Sustained outrage: a newspaper like no other

If you haven't already, check out "Sustained Outrage," a Reel South program  about the Pulitzer Prize-winning Charleston Gazette-Mail. It aired on PBS and temporarily available here.

It's hard to describe to someone outside of West Virginia just what a huge role this paper has played in exposing corruption, greed and various forms of skulduggery over the years. I can't imagine how much worse things would be without it.

The episode features among other things Eric Eyre's epic reporting on the opioid crisis, which snagged the Pulitzer, and MacArthur "genius" award winner Ken Ward, who has covered environmental issues for years. Sadly, neither of them remain at the paper. Eyre's book on his investigations, Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic, was released in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, although it has received rave reviews, like this one in the NY Times. And it's a safe bet we'll hear more from Ward.

Like many independent papers, it has had and continues to have challenges. There was a huge scare in 2018 that the paper, then in bankruptcy court, would be sold to the right wing Trump-loving and climate change-denying Ogden chain. At what seemed like the last minute the paper was bought by HD media, which owns the Huntington Herald-Dispatch and other local papers. There a huge collective sigh of relief when that happened.

Hard times persist at the paper. People were laid off. Some pillars of journalism have recently left, voluntarily or otherwise. Still it hangs on, thank God.

In my 31 years at AFSC, I've often worked with reporters and editors there. I have particularly fond memories of barging in with a friend to the office of the late Don Marsh, a legendary editor, and saying "We're on a mission from God." Sometimes, that really seemed to be the case. And I'm very grateful that for an even longer period of time the Gazette has allowed me to be a contributing columnist in its pages. The sense of having a voice, however limited, has made a huge difference in my life.

The first edition of what would become the Gazette came out in 1873. I hope it has another hundred or so years.

Resilience and tragedy

Ravenswood WV was once a booming factory town. It was the home of a major Kaiser Aluminum plant, with employment in the thousands.

It wouldn't be accurate, however, to say it was a company town. Or only that. It was also a union town and a stronghold of the United Steelworkers of America.

If you're at all aware of economic trends in American since 1980, you can probably guess the trajectory of the story. The plant faced massive layoffs early in the decade and was sold in the late 1980s, morphing into the Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation (RAC).

In 1990, the company ordered union members, who were working despite the expiration of their old contract, out of the factory, which had taken on the appearance of a factory, and declared them to be permanently replaced.

Thus began "the battle of Fort RAC," which lasted from the fall of 1990 to the summer of 1992. It wasn't a strike; it was a lockout.

I must admit to having fond memories of that struggle, as I've written elsewhere. Despite all odds, the members of USWA Local 5668 won their jobs back.

In 1995, the factory became Century Aluminum, which eventually closed in the Great Recession, laying off 651 workers. Century union retirees had to fight long and hard to secure promised benefits, but eventually succeeded in 2017.

Today, aluminum is still produced there by Constellium, which employs around 1,100 people, most of whom are union members.It's the largest employer in Jackson County.

It's been a tough ride, and there have been plenty of casualties, but union workers have fought hard, won some victories and showed remarkable resilience.

Today another kind of struggle is going on there, as it is all over West Virginia and much of the country. That would be the struggle of responding to the pharmaceutical crime of the opioid epidemic.

This article from The Nation tells some of that story. The title--"These kids are watching their parents die"--is stark, but it's a quote from a local nurse practitioner. It makes the good point that public school teachers are in the front lines of this fight, just as they were in the wave of teachers' strikes that have challenged failed austerity policies in several states.

 Their situation is pretty grim, but, like the Steelworkers before them, sometimes they win.

780 million opioids?

A bit of a downer before the holidays: the latest Front Porch features Gazette-Mail reporter Eric Eyre on his series about WV's opioid epidemic. It's hard to get my head around this but over a few year's time, 780 MILLION opioids were dumped into WV, mostly to depressed areas in the southern coalfields.

I actually did the math, based on measuring one of my own (not very interesting) medicines: at 2.5 pills per inch w 63,360 inches per mile, 158,400 pills per mile divided into 780M=4,924.24 miles of pills. It's about the distance in air miles from New York City to Honolulu.

Damn.

An act of war

In case you missed it, please take a look at this great reporting from Gazette-Mail journalist Eric Eyre about WV's opioid epidemic. It's really hard to get your head around. Or my head, anyway.

Teaser: a handful of drug companies poured 780 MILLION pain pills into WV over a few years, even while our overdose rate increased. They specifically targeted a handful of rural communities in the coalfields.

It reminds me of Great Britain's shameful behavior towards China (or is that Jina?) during the opium wars, when that empire forced addictive drugs on the Chinese people.

If another country did this to us, we'd go to war. Unless it was Russia, which apparently gets a pass from the president elect.

O what a falling off was there

Once upon a time, the office of West Virginia's Attorney General was one devoted to things like consumer protection. When, for example, my elderly mother was preyed upon by predatory marketers, they tended to crawl back under their rocks when I mentioned the name of Darrell McGraw.

Those days are gone since the current occupant of that office, Patrick Morrisey, was elected mostly due to money from West Virginia's colonial masters out of state. As the Charleston Gazette noted in a recent editorial, the consumer protection division of that office has pretty much been gutted.

Gazette political columnist Phil Kabler summed it up nicely:

Should anyone be surprised that Pactrick Morrisey is pursuing a right-wing agenda, including investigation abortion clinics, and dismantling his office's consumer protection division? Not if they were paying attention.

Many voters were so focused on retiring longtime Attorney General Darrell McGraw that they didn't think through the consequences of electing Morrissey.

A quick glance of campaign contributors makes clear those donors weren't banking on Morrisey to continue McGraw's legacy of strong consumer protection and willingness to take on big pharmaceutical companies for price-fixing.

Gazette investigative reporter Eric Eyre noted today that

A special fund established to pay for Attorney General Patrick Morrisey's inaugural party received a $2,500 contribution from Cardinal Health in late February, the same company Morrisey's office has a pending lawsuit against for allegedly fueling West Virginia's problem with prescription drug abuse. 

Morrisey's wife, Denise Henry, is a lobbyist for Cardinal Health in Washington D.C. 

Cardinal Health, the nations second largest drug distributor, paid her lobbying firm $100,000 last year, according to Henry's lobbying disclosure form.

I wouldn't hold out much hope on that lawsuit. Follow the money.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with money at all (he wrote with irony). Maybe there are more important things for Morrisey to do...Like holding abortion witch hunts. Or opposing Medicaid expansion for hard working West Virginians when around 4 state residents die prematurely every week because they lack health insurance (uhhh...what happened to the whole pro-life thing?) Or holding forums on how we could make the state more business friendly?

Recently, Delegate Don Perdue, chair of the House Health Committee suggested Morrisey actually do something useful, like investigating WV's meth problems. I'm not holding my breath on that one either.

Servicing the ruling class is a full time job.