garrison Coward oversees Gov. Youngkin’s Partnership for Petersburg initiative – photo contributed to the Progress-Index

by James C. Sherlock

I have written in this space many times about the struggles of Petersburg.

Petersburg is blessed in one way.

The Progress-Index’s Bill Atkinson and Joyce Chu may be the best pair of local news reporters working in Virginia.

Mr. Atkinson, in a series of reports, has detailed the continuing struggles of that city to get a grocery store downtown.

The big grocers surround the center of the city in more prosperous, safer areas but have not entered there.

Food Markets in Petersburg courtesy of Bing Maps

It is no secret why. Poverty and crime do not attract retailers vulnerable to shoplifting and worse. And Petersburg is among the poorest and most crime-ridden in Virginia.

A recent Petersburg solicitation for interest in building a grocery store downtown drew no bidders.

The Governor has a broad Partnership for Petersburg initiative to help Petersburg help itself  It is run by Garrison Coward, an external-affairs senior advisor to Gov. Youngkin.

He reports that the Governor is “hell-bent” on seeing a grocery store built there.

I will offer an idea. Continue reading →

34 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Charity, Philanthropy and Nonprofits, Children and Families, Economic development, Governance, Poverty & income gap, Social Services and Entitlements

Tagged