Tag Archives: Guest contributors

Don’t Delay Electric Vehicles in Virginia

Not to mention, they’re unspeakably cool.

by Alleyn Harned

In the 2022 General Assembly, Delegate Tony Wilt, R-Harrisonburg, has introduced legislation which will increase consumers’ transportation costs and maintain our dependence on foreign oil. Both consequences are unacceptable in Virginia’s beautiful Shenandoah Valley region, which produces no oil and stands to benefit greatly from access to renewable technologies.

On Friday, January 21st, Wilt sent constituents an email mentioning his 2022 legislation, in which he emphasized “clean and affordable energy” in an all-of-the-above energy approach. Then he submitted House Bill 1267, which would delay implementation from 2025 to 2030 of the Advanced Clean Cars Program for low-emission and zero-emission vehicles.

The delegate’s attempt to delay Virginia’s modest goals for access to electric vehicles will send consumers to neighboring states for the rest of the decade to purchase electric cars. This would benefit the economies of Maryland and North Carolina, limit residents’ choices, and put Virginia at a competitive disadvantage. Continue reading

A Monumental Outrage

Charlottesville’s hasty—and possibly illegal—destruction of its Robert E. Lee equestrian statue establishes a toxic precedent.

by Catesby Leigh

The century-old equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been broken up, and, more likely than not, melted down into bronze ingots by now. But nobody involved in this officially sanctioned act of iconoclasm is saying whether that’s the case. Four weeks after the filing of a petition for injunction intended to prevent the statue’s destruction, the Charlottesville circuit court hasn’t even scheduled a hearing. Charlottesville’s woke excuse for a newspaper of record, the Daily Progress, has been notably incurious about the statue’s current whereabouts or condition.

The Lee equestrian was mainly the work of Henry Merwin Shrady, the sculptor who created the Grant Memorial at the foot of Capitol Hill in Washington. In a way, it was conceived as a peace monument. It showed the Confederate commander in dress uniform, hat at his side, back ramrod straight and with a facial expression of sober resolve. Traveler, his mount, walked with head bowed. Lee had surrendered but retained his dignity in defeat. The expression of resolve reflected a determination that the war be over.

After midnight on December 7, 2021, Charlottesville’s city council hastily—and possibly illegally—approved a resolution to donate the bronze statue, which had been removed from a downtown park in July, to a local African-American heritage center. The center proposed to melt the bronze down so that it could be recast in a “community”-inspired memorial celebrating wokedom’s new world of elevated racial consciousness. Continue reading

The New McCarthyism at UVa

Darkness descends upon the academical village. Photo credit: Washington Post

by Joel Gardner

One of my earliest memories is sitting with my mother as a pre-kindergartener watching the McCarthy hearings in the spring of 1954. Television was a new medium for most American households and the bombastic anti-communist antics of the junior senator from Wisconsin held the population enthralled for months. But, while television gave Joe McCarthy the exposure and notoriety he craved, it also spelled his doom, as more and more citizens came to realize that his agenda of intolerance and intimidation did not represent the American way. In fact, so many Americans were disenchanted and disgusted with the senator’s methodology that the term “McCarthyism” became a widespread derogatory term — which would become synonymous with authoritarian behavior characterized by thought indoctrination, loyalty oaths, and intolerance and punishment for dissenting views.

For over five decades, most American institutions eschewed tactics and agendas that reeked of McCarthyism. Which is why it is so disheartening and frightening to witness so many current institutions embracing the attributes of
McCarthyism — especially the one institution where it should be absolute anathema, but where it is most pronounced — our college campuses.

Unfortunately, this includes my alma mater, the University of Virginia, whose founders, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were the individuals most responsible for our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, the two pillars of American individual rights and freedoms. And just as the illuminating screen of television revealed the evils of McCarthyism, for those concerned with a free exchange of ideas and a level playing field of learning in higher education, it is important to shine the light of truth on the inappropriate and dangerous indoctrination flourishing at UVA. Continue reading

Impractical Solar Power, Illustrated With the Math

by David Wojick

This was first published at cfact.org and is reproduced with Wojick’s permission.

Many states and the utilities they regulate are talking about replacing their coal and gas fired generators with solar and wind power. For example, I recently wrote about how the crazy-named Virginia Clean Economy Act already has almost 800 square miles of solar slabs in the developmental lineup.

Given the high intermittency of wind and solar, the idea of running on solar and wind turns out to be an extremely costly prospect. It is all about reliability. Electricity must be there when we need it. Below I present some simple calculations that show just how bad this idea really is. Continue reading

Virginia, Take Another Look at Nukes

Terrapower’s technology is said to be safer than older nuclear technologies. Nuclear can provide a carbon-free electricity base-load that wind and solar cannot.

by Brian Glass

Dominion Energy, Inc., has ordered 176 wind turbines from Siemens Gamesa for its 2.6-gigawatt offshore wind farm at a cost of $9.8 billion. Electricity consumers will pay for this generating capacity. Let’s take a look at whether or not we will be getting our money’s worth.

The Virginia Clean Economy Act went into effect on July 1, 2020, with a goal of a carbon-free electric grid by 2050. The timetable for installing the first 880 megawatts turbines is 2024, with Phases Two and Three scheduled for 2026. Assuming a projected life span of 30 years, the useful life of the turbines will end between 2054 and 2056, just a few years after the Commonwealth’s zero-carbon deadline.

This doesn’t seem logical to me. The State Corporation Commission, which has received Dominion Energy’s application for the project, should take a hard look at whether or not it can meet the goals of the Virginia Clean Economy Act beyond the arbitrary 2050 deadline. Continue reading

A Broken Meritocracy

The following post has been extracted with permission from the book, An Inconvenient Minority: The Attack on Asian American Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy.

by Kenny Xu

There were just too many Asians.

Thomas Jefferson High School for Mathematics and Science in Arlington, Virginia, is widely considered the best high school for math and science in the region. It is the number one ranked high school by the U.S. News and World Report in the entire nation.

“That place is so difficult and so rigorous, that you’re just beaten,” said Asra Nomani, the Indian American mother of a Thomas Jefferson student. “You don’t even know if you’re going to make it, like as a family, because your child is slogging so much. And I have issues with that because they almost crush the passion of math and science out of you because they are just so rigorous, so hard. …”

Before 2020, admissions to Thomas Jefferson involved a standardized test, along with grades, teachers’ recommendations, and course rigor. It is all standard fare that anyone would know. For a long time, admissions to TJ were mostly white. As late as 2002, Thomas Jefferson was 70 percent white, 25 percent Asian, and 5 percent Black or Latino.

But starting in the 2000s, the composition of the class of Thomas Jefferson changed. It got more Asian. Way more Asian. The reasoning for this change was pretty simple: Asian immigrants started pouring into Northern Virginia in the ’90s. They got married and had kids. In the new millennium, those kids were reaching high school age. And they were studying to go to TJ. Continue reading

BBB Demise Is Also Labor-Rules Reprieve

Washington Post photo of a cake delivered to Virginia Senator Mark Warner in May, encouraging support for the pending PRO Act. Elements of the PRO Act are also included in the BBB omnibus.

by F. Vincent Vernuccio

Yesterday, Senator Joe Manchin, D-WV, gave an early Christmas present to Senators Mark Warner, D-VA, and Tim Kaine, D-VA, by declaring he would not support the $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act (BBB).

Virginia small businesses, job creators, and workers were wary of what the U.S. House passed in BBB, specifically some provisions mirroring parts of another disastrous piece of legislation called the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

However, it was not just those who would be affected who need to worry. Virginia politicians may have also had worries of the electoral consequences of voting for these bills.

If you are a small mom and pop business with only a few employees but no labor attorney on retainer, you better get one if the Senate votes for the PRO Act or if the Biden Administration continues to push the provisions in future “must pass” legislation. Continue reading

Voting Nullification

by Michael Fruitman and Jim McCarthy

Other than the continued inanity of conspiracy theorists and theories about the theft of the 2020 presidential election, we may be grateful in this post-Thanksgiving moment that our ballots in that contest mattered and prevailed.

Virginia turnout was 75% of registered voters (4.375 million). The Democrat garnered 2.413 million votes and the Republican 1.962 million, the largest and most significant result in the Commonwealth’s history and testimony to the vitality of citizen participation in the electoral process.

Nationally, the results were not dissimilar to those in Virginia, with 81.3 million popular votes for the Democrat and 74.2 million for the Republican. However, for a small handful of voters who happened to be members of the U.S. Congress, the popular results were not acceptable. On January 6, 2021, and into the early morning of the 7th, members of Congress conducted another vote to overturn the popular results by legislation, rejecting the Electoral College vote count. Continue reading

A Speech Notable for Its Banality, Vanity and Hypocrisy

by William L. Respess

“A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.”
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965), former governor of Illinois and twice unsuccessful democratic candidate for president against Dwight Eisenhower.

I assume most persons aware of the turbulent year that the Virginia Military Institute just transited have also informed themselves of the content of Governor Northam’s speech delivered on the evening of November 15 just past. As an alumnus (class 0f 1961), I expected it likely to be as memorable as his now famous (perhaps “notorious is a better descriptor) letter of October 19, 2020, in which he and a cohort of other Virginia Democrat politicians flayed VMI, his alma mater, with the accusation of “our deep concern about the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism” at the Institute. Burdened with that expectation, I thought reading it would propel me into a state of high dudgeon. It didn’t. Instead, I found the speech to be flaccid and unmemorable. Continue reading

Fairfax Schools Sex Survey Isn’t Just Intrusive, It’s Potentially Damaging

by Tyler Ohta

Once again, the Fairfax County School Board has put its ideological priorities ahead of the educational needs of the children. Yes, the 12 Democrats sitting on the school board have sent out another youth sex survey, just like it does each year.

The survey delivered during academic time to children in grades 8-12 reads like a rap song instead of a questionnaire to children as young as 11 years old. With a whopping 173 questions, the most pressing question judging by the fact that it is first, is — wait for it — “Are you transgender?”

Other questions include:

  • “How old you were when you first had sex?”
  • “How many people have you had sex with in the last 3 months?” (with an answer option of 6+ people!)
  • Have you ever tried heroin, cocaine, and cabbies? (multiple questions)

There are also plenty of other questions asking about children’s smoking, vaping, huffing, and drinking habits, as well as marijuana usage. Other questions delve deeply into the private lives of these kids, asking intimate and inappropriate
questions about family – the eerie thrust of which seems to lead children to doubt their families’ love and care for them. For example, “How many times a month do your parents bully, ridicule, or tease you?” Continue reading

An Open Letter to the VMI Corps

by Carter Melton

Ladies and gentlemen of The Corps, greetings. My name is Carter Melton, a history major from Salem who graduated in 1967. For 30 years I was the president and CEO of one of the largest hospitals in Virginia and served two terms on the Virginia Military Institute Board of Visitors.

I know exactly what you’re thinking: “Oh, no… a liberal-arts relic from The Old Corps.”

Please, just hear me out.

Last Monday evening you heard from the Governor of Virginia.

He stood before you and presented himself as a man who had been on the road to Damascus, met Jesus, and had an epiphany of the heart. In fact, he is a politician who got caught with his political pants down and, given the nature of his dilemma, pivoted to a strategy of racial redemption to save his political skin.

As for the Governor’s deep love and affection for VMI, you might want to consider the following: Continue reading

Will Election Fallout Extend to Local Union Push?

By F. Vincent Vernuccio

Virginia’s new collective bargaining law is forcing local government officials to deal with a controversial issue fraught with potential errors and legal risks.

If the 2021 election showed anything, it was that Virginia voters felt the Commonwealth was going in the wrong direction. The sweep of Republicans for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and the House of Delegates sent a clear message: Voters wanted change.

Local governments should take heed, especially on controversial issues such as public sector collective bargaining. Elected officials should carefully consider not just voter sentiment, but what new executive authority means for interpretation and implementation of recent laws.

One law, passed in 2020 by a Democratic governor, House and Senate, was a radical change to decades-old precedent. The new law gave local elected officials the ability to pass ordinances allowing government unions to have a monopoly and represent all public employees (even those that do not want representation) and to bargain on almost any issue. However, now there may be stricter scrutiny on the interplay between these ordinance and state laws, not to mention the U.S. Constitution. Continue reading

Stop the Sign Thefts!

by Susan Lang

Shelly Fularon Wood is running for Commonwealth Attorney in Chesapeake. She has handled more than 2,700 criminal cases in Virginia. She has experience working in the Norfolk Prosecutor’s office and was appointed by Chesapeake Circuit Court Judges to serve as a Substitute Judge. Despite these tremendous credentials, or maybe because of them, someone has been removing her campaign signs.

Wood has a system for recording where and when her signs are placed. She has determined that more than 200 have been stolen — so far.

A Facebook post claiming to be part of the City Sign Sweeper program shows what happened to many of the stolen Shelly Wood signs. The Sign Sweeper program does not cover removal of political signs. It is furthermore an incorrect application of the program to take signs of one candidate for an office but not the other’s signs. This individual was contacted; he said the signs had been destroyed. Continue reading

VMI, Recognize Binnie Peay’s Distinguished Service

J.H. Binford Peay III. Official portrait as vice chief of staff.

Here follows a letter from Salvatore J. Vitale, class agent of the Virginia Military Institute class of 1961. — JAB

I am a graduate, and proud to be one, of the Virginia Military Institute’s Class of 1961. Since last summer, I and others of the VMI alumni have been pleased to note that Bacon’s Rebellion has published a substantial number of articles concerning the events at VMI climaxing with the publication and fallout from the now infamous Barnes & Thornburg report commissioned by the administration of Governor Ralph Northam. The articles you published have done a great service to VMI and its alumni by, among other things, pushing back against the findings of that report and the libel of VMI in public media, principally in the “news “section of the Washington Post. That libel is that VMI is a systemically racist and sexist institution. …

The attack directed at VMI has no doubt caused injury to many. The reputations of alumni in general have been impugned because of being branded as the product of a systemically racist and sexist institution. The attack certainly raises the question whether young women and minorities in uniform will, rightly or wrongly, fear that VMI officers of higher rank lack respect for them and, perhaps equally unfortunate, transmit that fear into lack of respect for the superior
officer. There is also rightful fear that in this current political environment that VMI’s sullied reputation could harm their opportunities for advancement, particularly for young officers? If this false narrative diminishes the ranks of women and minorities who seek admission to VMI, it will be unfortunate for VMI and for those who are deterred from applying due to this distorted
depiction.

Some may say that the foregoing is merely speculative. There has, however, been one injury that is beyond dispute to VMI alumni — the reputational damage to former superintendent General J. H. Binford Peay III, VMI class of 1962, following his resignation after receiving public rebuke from Governor Northam through a “lost confidence” communication. Continue reading

Stronger Teacher Unions = Weaker Parents

Loudoun County parents pack a School Board meeting. Photo credit: Idiocracy News Media

Allowing collective bargaining will put yet another special interest ahead of the parents who simply want a say in what is best for their children.

by F. Vincent Vernuccio

First published by Virginia Works and reprinted with the author’s permission. 

Virginia parents soon could lose even more control over their children’s education.

Parents frustrated with school curriculum and other education issues throughout the state have earned national attention. But as that frustration boils over into school board recall petitions and the race for governor, one policy change that could limit parental and voter choice is being overlooked: public sector collective bargaining.

new law in Virginia gives local governments and school boards the power to permit government unions to have a monopoly on representing public employees. If school boards pass the law, they will be forced to negotiate with these union officials.

This will put an extra, unaccountable unelected layer of bureaucracy between parents, teachers and schools.  Continue reading