Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

  • Check Out Which New Virginia Laws Go Into Effect July 1st

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    Robin Beres

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    by The Republican Standard staff

    The Virginia General Assembly passed several small bills due to the split between the Republican-led House of Delegates and the Democratic-controlled Virginia State Senate. Yet the areas where they did find co-operation could matter to many Virginians as we head into Fourth of July weekend.

    Enhanced Penalties for Fentanyl Manufacturing or Distribution
    Reeves SB1188 Senate 35-5 House 50-42
    Provides that any person who knowingly and intentionally manufactures or knowingly and intentionally distributes a weapon of terrorism when such person knows that such weapon of terrorism is, or contains, any mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of fentanyl is guilty of a Class 4 felony.

    Universal Occupational License Recognition
    McDougle SB1213 Senate 40-0 House 99-0
    Establishes criteria for an individual licensed, certified, or having work experience in another state to apply to a regulatory board within the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation and be issued an occupational license or government certification if certain conditions are met.

    Police Chiefs May Enact Local Curfews during Disturbances
    Norment SB1455 Senate 27-12 House 53-45
    Enables the chief law-enforcement officer of a locality to enact a curfew under certain circumstances during a civil disturbance.

    Making Sure Every District has a Legislator
    Suetterlein SB944 Senate 39-0 House 99-0
    Requires special elections to fill a vacancy in the membership of the General Assembly be held within 30 days of the vacancy if the vacancy occurs or will occur between December 10 and March 10 which coincides with time right before and during the General Assembly session. (more…)

  • Virginia: Look West To See What’s Coming

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    by Kerry Dougherty

    Reason #5,692 not to vote for ANY Democrats running for the General Assembly this fall:

    We all know that Virginia’s leftists in Richmond yearn for our lovely commonwealth to be more like California. When last they controlled the state legislature these nuts directly tethered our energy policies to that “progressive” utopia.

    It won’t stop there, so let’s see what else is on its way from the West Coast.

    Looky here! It’s Assembly Bill 665, working its way through the legislature. When this passes — and it’s just wacky enough to win approval — it would essentially emancipate some 12-year-olds, allowing them to seek mental health care without their parents’ approval. (more…)

  • Electricity Bill Caps for Poor Start in November

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    by Steve Haner

    Beginning next winter, low- income customers of Dominion Energy Virginia or Appalachian Power Company will be eligible to have their monthly bills capped under a new state financial assistance program.

    The income cut off to qualify for Virginia’s new Percentage of Income Payment Plan (PIPP) assisting low income households with their electric bills is the same as the threshold for the long-standing Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). So LIHEAP beneficiaries will likely be the first enrolled in the new program later in 2023. (more…)

  • Old Law Coming Back to Bite Virginia?

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

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    Voting booths in Portsmouth. Photo credit: Virginian-Pilot

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    On behalf of three Virginia residents, the Virginia ACLU, along with a large D.C. law firm, has filed suit in federal court challenging the provision of Virginia’s constitution that disenfranchises anyone convicted of a felony, providing that their voting rights can be restored only by the governor.

    Such a legal challenge is not necessarily new, but the basis for this one is novel and fascinating The plaintiffs claim that the provision of the Virginia constitution is illegal because it violates the provisions of the federal law that allowed for the Commonwealth’s readmission to the Union after the Civil War.  That law included this provision, similar to that included for laws applicable to other member states of the Confederacy:

    That the State of Virginia is admitted to representation in Congress as one of the States of the Union upon the following fundamental conditions: First, that the Constitution of Virginia shall never be so amended or changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United States of the right to vote who are entitled to vote by the Constitution herein recognized, except as a punishment for such crimes as are now felonies at common law, whereof they shall have been duly convicted under laws equally applicable to all the inhabitants of said State.  [Emphasis added.] (more…)

  • Patriotism in Virginia

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    by Robin Beres

    In less than a week, Virginians, like Americans everywhere, will celebrate Independence Day. This year, despite high inflation, high gas prices, a sharply divided electorate, and rising crime rates, there seems to be a growing consensus that we celebrate this occasion with all the gusto we can muster.

    Despite the holiday falling on a Tuesday, from Winchester to Norfolk to Abingdon, plans are afoot for a glorious Fourth, complete with fireworks, parades, and hot dogs. Mount Vernon is celebrating the naturalization of hundreds of new American citizens. Colonial Williamsburg is offering free admission to its historic area and art museums on July 4. Virginia Beach is hosting free concerts on 17th Street, 24th Street, and 31st Street. Just about every small town and village is having a parade. With 27 military installations around the state, expect to see lots of marching troops and military static displays.

    Audience members hold their hands over their hearts while the U.S. Air Force Band plays the national anthem at Williamsburg, Va., July 4, 2012.

    Thankfully, Virginia has so far managed to avoid the oppressive heat dome that sits over much of the United States. But even if the temps do soar above the 90-degree mark, it probably wouldn’t deter many Virginians from celebrating our Independence Day. It’s what we do — and studies show we do it with more pride than any other state in the union. (more…)

  • Public School Clubs: What Happened To Chess, Drama and Debate?

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    Bob Rayner

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    by Kerry Dougherty

    Never mind that public school test scores are plummeting and that kids from coast to coast are falling hopelessly behind. The Biden Administration is focused on one thing: “inclusion.”

    On June 21 the Department of Education issued a “toolkit” called “Creating Inclusive and Nondiscriminatory School Environments For LGBTQI+ Students.”

    Included in the toolkit is the Biden Administration’s recommendation that “teachers and administrators help students establish Gender and Sexuality Alliances” in their schools.

    Those are clubs, based only on sexuality. If your local high or middle school doesn’t have one yet, it’s coming.

    Count on it.

    At the risk of sounding like a fossil, I need to ask: since when do schools urge kids to start clubs on sexuality? What’s next, the Future Dominatrixes of America club? A Furry Fan club? A Pup Play club?

    Enough, already. (more…)

  • Roanoke County Quietly Extends Contract For $109,000 Year Registrar But Questions Persist

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    by Scott Dreyer

    For many historical and cultural reasons, America has traditionally been what sociologists call a “high-trust” society. As reported in this report from the Pew Research Center, cultures with high trust (such as Canada and Sweden) usually have low crime and corruption while the reverse (such as South Africa and Peru) is also true.

    Unfortunately, polls show Americans’ trust in major institutions has been on a downward slope for the past 15 years or so. Gallup first measured confidence in institutions in 1973 and has done so annually since 1993. A Gallup poll from June 2022 showed significant declines for 11 of the 16 institutions tested and no improvements for any.

    Those who expressed “a great deal” of confidence in the three branches of the federal government, newspapers, TV news, big tech, and the criminal justice system were all at 26% or below.

    On the issue of voting, most Americans have generally trusted the system, although documented cases of stolen elections exist. One example is the 1948 Democrat primary Senate runoff in Texas. Then-Congressman Lyndon Johnson (D) was initially behind until some mysteriously “uncounted ballots” were found in a ballot box called Box 13. Johnson then won with an 87-vote margin, earning him the nickname “Landslide Lyndon.” Johnson went on to defeat the Republican candidate in November and from the Senate later became John F. Kennedy’s vice president and then president after JFK’s assassination. (more…)

  • Correction: My Story on PIPP Was Wrong

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    Virginia’s Department of Social Services (DSS) has prepared a plan for the implementation of a cap on electricity costs for low-income customers of Virginia’s two main utilities. My report on June 27 that the plan was “missing in action” was wrong.

    For the most interested, you can find the DSS draft here, and it envisions the Percentage of Income Payment Program (PIPP) beginning in November of this year.

    I owe apologies to the folks at DSS who clearly have been working on this, and obviously they were working with both utilities to get to this point. I also falsely implied it had dropped off the radar with the Glenn Youngkin Administration, and unfairly implied that the various advocacy groups who supported this had lost interest in it. My post was so irredeemably wrong and unfair I just deleted it.

    Part of my reason for the post was to flush out what was happening, and I appreciate the reader who had seen the document and referred to it in a comment. He provided the link above. But the commentary was mine and I regret the errors. I will now dive in a bit deeper and perhaps file a later report on what is being proposed.

    Fifty-one years ago last summer, covering my first American Legion League baseball game for the Petersburg Progress-Index, watching a local team (and being asked to keep the official scorebook) for the first time, I wrote a story that included the wrong names of the player who scored the winning run and the player credited with the RBI. The editor made me take every angry phone call. The feeling rushes back.

    -SDH

  • Population Changes in the Commonwealth Since the 2020 Census

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    by James C. Sherlock

    The Bureau of the Census has issued its estimates of the population changes in Virginia and its 133 jurisdictions since the 2020 census.

    They are always of interest, but perhaps more so since 2020-2022 spanned the COVID years.

    The categories of change calculated by the Census Bureau are total change, natural change (births minus deaths) and migration. They provided the raw numbers.

    In the attached spreadsheet, I let Excel calculate the percentages, which I find more meaningful. Some are surprising given that it was only a two-year period, but perhaps not, since it spanned the COVID years.

    We’ll examine them. (more…)

  • Policing Ain’t Bean Bag… Or Maybe It Is

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    James A. Bacon

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    Upon hearing that the Fairfax County Police Department had scrapped conventional shotgun shells in favor of “bean bag” projectiles, my initial reaction was to mock the change. Bean bags? What’s the next tool in the police arsenal — pillows? Given the approving tone of the article in The Washington Post, I was tempted to dismiss the idea as the latest excrescence of politically correct dogma.

    After further examination, I have reconsidered. Tasers are one non-lethal  alternative, but they don’t always work, especially if the target is pumped up on drugs. Does anyone remember Rodney King? The bean bag projectiles aren’t perfect — they can cause injuries or in rare circumstances kill. Still, they inflict a lot less damage than bullets or buckshot. The Fox News clip above shows how Atlanta police used bean bag rounds to disarm a man with a hatchet and axe.

    Giving police alternatives to beating recalcitrant suspects into submission is always a good idea.  — JAB

  • Destroying the Commonwealth in Order to Save It

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    (This was first published today by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy)

    by Barbara Hollingsworth

    Members of the General Assembly who voted for a bill in 2021 mandating that new vehicles sold in Virginia must be all-electric by 2035 forgot to do the math to show exactly how that would work in real life.

    As the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy noted in February when we unsuccessfully made the case for repeal of this ill-advised legislation, the Commonwealth simply does not have the technological capacity to make such a massive switch from internal combustion engines in such a short period of time.

    Replacing the energy stored in one pound of oil takes 15 pounds of lithium battery. To mine the materials found in the typical 1,000 pound car battery will mean mining and processing about 250 tons of rock and dirt.

    Nobody told Virginians that the level of subsurface mining required to manufacture the millions of new batteries required to store electricity generated by wind, solar and other “renewable” energy sources will dwarf current production levels, scarring the earth.

    Consider our planet — including Virginia, which has deposits of copper, manganese and zinc — pockmarked with ten times the current number of mines, resembling craters on the moon. This in a state that won’t even allow an underground natural gas pipeline to be built. (more…)

  • Profound Registered Nurse Shortages in a Virginia Beach Nursing Home

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    By James C. Sherlock

    Registered nurses (RNs) both supervise medical treatment and are the primary medical care providers in nursing homes.

    Physicians are on call but generally are not present.

    One Virginia nursing home is currently advertising:

    RN’s Now hiring All Shifts! Pick your shift.

    Perhaps not good news for those patients.

    Some of the worst nursing homes are just bad places to work.  Others don’t pay their nurses enough.

    Some both.

    I will describe with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) information a Virginia Beach nursing home that:

    • is grossly understaffed; and
    • has been cited in its most recent inspection both for abuse of patients and for failure to provide appropriate treatment and care.

    Yet it is open and soliciting new residents.

    (more…)

  • Henrico Schools Are Failing Its Poor Students

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    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    John Butcher’s recent article on the relationship of SOL reading scores and funding per pupil prompted me to examine the most recent (2022) 3rd grade reading scores of students in Henrico County, where I live. The scores for disadvantaged students, particularly Black students, are awful.

    I decided to present my findings to the school board and confront them with the failure of the schools they oversee. However, at their meeting this past week, I had only three minutes to speak. I do not talk fast enough to get much said in three minutes. Accordingly, I have sent them copies of the prepared remarks set out below.  I do not have hope for much of a response. (more…)

  • Off the Interstate–A Local Place For A Snack

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    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    If you are traveling through the middle of the Commonwealth this summer and want a break for some ice cream, this is the place.

    Just north of Culpeper on Rt. 29 is Moo Thru.  The claim is that the operators make the ice cream using fresh milk from cows in the region.  It is very good and they have a wide assortment of flavors.

    You can drive through or order from the window and eat on picnic tables under an open shelter.   It is a popular place and, on weekends, there are usually cars backed up for the drive-through and people lined up at the window.

  • NAEP Before and After COVID

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    by John Butcher

    We’ve been hearing about the post-COVID declines in scores on the National Assessment of Educational Process (NAEP) tests. The NAEP database offers some (in fact, an abundance of) details.

    Here, as a small sample, are the 4th and 8th grade reading and mathematics data for the nation and Virginia.

    First, reading:

    (more…)