Tag: James A. Bacon
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Northam to Address VMI
by James A. Bacon “Northam heads to hostile terrain — VMI — to speak to 1,700 cadets.” That’s the headline on the Washington Post’s latest update on the hardball politics of racism and anti-racism at the Virginia Military Institute. The headline is a stretch, even if you believe, as the Washington Post has insisted, the…
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Marik Sues Sentara Over COVID-19 Treatment Ban
by James A. Bacon Paul Marik, director of Sentara Norfolk General’s ICU, has sued the hospital to reverse a ban on a treatment protocol he uses to treat critically ill patients. That protocol includes the administration of ivermectin and fluvoxamine. In the lawsuit Marik claimed that the Sentara restrictions may have contributed to the deaths…
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In Praise of Two Great Public Servants
by James A. Bacon Virginia has been blessed to have had many superb public servants over the years. They may not be remembered in the history books, which have a bias toward elected politicians, but we are reminded of the indispensable contributions of at least two of them in today’s news clippings. One is leaving…
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The Invisible Side of the Student Loan Crisis: Debt Collection
by James A. Bacon VPM News tells the story of Joshua Bowser, a Virginia State University dropout who was living at home in New Jersey with his parents and working two jobs. Unbeknownst to the young man, he owed the Commonwealth somewhere between $6,900 and $10,700 (the paperwork gave different figures) for unpaid tuition and…
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“Working People” Resist
@rhondaleehughesgriffith ♬ original sound – Rhonda Lee Hughes Gr I don’t know who Rhonda Lee Hughes Griffin is, or where she’s from. And my aim here is not to comment on the validity of her views about COVID-19 vaccinations. Rather, I point to this 24-second TikTok video as a crystallization of the new class divide…
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The Ten-Year Tab for Economic Development Incentives: $3 Billion
by James A. Bacon Virginia spent $3 billion on economic incentive programs during the decade of the 2010s (between FY 2011 to FY 2020), equivalent to 1.5% of the total General Fund budget. Although there is considerable variability from year to year, incentives grew roughly twice as rapidly as the rest of the total budget,…
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Make Government Work Again
Education blogger John Butcher highlights key insights from Matt Hurt’s Bacon’s Rebellion series about Virginia’s Standards of Learning assessments. Butcher, whose skepticism is amply captured in the title of his blog, “Cranky’s Blog,” finds much to admire in Hurt’s analysis and the success of the Comprehensive Instructional Program (CIP) consortium that he heads. Southwest Virginia…
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Indians and McAuliffe’s Last Stand
by James A. Bacon A certain KP Nayar offers an interesting perspective on Virginia’s gubernatorial election from his vantage point as the Washington columnist for Moneycontrol.com, an English-language publication serving the business market in India. “Indian Americans constitute only one percent of the U.S. electorate, but Virginia is a state where they have influenced state…
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Is Virginia Exporting Its Human Capital?
by James A. Bacon Researchers at the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) are asking a question with profound implications for Virginia’s higher-education policy. Is Virginia exporting more college graduates than it is importing? The answer, conclude Tom Allison & Susan Hankins in the latest Insights post, is, “Maybe. Enough to get our…
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Herring Intervenes to Protect Hospital Competition… in Pennsylvania
by James A. Bacon It’s encouraging to see that Mark Herring has taken a forceful action against an “anticompetitive hospital merger” in his final days as Attorney General. Too bad the targets of his judicial intervention are in New Jersey, not Virginia. Herring has joined a bipartisan coalition of 26 attorneys general filing an amicus…
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No Indoctrination to See Here, Move Along Now — Albemarle County Edition
by James A. Bacon A disturbed parent of an Albemarle County middle school student has directed me to materials used in classroom presentation as part of the “Courageous Conversations about Race,” initiative at the Henley Middle School website. “We’re unique among school divisions and, for that matter, organizations of any kind, for having adopted an…
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Oops. Wind Farm to Cost $2 Billion More
by James A. Bacon Dominion Energy’s CEO Bob Blue acknowledged yesterday that the cost of the power company’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project will cost $9.8 billion — $2 billion more than previously stated. During an investor conference call, Blue blamed the 25% jump on “commodity and general cost pressures” as well as completion of…
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Spanberger Speaks Truth to Power
by James A. Bacon As Democrats come to terms with their butt-whooping in Virginia and their near-death experience in New Jersey, they’ve been asking themselves what went wrong. Predictably, pundits from the University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato to MSNBC’s Joy Reid have interpreted the shellacking as a racist White backlash. This delusional bubble-think is a…
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College Faculty Don’t “Think Like America”
by James A. Bacon It has become a widespread conviction on Virginia’s colleges and universities that faculty and staff should “look like Virginia” in their demographic make-up. There is no comparable obsession with hiring faculty and staff that “think like Virginia.” Employees of James Madison University — faculty, staff, and administrators — donated more than…
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How the WaPo’s Epic Fail on Schools Helped Elect Youngkin
by James A. Bacon The national news media are full of commentary today analyzing the implications of the Republican sweep of statewide offices in Virginia. Almost all focus on Glenn Youngkin’s deft exploitation of the culture wars playing out in the state’s public schools, especially in Northern Virginia. Youngkin does indeed deserve credit for harnessing…