Addiction, politics, biscuits

Here's the latest Front Porch, which among other things talks about President Obama's recent visit to WV to discuss the addiction problem. It includes a few shameless appeals to get a local biscuit chain to underwrite the program.

Big news day in WV

The big news in WV today is the visit of President Obama to Charleston to discuss the opioid addiction crisis. This state leads the nation in overdose deaths.

You can read more or watch the whole thing here. The president also gave Gazette Mail reporter David Gutman and exclusive interview here.

Not surprisingly, coal supporters, many of whom blame all the ills of the industry on the president, also rallied. There was some racial dog whistling at the event. It is my long held position that the blackness of the president has been a gift from the gods both to the industry and to certain politicians.

The state's attorney general also used the visit to show his....position.

"Ripe for the picking"

Here's another great report by the Charleston Gazette-Mail's David Gutman. This one is on how WV came to lead the nation in overdoses.

ANOTHER BAD IDEA. Here's another report on why eliminating WV's personal property tax, a priority for big business, is a bad idea.

WELCOME CANINES! Enter the dog.

Good question

A select committee of mostly Republicans in the WV legislature have spent a good part of 2015 pondering state tax reform. It's pretty clear that what they'd like to do is further cut business taxes. But Gazette statehouse reporter Phil Kabler asks a good question: how does that plan play out when the state budget is going under?

COULD THERE BE A PATTERN HERE? In this piece, WV Public Broadcasting looks at the troubled history of safety violations at Upper Big Branch before the 2010 disaster.