How We Got Here…

Posted on September 23, 2021 by | 27 comments

by A.L. Schuhart

The explosive spread of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI) in American education can be traced in large part to the changes made to the Principles of Accreditation for Colleges and Universities and Schools during the Obama Administration. These changes have reoriented the mission of American colleges from individual learning to social change and indoctrination.

American colleges and schools are “accredited” by supposedly independent regional bodies that monitor and regulate standards of education. These entities once were apolitical, but this is no longer the case. Ideally, their memberships (appointed by state governors) should reflect the diversity of competing political views in our Democracy and, in doing so, prevents the education system from being controlled by any one ideological group. That check no longer exists.

Virginia Colleges are accredited by SACSCOC (the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges). Let’s look at some key language changes between the “SACSCOC Principles of Accreditation” from ante-Obama (2012) and post-Obama (2018) versions of the documents. Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

Redistricting: Voting Rights Act

Posted on September 22, 2021 by | 14 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

After the population issue of “one man, one vote,” the next priority the Virginia Redistricting Commission must consider in the drawing of new election districts is compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act.  This post will lay out the main principles that need to be considered.

I need to make this caveat clear up front:  I am not a lawyer and I am certainly not an expert in the field of election law or the Voting Rights Act.  Election law is a complex and, at times, Byzantine, area.  In addition to the statutory language, there is a large body of case law, some of it conflicting, that has developed around the Voting Rights Act.  The following discussion is a distillation of the main points presented to the Virginia Redistricting Commission in a report by its consultants and a joint memo from its Democratic and Republican attorneys entitled:  Voting Rights Act Legal Primer.

As the attorneys note:  “Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act] prohibits what is referred to as ‘minority vote dilution’—the minimization or canceling out of minority voting strength.”  It is important to note that the “dilution” need not be deliberate for there to be a violation of Section 2.  It is sufficient that there be a diluting impact, intentional or not.  In summary, Section 2 requires that members of a minority group have a fair opportunity “to elect representatives of their choice.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Uncategorized

The Environmentalist Case Against Renewables

Posted on September 22, 2021 by | 129 comments

If you missed the Virginia Energy Consumer Conference last week, here’s your chance to catch up. The highlight is Steve Haner’s interview of Michael Shellenberger, author of “Apocalypse Never.” Addressing the energy debate from a national perspective, Shellenberger makes the case that renewable energy sources are no panacea for the environment. Subsequent presentations in the conference provide conservative perspectives on Virginia-specific issues. — JAB

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Posted in Energy, Environment

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Bacon Bits: The Fraying Social Fabric Edition

Posted on September 22, 2021 by | 16 comments

Honor is an antiquated slaveholders concept anyway. The University of Virginia’s student Honor Committee has voted to alter the honor code to eliminate the single sanction against lying, cheating and stealing from expulsion to a two-semester suspension. Before the change can be adopted, it must be approved by a vote of the student body. Third-year law student Christopher Benos proposed the plan. “This is a system that maintains the integrity of the Honor system, while offering the multi-sanction system that prioritizes rehabilitation, recommitment and Honor education.” The Cavalier Daily student newspaper describes the debate here. Prediction: If this proposal is enacted, few students actually will be “rehabilitated,” and lying, cheating and stealing will get worse. The “community of trust” is eroding as it is, even without the change. Sign of the times: Rocking chairs outside rooms on the Lawn have to be chained down.

Refund the police. Arlington County, which competes with the City of Charlottesville for being the most “woke” locality in Virginia, is hemorrhaging police officers, and City Manager Mark Schwartz proposes setting aside $3 million in the 2023 budget for retention and recruitment. So far this calendar year, 46 officers have announced their intention to leave the force, either resigning or retiring. “Please don’t leave, we need you,” Schwartz said, according to WTOP News. Describing the situation as “critical,” Schwartz said many police officers are leaving for better-paying positions in the private sector, including Amazon’s new Northern Virginia headquarters.

The best of a bad crowd. The College of William & Mary scored 10th in the latest Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) / RealClearEducation college free speech ranking. Among the 159 colleges surveyed, George Mason University snagged 12th place, and the University of Virginia came in 22nd. Virginia Tech dragged up the rear among Virginia institutions with a 107th-place score. The findings were based upon a survey of 37,000 undergraduate students. Students were queried about their comfort discussing controversial topics, tolerance for liberal and conservative speakers, and tolerance for conservative speakers, and administrative support for free expression. I don’t know enough to comment about W&M or GMU, but if UVa ranked 22nd freest in the survey, U.S. higher-ed has a real problem. Many students, faculty and staff do not feel free to express conservative ideas.

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Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Education (higher ed), Uncategorized

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Virginia Schools Grappling with COVID After-Effects

Posted on September 22, 2021 by | 21 comments

by James A. Bacon

Straw in the wind #1: Two students were wounded in a shooting at Heritage High School in Newport News Monday. The incident didn’t fit the profile of a mass shooting by a mentally distressed student lashing out at random. The shootings, in which a male student was shot in the side of the face and a female was shot in the leg, stemmed from a dispute between two youths who knew one another.

Straw in the wind #2: Nearly 10% of Richmond Public School students are “no shows” for the 2021-22 school year, the city school system reports. Nearly 2,400 students have failed to show up to class this year. Of those 359 are “virtual learners” who have yet to check in online.

What we are seeing here is the fallout from last year’s disastrous policies of shutting down in-person learning. Most Virginia families were equipped to handle the shift, but many were not. Tens of thousands of children were left at home unsupervised as their parent (or parents) worked. Left to their own devices, many made a sham of studying and occupied themselves by interacting with each other on social media. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12)

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Ignore the Fun Police. Football Is Safe.

Posted on September 22, 2021 by | 24 comments

Virginia Tech’s Lane Stadium

by Kerry Dougherty

Travel back in time with me to the first weekend in September. Anyone remember what the COVID fear peddlers screamed when they saw packed college football stadiums during Week One of the 2021 season?

Just wait two weeks!

Super-spreader events!

Masks! Where are their masks?

And then there was the leader of America’s lockdowners, Anthony Fauci.

When the stadiums were rocking from Blacksburg to College Station to Ann Arbor, Fauci disapproved.

He likes his stadiums empty. Continue reading →

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A Malicious Prosecution

Posted on September 22, 2021 by | 28 comments

by Carol J. Bova

During the Bob McDonnell administration, the Commonwealth of Virginia preserved 232,000 acres through conservation easements or donations, falling short of the governor’s 400,000-acre goal because of the tight economy. Seizing on the deficit in his 2013 gubernatorial campaign, Terry McAuliffe promised that he would “preserve at least 400,000 acres of open space.” He repeated the number in his first speech to the General Assembly after taking office in 2014.

By 2015, it became obvious McAuliffe could not meet his goal. Scrambling to save face, he announced in April 2015 the launch of “Virginia Treasures,” a strategy for conserving land and expanding access to public outdoor recreation. The goal was to identify, conserve, and protect at least 1,000 “treasures” by the end of his term.

It soon became apparent to many residents of Mathews County that their property and their homes fell within the pale, blue-coded areas of the map where McAuliffe hoped to find his Virginia Treasures. And so began a seven-year nightmare for the Eubank family as the local government tried to bully them, in what they saw as a grotesque abuse of bureaucratic power, to diminish the value of their private land so that it could be acquired for a public access site. Continue reading →

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Posted in Land use & Development, Regulations and Government Oversight, Uncategorized

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Flag Vandalism at UVa a False Alarm, Ryan Says

Posted on September 21, 2021 by | 39 comments

by James A. Bacon

A few days ago I reported an alleged act of vandalism against 2,977 tiny American flags planted in the ground as part of a 9/11 commemoration at the University of Virginia. The evening after the service, which was sponsored by the conservative Young Americans for Freedom and attended by President Jim Ryan, it was discovered that hundreds of the flags had been knocked over. A preliminary review of surveillance tapes suggested that unidentified individuals had flipped over a table with a banner.

A more in-depth review by UVA police now says that wind might have blown over the flags and that the person in the video might have been trying to set the table right.

The incident had drawn considerable attention at UVa. Two days ago Ryan updated the Board of Visitors about the incident. I republish it here; Continue reading →

39 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Uncategorized

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Henrico, Chesterfield Users of Richmond Gas Unprotected by SCC, State Law

Posted on September 21, 2021 by | 27 comments

Pending Termination

by Steve Haner

Sec. 13.10. No sale or lease of utilities except when approved by referendum. There shall be no sale or lease of the water, wastewater, gas or electric utilities unless the proposal for such sale or lease shall first be submitted to the qualified voters of the city at a general election and be approved by a majority of all votes cast at such election.

That provision is in the charter for the City of Richmond, part of the Code of Virginia. Note it does not require the city’s leaders to consult with the people before closing a city-owned utility, just before the sale or lease.  Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulations and Government Oversight, Resilience

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VEC Made $930 Million in “Incorrect” Payments Last Year

Posted on September 21, 2021 by | 2 comments

by James A. Bacon

Inundated by unemployment claims during the COVID-19-induced recession last year, the Virginia Employment Commission made an estimated $930 million in “incorrect” payments last year, according to an update by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

The magnitude of wasted dollars has gone largely unnoticed as the media and the Northam administration have focused on VEC’s failure to deliver unemployment benefits to out-of-work Virginians, many of who have fallen behind on their rent payments now face eviction.

Between March 2020 and July 2021, the VEC paid out $13.9 billion in state and federal unemployment benefits, states JLARC. The number of claims jumped tenfold, and guidance for administering the gush in federal relief dollars was unclear and evolved over time. The VEC’s obsolete claims-processing software was overwhelmed. Further, the VEC compounded its problems by making forms and instructions overly “complex and confusing.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Efficiency in Government, Labor and Workforce

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Wait, What? Renter Credit Scores Are Improving?

Posted on September 21, 2021 by | 3 comments

Average credit scores. Graph credit: Consumer Protection Finance Bureau

by James A. Bacon

Who would have guessed? For all the angst over the “eviction crisis” precipitated by COVID-19-related job losses, it turns out that the financial condition of low-income renters improved overall as the epidemic wore on, according to a new report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The federal bureau credits stimulus payments, stepped up unemployment insurance benefits, and the suspension of college loan repayments for the change.

Virginia advocates of tenant rights used the eviction crisis as justification for the partial moratorium on evictions through June 2022. (Before evicting tenants for unpaid rent, landlords need to give tenants 45 days to get rental assistance approved.) At one level, the crisis appeared to be very real. The Virginia Unemployment Commission fell far behind in processing unemployment benefits to workers who lost their jobs, which seemed a plausible explanation for why so many were falling behind on their rent payments.

Administrative failures may be responsible for Virginia’s eviction crisis, but the CFPB report suggests that the story is more complicated than commonly portrayed. Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in Housing, Poverty & income gap

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Follow the Science. Whose Science?

Posted on September 21, 2021 by | 40 comments

Image by Katja Fuhlert from Pixabay

James Earl Biden. Yesterday was supposed to be the day when almost all American adults could start getting the first booster shot for the Pfizer vaccination. On August 18 the Biden Administration announced that a Pfizer booster shot would be available to Americans who received their second Pfizer dose at least eight months prior. At the time of the announcement, Biden said, “This will boost your immune response. It will increase your protection from COVID-19.  That’s the best way to protect ourselves from new variants that could arise.”

While the Biden announcement contained the usual boilerplate notation that approvals had to be secured from the FDA and CDC before the booster program could begin, it seemed obvious that the administration expected approval.

The scheduled date for broad based Pfizer booster shots came and went yesterday without a broad based booster program. Continue reading →

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Posted in Health Care, Uncategorized

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Redistricting: the First Stab at Statewide Maps

Posted on September 20, 2021 by | 40 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

The Virginia Redistricting Commission started out by dividing the state into eight regions. Its original plan was to proceed with drawing House and Senate districts, region by region, starting with Northern Virginia. That quickly proved to be inefficient, slow, and impractical.  Last week the map drawers  were instructed to produce statewide House and Senate maps. As part of their guidance, they were told to “respect” political subdivisions as much as possible, while adhering to the compactness and equal population requirements.

Today, they produced those maps for the Commission members, and the public, to view and comment on. I will use one county with which I am familiar, Halifax, to illustrate two aspects of the redistricting process: how different, legitimate approaches can produce different results and the partisanship dilemmas. Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Elections, Electoral process, General Assembly, Politics

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Dominion Dips Toe into Battery Storage

Posted on September 20, 2021 by | 43 comments

by James A. Bacon

Last week Dominion Energy announced a slew of new solar and energy-storage projects, which it describes as a “significant step” toward achieving the net-zero carbon goals for Virginia’s electric grid under the Virginia Clean Energy Act.

The proposed investments include 11 utility-scale projects, two small-scale distributed solar projects, one combined solar and energy-storage project, and one stand-alone energy storage project. Aside from receiving State Corporation Commission approval, the projects will require state environmental permits and local zoning approval.

Once in operation, the projects will be able to provide 1,000 megawatts of electricity, or roughly enough to power 250,000 homes at peak output. Dominion said the package of projects would add $1.13 to the typical residential customer’s monthly bill.

Dominion’s announcement raises questions. If utility-scale solar is the most economical form of electricity generation, how come rates will be going up? Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy

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The Real Election Integrity Issue in VA this Year

Posted on September 20, 2021 by | 9 comments

by Paul Goldman

Virginia is on track to hold an unconstitutional, illegal election this November 2. The Governor knows it. The Lieutenant Governor knows it. The Attorney General knows it; indeed, he is in court fighting my effort as the lawyer for the defendants in Goldman v Northam, et al, which is a federal action against the Governor and the Virginia Board of Elections. (The case is number 3:21 – cv – 00420 and all the documents can be found in the federal court PACER system, free to all Virginians).

The upcoming November elections for the House of Delegates are flat-out unconstitutional. The constitutionality was decided in a previous federal case in Virginia (Cosner v. Dalton, et al, 52 F. Supp. 350 (E.D. Va. 1981). The defendants were John Dalton, then Governor of Virginia, and the top officers of the of Elections. In Cosner, the federal court merely applied the law as first articulated in the seminal case of Reynolds v Simms (377 U.S. 533). In 1964, the United States Supreme Court had declared the equal protection clause of the 14th applicable to the apportionment of the districts in state legislatures.

“Simply stated, an individual’s right to vote for state legislators is unconstitutionally impaired when its weight is in a substantial fashion diluted when compared with voters of citizens living in other parts of the state.” Reynolds at 568.

In the ensuing decades, Attorneys General of Virginia and their counterparts in other states have been in federal courts around the country trying to define the term “in a substantial fashion” as a statistical marker for legal purposes. Legendary Virginian Henry Howell, the leading anti-Byrd Democrat at the statewide election level, became the first in Virginia to put the Reynold’s decision to a constitutional test in the case of Mahan v Howell, 410 U.S. 315 (1973). Continue reading →

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Posted in Electoral process, Uncategorized

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