"Why in the world are we doing this?"

Say what you want about WV Governor Jim Justice--I certainly have. But he does have his moments. One of these occurred today at an impromptu press conference on the ominous omnibus senate education bill.

His main message was "why are we doing this?" While he admitted education in WV could be improved, he came out strongly against charter schools and attacks on teachers' organizations (paycheck "protection," which is more like paycheck reduction). He admitted that he believed the senate bill was at least partially an act of retaliation against teachers. He said that he'd veto the bill in its current form and urged that it be broken up into component parts, each of which could be considered independently. And he called for the passage of a clean pay-raise bill for teachers and state workers.

The main theme seemed to be that we don't need something this divisive, saying "Come on, we're better than this."

It's still unclear how the senate under the leadership of Mitch Carmichael will respond or what the house thinks about the whole thing. In a worst case scenario, the veto, if it happened within a certain time, could be overturned by a simple majority.

Still, he came out and strongly said things that many of us have been saying.

Obviously, it's nowhere near over and we need to stay on this. Still, this was something that probably nobody was expecting this morning.