Case in point

The Charleston Gazette gave nice editorial support to an upcoming conference on race in Appalachia that I've been working on with quite a few other people. One example of why such a topic might be relevant is the recent controversial  personal blog post by Charleston Daily Mail editorialist Don Surber in which he referred to Michael Brown as an animal who had to be put down. The blog post has since been taken down, but that's a bell that will be hard to unring.

A little good news

According to longtime WV statehouse reporter Tom Miller, 

The idea of housing West Virginia's state prisoners at a private, for-profit prison in neighboring Kentucky has been shelved and is no longer a priority, Commissioner Jim Rubenstein of the state Division of Corrections told state legislators last week at one of the interim committee meetings.

Rubenstein said the idea has now "been put way back on the back burner" because of the current decrease that his agency has been seeing "within the total (inmate) population." This seems to put to rest this earlier proposal that called for the state to possibly house up to 400 inmates at a prison in eastern Kentucky that would be operated by the Corrections Corporation of America.

This is welcome news for all kinds of reasons. I was proud to work with WV allies to keep this from happening. The main reason it didn't was the success of a 2013 bill addressing prison overcrowding.

RACE MATTERS IN APPALACHIA. If you get a chance, please consider attending this conference or race on Nov. 10 and 11.

Worth a look

This will be short post but one with a link to lots of good information. Click here to see how the NY Times answers the question "Is the Affordable Care Act working?"

TO CLEAR THE PALATE, here's something about ancient giant sharks and whales.