Thoughts on WV's supreme court mess

If you live in West Virginia and are in regular contact with people from out of state, there's a pretty good chance someone may have asked you "what the (fill in the blank) is going on with the whole state supreme court goat rope?"

(In case you've been frying other fish, the Republican majority in the WV House of Delegates voted to impeach all remaining members of the court, in effect blowing up an entire branch of state government. This could potentially let Republican Governor Jim Justice stack the deck until 2020.)

If you don't want to recap the whole thing blow by blow, there's a pretty good summary in Slate that doesn't get in the weeds. Of course, there is a lot of great local journalism going on by reporters like the Gazette-Mail's Jack Zuckerman and Lacie Peterson and MetroNews' Brad McIlhenny if you want the whole rundown.

My short take is that while all the remaining justices (one resigned and another retired during the mess) have been lavish in spending, only one really calls out for impeachment, to wit Allen Loughry of $32,000 couchgate fame, who is facing federal charges. The one who resigned, Menis Ketchum, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud.

Here's the lead from the Slate piece:

What the hell is going on in West Virginia? On Monday, the House of Delegates impeached the entire state Supreme Court on charges focusing on the justices’ lavish spending on office refurbishments. Republicans, who led the drive to oust the whole bench, insisted the court was irredeemably corrupt. Many Democrats countered that GOP legislators were staging a coup to seize control of the judiciary. One justice, Robin Davis, resigned rather than allow herself to be removed, proclaiming that the impeachment push was a “disaster for the rule of law” and an attempt by the legislature “to dismantle a separate branch of government.”

While Davis isn’t wrong, the court isn’t wholly blameless either. Republicans are attempting to stack it—but the justices made that task easy by engaging in conduct ranging from questionable to certainly illegal. Republicans are citing the serious allegations against two justices to justify removing all four, and they have timed their attacks to ensure that Republican Gov. Jim Justice, rather than West Virginia voters, will be able to select their replacements, thereby dragging the court far to the right.

At last count, nine people have applied for interim seats on the court. The next stop for impeachment proceedings is the state senate, where the games will presumably begin next month.

All of which is yet another reason to change the state motto from "Mountaineers are always free" to "You can't make this **** up."

A new motto?

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about how the website WalletHub came up with a list of the best and worst places for millennials to live.

It’s no surprise that West Virginia came out on the bottom. But, as my friend Stephen Smith wrote with Pastor Mason Ballard in a Gazette-Mail op-ed online, it’s the best state to come to, if you want to make a difference.

And God knows we need that.

One of the reasons West Virginia might be unattractive to younger newcomers is the fact that it’s kind of falling apart, and the Republican majority in the Legislature apparently wants to pass a poverty budget that keeps things that way, by cutting K-12 and higher education, slashing social services and neglecting to invest in our people and infrastructure.Gazette-Mail reporter

Phil Kabler had a great riff on that theme in a recent column in which he envisioned the state as a shabby and unmaintained apartment for rent in a run-down neighborhood where schools are neglected and teachers laid off. Who would want to live in a place like that unless they had to?

One thing that could make things better in the short term is a budget that invests in people and infrastructure, along the lines that Gov. Jim Justice has proposed. Before a certain memorable news conference, lots of people I know were hoping he would veto the Legislature’s proposed budget. And some of us, including me, sounded the alarm and urged people to contact the governor in support of a veto.

I guess that’s something we can scratch off the list. And that’s no (metaphorical) BS.

It’s hard to tell how the budget battle will go, but there’s a lot riding on it. And a lot depends on whether and how much ordinary West Virginians are willing to stand up in support of the kind of budget that protects our people and gets us back on the road.

I do hope that, if and when a budget deal is sealed, it won’t involve a “compromise” that shifts the weight of taxes to those who can least afford it and sets up another fiscal crisis down the road.

Meanwhile, recent events have convinced me that I should devote my remaining days to updating the state motto to bring it up (or down) to date. “Mountaineers are always free” was great, but more suited to the days when our appetite for fighting for ordinary working people was more apparent.

My suggested replacement is: “You can’t make this **** up.” At least until such time as the other one fits again.

(Note: I even started looking for how to say this in Latin, until I was reminded that, as of 2016, the Legislature made English the state’s official language. I guess I can scratch that off the list, too.)

(This op-ed ran in today's Gazette-Mail)

You really can't make this **** up

The website WalletHub recently came up with a list of the best and worst places for millennials to live. It's no surprise that West Virginia came out on the bottom. But, as my friend Stephen Smith wrote with Pastor Mason Ballard, it's the best state to come to if you want to make a difference. And God knows we need that.

One of the reasons WV is unattractive to newcomers is the fact that it's kind of falling apart and the Republican majority in the legislature wants to pass a poverty budget that keeps things that way. Gazette-Mail reporter Phil Kabler had a great riff on that theme in the first part of this column.

One thing that could make things better is a budget that invests in people and infrastructure, as Gov. Jim Justice has proposed. Some of us were hoping he would veto the  legislature's proposed budget. And some of us, including me, sounded the  alarm and urged people to contact the governor in support of a veto.

I guess that's something to scratch off the list. And that's no (metaphorical) BS.

Two last thoughts:

*first, this really is the year of political props; and

*second, as I've argued before, we really should change the state motto from "Mountaineers are always free" to "You can't make this **** up" At least until we deserve the old motto again.

What's next?

I'm thinking about starting a betting pool about what bills might gain traction in the WV legislature.  Upon considering things like this and this and this, I'm thinking about putting money on a bill that would not require teachers in WV's new charter schools to be literate provided they hated gay people enough.

Curiouser and curiouser

Holy chaos theory, Batman! WV politics just got even weirder. It goes something like this:

1. WV state senator Daniel Hall once ran for the WV House as a Republican. He lost.

2. He then ran as a Democrat and won. Twice.

3. Then he was elected as a Democrat to the WV Senate.

4. After the 2014 elections, when the WV senate was tied 17-17, he switched back to being a Republican.

5. As of today, he announced his resignation from the senate in early 2016.

Y'all getting this so far?

So the question is, who gets to name his replacement? He was an R after the election but was elected as a D. State law seems to be a bit ambiguous, but it seems to me the fairest way is to honor the results of the last election.

This could potentially rewrite the landscape of the 2016 legislature. Or not.

This is yet another reason why I think the WV state motto should be changed from "Mountaineers are always free" to "You can't make this **** up."

Read more here.

This will be one to watch.

Just saying

On more than one occasion, I have suggested here that WV change it's outdated state motto from "Mountaineers are always free" to "You can't make this **** up." If more evidence was needed for this, check out this story.

The big three

The Gentle Reader may perhaps recall my campaign to update the WV state motto from "Mountaineers are always free" to "You can't make this **** up." Here is another reason why:

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to a story about a person sentenced to prison after a car wreck that left chickens, marijuana and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) scattered on Interstate 79. If memory serves, there was an AK-47 on hand as well.

In my friend's words, "He had it all...and lost it."

(I seem to recall that in the wake of the accident a WV game began where people would come up with their own list of three random things scattered on the interstate, but it would be hard to top the real thing.)