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Jeanine’s Memes
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The Real Fascists Next Door
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Hitler, animal lover, with his dog Blondi. by James A. Bacon
If you read the recent post, “The Fascists Next Door,” you would see that serious people at the University of Virginia — people who get paid actual salaries, not people who store their worldly belongings in stolen grocery carts — peddle the notion that middle-class Americans are fascists. Not all middle-class Americans, perhaps. Not the ones who think like them. Just those who wave the flag on the 4th of July, believe in the sanctity of the traditional family structure, and/or vote for Republicans. Apparently, such people are rooted in the mythic white-people past that gives rise to racism, sexism, and homophobia — in other words, fascism.
The Brainiacs who espouse such views about fascism, a doctrine that elevates the ideal of the all-powerful state, ignore the part where most middle Americans yearn to curtail the powers of the state. They also overlook the fact the fathers and grandfathers of these middle Americans, in all their toxic masculinity, waded ashore on D-Day into a hail of Nazi bullets on their way to, you know, overthrowing Adolph Hitler. Waving rainbow flags would not have chased the Nazis out of France. Indeed, if America had been counting on the snowflakes who melt from contact with college-campus “microaggressions,” we’d all be speaking German now. (more…)
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I Still Miss Dad After 23 Years
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by Kerry DoughertyI wrote this column in June of 1998, just weeks after my father’s sudden death of a heart attack. (He died riding his exercise bike at age 74.) In many ways, this post is dated. Yet I hope it still is meaningful. I loved the guy.
To make sense of the piece it’s worth noting that on May 7, 1998 — the day Dad died — the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 8,976. Morrison’s Cafeteria in Virginia Beach closed many years ago. The round-trip toll on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel is now $36, not $20. Worse, they no longer give you a coupon for a free thimble full of Coke. I guarantee you that would have ticked off my father.
This is the first year in my life that I have no one to call or send a card to on Father’s Day. My dad died six weeks ago.
Then again, the card thing always posed a problem, as Hallmark never produced one that captured the spirit of my father. He was a child of the Depression, a character out of a Jimmy Stewart movie. He was a cross between Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and Norman Vincent Peale. He was a man who had eaten in some of the finest restaurants in America but preferred dinner with his grandchildren at Morrison’s Cafeteria.
Wherever he ate, he always said grace first. (more…)
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The Fascists Next Door
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Displaying dangerous fascistic tendencies… Photo credit: DailySIgnal by Ann Mclean
Want more evidence that the University of Virginia has become an impermeable thought bubble where people can say the craziest things without fear of contradiction? Consider this: Two University of Virginia professors —Manuela Achilles and Kyrill Kunakhovich — taught a history course this spring that portrays American conservatives as fascists. They weren’t being hyperbolic. They really meant it.
In their analysis, the wellspring of fascism is not worship of the all-powerful, totalitarian state — which conservatives totally reject — but the traditional American virtues of family and patriotism.
I first learned of this class from a young friend of mine. Here is her description:
Recently, I enrolled in a fascism class thinking it would be a great way to weed through the constant accusations that politicians make about who is fascist and who is not. The class started out great. We studied Hitler and Mussolini and other fascisms in Europe, then moved to Asia to look at Japanism, but the more the course progressed, the more I was confused about what fascism actually is. My professors chose to leave fascism undefined and allow each student to come to their own conclusion. That seems pretty reasonable, right? I thought so, too. (more…)
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Yes, Virginia, There Is Critical Race Theory In Our Schools
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by Elizabeth SchultzSchool districts across Virginia have been expending resources, directing staff time, and hiring consultants to address “equity” in curriculum delivery and for professional development of teachers and other employees. Fairfax and Loudoun County, the two largest counties in the Commonwealth, have set the lead in driving the changes in education and embracing critical race theory and “anti-bias” in their respective divisions.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) pushes the distorted concept that the most important thing about a person is his or her race. It divides people by those who are “minoritized” and those who are “privileged” and “oppressors,” advancing Marxist ideology that, by default, all interactions are derived from racism, our history and nation is built on racism, and all inequities are, yes, ascribed to racism. The color of one’s skin defines whether they are racist, not their beliefs or actions.
As a result, to undo the professed mantle of inherent racism in all aspects of society, CRT demands “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, addressing “justice”, and, according to activists like Ibrahm X. Kendi, the Center for Antiracist Research director at Boston University, requires people to become “anti-racist.” (more…)
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Wind Power Is Beautiful But Expensive
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by James A. BaconOffshore wind turbines are works of engineering beauty. Soaring as high as the Washington Monument, they are a magnificent sight to behold, as I saw for myself on an excursion Wednesday to view Dominion Energy’s two experimental wind turbines up close. The towers are also very expensive — not just the two pilot turbines, which no one pretended at $300 million for the pair would produce economical electricity, but the fully built-out wind farm with 180 turbines at a cost currently estimated at $7.8 billion.
If the only cost you consider is the expense of erecting a turbine itself, offshore wind can look competitive with solar and combined-cycle natural gas. Dominion officials estimate their wind turbines will generate electricity at a cost of 8 cents to 9 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s less than the average rate of $10.83 cents per kilowatt hour Dominion charges its customers.
But the turbines don’t generate electricity in a vacuum. They are part of an electrical-generating system. And you can’t build a system around turbines that generate electricity only when the wind blows. Dominion must build a major transmission line to plug into the grid and maintain backup power sources to kick in when the winds fall still. (more…)
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Packing the UVa Law School Faculty
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Risa Goluboff, dean of the University of Virginia Law School by Ann McLean
Earlier this week UVA Today touted the addition of 17 high-profile professors — packed with former U.S. Supreme Court clerks, Rhodes Scholars, and even a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship genius grant recipient — to the University of Virginia Law School.
“Our new and incoming faculty are either already academic superstars or superstars in the making,” said Dean Risa Goluboff. They are “highly influential voices in their fields whose scholarship will have an impact at UVA Law, both inside and outside of the classroom, and well beyond it.”
The law school’s run of prestigious hires, who include nine women and seven “people of color,” have sparked envious praise on Twitter, gushes the article, written by Eric Williamson, associate director of communications for the law school. “I feel like they must be amassing this incredibly all star faculty for a reason,” one woman is quoted as tweeting. “A new Marvel series? Avengers: Endgame 2?”
The article omitted one salient fact of interest to the broader UVa community — there is no intellectual diversity in the group. Every new hire tilts to the left ideologically. There’s not a conservative among them. (more…)
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Pre-COVID Test Results Show a Failed Public Education System
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by James C. SherlockI have questions in my own mind about the quality of Virginia public schools.
In search of answers I invested several weeks full time in building into a spreadsheet what I consider some of the critical metrics among both Virginia public schools in general and ten different school districts that I chose.
For each of those districts I recorded data on:
- demographic groups by racial cohort, economically disadvantaged, and English learners;
- school investment;
- chronic absenteeism;
- SOL reading and math performance of each demographic group in each district; and
- Compared them to state averages in each metric.
I chose and paired the ten different school districts (of 133) in an attempt to get a cross section of urban, suburban and rural districts in Northern Virginia, the Richmond area, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads and Southern Virginia.
I used the 2018-19 school year, the last year before COVID, to provide a baseline for learning losses and what those schools need to do going forward.
The data reveal enormous problems with the basic building blocks of education. (more…)
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Still an Open Question: Will Virginia Become Supply Chain Hub for East-Coast Wind Farms?
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The Luxembourg-flagged Vole Au Vent is seen here installing one of Dominion Energy’s two experimental wind turbines 27 miles off the Virginia coast last year. Photo credit: Dominion. An American-made vessel will install the next 180 or so turbines. by James A. Bacon
The primary justification for spending $7.8 billion to build a wind farm off the Virginia coast at a significantly higher cost per kilowatt than other energy sources is to advance Virginia’s goal of achieving a zero-carbon electric grid by 2050. But an important secondary consideration is the hope that the project will jump-start the creation of a new industry in Hampton Roads serving the emerging East Coast offshore wind industry.
Virginia has deep channels, no bridge obstructions, an active maritime community, and perhaps the nation’s largest shipbuilding industry. Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, it is hoped, will catalyze development of a multibillion-dollar offshore wind-energy industry in Virginia.
That case is a little harder to make these days. When Dominion decided to invest $500 million in building an offshore wind-turbine installation vessel, none of Virginia’s shipbuilding companies was interested. All were booked up with Navy contracts. The vessel, named after the mythical Greek sea monster Charybdis, is being constructed in Brownsville, Texas. (more…)
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What Dominion Has Learned From Its Experimental Wind Turbines
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by James A. BaconDominion Energy spent $300 million to erect the two wind turbines now standing about 27 miles off the Virginia coast, a sum that could never be justified by the 12 megawatts of generating capacity they add to the grid— enough to power only 3,000 homes. The real benefit will come later, when Dominion builds a proposed 180-turbine wind farm expected to generate 2,640 megawatts of capacity, enough to power up to 600,000 homes, at a projected cost of $7.8 billion.
Thanks to the data gathered from the two experimental turbines, Dominion officials say it will need 40 fewer of the multimillion-dollar turbines than it had originally anticipated, a savings of hundreds of millions of dollars. Also, from the experience of leasing an expensive, hard-to-book installation vessel, Dominion is investing $500 million, risking shareholders’ money not ratepayers’ money, which will serve other East Coast windfarm projects as well as Dominion’s at a lower cost than chartering a European vessel.
Company officials say they have learned other odds and ends from the experimental turbines that will inform their safety and environmental efforts going forward. (more…)
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Who’s Setting Car Fires in Norfolk’s Ghent Neighborhood?
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by Kerry DoughertyWho’s setting those car fires in Ghent?
Oh, you haven’t heard about the arsons? Buckle up.
Last Friday night, as rain drenched Norfolk, Patrick and Tiffany McGee and their two young sons were watching TV in their picturesque Cape Cod with a picket fence on the corner of Redgate and Claremont Avenues in West Ghent.
According to a witness report filed by Patrick McGee, Tiffany saw a figure outside of their home and by the time her husband — a former Navy SEAL — opened the door and sprinted outside he found their two cars engulfed in flames. Patrick got his family out of the back of the house and to safety while neighbors who’d gathered near the inferno called for help.
The fire trucks arrived, one after another, and finally put out the conflagration which had spread to the attached garage and nearby trees. (more…)
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Beach School Board’s Meeting Was Legal. But It Wasn’t Right.
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by Kerry DoughertyGood news for elected officials who find the public’s presence at their meetings a pesky distraction, who give half-hearted, last-minute notice of meetings and then lock the doors to the building where the meeting is being held.
It’s all legal!
Yep, apparently Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act law has broad exemptions for what are considered “special meetings,” so the June 1 shenanigans of the Virginia Beach School Board members — who did all of the above — did not run afoul of the open meeting statutes, according to a judge’s ruling yesterday.
Neither did the fact that they were obviously trying to confuse the public by postponing and then cancelling meeting dates, which resulted in the happy accident of thwarting a scheduled rally protesting Critical Race Theory in Beach schools. (more…)
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These Two Electric Chargers Ran Out of Gas, So to Speak
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Out of Order I’m just back from a trip to Virginia Beach on a media tour of Dominion Energy’s two experimental offshore wind turbines. I’ll have more to say about them shortly. As for the subject of this post… Driving home, I stopped at the Interstate 64 rest stop between West Point and Richmond. Very conveniently for drivers of electric vehicles, the rest stop sports two EV fast-charging stations. Recharge your car while you’re taking a leak!
Dominion Energy installed the fast-charging station in partnership with the Virginia Department of Transportation in 2009, according to this article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It was to be the first of many.
Correction: The original version of this post made the inaccurate assumption that these charging stations were part of a recent Northam administration initiative with Los Angeles-base EVgo funded from a Volkswagen settlement. Bacon’s Rebellion regrets the error. But Bacon’s Rebellion still wonders who paid for the charging stations — Dominion rate payers or shareholders — and how long they have been out of order.
— JAB
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From Farming Corn to Electrons
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Dominion solar farm. Photo credit: Dominion. By Dick Hall-Sizemore
In light of recent denials by local governing bodies, there has been some skepticism expressed on this blog as to whether the Commonwealth could meet its goals on solar energy. Going against recent trends, however, has been the city of Chesapeake.
According to the Virginian-Pilot, the city council recently approved an application to build a 900-acre solar farm. This most recent approval about doubles the size of three previously-approved projects. It is estimated the project will cost $100 million. The company anticipates generating 118 megawatts, enough to power about 20,000 homes.
The land involved is now prime farmland. An interesting aspect of this project is that is an amalgamation of acreage from multiple owners. (more…)
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Herd Immunity Versus Herd Insanity
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by James A. BaconLike 450 other higher-ed institutions across the United States, the University of Virginia will require all students to be fully vaccinated for the COVID-19 vaccine if they want to return to classes this fall. The mandate extends to the 2,800 students who got the virus and now enjoy acquired immunities. Oddly, the mandate does not include university employees, even though they are older on average and more likely to catch and spread the virus.
Virginia may be reaching herd immunity as the number of confirmed cases rapidly approaches zero, but UVa can be fairly said to have reached herd insanity — the phenomenon of following other colleges and universities issuing vaccine mandates because everyone is issuing them.
A couple of days ago I wrote a post asking the university to reveal UVa President Jim Ryan’s justification for asking the Board of Visitors to approve the mandate. No explanation is forthcoming. The university says that the president’s “working papers” are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Judging by the comments on that post (150 at this point), readers were more fixated on the scientific and moral dimensions of the policy than UVa’s lack of transparency, so I turn to that issue today.
While pro- and anti-mandate advocates were contending on Bacon’s Rebellion, Aaron Kheriaty and Gerard F. Bradley published a column in the Wall Street Journal that clarified several aspects of the debate. (more…)
