Author: James A. Bacon
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Stop Tolerating the Intolerable
by Kerry Dougherty Have we gotten to the point where mobs of anarchists can rampage through Richmond as they did last weekend, setting fires and assaulting police officers and firefighters while the governor, the attorney general and others basically shrug? I can answer that: Yes. That’s exactly where we are. Last weekend’s riots in Richmond…
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Reality TV at Its Worst
by Kerry Dougherty As members of Congress indulged themselves in a farcical hearing yesterday with Attorney General William Barr, Richmond had a televised spectacle of its own. Virginia’s folksy Governor Ralph Northam staged his own little show, a press conference, which featured the usual blame game. Northam expressed concern about rising numbers of COVID cases…
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Who is Behind NAH, LLC?
by James A. Bacon Most of the Confederate statues and memorials in the City of Richmond are gone. Only the statue of Robert E. Lee, the subject of ongoing litigation, remains. The statues and cannons are not coming back. The broken egg cannot be reassembled. But there are legitimate issues relating to Mayor Levar Stoney’s…
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How Hospital Monopolies Extract their Pound of Flesh
by James A. Bacon The average cost of family coverage in a private health insurance plan in Virginia ran more than $26,300 in 2017, according to data from the Commonwealth Fund. That number includes the employer share of the insurance premiums, the employee’s share, and out-of-pocket costs. If you want to understand why middle-class standards…
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Pontificating about Health Care
In a webcast produced by YourFreedomHub, I explain the political economy of healthcare in Virginia. Long-time readers of Jim Sherlock’s columns and my columns on this topic will find much familiar material. The value in watching the presentation is seeing many strands pulled together in a coherent narrative. Also, I do provide some evidence…
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Where’s the Oppression, Mr. Qarni? Please Show Me the Oppression!
by James A. Bacon Atif Qarni, Virginia’s secretary of education, urges people to fight systemic racism and injustice in U.S. society. Addressing local elected officials, he said in June, “You have significant power to dismantle systems of oppression that may include policies, practices, or processes that negatively impact the lives of Black people or people…
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New Houses for $150,000
by James A. Bacon It remains an eternal mystery why it costs in the realm of $250,000 or more per unit to build apartment buildings for the poor in the Richmond region. The Danville Redevelopment and Housing Authority is delivering five new houses on their own lots near downtown Danville, for a sales price as…
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Brace Yourselves: Another Northam Presser Today
by Kerry Dougherty Get ready, Virginia. Gov. Ralph Northam, the man who can’t stop the rioting in Richmond but thinks he can stop the spread of COVID-19, is holding a press conference. No, he won’t be announcing strong measures to end the violence and lawlessness roiling the streets of the Capitol. Like most Democrats, the…
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Why is VDH Stockpiling Cases as Unknown Race?
By Carol J. Bova The Northam administration started expressing concern about the disparity of racial impacts of COVID-19 as early as March. But the number of confirmed cases with race/ethnicity listed as “Unknown” has grown to 20,886, or 24% of all cases. How is such a huge gap in the data even possible? Here’s the…
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GMU Race-Based Discrimination Is Unconstitutional
by Hans Bader As part of a new “anti-racism” push, George Mason University plans to discriminate based on race in favor of faculty of color. On July 23, Dr. Gregory Washington, the president of GMU, announced that “We will develop specific mechanisms in the promotion and tenure process that recognize the invisible and uncredited emotional…
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Bacon Bits: And in More Riot-and-Protest News…
Support the blue. Here’s a story covered by the (Petersburg) Progress-Index but ignored by the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Virginia’s newspaper of record for left-wing causes): Several hundred people gathered in Chesterfield County to support the blue. Remarkably, no rocks were thrown, no windows broken, no cars or buildings torched, and no one was arrested. Crying Wolf.…
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Yeah, Antifa in Richmond Is Real. Even the Mayor Admits It.
by James A. Bacon Conservatives have been mocked for suggesting that “Antifa” members have numbered among protesters roiling Virginia the past two months, but yesterday Richmond Police Chief Gerald Smith, with Mayor Levar Stoney at his side, said the police believe that Antifa and individuals influenced by Antifa participated in the predominantly white mob action…
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The Bravest Woman in Richmond
by James A. Bacon Kimberly Gray, a Richmond City Councilwoman and mayoral candidate, espouses a philosophy that some people in the era of Black Lives Matter find offensive. “I’ve been verbal about protecting all citizens,” she tells Bacon’s Rebellion. “This is my city. I love my city. I want it to be a place where…
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How Fed Policy Is Wrecking the Economy
by James A. Bacon Of all known government interventions in the U.S. economy, the most insidious and dangerous is regulation of the price of money (interest rates). Years of Federal Reserve Bank monetary stimulus and quantitative easing, promulgated for the purpose of easing or avoiding a recession, is wrecking the U.S. economy in ways that…
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Another Deceptive Article about Mortgage Discrimination
by James A. Bacon Oh, brother, here we go again… Of the 14,700 mortgage applications submitted by black Virginians last year, 11.9% were turned down, reports the Virginia Mercury. By contrast, of the 70,400 applications from non-Hispanic whites, only 5% were rejected. The difference in acceptance rates cannot be attributed solely to differences in income,…