Tag: James A. Bacon
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Youngkin Unveils New Trans Policy for Schools
by James A. Bacon The Youngkin administration has issued a new set of model policies designed to uphold the “privacy, dignity and respect” of all students and parents in Virginia public schools, replacing a policy put into effect by the Northam administration in 2021. The new policies strike me as eminently reasonable. The guidelines make…
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Just as We Need Them More Than Ever, Virginia Libertarians Have Dissolved Themselves
by James A. Bacon In a profound disagreement over philosophy, The Libertarian Party of Virginia has voted to dissolve itself. In a 7 to 5 vote, the state central committee contended that the national image of the party was now “functionally indistinct from other alt-right parties and movements.” But the national Libertarian Party declared that…
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College “Equity” and the Student Pipeline Problem
by James A. Bacon It’s sad to see that my friends at the Partners for College Affordability & Public Trust (once a sponsor of Bacon’s Rebellion) have embraced the “social justice” paradigm for higher education. I whole-heartedly endorsed their mission when it focused on containing the rising cost of college attendance generally and advocated increased…
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Great Moments in the Annals of Virginia Transportation
by James A. Bacon Two recent news nuggets provide a juxtaposition that calls into question the sanity of Virginia’s transportation policy. Item #1: The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) will pay the lead contractor on the long-delayed Silver Line rail extension $207 million more as part of an agreement reached in July, reports The Washington…
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VCU Police Department Signals Its Wokeness
by James A. Bacon A new “resource” will be available to the LGBTQIA+ community in Richmond. Virginia Commonwealth University — yes, the same institution that recently lost $470,000 in a cyber scam — has assigned two campus patrol officers as “campus LGBTQIA+ liaisons.” A recent university announcement noted that VCU Police Chief John Venuti has…
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Watch Out, Nigerian Princes Are Using Bitcoin and VPNs Now
by James A. Bacon Nigerian scam artists are upping their game. Ten or twenty years ago, they bombarded the Internet with tales of African potentates and lost fortunes that only the favored email recipient could help recover… if he or she could provide a small bank deposit first. There were so many of these entertaining…
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“Our Life Is Always Threatened”
by James A. Bacon Last week an unidentified White man draped a noose from the statue of Homer at the University of Virginia. Without any evidence of the perpetrator’s motive, University Police and President Jim Ryan promptly proclaimed the incident a hate crime. Yesterday, a group of 60 or so students gathered near the statue…
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Presumed Racist Until Proven Innocent
by James A. Bacon Around 11:15 p.m. last Wednesday, a White male dressed in dark clothing climbed the statue of the blind poet Homer on the grounds of the University of Virginia and hung a noose around its neck. The next day University President Jim Ryan declared the incident to be a “hate crime” and…
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Va. Colleges Fare Pretty Well in Free-Speech Rankings
by James A. Bacon Three Virginia universities scored in the top 25 institutions in the 2022-23 College Free Speech Rankings published this week by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The College of William and Mary scored 12th among the 203 institutions ranked in the national survey of 44,900 undergraduate students. George Mason…
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Sorry, Lefties, But Racists Don’t Invest In Black Enterprise
by James A. Bacon The broadsides against Bert Ellis are going national. Inside Higher Education, the higher-ed trade publication, has published an article highlighting the growing controversy over Ellis’ appointment to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors. The article quotes Eva Surovell, editor-in-chief of The Cavalier Daily, whose articles sparked the furor, as saying…
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A Lie Is Born
by James A. Bacon It is horrifying to watch in real time how the media generates falsehoods and then spreads them without correction. About two weeks ago The Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Virginia, published an article about a 47-year-old controversy in which Bert Ellis, who then was a tri-chairman of…
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Another Way to Crunch the SOL Numbers…
For simplicity’s sake in recent posts about the 2021-22 Standards of Learning (SOL) results, I’ve used the pass rates for English reading tests as a proxy for all five subjects, including English writing, math, science, and history. Perhaps a better way to rate the performance of Virginia school districts would be to compute a composite…
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Culture Wars + Unearned Income Equality = Political Realignment
by James A. Bacon If you want to understand the political realignment taking place in the United States — and Virginia, of course — you need to read this column in The Wall Street Journal: “Income Equality, Not Inequality, Is the Problem.” Most commentary on income inequality in the U.S. focuses on income reported to…
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North of the James: Fastest Growing Housing Prices on the East Coast
by James A. Bacon Ever since the late 1930s Virginia’s population has grown faster than that of the nation — until the past few years, that is. Recently, Virginia has experienced a slight net out-migration of domestic residents, and population growth has slowed to match that of the U.S. as a whole. Writing in the…
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Where Black Students Outperform Whites
by James A. Bacon A major concern arising from the latest Standards of Learning (SOL) data is the fact that the racial divide between Asians and Whites on the one hand and Blacks and Hispanics on the other has gotten wider over the past three years. This disturbing trend has occurred despite unprecedented efforts to…