Tag Archives: James Sherlock

A Killer Strategy

by James C. Sherlock

Democrats in Virginia and nationally plan to ride abortion to victory in elections as far as the eye can see.

The herald of this strategy was a piece in New York Magazine by Rebecca Traister.  It was titled, unsubtly, “Abortion Wins Elections.”

She is probably right, if her positions are presented in a softened way.

She is right if progressives can set the terms of the debate and avoid the hard questions which the press will try feverishly to help them bury.

But I hand it to her. She is straightforward. She advocates boundless abortions. In that she is probably making the wrong bet.

In the progressive vision:

  • There are no fathers, no husbands in the brave new world. Reproductive choice does not apply to men;
  • Babies don’t exist until the moment of birth. Some would like the opportunity to take a look after birth — about which Dr. Northam spoke — before deciding;
  • They insist on tax money — from everyone — paying the bills.

The far right counters the left’s list of demands with its own. No abortions ever, under any circumstances.

I suspect Virginians are unprepared to go to either extreme. But there are questions directly applicable to Virginia politics.

  • Will abortion drive education and parents rights from the front of Virginia voters’ minds?
  • Will killing — sorry — terminating babies prove more important to voters than how the survivors are raised and educated?

In either case, it will be about children.

Who don’t get a vote. Continue reading

Crime in Virginia — the Statistics of Race and their Causes

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

Men Model Climate, God Laughs

by James C. Sherlock

This is an ode to modeling and the inevitable contretemps in the comment section that followed Steve Haner’s article yesterday.

1.Time Magazine, April 8,1977. Two great modeling stories:

  • “Why we can’t beat the Soviets;” and
  • “How to Survive the Coming Ice Age”.

Perhaps we did all 51.

2. Cover of Science News March 1. 1975 

  • ”Our Ice Age Cometh.”

Continue reading

Virginia’s Community Banks, Under Stress, are Crucial to the Economy, Small Business and Small Communities

Back of America locations in Virginia

by James C. Sherlock

In general, I do not write enough about Virginia small businesses.

Small business is both the heart and soul of the Virginia economy.

I have no personal financial interest in Virginia’s community banks, but all of us need them to be healthy.

Because community banks disproportionately fund small business.

The Federal Reserve reported in its 2023 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2022 Small Business Credit Survey

As pandemic-related funding programs ended, the data show an accompanying rise in the share of firms that sought traditional financing in the form of loans, lines of credit, or merchant cash advances. The share of these applicants that were fully approved rose year-over-year but lags prepandemic levels.

But the banking industry, trying to reestablish itself as the economy’s primary funding agent after the COVID federal money tsunami receded, is under stress not seen in 2022.

The Fed’s rapid rise in interest rates to combat inflation, driven by federal spending, has lowered the value of banks’ fixed rate collateral.

Community banks, not the source of the problem, are bearing the brunt of the reaction.

Depositors need to understand how important Virginia’s 42 community banks are to Virginia’s economy — and many of their own jobs. Continue reading

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

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

The Registered Nurse Shortage

by James C. Sherlock

I have reported often about the severe and increasing shortages of nurses both in Virginia and nationally.

At some point in nearly everyone’s life, we literally will not be able to live without the help of a nurse, whether for injury or illness or just declining overall health.

We need both the nurses and ourselves to be safe when that happens. We will have to fill the shortages, first by recruitment and retention. Perhaps simultaneously by increased legal immigration of qualified nurses from other countries.

This article will focus first on what RNs were paid in 2021, both in Virginia and nationwide. We will examine it in absolute and in relative terms. Virginia in 2021 was competitive on pay in relative terms. But wages may be insufficient in absolute terms to address the shortages.

Then we will discuss what else needs to be done to recruit, train and retain more nurses. I mentioned in an earlier article that RN instructors in training programs are one of the biggest needs.

The Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics have captured the large increases in registered nurse (RN) pay across the board and the doubling of the pay of travel nurses in 2021. Those pay surges were driven by COVID supply and demand and funded partially by federal emergency money.

You will see that, by what I consider a useful calculation, Virginia RN’s median wage compensation is 18th among the states when adjusted for each state’s cost of living index. Virginia is the top-paying state among adjacent states and the District of Columbia.

Regardless of the reason, it was past time that we paid them more. We need the pay raises to stick. It is the only way over the long run to begin increasing the supply.

I say begin because there are other factors driving nurses away. Safety is a huge factor. Continue reading

Rosalyn Dance Can Help Interpret Democratic Election Laws

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

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

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

Public School Climate Lessons Terrorize Virginia’s Children

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

Virginia’s Best-Attended School Divisions 2021-22 – It’s Not About Money

Overall best attendance among Virginia Public School Divisions 2021-22

by James C. Sherlock

We often, because it is important, concentrate on what is not working in Virginia’s state and local governments. Occasionally it is equally important to congratulate the winners.

In this report I will list Virginia’s best-attended school divisions in 2021-21, both by all students and by sub-groups.

You will be surprised by some of the winners.

These rankings offer crucial measures of school division effectiveness and reflect the efforts and values of students, families and teachers. Continue reading

Is a Reckoning Coming for the Management and Administrative Costs at Virginia’s State Colleges and Universities?

UVa President James Ryan. $750,000 base salary. Courtesy of the University of Virginia

by James C. Sherlock

In 2015, Professor Paul Campos of the University of Colorado at Boulder wrote an op-ed for The New York Times that clarified for many a major issue in the rising costs of a college education — the exponential growth of the number and costs of administrators.

According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.

Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.

With inflation putting pressure on budgets, I hope Boards of Visitors are taking a hard look at reducing expenses before increasing tuitions. Continue reading

Private Hospitals show Virginia’s State Hospitals, Colleges and Universities the Way to Efficiency

Valley Health Winchester Medical Center

by James C. Sherlock

We read far too often about funding “crises” in government institutions and programs.

The general public, me included, would be far more attentive and sometimes supportive if government would follow the lead of private companies and continually right-size itself and emphasize customer-facing services.

The health care industry — or rather the private healthcare industry — consistently shows the way.

Even not-for-profits are not for losses.

Count, if you can, the number of times in your life that a government organization has announced job cutbacks in administration in order to optimize expenditures and provide better service.

Yeah, me neither.

Students at one of my favorite state schools (it is northwest of Richmond and west of Orange County) are protesting that their faculty is underpaid.

The solution to that problem, if indeed the Board of Visitors considers it a problem, writes itself. Continue reading

Black Students Disappearing from Classrooms Disproportionately in Ten of our Largest School Divisions

by James C. Sherlock

For those who support local control of schools no matter what, I will offer you a “what” to consider.

For those who are nervous about even discussing why some jurisdictions in Virginia have failed to ensure “an educational program of high quality is established and continually maintained” for Black children, that works for Black children no matter their circumstances, you are reading the wrong article.

Twenty percent of Virginians are Black, as were 22% of our public school students in 2022.

Virginia lost 4% of its Black public school student registrations in the last three years, compared to 2.6% of all students including Black students. Black chronic absenteeism statewide jumped from 13.1% to over 25%. All student chronic absenteeism including Black students was 20%.

Ten jurisdictions with at least 2,000 Black students at the start of that period lost higher percentages of their Black students than the state average. Some much higher.

Those ten lost 8,668 Black student registrations. The entire state lost 10,674. Chronic absenteeism of black students in those jurisdictions increased in line with statewide increases.

Without even bringing up school quality, this is unacceptable if we care about the futures of Black kids.

We have to get them in school. I say “we” because it will be a long-term disaster for both these children and Virginia if we don’t.

Lots of different things have to be done to get them there, which is where school quality comes in. But I will share some of the raw numbers. Continue reading

Dems Block Bill to Maintain Safe and Effective Classrooms

by James C. Sherlock

I have written earlier about a Democratic bill in this recent General Assembly with broad Democratic support that did not pass.

Let’s look at another bill that did not pass, this one from a Republican, and with broad Republican support.

Article VIII. Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution requires the General Assembly to “seek to ensure that an educational program of high quality is established and continually maintained.”

This bill, HB 1461, was an attempt to carry out that responsibility.

It required the Department of Education to establish, within its regulations governing student conduct, a uniform system of discipline for disruptive behavior and the removal of a student from a class. The bill included criteria for teachers to remove disruptive students from their classes:

  • It instituted a requirement for a teacher to remove a disruptive student from a class if the disruptive behavior is violent; or
  • If the student persisted in disrupting the class after two warnings.

It added a prohibition against holding a teacher liable for taking reasonable actions or utilizing reasonable methods to control a physically disruptive or violently disruptive student.  Every school board would be required to adhere to these provisions.

That was it.

The “ensuring an educational program of high quality” thing.

Every Democrat in both bodies voted against it. Continue reading

Virginia Democrats Want to Deal With Criminals 18-20 in the Juvenile Justice System

by James C. Sherlock

I received an update yesterday from the NAACP on legislation that caught their interest in the 2023 General Assembly.

One bill that did not pass, but got party line Democratic support in the Senate Judiciary Committee, in turn caught my eye.

It was SB 1080 Juvenile and domestic relations district courts; adjudication of delinquency. Patrons were Senators Edwards, Boysko and Surovell. It was not some fringe bill. This is a mainstream Democratic goal.

The NAACP wanted me to know they wanted it reintroduced next year.

Delinquency is currently defined as criminal complaints for felonies or misdemeanors filed against a juvenile age 17 and under.

Democrats, unanimous in the Senate Judiciary Committee, voted to create a newly-defined class of “underage persons,” 18-20, and handle them in the juvenile justice system as well.

Seriously. Twenty-year-old felons in juvenile detention facilities.

They voted for that. Continue reading