Bacon's Rebellion

  • Silver Line Phase II — Now Four Years Late

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    James A. Bacon

    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

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

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    James A. Bacon

    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 

  • Inexplicable — What Could Be Causing the Surge in Violence?

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    James A. Bacon

    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. (more…)

  • Another Distraction from the Hard Work of Teaching

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    James A. Bacon

    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.” (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    Jeanine’s Sunday memes at The Bull Elephant.

  • The Real Fascists Next Door

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    James A. Bacon

    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. (more…)

  • I Still Miss Dad After 23 Years

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    James A. Bacon

    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. (more…)

  • The Fascists Next Door

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    James A. Bacon

    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. (more…)

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

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    James A. Bacon

    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.” (more…)

  • Wind Power Is Beautiful But Expensive

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    James A. Bacon

    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. (more…)

  • Packing the UVa Law School Faculty

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    James A. Bacon

    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. (more…)

  • Pre-COVID Test Results Show a Failed Public Education System

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    I have questions in my own mind about the quality of Virginia public schools.

    In search of answers I invested several weeks full time in building into a spreadsheet what I consider some of the critical metrics among both Virginia public schools in general and ten different school districts that I chose.  

    For each of those districts I recorded data on: 

    • demographic groups by racial cohort, economically disadvantaged, and English learners;
    • school investment; 
    • chronic absenteeism; 
    • SOL reading and math performance of each demographic group in each district; and  
    • Compared them to state averages in each metric.

    I chose and paired the ten different school districts (of 133) in an attempt to get a cross section of urban, suburban and rural districts in Northern Virginia, the Richmond area, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads and Southern Virginia.

    I used the 2018-19 school year, the last year before COVID, to provide a baseline for learning losses and what those schools need to do going forward.  

    The data reveal enormous problems with the basic building blocks of education.  (more…)

  • Still an Open Question: Will Virginia Become Supply Chain Hub for East-Coast Wind Farms?

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    James A. Bacon

    The Luxembourg-flagged Vole Au Vent is seen here installing one of Dominion Energy’s two experimental wind turbines 27 miles off the Virginia coast last year. Photo credit: Dominion. An American-made vessel will install the next 180 or so turbines.

    by James A. Bacon

    The primary justification for spending $7.8 billion to build a wind farm off the Virginia coast at a significantly higher cost per kilowatt than other energy sources is to advance Virginia’s goal of achieving a zero-carbon electric grid by 2050. But an important secondary consideration is the hope that the project will jump-start the creation of a new industry in Hampton Roads serving the emerging East Coast offshore wind industry.

    Virginia has deep channels, no bridge obstructions, an active  maritime community, and perhaps the nation’s largest shipbuilding industry. Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, it is hoped, will catalyze development of a multibillion-dollar offshore wind-energy industry in Virginia.

    That case is a little harder to make these days. When Dominion decided to invest $500 million in building an offshore wind-turbine installation vessel, none of Virginia’s shipbuilding companies was interested. All were booked up with Navy contracts. The vessel, named after the mythical Greek sea monster Charybdis, is being constructed in Brownsville, Texas. (more…)

  • What Dominion Has Learned From Its Experimental Wind Turbines

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    James A. Bacon


    by James A. Bacon

    Dominion Energy spent $300 million to erect the two wind turbines now standing about 27 miles off the Virginia coast, a sum that could never be justified by the 12 megawatts of generating capacity they add to the grid— enough to power only 3,000 homes. The real benefit will come later, when Dominion builds a proposed 180-turbine wind farm expected to generate 2,640 megawatts of capacity, enough to power up to 600,000 homes, at a projected cost of $7.8 billion.

    Thanks to the data gathered from the two experimental turbines, Dominion officials say it will need 40 fewer of the multimillion-dollar turbines than it had originally anticipated, a savings of hundreds of millions of dollars. Also, from the experience of leasing an expensive, hard-to-book installation vessel, Dominion is investing $500 million, risking shareholders’ money not ratepayers’ money, which will serve other East Coast windfarm projects as well as Dominion’s at a lower cost than chartering a European vessel.

    Company officials say they have learned other odds and ends from the experimental turbines that will inform their safety and environmental efforts going forward. (more…)

  • Who’s Setting Car Fires in Norfolk’s Ghent Neighborhood?

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Who’s setting those car fires in Ghent?

    Oh, you haven’t heard about the arsons? Buckle up.

    Last Friday night, as rain drenched Norfolk, Patrick and Tiffany McGee and their two young sons were watching TV in their picturesque Cape Cod with a picket fence on the corner of Redgate and Claremont Avenues in West Ghent.

    According to a witness report filed by Patrick McGee, Tiffany saw a figure outside of their home and by the time her husband — a former Navy SEAL — opened the door and sprinted outside he found their two cars engulfed in flames. Patrick got his family out of the back of the house and to safety while neighbors who’d gathered near the inferno called for help.

    The fire trucks arrived, one after another, and finally put out the conflagration which had spread to the attached garage and nearby trees. (more…)

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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