Tag: James A. Bacon
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Sidney, We’ll Miss You
by James A. Bacon Sidney Gunst, who died last week, was best known as the pioneering developer of the Innsbrook office park in Henrico County — the biggest employment center in the Richmond metropolitan area outside of downtown Richmond. The Richmond Times Dispatch’s Greg Gilligan did a fine job on short notice of capturing Sidney’s…
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Leftist Media Does Battlefield Prep for White Supremacist Trial
by James A. Bacon Left-wing media from the New York Times to National Public Radio are as excited as can be about a civil trial starting today in Charlottesville that targets organizers of the infamous Unite the Right rally in 2017. As the Times puts it, lawyers for the nine plaintiffs “are hoping that their…
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Bacon Bits: More Woke Wars
The culture wars are never ending. My previous Bacon Bits post only scratched the surface. Here’s more…. Crackdown on parents was orchestrated. Remember how the National School Boards Association wrote that letter accusing parents of terrorizing school board members across the country, leading to Attorney General Merrick Garland ordering the FBI to collaborate with local…
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Bacon Bits: Woke World Update
Sounding more like the Taliban every day! The rhetoric regarding Civil War statues may be undergoing a significant shift: from tear ’em down to melt ’em down. It’s not enough to remove the statues from the public square. Now they must be destroyed. The latest straw in the wind: The Jefferson School African American Heritage…
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Public School Meltdown: Teacher Burnout Edition
by James A. Bacon A student at a Petersburg public school took a knife to school Tuesday and used it to cut a classmate from his earlobe to his face, reports the Associated Press. The perp and the victim were six years old. While that particular horror was unique to Petersburg, fights and violence are…
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Finally, Virginia’s Political Class Starts Thinking about Grid Reliability
by James A. Bacon At last — a serious discussion has occurred about the reliability of Virginia’s electric grid as the state moves toward zero-carbon electricity generation by 2050 (and 2045 in the Dominion Energy service territory). Reliability was a prime topic of conversation at the third Virginia Clean Energy Summit Tuesday. A panel discussion…
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Bacon Bits: Government Failure, Private Initiative
Will Metro ever get its act together? The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has pulled the 7000 series of rail cars from service after a derailment on the Blue Line and discovery of more than two dozen wheel-assembly defects similar to those that had contributed to the accident, reports the Washington Post. “The potential for…
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The Alumni Rebellion Gains Momentum
First, Stuart Taylor and Ed Yingling (with Princetonians for Free Speech) got a column published Monday in the Wall Street Journal about the formation of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance. Fox News followed with a story yesterday (seen above). Since then, Inside Higher Ed, the leading higher-ed trade publication, has run a news story of its…
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No CRT to See Here, Move Along Now
From the Critical-Race-Theory-is-a-conservative-bogeyman department: Celebrate #UnityWeek and join panel discussions where you can engage in healthy and positive conversations about unity. Featured for Unity Week is the “Stamped from the Beginning Community Read Project,” a Virginia Beach Public Library (VBPL) read program series featuring “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in…
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Another Assault on Virginia Landlords
by James A. Bacon The Office of the Attorney General has filed lawsuits accusing 13 Richmond-area real estate companies of discriminating against prospective renters who receive federal housing vouchers. “Every single Virginian has the right to a safe, comfortable home, regardless of whether they have some assistance paying their rent,” said Attorney General Mark Herring.…
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Alumni Power
by James A. Bacon The university alumni rebellion, which first took root in Virginia, is going national. Washington & Lee University was the first higher-ed institution in the country, to my knowledge, where alumni organized to fight the leftward drift of their alma mater. The W&L group, known as the Generals Redoubt, was followed quickly…
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Alumni of the World Unite!
This press release was issued today by the Alumni Free Speech Alliance, of which The Jefferson Council is a founding member. I serve as vice president-communications of the Council. — JAB Millions of college and university alumni around the country are dismayed by the intolerance of unpopular viewpoints at their alma maters, and many have…
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Virginia Elections: Endanger Kids, Lose Your Seat
by Kerry Dougherty I tried to warn you that kids would get hurt. I tried to warn the governor. On February 2, 2020 we published “Insane Bill Will Endanger Kids” after Democrats in the General Assembly passed HB257, reversing a law that had compelled school principals to report cases of sexual battery, stalking, assault and…
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Shootings Are Spiking? Let’s Blame COVID!
by James A. Bacon It came as a big surprise to U.S. Senator Mark Warner to hear about the spike in violence occurring in the City of Richmond. The Senator, who last lived in the city when he was governor in 2006, met with what WTVR-TV describes as a gathering of government and community leaders.…
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The Emerging “Lost Generation” of Students
by James A. Bacon Virginia schools, like schools across the country, experienced an educational meltdown during the COVID-19 epidemic. The relatively comforting news is that, according to Virginia Department of Education, Virginia’s graduating seniors significantly out-performed their peers nationally. Fifty-six percent of Virginia test takers met all four of the college-readiness benchmarks — English, Reading,…