Tag: James A. Bacon
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COVID and Labor Shortages Are Aggravating Virginia’s Mental Health Crisis
by James A. Bacon The story made big headlines earlier this month when the Northam administration announced that five of the Commonwealth’s eight mental health institutions have stopped taking new patients. Two things are happening to make a chronically bad situation worse. First, the number of patients referred to state hospitals through Temporary Detention Orders…
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UVa, Wokeness, and Rooms on the Lawn
by James A. Bacon Once upon a time in a galaxy far far way, it was considered a great honor among 4th-year University of Virginia students to be selected for residence on the Lawn — the architectural heart of the university designed by Thomas Jefferson and now designated a world heritage site. The accommodations were…
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Fredericksburg’s Tree Tyrants
by James A. Bacon I was driving up Interstate 95 to Fredericksburg one Saturday in April when I got a call from my mother. Pick up a rental chain saw on the way into town, she said. She wanted me to cut down a crape myrtle in front of her house. I knew well the…
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How Not to Treat a Conservation Easement
The Commonwealth needs to tighten up its system for granting and overseeing conservation easements, the Virginia Office of the State Inspector General (OSIG) has found. One of three conservation-easement properties visited by OSIG auditors did not meet Conservation Value Review Criteria adopted to provide for quality conservation value. The inspectors saw “trash, old tires, scrap…
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Confederate Statues and Judicial Fiats
by James A. Bacon The Roanoke County Courthouse is located, oddly enough, in the independent city of Salem. Nearby, within the sight of the courthouse, there stands a statue of a Confederate soldier in front of a building owned by Roanoke College. The college would like to remove it, but the statue is situated on…
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How Hillsboro Reinvented Itself… with Government Grants
by James A. Bacon Hillsboro in western Loudoun County is a rural success story, reports The Washington Post. Over the past couple of years, the town of 120 has transformed its main street, a 0.7-mile stretch of Route 9. The addition of sidewalks made the community’s main drag inviting to pedestrians after having been rendered…
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It’s Official: Patrick Henry Has Been Canceled
by James A. Bacon Under intense pressure from the Virginia State Board of Community Colleges, the board of the Patrick Henry Community College, named after the founding father, has changed its name to Patrick & Henry Community College. The new name reflects the college’s commitment to Patrick County and Henry County, two of the localities…
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The Missing Data in the School-Mask Mandate Controversy
by James A. Bacon The Northam administration has issued new guidelines urging unvaccinated students and staff to keep wearing masks in K-12 schools this fall — but won’t require them to do so. Some school districts, like Chesapeake, have voted to nix the masks, while others, like Virginia Beach (see Kerry Dougherty’s column below), will…
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Libraries, Drag Queens and Culture Wars
by James A. Bacon As a conservative with libertarian leanings, I have no quarrel with drag queens. If men want to dress like women… that’s not my thing, but it’s a free country. If men like to dress like women and sing in night clubs, that’s fine, too. Some are very entertaining — and they…
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A Compromise for Confederate Statues
I was visiting Berryville this weekend to attend my niece’s wedding when I happened upon this statue at the Clarke County courthouse. My thought: That’s one way to handle the Confederate statue conundrum. Don’t take it down. But never prune the tree growing all around it. In a couple more years, the statue still will…
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The Left Acknowledges Virginia’s Violent Crime Spike
by James A. Bacon It’s good to see that our colleagues at The Virginia Mercury understand that Virginia does have a crime problem. As an article by Graham Moomaw acknowledges in the lead paragraph, Virginia’s homicide rate hit a 20-year high in 2020, and violent crimes are trending even higher in some cities this year.…
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Chaos In the Streets, er, In the Sidewalks
by James A. Bacon Sidewalks are going to get very crowded, and now is the time to start thinking about what to do about it. We all know that self-driving cars soon will become a common sight, but a white paper, “The Last Block,” by Canadian Bern Grush, an occasional contributor to Bacon’s Rebellion several …
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More Clarity, Please, About Vaccinations for COVID Survivors
by James A. Bacon Since late January, when COVID-19 vaccines became available to the general public in Virginia, 99.4% of the cases, 99% of hospitalizations, and 99.3% of deaths have occurred in people who have not been vaccinated, according to the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association (VHHA). “The scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that the COVID-19…
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Another Free Speech Fiasco at UVa
Charlottesville attorney Charles L. Weber Jr., represented University of Virginia student Morgan Bettinger in legal proceedings involving the University Judiciary Committee, which condemned her for words that allegedly constituted a “risk” to other students. This incident is a case study in how leftist, “anti-racist” students at UVa wield processes and procedures, with the complicity of…
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Descano Promises More Sunlight for Criminal Justice Data
by James A. Bacon Steve Descano, Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney, plans to begin publishing data on prosecutions as part of his campaign to root out alleged racial and socioeconomic disparities in the county’s criminal justice system, reports The Washington Post. Data to be published online will cover such metrics as race, charging, sentences, bail decisions,…