Deja vu

I give Gov. Jim Justice credit for pointing out that some promised remedies for West Virginia’s ills didn’t pan out. In a televised town hall meeting, he told the audience:

“Really and truly, let’s just be brutally honest. We passed the right-to-work law in West Virginia. And we ran to the windows looking to see all the people that were going to come — and they didn’t come. We got rid of prevailing wage. We changed our corporate taxes and we’ve done a lot of different things. And we’ve run to the windows and they haven’t come.

“We’ve absolutely built the field in a lot of different places thinking build the field and they’ll come, and they didn’t come.”

It’s hard to argue with that. The promised benefits of West Virginia’s 2007 tax cuts under the leadership of one party never happened. And the state has lost about 60,000 people, more than the population of its capital city, since the push for anti-worker legislation began in 2015 under the leadership of another party.

The governor promises that things will be different this time around, with his plan to drastically cut or phase out the state income tax. I’m sure he has the best of intentions, but, for some reason, I keep thinking about Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick, in the old Peanuts comic.

(In case that cultural reference is dated, it didn’t work out well for Charlie Brown.)

The state income tax provides more than 40% of revenue for the core state budget, to the tune of over $2 billion per year. Eliminating or drastically reducing it would involve shifting taxes to the least wealthy or eliminating state investments in people, infrastructure and health at all levels. Or, more likely, it will mean a bit of both.

West Virginia’s income tax is the only progressive tax in the state, meaning that those with more resources pay a somewhat higher rate. According to an analysis of the proposed legislation, 63% of the tax cuts will go to the top 15% of earners. Proposed rebates notwithstanding, overall taxes likely would go up on people in the lower 60%, who, by necessity, spend most of what they make on taxable goods and services.

Even if all the proposed new and/or increased taxes are enacted, it would still leave a budget gap of about $185 million. That means that more cuts to state programs and services would be required. And that’s assuming that the Legislature agrees to all aspects of the plan, which seems pretty iffy.

The plan includes an increase in the regressive consumer sales tax to 7.9%, increasing excise taxes on soft drinks, beer, wine, tobacco and such; taxes on “luxury goods;” and taxing some new services. All these are likely to arouse a great deal of opposition from retail and industry groups, which have a long history of getting pretty much whatever they want from compliant lawmakers.

We also can be sure of hearing a rousing round of protests from and about the economic impact on border counties, if West Virginians take their purchasing power elsewhere. About 30 counties are at or near the border of another state. More to the point, our colonial overlords extracting the state’s mineral wealth might not be happy about changes to severance taxes.

If these groups get their way, the revenue hole to be made up would be even deeper and the overall package probably would include even more budget cuts.

Proponents claim that any impact will be more than compensated for by the hordes of new people flooding into the state. However, as a saying variously attributed to Yogi Berra, Mark Twain and many others goes: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

I will venture to make one, however: If West Virginia’s leaders cut investments in the things that make a place worth living in — good schools, higher ed and job training, child care, parks and natural resources, public libraries, good roads, broadband, access to health care, support for the elderly — nothing will stop the bleeding of our youngest, best and brightest.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Toxic medicine

Pick your poison. Image by way of wikipedia.

 If there was a scarier place for a soldier to be in the American Civil War than a battlefield, it might have been a hospital, of either the field or conventional variety.

Medical science had not yet caught on to the germ theory of disease. Overworked doctors rushed from patient to patient with unwashed hands and instruments. Amputation was the order of the day.

But if there was anything scarier than Civil War-era surgery, it might have been the medicine. It was a common practice to administer heroic doses of calomel to patients for a variety of ailments, including diarrhea and dysentery.

Among the ingredients of calomel were a mixture of mercury and chloride.

I managed to avoid a chemistry class in my education, such as it was, but I don’t think you need an advanced degree in that field to get a bad feeling about that.

One obvious result was mercury poisoning, but the specific symptoms could be horrific, including loss of teeth, rotting jaws and gangrene in the mouth and jaws.

Calomel caused misery and sometimes death to countless people, even ruining the health of “Little Women” author Louisa May Alcott during her stint as a nurse for wounded soldiers.

It boggles the mind that generations of doctors would rely on a chemical that caused so much damage and prescribe bad medicine for so long.

But the same kind of thing has happened over and over in the realm of policy and politics for the last half century.

And it might be about to happen again in West Virginia unless people speak up.

The bad medicine I’m referring to is the idea that cutting taxes for the wealthy will create jobs and economic growth. We’ve been told that over and over for years, but the evidence for that is about a scarce as that of the benefits of ingesting calomel.

Recently, researchers at the London School of Economics did the math. In a big way. They examined the impacts of tax cuts for the rich over a 50-year period in 18 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The countries included the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Among the findings:

“We find that major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income. The effect remains stable in the medium term. In contrast, such reforms do not have any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment.”

And:

“Furthermore, we find no effect of tax reforms on real GDP per capita. When looking at the effect on unemployment rates, the estimates show a slightly different pattern. Here, tax cuts for the rich lead to slightly higher unemployment rates in the short term.”

And:

“Turning our attention to economic performance, we find no significant effects of major tax cuts for the rich. More specifically, the trajectories of real GDP per capita and the unemployment rate are unaffected by significant reductions in taxes on the rich in both the short and medium term..”

And:

“Cutting taxes on the rich increases top income shares, but has little effect on economic performance.”

If that’s not enough, other research in the field of public health from a variety of sources has found higher rates of inequality to be associated with many social problems, including increases in crime and violence, infant mortality, obesity, addiction, mental health problems and general unhappiness.

It’s very likely that there will be efforts in the coming legislative session to pursue this failed policy by changes to income and business property taxes that benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

I’m sure we’ll be told that taking the fiscal equivalent of calomel will be good for us. I hope the people of West Virginia send a loud and clear message of thanks but no thanks.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Corporate tax cuts or kids and colleges?

Back in 2007, the West Virginia Legislature dramatically changed the state’s tax system, reducing business taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The package included phasing out the business franchise tax and reducing the corporate net income tax from 9 percent to 6.5 percent. Other cuts and credits would follow.

The annual dollar amount of the cuts, at least $250 million, would have been more than enough to cover the costs of undergraduate tuition for every West Virginian enrolled in state universities, which could have really been a game changer for the state.

Talk about a road not taken.

It was argued at the time that these tax cuts would “pay for themselves,” a scenario about as probable as the belief that if you take gasoline out of your car you can drive it farther. What we did get in that department was an almost annual budget shortfall, including a gap of $27 million this year that had to be made up by one-time transfers from the state Treasurer’s Office.

Usually, budget shortfalls translate into budget cuts.

And the governor’s annual budget report to the Legislature anticipates that the next several years will be even leaner.

This loss of funding has hit higher education particularly hard and raised tuition rates for students. The state spent less per student on higher education in 2018 than it did in 2008.

According to a 2017 report by the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy, “Since 2008, state spending in higher education has declined by $130 million, adjusting for inflation.” Tuition rates have doubled since the early 2000s, in a state that trails the nation in educational attainment, with all that that implies in terms of lost income and lower workforce participation.

We were also promised at the time that these tax cuts would create jobs, which didn’t happen. According to the Quarterly Census on Employment and Wages, in the 10 years between 2007 and 2017, employment in all industries of all sizes fell from 706,172 to 683,807. The most recent data suggests that, at best, we’re back where we started over 12 years ago.

All of which is to say that the first 10 years of tax cuts brought the state a whole lot of nothing in the way of benefits.

Fast forward to 2020. The Legislature is once again pondering another major round of corporate tax cuts, which leads me to conclude that some people really do want it all.

The latest proposed cuts specifically involve the elimination of the business personal property tax, which covers things like machinery and equipment, tools, fixtures and inventory. There will no doubt be promises that these cuts will pay for themselves and create jobs. Déjà vu all over again.

I’m reminded of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown in the Peanuts cartoons.

This alleged “job killing” tax amounts to less than 1 percent of what businesses pay for materials, according to Census data. When you factor in other costs of doing business, such as payroll, energy and capital expenditures, we’re talking about something less than a rounding error. And one peer-reviewed study suggests that eliminating the machinery tax could have the unintended consequence of reducing employment by encouraging automation.

Eliminating this tax would affect state and local governments and particularly hit funding for public schools.

If enacted, these cuts will either mean our schoolchildren and public services take a hit or the lost revenue would be made up by increasing regressive taxes on working families.

It makes a whole lot more sense to invest in our children, workforce and communities.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Getting the band together again

Mission accomplished: winning the 2018 WV teachers' strike

As we gear up for the 2019 legislative session, I have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that this time last year the great WV teachers' and school support workers' strike wasn't much more than an angry gleam in a few peoples' eyes. It was a real reminder to me that hope can come when least expected.

Still, there are unresolved issues. Last year's raise still isn't what these workers deserve. PEIA funding in unresolved. Worse, Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael wants to eliminate the business inventory tax, which currently brings in $140 million per year, most of which goes to local school districts.

The promise apparently is that this cut, which mostly benefits out of state corporations, will create jobs and won't hurt funding for education....kind of like the last round of business tax cuts would create jobs and pay for themselves. 

Except they didn't.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it's good to know that West Virginia can still go West Virginia on itself.

West Virginia's teachable moment

(This alert went out from the Legislative Action Team for Children and Families, which includes over 20 of WV's leading non-profits and organizations working for children and families.)

This is a teachable moment... will we learn the lesson?

In every county across West Virginia our teachers, service personnel, and state employees have put their jobs and bodies on the line in the struggle for decent wages and benefits.

For those of us who want to live in a a state that meets its obligations to its residents with good schools, good infrastructure, public parks, good jobs and excellent quality of life, the struggle of these teachers, service personnel and state workers is OUR struggle. THEIR fight for a better state is OUR fight for a better state.

This is a teachable moment for all of us. Our teachers are teaching all of us a valuable lesson.

For the last 10 years our leaders have chased down the blind alley of tax cuts for corporations, which neither paid for themselves nor created jobs.

For the last 100 years our state has bumped up against the dead-end of an economy where our natural and human wealth has drained away. Our policies have enriched out-of-state corporate CEOs and left us behind. We have failed to keep our promises to our children. We cannot afford another failing grade.

This is a test. One we cannot afford to fail.

This is a teachable moment for all of us, but only if we learn the lesson.

This could be the moment we learn from past mistakes. This could be the moment when we reverse course and invest in our children and our schools, invest in the people who care for our children and families and keep us safe.

In West Virginia, we care about one another. Our values are on display all across the state as our neighbors, families and churches are working together to support children with food and care, standing side by side on picket lines lifting our voices together calling for change, and working to make that change a reality.

What can you do to help during this critical time so we learn the lessons that our brave educators and their allies are teaching us? 


TAKE ACTION! 
JOIN OUR BRAVE TEACHERS, SERVICE PERSONNEL AND PUBLIC WORKERS, SO WE LEARN FROM THIS TEACHABLE MOMENT AND PASS THIS TEST FOR WEST VIRGINIA'S FUTURE. 

Please call the following leaders and urge them to put people first, come to the table, and work for a solution that is fair for WV families, teachers and students.  Please be courteous to the person answering the phone:

Governor Jim Justice, 304-558-2000
Senate President Mitch Carmichael, 304-357-7801
House Speaker Tim Armstead, 304-340-3210

Reach out on Twitter:
@WVGovernor
@SenCarmichaelWV
@ArmsteadWV

Support your local teachers and service personnel by posting on social media, visiting picket lines or honking when you drive by, send messages of support to local school boards.
Continue to stand together #55Strong #55United.

Share this Action Alert with your friends and networks.

Bare bones

Well, West Virginia finally has a state budget, assuming the governor doesn't veto it, which I doubt will happen. It's pretty bare bones.

Most disturbing is the $16 million cut in higher education in a state that desperately needs to raise its educational attainment level, which will raise costs for students. After spending half a mill on the special session.

Here are some facts about higher ed and the state budget from the WV Center on Budget and Policy:

*Average tuition at West Virginia’s public colleges and universities has increased by $4,200 since 2002, a 147 percent increase, and far outpacing inflation.

*Tuition increases, in large part, have been fueled by falling public support for higher education. Since 2008, state spending in higher education has declined by $130 million, adjusting for inflation.

*As tuitions have increased, so has student debt. The average debt of a college graduate in West Virginia has increased by 70 percent since 2005. West Virginia also has the second highest student loan default rate in the country.

*Tuition increases have eroded the value of the state’s financial aid programs. The share of tuition covered by the PROMISE scholarship has fallen from 100 percent to 70 percent.

This was the second year in a row the state skated to the edge of a government shutdown. Back in what I didn't realize were the good old days, the legislative session was 60 days with maybe a  mostly drama-free week right after to nail down the budget. I'm hoping this doesn't turn into Groundhog Day.

On the bright side, the budget doesn't include tax changes that would make the bottom 80 percent pay more while giving a big break to the wealthy, a measure that would have also cost the state hundreds of millions in lost revenue in future years. One bad year is betting than signing up for a bunch of them.

Here are two views on the budget process by two veteran reporters, Phil Kabler from the Gazette-Mail and Brad McElhenny from WV Metro-News.

A better way to deal with WV's budget woes

There's a lot at stake in the current debate over the state budget. It could affect kids, seniors, students, veterans and working families for years to come. Below, by way of friends at the WV Center on Budget and Policy and other allies, are some simple suggestions for fixing the problem and easy action steps you can take:

The state budget fight is a complicated mess. It's time to simplify.

Right now, we have no actual bill, but the last version we saw would have included the greatest tax cut for the rich in recent West Virginia history. To pay for it, lawmakers are talking about a wide range of bad ideas: a $94 million cut to public education, complicated tax increases, and even a food tax. Even with all these maneuvers, one lawmaker told us that we should still expect to see a deficit of over $200 million as soon as next year.

There is another way. We call it the Better Budget Framework for West Virginia. For the last 3 weeks, we have been talking to citizen leaders and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle - including members of Democratic and Republican leadership.  The budget framework below represents a simple way to get out of this mess.

It includes just 4 steps:

• Increase the sales tax from 6 percent to 6.5 percent.

• Do what other states have done and close sales tax loopholes, by expanding the sales tax to industries that have been exempt (telecommunications, digital downloads, personal services, electronic data processing,  personalized health fitness, contracting services, technical evaluations).

• Institute a fair share tax of 1 percent on income over $200,000.

• Institute a refundable 5 percent Earned Income Tax Credit, for working families - to incentivize work and make the plan less regressive.

This plan would generate roughly $270 million in revenue, on par with the targets set by other plans. Here are 10 benefits of the simple, better budget plan:

1. No cuts to K-12 education.
2. No tax cuts for the rich.
3. Fewer tax increases on working families, then the latest "compromise" plan.
4. No cuts to the Promise scholarship, and no new cuts to Higher Education.
5. No cuts to public broadcasting, the Women's Commission, or the arts.
6. No government shutdown.
7. No big new deficit in 2019.
8. No complicated triggers.
9. No food tax increase or other complicated tax increases.
10. No cuts to hospitals and health care.

To be clear, this budget framework is not perfect.  It's pragmatic. When we talked with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, these were the priorities they listed. Like any good compromise, everyone will find something not to like in it -- including our own organizations and partners. We call it a framework, because some of the details could be tweaked (for instance, we'd be happy to see a sugar-sweetened beverage tax in exchange for a lower sales tax) and you would still get the same 10 core benefits.

Please click here to ask your lawmakers to sign-on to the Better Budget Framework, and help stop us from going the way of Kansas. Now is not the time for the greatest tax cut for the rich in West Virginia history.  It is not the time for complicated maneuvers.  It is not the time to subject ourselves to a decade of budget deficits.

Please encourage lawmakers to sign on to the Simple Plan.

It is up to us to Protect West Virginia!

Protect West Virginia is a grassroots coalition of more than 300 individuals and 30 organizations who oppose further budget cuts that harm our communities and who want to connect West Virginia values to state budget priorities.

Act now to protect West Virginia's future

WV Governor Jim Justice has issued a call for a special session of the legislature to start on May 4 to work on the state budget. The governor seems confident that a deal is within reach, having told those attending a press conference that “I think we’re on a pathway to pass a budget that’s going to be really special,”

Of course things could be "special" in all kinds of ways. While I appreciate the governor's attempt to reach a deal with the Republican legislature, I hope he doesn't reach a "compromise" that would hurt working families while giving a tax cut to the wealthy and causing more serious fiscal problems down the road. You can read more on that here and here.

This is a time when revenue increases are needed to preserve the things we value most: schools, higher education, infrastructure, kids, seniors, veterans, parks, recreation, etc. That's one thing. But making the tax system more unfair to low income families while giving a break to the well off is just wrong.

As my friend Sean O'Leary from the WV Center on Budget and Policy recently tweeted, "If WV is going to increase taxes on working families, it should be for investing in schools, roads. Not to pay for tax cuts on the wealthy."

If the Republicans want to force the issue--and they have the votes--then so be it. Let them own it. All of it.

So what can you do about it? Several things, including:

*Call the governor's office and say something like, "Thank Gov. Justice for fighting for a budget that's good for all West Virginians. But please don't accept a compromise that hurts working West Virginians and makes our problems worse in the future."

*Contact your legislators. You can find out who they are here. The legislative website is here.

*Learn more by watching this Facebook Live presentation by Sean Monday, May 1 at 5:30.

*Show up at the capitol on Thursday, May 4 at 9:00 to stand up for The People's Budget.

Game on. And for real.

Smoke and mirrors

One of the many bad ideas under consideration at the WV legislature is a bill that would replace WV's income tax with a tax on consumption. This would mean a huge cut for the wealthiest and a major tax increase for everyone else. It would also blow yet another hole in the state budget. We discuss this on the latest Front Porch.

Last time around, we discussed marijuana legalization, both chemical and recreational. My position is rather nuanced:

*if alcohol was good enough for my old man it's good enough for me; but

*considering all the ill **** that's legal, marijuana is pretty small potatoes; and

*medicinal marijuana could really provide relief for people dealing with several diseases; and

*it could be a much needed revenue generator if it was legalized, taxed and regulated.

A taxing question

The latest Front Porch program/podcast is about the proposal by the majority in the WV senate to replace the state's relatively progressive income tax with a regressive consumption tax. It's no surprise that I'm against it, for reasons mentioned on the podcast. I was pleased to learn, however, that my conservative counterpart on the program doesn't think it's a great idea either. You can get down in the weeds here.

Meanwhile, if you haven't already, click on Protect WV and sign up for alerts on the state's ongoing budget battles. Drastic cuts would adversely impact the quality of life for all West Virginians. We're talking jobs, roads, education and school services, higher ed, vocational training and workforce development, programs for kids and seniors, state parks, natural resources, and all the rest.

 Here's the action page. And, while we're at it, here's a budget calculator where you can come up with your own solution to balance the state budget.

This tax and budget stuff is a huge issue and one that could have as significant impact on our state as actions at the federal level.

Heads up!

It's understandable that a lot of attention is focused on the...stuff rolling out of Washington these days. But there's a huge threat at the state level and politicians of both parties talk about the need to slash the state budget, which has already been cut for the last several years.

Now it's even more serious. We're talking serious damage to the things that make life livable here..

There's no such need. They can easily raise revenue to protect schools, kids, seniors, higher ed, job training, parks, tourism, public safety and all that. It's a matter of choice.

I urge everyone in WV who cares about any of that to check out www.protectwv.org, learn about what's at stake, sign up to keep up and show up.

For West Virginians, this crosses divides. Whether you love or hate Trump, you probably know someone who goes to or works at a public school or college, have a favorite state park, go to a library, drive on roads, and care about public safety. Etc.

It's on. Now.

#protectWV #nofailedstate

Sticking it to which man?

This op-ed of mine ran in Tuesday's Charleston Gazette-Mail, although for some reason it didn't get posted online:

There’s a lot of talk lately about the working class. In an ordinary year, I’d be ecstatic because this is something I care about.  But this isn’t an ordinary year.

Lately, the term is often racialized, which is never a good sign. The Electoral College victory of the president elect is attributed to the white working class. While there are lots of ways of parsing the results, let’s assume that’s true and consider how working people are likely to fare now.

I guess we could start by saying that white working class people probably won’t have their names added to a registry, face mass deportations, or have travel restricted for reasons other than lack of money. There’s that anyway, although I kind of doubt this would have happened in any case.

But a number of policies now on the agenda could be harmful to working people.

Let’s start with the Affordable Care Act.  Around 30 million Americans could lose coverage if it is fully repealed without being replaced. Of these, over half are white, most of whom work for a living.

 In WV, Medicaid expansion alone covers nearly 180,000 people, about one out of ten. That doesn’t include people with disabilities or the tiny TANF or welfare population.  Around 37,000 working West Virginians got covered through the exchange.  Around 18,000 young people up to age 26 are now covered on their parent’s insurance. These people are overwhelmingly in working families. White ones too.

Losing expansion funding would be a devastating blow to hospitals and health care providers here and would result in job losses in one of the few growing industries.

The new administration could breathe new life into House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program. Medicare is a health care program for people age 65 and older who have worked and paid into the system. It provides coverage to over 55 million Americans and around 400,000 here, over 1/5 of the population. We’re tied with Maine in having the highest percentage of beneficiaries.

Ryan has also proposed block granting—and effectively cutting--programs such as SNAP and traditional Medicaid, both of which benefit working families. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the data shows that “The overwhelming majority of SNAP recipients who can work do so.”  SNAP benefits go straight to local businesses and help support thousands of retail and agriculture jobs.

Traditional Medicaid covers 70 million, including long term care for the elderly and people with disabilities. Many seniors who worked all their lives run out of savings when they need long term care. Medicaid picks up the slack. With block granting, some would have to quit jobs to care for elderly family members, even though they may be unequipped to do this. More seniors who worked all their lives will be in danger of abuse or neglect.

This would also mean losing federal matching funds, again with job impact. More than 10 years ago the WV Bureau of Business and Economic Research found that Medicaid spending supported economic activity that generated nearly 33,000 jobs. That number has only gone up since.

Medicaid and CHIP provide health care to children in many working families earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level—and most workers want their kids to live and be healthy. The programs also bring millions of dollars to local communities and sustain jobs.

The latest round of proposed tax cuts—a remedy that has yet to produce impressive results--would likely benefit the very wealthy, increase inequality, and reduce the ability of the federal government to respond to the needs of working families—for example by making vocational and post-secondary education more affordable.

From the earliest days of the republic, working people fought for a free public education for their children, which is likely to be undermined by a secretary of education committed to undermining it with a system of vouchers and privatization schemes. Speaking of labor history, another key demand of the past was the abolition of child labor, which has been praised by a group the newly appointed education chief has supported.

Then there’s trade, a major issue for working people. I’m not mourning the death of the Trans Pacific Partnership and I support revisiting trade deals to ensure workers’ rights and save American jobs. But a heavy handed approach could set off a trade war which the conservative Peterson Institute described as “horribly destructive.” Peterson estimated that this could cost between 1.3 and 4 million jobs. Progressive groups that ordinarily oppose Peterson on trade issues, such as the Economic Policy Institute, share similar concerns.

If the US ignores the dangers of climate change, working people will be hit the hardest by extreme weather events, like those that hit much of the state this summer. Scientific models project more droughts, floods, food shortages, wildfires, disease epidemics, etc. While we’re at it, if the US goes to war with the known universe over perceived slights on Twitter, it’s a pretty safe bet that working people would pay the highest price.

Then there’s the pick for secretary of labor, a fast food baron who opposes the minimum wage and talks about replacing workers with robots, saying that the latter are ““always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case”

Sorry, but If this is a case of sticking it to the man, I’d have to ask, which man would that be? From where I’m sitting, it seems to be the one who is living paycheck to paycheck.

I think a real pro-working class program would be based on solidarity, not scapegoating. It would include such things as full employment and trade policies to strengthen the middle class; patching the holes in our pension and health care system, ensuring paid sick days and family leave; making debt-free post high-school job training and education a reality; strengthening K-12 public education; investing in things like early childhood programs and infrastructure; and guaranteeing the right of workers to organize. And, since widespread poverty exerts a downward pressure on everyone’s wages, it would support an increase in the minimum wage indexed to inflation.

It would recognize that an injury to one is the concern of all, just as the labor movement of the 1800s came to recognize that free labor could never prosper while slavery persisted. And it would promote international policies that would guarantee fair trade, a sustainable future, and what Lincoln called “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

I haven’t heard a lot of that.

Taking on the new tobacco

Given West Virginia's budget crisis and dismal state of public health, it's a good thing that a campaign is in the process of being launched that aims to increase the tax on sugary drinks. Already some cities have experienced success at this. This NY Times article shows the early results of a major university (and employer) that banned them from the campus.

Of course, the outcome of that campaign might be affected by Tuesday's outcome. As will many other things...

Sugar is the new tobacco

This op-ed of mine ran in yesterday's Charleston Gazette-Mail:

When legislators start scrambling to fill West Virginia’s budget gap next year, they would do well to consider raising the tax on sugary drinks. And maybe finishing the job on the tobacco tax.

There are plenty of reasons to consider this option, but here’s one to start with: sugar is the new tobacco. In more ways than one. And tobacco is the old sugar.

But, let’s start with the old one. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 U.S. deaths per year.

For comparison, consider this: that’s more than twice the number of Union and Confederate soldiers killed or mortally wounded in battle in the whole Civil War (around 110,000 and 94,000, respectively).


The CDC estimates economic costs to be more than $300 billion per year, including $170 in direct medical costs and $156 billion in lost productivity.

That’s over 70 times the size of West Virginia’s general fund budget of $4.2 billion in 2015.

That’s bad enough, but many Americans may have forgotten how the tobacco industry knew about the danger of smoking but suppressed the information to protect profits and delay regulation.

As James Surowiecki wrote in The New Yorker, industry researchers “had demonstrated the addictive qualities of nicotine and the health hazards of smoking years before these things became public knowledge, and that tobacco companies had nonetheless embarked on a public campaign to deny what they knew to be true, from their own research, and to cast doubt on the dangers of cigarettes.”

It has recently come to light that the sugar industry was up to the same tricks for years.

According to a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine, more than 50 years ago, sugar industry interest groups became concerned about research on the dietary causes of coronary heart disease, especially those that linked illness and early deaths to sugar intake.

Over a period of decades, the industry dumped a few million dollars on P.R. and “research,” including funding for Harvard scientists who minimized the role of sugar and cast fat as the villain. The scientists didn’t disclose any possible conflicts of interest.

As far back as the 1950s, one influential industry leader argued that “sugar is what keeps every human being alive and with energy to face our daily problems.” In effect, the industry paid for research to back up their claims.

You get what you pay for. Or the industry did anyhow. As the authors of the JAMA article note, “by the 1980s, few scientists believed that added sugars played a significant role in CHD, and the first 1980 Dietary Guidelines for Americans focused on reducing total fat, saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol for CHD prevention.”

As Surowiecki put it, the Harvard researchers “discounted studies suggesting that reducing sugar consumption could help with coronary heart disease, while overstating the evidence blaming saturated fats.”

If you’re old enough to read this, you probably remember the “low-fat” marketing craze that really took off in the ’90s and hasn’t entirely gone away.


This isn’t to say that fat is a new health food, but it’s hard to deny that the low-fat craze helped lead to the high-carb diets that have contributed to the nation’s — and especially West Virginia’s — obesity crisis, which is taking its own toll, in terms of health and financial costs.

Back in 2008, health care policy expert Ken Thorpe was commissioned to advise the Legislature on how to improve the state’s physical (and ultimately fiscal) health. At the time, he noted that we spent 13 percent more per person on health care than the national average.

He also noted that “Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that West Virginia has among the highest rates of childhood and adult obesity in the country. These high rates of obesity are associated with high and rising rates of diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, heart disease, pulmonary disorders and co-morbid depression.”

In a 2009 report titled “The Future Costs of Obesity,” Thorpe reported that obesity-related diseases cost West Virginia $668 million in 2008, a number he expected to rise to $2.4 billion by 2018 if nothing changed.

It’s hard to get up-to-the-minute data on this, and some progress has been made, but it’s clear the public health threat is still with us.

The death toll hasn’t reached Civil War levels, but damage has been done, and our children have been among the targets. In 2012, nearly one in four West Virginia fifth-graders already had high blood pressure, according to West Virginia University measurements of thousands of children. One in five kindergarteners were coming to school obese and were at risk of type 2 diabetes. Nearly one in three adults were obese. According to Try This West Virginia, a campaign to promote healthy lifestyles, seven out 10 health care dollars were spent on preventable diseases.

Let’s just say that if another country had done this to our kids, we’d be at war.

I’m no purist about this stuff. I’m a former smoker and I consume sugary drinks (although you have to be 21 or older to buy most of them), but let’s face some facts.

Budget crisis or not, imposing a tax on things that kill us might not be a bad idea. Part of the revenue could go to addressing the medical costs these things cause. And if, over time, we consume less of them and suffer less harmful effects ... well ... that would be a good problem to have.

You get what you pay for

West Virginia is dry as a bone right now, although it may rain tomorrow inshallah. It's so dry that dust springs up when our dogs walk across the field. The creek is dry except for a few holdout holes for the first time since 2012. Oh yeah, and fire season is  approaching.

Fall brush fires around here are not as catastrophic (for now) as those in California and other places, but they can be pretty scary. I remember one year when you could see long lines of fire snaking along the mountains of Logan County. In fact, the one on-duty injury I sustained in my short, happy and inglorious career as a volunteer fire fighter happened during a brush fire.

(Actually, it was a burn from a flare, but the flare started it.)

Anyhow, fire season and managing woodlands has gotten a bit harder lately, since the state had to lay off 37 foresters due to legislative inaction. Come to think of it, those guys might have been useful in reducing the impact of severe flooding in the future by monitoring the damage done by corporate clear cutters.

Holy hashtag failed state, Batman!

Meanwhile, the state's opioid crisis keeps rippling out. This WV Public Broadcasting story explores how it's impacting the foster care system in the state.

And, while we're at it, here's an op-ed by my friend the Rev. Matthew J. Watts about what might happen politically if all of the state's convicted felons voted. They can in WV, but many don't vote or even realize that it's legal here.

Finally, a little over a year ago I was part of an AFSC delegation to Palestine. I have many grim and sad memories of the trip. However, I have nothing but fondness when I think back on hanging with comrades and drinking Taybeh, a primo Palestinian beer.

Of flooding, the role of government and such

The Charleston Gazette-Mail recently ran an editorial that hit the nail on the head. Here are the opening paragraphs:

THE RECENT deadly floods offer clear examples why it is so important for West Virginia lawmakers to figure out how to fund a healthy and responsive state government as the state’s traditional sources of revenue shrink.

A storm like the one in June would cause anyone to dip into the Rainy Day Fund to keep services running. That is what the fund is for. But in recent years, West Virginia has been relying on its savings account too much just to cover its usual bills.

West Virginia would have been hurting anyway with the drop in coal severance taxes and other fluctuations. But making matters more difficult were $300 million worth of business tax cuts in recent years. By now lawmakers should have figured out how to make up that lost revenue. Instead, the state has been cutting spending.

Gazette reporter David Gutman recently pointed out that many of the agencies being cut are precisely those that could help people deal with the flood. This includes:

*the State Police, which will see a cut of around $2 million, 11 percent below 2014;

*The WV National Guard. With funding flat since 2013, this amounts to a 5 percent cut if you factor in inflation;

*the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which has had flat funding for the last five years, another cut when inflation is factored in;

*the state Early Warning Flood System, which is down by 11 percent since 2013 and will get a $25K budget cut next year;

*the Bureau for Public Health's aid for local water systems has been flat since 2013 and will be cut by 24 percent next year.

Other state agencies that have been cut include the Department of Environmental Protection, which among other things regulates nearly 400 non-coal dams and the WV Conservation Agency, which maintains 170 flood control dams as part of the Department of Agriculture. It will cut by around $450,000 and will be funded at about 25 percent less than in 2013.

This is just nuts, a needless disaster waiting to happen due to bad decisions of the past and the anti-tax mentality of the WV legislature's majority.

 

Flotsam and jetsam

Here's a good website to keep up with developments in the response to the massive flooding in West Virginia.

Meanwhile, here's a cool rant linking WV's rainy days with the state budget and rainy day fund, which took a heavy hit during the legislative special session. It underscores the state's need for new revenue, which will likely face opposition from anti-tax zealots unless the composition of the statehouse changes.

Speaking of taxes, the Paul Ryan "Better Way" plan isn't. It's mostly a rehash of the failed policies of the past.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to watch developments between the United Mine Workers union and Murray Energy. Union members recently voted to reject the deal. CEO Robert Murray seems to be gunning for the king of coal throne vacated by former Massey CEO Don Blankenship.

Finally, in the spirit of "it's not all bad," there are some exciting things happening in WV around youth leadership development and civic participation.

Not another no-brainer!

It's no secret that WV's budget is a hot mess. The majority-Republican legislature didn't pass one at the end of the session and there's still no deal.

Hardliners oppose any new taxes, even extremely reasonable ones like a $1.00 increase in the cigarette tax, which would both raise needed revenue and have a positive public health impact. Instead, they are talking about slashing budgets, laying off public employees, and even privatizing public colleges and universities and the Public Employees Insurance Agency.

There are some voices of reason, including this Gazette editorial, this op-ed, and  this bit of myth busting about the budget. A number of groups came together Thursday at a press conference calling for higher tobacco taxes.

It's not clear if the ideologues in the legislative majority are listening. One of the speakers at the press conference said that raising this kind of revenue was a "no-brainer." I'm not sure what this says about WV, but in my experience the no-brainers are the toughest fights of all.

Good times...not

The WV legislative session is more than half over...which is good...but the Republican leadership has spent most of its time cutting workers' wages, bashing poor people and gays, and pandering to pistol packers...which is not.

Meanwhile, their answer to the state's budget and revenue problems is draconian budget cuts to everything from public safety to K-12 to higher ed. So far, they've shown little interest in common sense solutions that would raise revenues.

Other bad ideas involve spending millions of dollars to tighten benefits and rules for programs that effect low income families and test them for drugs, an expensive policy that has basically turned up next to nothing in other states.

The fun never ends. Once again I say hitting bottom would be nice.

Hard Times

The latest Front Porch podcast is out. This time the focus is on WV's tanking economy and budget and what we might be able to do about it. I'm not as pessimistic as some people. Maybe that's because I've been to Gaza...