Author: James A. Bacon
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Williamsburg the Locality Most Vulnerable to COVID-19
The City of Williamsburg is the Virginia locality most vulnerable to the stresses imposed by the COVID-19 epidemic on local governments, according to a report recently issued by Virginia’s Commission on Local Government. Other small cities — Emporia, Colonial Heights, and Norton — follow close behind on the list. The Commission based its assessment on…
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Richmond Schools as Real-World Social Science Experiment
School Superintendent Jason Kamras said yesterday that he will ask the Richmond School Board to remove school resource officers (SROs) from city schools and use the money to hire more mental health professionals. He made no mention of removing school security guards. Most of the arrests made in Richmond schools in 2019-20 were for simple…
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133 Virginia Petri Dishes for Back-to-School Policies
by James A. Bacon Virginia’s 133 school districts are conducting what amounts to an unprecedented experiment on the efficacy of online learning in K-12 education. Spooked by COVID-19, local school boards are stampeding toward the emergency exits — hundreds of schools will close this fall, and tens of thousands of Virginia school kids will be…
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How COVID Will Transform Higher Ed
by James A. Bacon The COVID-19 epidemic will permanently alter the landscape of higher education, one of America’s most broken industries, contends Stephen McBride, writing in Forbes. College costs have ballooned “beyond all reason,” he says, but as recently as a year ago, he held out little hope that anything would change. Why? “It’s a…
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Bacon Bits: Pigskins, COVID, Unemployment
Hail the to Pigskins. The football team formerly known as the Washington Redskins has punted on adopting a new permanent name this season, and will refer to itself for the time being as the Washington Football Team. The pause allows the team to “undertake an in-depth branding process” that incorporates player, alumni, fan, community and…
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Philanthropist James Dooley Soon to Be Canceled by VCU
The Dooley Hospital for Infectious Diseases at Virginia Commonwealth University no longer stands. But the portico/entrance of the original building has been retained as a free-standing memorial on VCU’s medical campus. The name of the Dooley Hospital is etched in limestone. The Virginia Commonwealth University’s Committee on Commemoration and Memorials has targeted the Dooley Hospital…
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Stop Walking on Eggshells
by Kerry Dougherty A new study from the libertarian CATO institute supports something I’ve believed for a long time, which – let’s be honest – is why I’m sharing it with you. It found that the cancel culture is stifling speech. The result: A growing number of Americans on both sides of the political divide and all…
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“Anti-Racism” Is Racism in Disguise
by Hans Bader America’s colleges, media, and cultural institutions are being swept by the ideology of “anti-racism.” It openly advocates racial discrimination against white people, and promotes bigoted, lower expectations for black people. “Rationality” and “hard work” are vestiges of racism, declared the “anti-racism” web site of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History…
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No Known Case of Teacher Catching COVID-19 from Pupils
Perhaps Virginia teachers terrified of returning to schools this fall should read this article in the Financial Times (of London): There has been no recorded case of a teacher catching the coronavirus from a pupil anywhere in the world, according to one of the government’s leading scientific advisers. Mark Woolhouse, a leading epidemiologist and member…
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Charlottesville Elites and Virginia’s New Ruling Class
by James A. Bacon Before it sold off its national newspaper division to Lee Enterprises for a measly $140 million in March, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway owned most of the newspapers in western and central Virginia, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Roanoke Times, the Daily Progress (in Charlottesville), and the News Virginian (in Waynesboro).…
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Who Wants to Visit New York Anyway?
by Kerry Dougherty This is rich. One of the worst governors in the country — Andrew Cuomo — announced yesterday that Virginians are not welcome in New York and neither are folks from 30 other states. Unless we quarantine and show a clean bill of health, that is. He’s afraid we’ll infect New Yorkers with…
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Check out My Political-Economy-of-Healthcare Webinar
I’ll be talking about the political economy of healthcare in Virginia 7:00 p.m. Wednesday (tomorrow) in a webinar hosted by Your Freedom Hub. Bacon’s Rebellion readers recalling the posts that Jim Sherlock and I have written about the power of hospital cartels will find the subject matter familiar. But I’ll be previewing some new data…
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Debunking the Lie of Unequal Funding, Part II
by James A. Bacon A month ago I demonstrated in “The Big Lie of Unequal Funding” that there is no meaningful difference on average in the amount of money spent on black and white school children between school districts across Virginia. I drew that conclusion based on average spent per pupil in each school district.…
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Creeping Totalitarianism: Now They’re Indoctrinating Kindergartners
by James A. Bacon Loudoun County Public Schools are adding “social justice” to the mission of teaching elementary school students. The County has teamed with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s education arm, Teaching Tolerance, to develop its new curriculum, reports the Washington Examiner. “Sugarcoating or ignoring slavery until later grades makes students more upset by…
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Some Kids Need School More than Others
by Kerry Dougherty Let’s stop pretending there’s any chance at all that public schools will be open five days a week this fall. They won’t. Not around here, anyway. Not in many places. The teachers have spoken. Their unions, er associations, have made it clear that they don’t want to return to their classrooms yet.…