Author: James A. Bacon
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Things Fall Apart: Workforce Edition
by James A. Bacon A friend of mine, a Richmond-area attorney, received this message from his accountant explaining the increasingly difficult conditions in which his business was operating: Increasingly, we’ve experienced extreme disruption with our US Postal Service as well as the handling of payments by government agencies, regardless if they have confirmed delivery. This…
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You’ll Have to Pry My Steering Wheel from My Cold, Dead Fingers
The latest from the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy…. I don’t have any philosophical objections to electric vehicles. If they offer better performance for the price than combustion-powered cars, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy one. I do have public-policy reservations about government subsidies for EVs and EV infrastructure, and I do have concerns about…
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New Sheriff in Town
by James A. Bacon The comments section of Bacon’s Rebellion is a patch of the Wild West on the Internet. Laws and rules are frequently ignored. There are too many ad hominem attacks, too much skirting around profanity restrictions, too many excursions into rhetorical no-man’s land, and too many flaming wars. There’s gold in them…
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One-Size-Fits-All COVID Policy Vs. Precision Medicine
by James A. Bacon What a revelation. It turns out that a person’s genes have a big influence over how or his or her immunological system responds to the COVID-19 virus. A Charlottesville company, Ampel Biosolutions, has developed a blood test, which it claims predicts with 90% accuracy if a COVID-infected patient is at risk…
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Factoid of the Day: It Still Pays to Work in Virginia
In three states — Washington, Massachusetts, and New Jersey — a family of four can earn more than $100,000 annually in equivalent government benefits, according to a study, “Paying Americans Not to Work,” published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The earned income equivalent for the state of Washington is a mind-boggling $122,653 a year,…
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Will Loudoun Cancel Frances Hazel Reid?
by James A. Bacon Frances Hazel Reid began working for the Loudoun Times-Mirror in 1921, and remained an employee until shortly before her death in 1994 at the age of 94. Starting out as a secretary in an era when the majority of women did not work outside the home, she rose through the ranks…
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If This Doesn’t Get You Admitted to UVa, What Will?
@limmytalks did you get them right? #collegeapps #collegeadmissions ♬ original sound – Limmy 💛 The producer of The School of Limmy, a Korean-American neuroscience major at Duke University, posts short videos about college admissions on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. One of his schticks is reading the qualifications of student applicants and listing the colleges that…
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You Support Free Speech? Show It.
by James A. Bacon The leaders of Virginia’s colleges and universities are sensitive to the public’s distrust of higher-ed’s ability to protect freedom of speech and “cultivate robust and divergent viewpoints.” “Today’s students may hesitate to discuss difficult topics for fear of retribution or ostracism,” write four Virginia higher-ed presidents in an op-ed published in…
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Workforce Development: Wrestling with the Alligator
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin wants to consolidate the plethora of Virginia’s workforce development programs spread across 13 agencies and six secretariats, according to Virginia Public Media. Not only do these programs consume $485 million in federal and state funding but there are a bewildering 1,500 of them. I find that number so astonishing as…