"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.

Room for (real) populism in West Virginia

Say what you want about the political attitudes of West Virginians. Everyone else has, including me. But things are complicated here.

Earlier this week, WV MetroNews and the Dominion Post released a poll about the attitudes of West Virginians towards big business. It might surprise some people. Among the findings:

*58 percent of respondents believed that government regulation of business is necessary to protect the public. Guess that means we haven't forgotten all the for-profit disasters that have killed or maimed so many state residents over the years;

*88 percent believed that too much power was concentrated in the hands of a few corporations;

*72 percent believed that corporations were making too much in profit.

All of these numbers are up significantly from a similar 2014 poll. The poll surveyed 404 West Virginians from all counties and has a 4.9 percent margin of error.

The upshot seems to me to be that people here are open to a real populist message and agenda if there's a willingness to put one forward.

If we don't, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Reading the signs

In ancient Rome, augurs tried to read the future by looking at the entrails of sacrificial animals or the flights of birds. These days we tend to rely on things like polls, which is probably just as well. The results of the latest WV MetroNews poll are pretty interesting. Respondents were asked about their approval of President Trump, Governor Justice, Senator Capito and Senator Manchin.

In it, Trump's approval isn't as high as you might think it is (or as low as you might think it should be, depending on your viewpoint). It looks like Gov. Justice didn't do himself a whole lot of favors even among Republicans with his switch to that party during Trump's WV visit.

Senator Capito's approval rating is the lowest on record, which may or may not have something to do with fears related to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which, for all its flaws, has brought health coverage to around 225,000 West Virginians. At this moment, it looks like Senator Manchin is riding high, with more Republicans, Democrats and Independents holding favorable rather than unfavorable views. Of course, it's way too soon to tell how all this will play out in 2018 and beyond.

You can read more here.

Digression: when the ancient Greeks didn't like the results of auguries from entrails, they sometimes kept sacrificing animals until they got some guts that promised good news, which is kind of like commissioning more polls until you get one you like.

The Romans weren't much of a sea power at first. They would sometimes seek to read the future by seeing is the sacred chickens would eat before a fight. When the chickens wouldn't eat before the battle of Drepana with the Carthaginians, one commander got into trouble by throwing them into the sea and saying "Let's see if they'll drink." The Romans lost that one. Take home message: don't mess with chickens.

I'm not big on omens, but things would have to get pretty bad at the farm for chickens not to eat.

Rediscovered again

It must be an election year, because WV has definitely been rediscovered. Two presidential candidates hit the state yesterday alone, with two entirely different vibes. Here's coverage of a forum on poverty in McDowell County, one of the nation's poorest counties, led by Bernie Sanders. And here's coverage of the other one.

Speaking of the other one, this piece from Forbes questions his claim to be able to bring back the coal industry.  This one talks about what he didn't say to miners. And this one questions claims about national working class support.

How bout that?

Maybe this is true everywhere, but West Virginia politicians tend to get braver the closer they come to retirement or mortality.

WV Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, who isn't eligible to run again for that office, has shown courage on more than one occasion, including last week or so when his administration announced that it would take another look at the health impacts of mountaintop removal mining.

The very latest example is his veto of a bill that would have allowed West Virginians to carry concealed firearms without getting a permit and taking a gun safety class. It even made  the NY Times online with the headline "A Governor Faces Down the Gun Lobby." He should have plenty of political cover, however, as a recent poll found that over 80 percent of respondents opposed the bill.

All I know is it led to quite a few wisecracks in the halls of the capitol, some of which my have been uttered by me.

One to watch

The latest legal developments in the case of former Massey CEO Don Blankenship are interesting. First, the gag order will make events a little hard to follow. The accused pleaded not guilty, which wasn't a surprise. I was a bit surprised to learn about the requirement for him to post a $5 million bond.

A friend of mine suggested that the judge might have been afraid of another Marc Rich incident. Rich was a financial speculator who fled abroad to avoid prosecution until pardoned by President Clinton for some ungodly reason during the final moments of his presidency. Ken Ward reports that the federal magistrate seems to be concerned about Blankenship's financial affairs as well.

The irony in all this is that Blankenship's legal troubles are occurring just as his political dreams for West Virginia have come true in the wake of the last election.

Election Day Blues

My friend Ken Ward over at Coal Tattoo has some words of wisdom on this election day. He notes that while lots of politicians rattle on about the so-called "war on coal,"

The list of things that coalfield candidates don’t want to talk seriously about is long and important: Mine disasters, black lung disease, global climate change, the environmental and human health costs of mountaintop removal, and — probably most significantly — what Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky will do for jobs and an economy as the region’s coal production continues to decline.

 In particular, candidates from both parties have tended to vie with one another on who can bash Obama the most. Ward blames the media as much as the campaigns for going along with oversimplified soundbites.

He nails it with his conclusion:

Because elections do matter. And regardless of who controls the U.S. Senate or the W.Va. House, coalfield residents will wake up on Wednesday facing the same set of serious challenges: Natural gas will still be cheap. The best coal reserves in Central Appalachia will still be mined out. Carbon dioxide in our planet’s atmosphere will still be climbing to levels we should all be afraid of. The coal-mining jobs that are left will will be too dangerous, putting workers at risk of dying suddenly in a roof fall or slowly from black lung.

When all the votes are counted, our region will still face too much drug abuse and too little education, too much pollution and not nearly enough quality health care, too many WARN notices and too few jobs — too much fear and far, far too little hope. And mostly all the election will have done with its endless television ads, sound bites and attacks is the one thing that coalfield residents can least afford: Torn us further apart, instead of bringing us closer together.

The whole piece is worth a look and has tons of links.

"Fear of the black body"

First word today goes to New York Times columnist Charles Blow for his op-ed titled "Michael Brown and Black Men." The recent police killing in Missouri is just one example of something that happens all too frequently.

CAN YOU SAY "DIVERSIFICATION? At least one WV politician used the D word.

HIGH HOPES, LOW MEANS. Here's economist Dean Baker on some of the whacky ways opponents of the Affordable Care Act want to kill it.

People deserve better

Another round of coal mine layoffs has just been announced. Unfortunately, WV's political leaders from both major parties are not dealing with the real issues, as Ken Ward notes in Coal Tattoo. On the brighter side, this editorial from the generally conservative Charleston Daily Mail talks sense.

OFF TOPIC. Although El Cabrero works for a Quaker organization which tolerates the publication of this blog, not to mention my other heterodoxies, I happen to be a cradle Episcopalian. Which is why I have decided here to include the late comedian Robin Williams list of the top 10 reason to be Episcopal. I totally agree.

Me too, Bob

I have long ago come to terms with the fact that Bob Dylan wrote the soundtrack for my life. Usually, this is not the young idealistic Bob but rather the obscure, ironic and apocalyptic Bob.

The Dylan song that captures this moment in time is "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," a surrealistic romp from his early electric phase. The line in question is one that I've experienced over and over again in West Virginia, where once you think you've fought and won something you sometimes have to do it all over again.

That's the case with the effort to raise the state's minimum wage. A bill to do so cleared the legislature on March 8, the last night of the session. Things looked pretty good until an corporate attorney from a major law firm began aggressively pushing to get Gov. Tomblin to repeal it.

The line is "An' here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
you have to pay to get out of
going through all these things twice.

Anyhow, we will now the results in the next few days. Appropriately enough, the bill's fate will be sealed on April 1.

Here's my rant about that  and here's some news coverage.

One for fun, three for real.

OK, I don't usually sit around watching stuff on YouTube. Really. But I recently discovered a hilarious web-based show that is tailor made for karate geeks like myself. It's called Enter the Dojo and is a great spoof of the martial arts world and especially "McDojos." If you liked The Office you just might love it.

Watch at your own risk.

OK, back to business.

WHO OWNS WEST VIRGINIA? You probably guessed it: not West Virginians. Here's info about a new study by the American Friends Service Committee and the WV Center on Budget and Policy.

SPEAKING OF WEST VIRGINIA, here's an interesting op-ed by a friend of mine on the state's political climate. The author, Perry Mann, is even generous enough to feed the trolls that lurk at the Gazette website.

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, McDowell County, historically one of the counties from which the most coal wealth has been extracted, has life expectancies at or near the lowest in the nation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Short load

West Virginia was the subject of a long and gloomy article in the Washington Post recently. Some other reflections on changes in the state over time can be found in this Gazette editorial.

Meanwhile, here's a good one by E.J. Dionne about why Congress has been trying to fix the wrong problem for the last few years and one more by Krugman about how ideology can sabotage government services.

Coal kabuki

We finally got around to watching Avatar on Netflix. The story about a corporation mercilessly exploiting mineral resources sure made me glad nothing like that ever happened in Appalachia.

Meanwhile, other mining dramas are unfolding here. First on my list is yesterday's report by MSHA on the causes of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, which appear to be a lethal mix of methane, failed equipment, excessive coal dust and noncompliance with safety regulations.

Second is the predictable theater that followed in the wake of the EPA's veto of Arch Coal's Spruce Mine mountaintop removal permit. Many state politicians and the coal industry are calling for a rally for coal for today.

As Ken Ward pointed out in Coal Tattoo, the Friends of Coal website actually referred to the event as "a call to arms," although that was taken off the web when word got out.

The use of such obviously incendiary language so soon in the wake of the Arizona massacre seems to be a bit....ill chosen, to say the least.

Even before the Arizona tragedy, quite a few people I know in West Virginia have been concerned that overheated rhetoric is going to lead to violence here sooner or later. I hope that won't happen today.

Meanwhile, here's what I'm pretty sure is the real deal:

1. During the Bush years, the industry could do pretty much whatever it wanted.

2. Those years are over. While the Obama administration has no intention of abolishing coal mining or even mountaintop removal, it does take the law more seriously and will push to reduce the environmental and other impacts.

3. If the permit would be revised to limit the impact, it would probably be approved. This kind of thing has already happened before. And, as Ken Ward noted here, an engineering study by Morgan Worldwide found that an alternative plan would have reduced environmental impacts while still allowing substantial mining to take place.

But, given the choice between throwing a hissy fit and problem solving, the smart money around here still seems to be on hissy fit.

At times like these, I miss the voice and vision of Senator Byrd.