Author: James A. Bacon
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The Folly of Mandated Yards
Jim Dalrymple, a Salt Lake City journalist, publishes the About Town blog, where he opines about urban land use in the Provo-Salt Lake City region of Utah. I’ve begun following the blog because he asks many of the same kinds of questions I do, informed by similar free-market sensibilities. In a recent missive, he asked…
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The Eroding Value of the College Sheepskin
by James A. Bacon Thanks to college inflation, Grade Point Averages (GPAs) don’t reveal as much as they once did. The percentage of As given by college and university professors has nearly tripled between 1940 and 2008, according to a 2012 study of 200 four-year educational institutions. Even a college diploma is more a mark…
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The Stroadification of the South Atlantic Coast
by James A. Bacon Litchfield Beach, S.C., is blessed by natural beauty. It has long, wide beaches with sand as soft as talcum powder. It has fecund marshlands bursting with wildlife. It has thick, semi-tropical foliage: palmetto palms, crepe myrtle and southern live oak draped in Spanish moss. Too bad the humans did such a…
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Clouds
Clouds… I could sit on a sand dune sipping coffee and watch them all day long. Totally therapeutic. I’m so mellow now, I’ve stopped compulsively checking the blog every two hours. So sad, today is the day we pack up and make the long drive home. Speaking of the blog, thanks to PeterG for keeping…
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Compare and Contrast: Chesterfield and Henrico on the Meals Tax
by James A. Bacon Henrico County isn’t the only Virginia jurisdiction where citizens will vote on a meals-tax referendum this fall. Chesterfield County leaders also are seeking a meals tax. But the approach taken by the two localities is very different, which may explain why Henrico residents are restive while their neighbors south of the…
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Working Still Beats Welfare in Virginia
Despite the highly controversial reform of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program in 1996, welfare benefits actually have increased in generosity over the past 17 years. Social-services benefits for the poor pay more than minimum-wage jobs in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states they…
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The Sky Is Alive
When you live in a hilly, wooded urban area like Henrico County, Va., you never see the horizon. If you can’t see the horizon, you can’t see the sun rise. One of the beauties of the beach is the wide-open sky with its sunrises, sunsets, and parades of towering, billowing clouds. I am a confirmed…
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Moonrise at Murrell’s Inlet
The water and sky are spectacular down here on the South Carolina coast. No sign of global warming this week — temperatures were blessedly and unseasonably cool yesterday. Good thing the Bacons aren’t adventure kayaking in the Arctic this summer. According to the Danish Meteorological Institute, the extent of Arctic sea ice is 50% greater…
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Boilerplate, Hocus Pocus and a False Choice
by James A. Bacon So, Laura Lafayette, CEO of the Richmond Association of Realtors, has responded to my recent column in the Times-Dispatch regarding the Henrico County meals tax. Much of the column consists of boilerplate pro-tax talking points that you can find on the Henrico County’s supposedly non-advocacy “informational” meals-tax website. But she does…
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The Changing Definition of “Law and Order”
Conservative thinking about crime and “law and order” is changing. When I wrote about overcrowding in Richmond city jail earlier this year, I had little inkling that there was a larger, national conservative movement to re-evaluate ways to reduce jail and prison populations. But it turns out there was. I was surprised to find that…
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The Corruption Scandal You Haven’t Read About
by James A. Bacon Virginia political news this summer has been dominated by the GiftGate scandal, as well it should have been — citizens need to hold state elected officials to the highest standards of ethical behavior. “I abode by the letter of the law,” is not a defense. Some things are wrong, even if…
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Summer Doldrums
I know I know… I’m a slacker. I take a full week’s vacation every year. Sometimes two weeks. The Bacon family is heading Saturday to Litchfield Beach, S.C. Nothing fancy. Just an old-fashioned beach vacation. I’ll be checking in every so often, and I may make a couple of quick-and-dirty blog posts. Henrico County meals…
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Finding the Right Formula for Libbie & Grove
by James A. Bacon When last we visited the re-development of the Libbie & Grove neighborhood of Richmond (“The Densification of Richmond“), public opposition had stymied the conversion of a BP gas station into a four-story luxury apartment complex. The proposed facility was just too big — it would have been out of place in…
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Virginia Is for Oenophiles
Virginia’s wine industry is on a roll, and one of the factors driving growth are some of the most wine-friendly consumer laws in the country. Virginia is one of seven states to win a perfect A+ rating from the Virginia Wine Consumer Coalition in its 2013 state-by-state report card on consumer access to wine. “Wine…
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Walkable Urbanism Takes Root in Virginia Beach
by James A. Bacon Back in the pre-PowerPoint days when people used slide projectors, New Urbanist evangelist Andres Duany traveled around the country with a carousel of slides to illustrate the horrors that poor planning had inflicted upon the urban landscape. One of those slides, I recall, was an aerial shot of the intersection of…