Author: James A. Bacon
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Lacking the Courage of Supermarket Clerks, Virginia’s Delegates Flee for Home
by Kerry Dougherty It’s official. Virginia’s supermarket clerks, hair stylists and nail techs have more courage than the elected members of the House of Delegates Hours after arriving in Richmond to gather in a socially distanced manner in the VCU Siegel Center gym, the nervous Democratic majority decided that it was too dangerous to meet…
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Bill Would Release Inmates Guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter
by Hans Bader Virginia’s legislature has a good chance of releasing many prison inmates guilty of involuntary manslaughter. In its special session this August, legislators plan to pass Senate Bill 5034, which would shorten many inmates’ sentences by increasing the number of credits they receive for good behavior while in prison. The bill would not…
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Stoney Justifies Statue Contract
by James A. Bacon The Stoney administration did not answer Bacon’s Rebellion requests for information when we were researching Mayor Levar Stoney’s awarding of a $1.8 million contract outside of Richmond’s procurement laws, but it did respond to the Richmond Times-Dispatch when the newspaper followed up on the revelations posted on this blog. Here’s how…
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California, Here We Come!
by James A. Bacon For a look at Virginia’s energy future, just take a look at California. It’s not a pretty picture. The state’s grid operator imposed short rolling blackouts twice over the weekend due to an inability to meet peak demand caused by a heat wave. More blackouts are possible later this week. Both…
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Virginia’s Special Session: Political Theater
by Kerry Dougherty Gov. Ralph Northam’s “special session” of the General Assembly that begins today in Richmond is quickly turning into political farce. What began as an emergency convocation of lawmakers to address the budget catastrophe brought on by Northam’s shutdown of the commonwealth and was expanded to include law enforcement reforms, now threatens to…
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Inching Closer to a Sustainable Mass Transit Model
Fairfax County and Dominion Energy are testing a driverless electrical shuttle. The Relay, a 13-foot-long blue bus is expected to begin regular service this fall, shuttling passengers back and forth between the Dunn Loring-Merrifield Metro station and the county’s Mosaic District. The service will be free. Users will be able track the Relay’s position with…
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The Godzilla of Truth Launches Digital News Site
by James A. Bacon As old-school newspapers fade away, there’s a new star in Virginia’s media constellation — the Virginia Star. The John Fredericks Radio Network has launched a daily news and digital newspaper for Virginia as an affiliate of Star News Digital Media. “The Virginia Star will be fiercely local in its core news…
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Masks Outdoors? That’s a Hard NO.
by Kerry Dougherty Every writer has a favorite place to sit and create. Mine is my screened porch. Most days I grab my laptop and coffee to head outside for most of the day. I’m there now, in fact, enjoying a drizzly, warm and quiet Sunday afternoon. There are no high-spirited beachgoers walking by with…
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The Gory Details of Levar Stoney’s Statue Contract
by James A. Bacon When Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney needed help taking down the city’s Confederate statues, he turned to Devon Henry, a prominent local construction contractor who had donated $4,000 to his 2016 mayoral campaign and political action committee. No local crane & rigging company in Virginia was willing to undertake the controversial project,…
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Entrepreneurs, Rent Seekers and the Just Society
by James A. Bacon It’s a lazy, rainy day, and for amusement, I’ve been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s online work, “Principia Politica,” in which he applies his insights into risk, probability, and the non-linearity of complex systems to the realm of governance and politics. The graphic displayed above appears about halfway through the presentation without…
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Uncertainty Shrouds College Move-in Day this Year
Against the backdrop of a stubbornly persistent COVID-19 epidemic, college kids are heading back to campus. Virginia’s colleges and universities soon will find out if all the students who paid deposits do, in fact, plan to attend this fall. Preliminary evidence suggests that enrollment numbers will not decline dramatically, although epidemic-control measures will significantly reduce…
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Make It Easier to Remove Bad Cops
by James A. Bacon The overwhelming majority of Virginia policemen and deputies are good people doing a creditable job under often-trying circumstances. But not all. Every profession has its bad apples. And in Virginia, state law makes it impossible to strip officers of their certification unless they have been convicted of a felony or certain…
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Big Prison Releases Likely as Legislators Exploit Pandemic
by Hans Bader With the public distracted by the pandemic, Virginia’s liberal legislature is likely to pass laws that would release many prisoners. A special legislative session begins on August 18, to address criminal-justice and COVID-19 issues. The Democratic Caucus has agreed to expand good-time credits for prisoners, effectively shortening their sentences. Parole would be…
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Woke War on America’s No. 1 High School
by Asra Q. Nomani Last month, Suparna Dutta spent countless hours researching how her son could safely return to school this fall as a rising sophomore at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a sprawling campus of classrooms, laboratories and open spaces with names like “Gandhi Commons” and “Einstein Commons,” outside the nation’s…
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Northam’s “Anti-Asian, Anti-Immigrant” School Initiative
by James A. Bacon More than 1,500 parents, students and alumni of the prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology have petitioned Governor Ralph Northam to halt the “secretive and bigoted, anti-Asian, anti-immigrant effort” to substitute race-based admissions for the meritocratic admissions criteria now in place. The petitioners accuse Secretary of Education Atif…