barometer
barometer on the white background
barometer
barometer on the white background
Thanks for being a subscriber.
Sorry, your subscription does not include this content.
Please contact your publisher to upgrade your subscription.
Op_ed_commentaries
Alan Rezek: West Virginia can benefit from studying climate change
Rezek
With nearly 40 years of experience as a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, 33 years of which were in West Virginia, I have often been asked why I have not written an opinion piece on the issue of climate change.
In the past, I deferred to experts and scientists with fancier credentials to give the facts that prove climate change, that show potential impacts of climate change and facts that confirm the urgent threat posed by climate change. We have blown away records regarding peak levels of carbon dioxide over the last 400,000 years. The graph tracking the change over the last 100 years has basically gone vertical with no indication of a change in sight. It is becoming commonplace to break record high temperatures around the globe.
But I have left the responsibility of educating people about the dangers of climate change to others, because debating with deniers of climate change is like arguing with members of the flat earth society. Climate change deniers maintain their stance at all costs. Perhaps it is to save face. Perhaps they believe to acknowledge it would threaten their livelihood. Perhaps it is a boost to their ego to go up against people they see as arrogant and elite. Whatever the reason, denying climate change does not change the dangers posed by it.
So, I would make a different case to the people of West Virginia about the meaning of climate change to us. Whether or not we agree about the seriousness of climate change, the world and our country are moving to address it. The fact is, it will be one of the largest economic drivers of this century. We can ignore that fact and keep ourselves entrenched in the past. However, the states that leverage this fact will be the ones which move forward as we progress through the next several decades. But what does that mean for West Virginia?
The governor and some key legislators need to put together a commission that will study the impacts of climate change, both physical and psychological, not just to West Virginia, but to other parts of the country. Bring in climatologists, marine biologists, flood control specialists, members of the energy sector, sociologists, environmentalists, agriculture experts and any other experts who can shed light on the issues related to climate change. The commission then needs to build an image of what the future will look like in a world addressing climate change.
From that image, West Virginia can formulate a plan that benefits its citizens and its economy. New solar technology requires much less sunshine to generate electricity. Would our abandoned mining sites be a good home for this emerging technology? It takes years to develop orchards. Is it time to begin to develop agriculture that has been limited by temperatures in the past? Will nearby warming metropolitan areas be looking for relief from heat in the forests and mountains? Will more people become environmentally interested seeking outdoor activities and recreation? Should this drive us to devote more resources to expanding our parks and recreation? Are government dollars, and resulting jobs, needed to mitigate greater threats of flooding due to increased levels of rainfall? Will the availability of seafood be impacted, making aquaculture a viable option for West Virginia? Will recycling emerge as a cleaner alternative to creating plastics from oil? Can the panhandles support recycling centers that can serve nearby metropolitan areas? Where does our current infrastructure need to be improved to facilitate changes the future may bring?
Answers to these questions can help West Virginia move forward and thrive. We need to do more as a state than trying to get a single factory here or there. We need to maximize what will stimulate our economy for years to come, not just right now. If we think small and pine about the past, we will remain in the past.
You do not have to believe in climate change, but society as a whole is looking for more sustainable options. We do need to leverage these options to advantage our state.
Alan Rezek, of St. Albans, is a retired meteorologist.
Op_ed_commentaries
Lida Shepherd: Welcoming immigrants to W.Va.
Shepherd
There is much discussion and hand-wringing these days over how we grow West Virginia’s economy and make ours a state where more people are moving in than moving out.
And it’s no wonder. Demographic trends do not exactly point to a rocket ship ride to growth and prosperity.
Two of the perhaps most telling statistics are that public school enrollment declined by 4,122 students last year and that between July 2017 and July 2018, West Virginia lost 11,216 people.
That amounts to 30 people packing up and leaving our state every single day, taking their talent and tax dollars with them.
However, an under-appreciated and under-reported cause for hope is our small but growing immigrant population.
As outlined recently in the report “The State of West Virginia’s Immigrants,†while West Virginia has the smallest population of immigrants among the 50 states, it is growing at a much faster rate. Although they make up less than 2 percent of the population, immigrants account for 19 percent of newcomers to the state since 2011.
What’s more is that according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, immigrants represent 5.5 percent of the business owners in the state, a fact that runs quite contrary to the ugly and nativist rhetoric of “they’re here to steal our jobs.†The reality is that proportionally, immigrants are creating more jobs than native-born West Virginians.
Challenging common myths and stereotypes about people who are undocumented, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that in 2017, unauthorized immigrants paid $5.1 million in state and local property, sales and income taxes in West Virginia.
For these positive trends and contributions to continue, we need to enact policies that make West Virginia the most welcoming state for immigrants, and strongly reject all rhetoric and policy that demonizes immigrants.
A good start would be shifting federal priorities away from spending billions on a border wall and continuing to increase the budget of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to separate parents from their children.
According to ICE statistics released by the American Civil Liberties Union-West Virginia, the Mountain State is the most dangerous place for immigrants to live. In other words, immigrants are more likely to be rounded up by ICE than in any other state, creating a climate of fear for immigrants seeking to live and work in West Virginia.
Additionally, we should defend programs like the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows young people brought to the Unites States as children to apply for a renewable two year period of deferred action on deportation and permission to work, as well as the Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which provides temporary legal status to people from other countries affected by armed conflict or natural disasters.
In an effort to move West Virginia in a positive direction, a social media campaign called Many Roads Home was recently launched, which highlights the impact immigrants have on our communities, and shares the stories of how some came to call West Virginia home.
The campaign caught on quickly, with nearly 1,200 likes in only two weeks. Perhaps it has tapped into the feeling of hospitality that runs deep here in West Virginia. And maybe what unites us is stronger than the fear-baiting which seeks to distract us from dealing with the real problems facing our state.
Whether for the warm and fuzzy reasons or for the cold calculus of economics, welcoming newcomers, welcoming the stranger, welcoming refugees, welcoming immigrants isn’t only morally right, but the future of our states relies on doing so.
Like the big signs read when you cross the state line, as a state we need to be sending a message loud and clear to immigrants: “Welcome to West Virginia!â€
Lida Shepherd is program director for the American Friends Service Committee.
Op_ed_commentaries
Rafe Godfey: Would the last Dem to leave WV turn out the lights?
Godfrey
The @WVGOP Twitter account recently blasted out a tweet about unemployment numbers, followed by the statement “The Trump economy is booming!!! #fourmoreyear.†That feeling when the official state GOP account screws up its own hashtags. If the economy is doing so well (and it’s not — their stats leave out the part about how most new jobs are part-time, pay little and have no benefits), you’d think the state Republican Party could afford to hire a competent proofreader.
•â¶Ä¢â¶Ä¢
County officials recently voted to make Putnam a “Second Amendment Sanctuary†county, where people can basically disobey whatever state gun laws they don’t personally agree with. These legalistic geniuses apparently think that Constitutional amendments cannot have any restrictions.
Speaking of which, I just had a great idea: I’m going to push for Kanawha to become a First Amendment sanctuary county, where you’ll be free to yell “Fire!†in a crowded theater, threaten whomever you want, steal anyone’s intellectual property and incite any and all manner of violence. Why not? After all, freedom of speech is in the Constitution, which means no state legislature can legally interfere with the most liberal (and literal) possible interpretation of it ... right?
I just wish conservatives were as passionate about amendments that actually are under attack, like the Fourth, which the U.S. Supreme Court has quietly gutted over the past decade.
•â¶Ä¢â¶Ä¢
In what will be surprising to absolutely nobody, Senate President Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, is backing away from his already extremely tentative support of the proposed Fairness Act. Of course, he first split a hair so fine it makes Einstein look bald, in saying that the act doesn’t have his “individual support.†As opposed to what — support from his army of Mitch Carmichael clones? Or maybe he’s a real-life Dr. Noonian Soong and built a pale, yellow-eyed android in his likeness? Lord, that’s scary.
Ahem. I digress. Finally, during an “All Kinds are Welcome Here†rally at the State Capitol, Carmichael said he’s “leaning no†on the Fairness Act. “If [discrimination against LBGTQ folks is] just a talking point we want to put forth in West Virginia — we don’t want to do that just for appearances,†he said.
Well, that’s odd, considering that the GOP’s much-ballyhooed “Born Alive†abortion bill was “just for appearances,†having no practical application whatsoever. As Delegate John Boyle, D-Jefferson, succinctly put it, “This bill does absolutely nothing. It proposes to make something illegal that is already illegal.â€
Some Republicans even acknowledged that the bill is without function. “Yeah, there might be laws that protect the life of newborns. That might change tomorrow,†said Delegate S. Marshall Wilson, R-Berkeley. Let me get this straight — newborns deserve “backup laws,†in case existing laws protecting them are repealed or somehow nullified, but LGBTQ people deserve no legal protections whatsoever? Got it.
This does further clarify one thing: The West Virginia GOP can hardly claim to be “pro-life,†as they have now made it quite clear that the lives of LGBTQ West Virginians are worth decidedly less to them.
•â¶Ä¢â¶Ä¢
A great op-ed by the always-on-point Chris Regan, on why Democrats are losing a lot in West Virginia, got me thinking. And it got me thinking about who’s in charge, because leadership starts at the top. And finally it got me thinking that Belinda Biafore and Bill Laird, state chair and vice chair, respectively, of the West Virginia Democratic Party, should resign.
As Regan noted, for the past 10 years the sycophants in the higher echelons of the state Democratic party have passed over real Democrats to bend over backwards for candidates who are basically Republican-lite, finally going so far as to back a billionaire, tax-dodging “deadbeat†(as Forbes so eloquently put it) who switched parties. And what have Democrats gotten from selling their collective soul?
Think I’m being too hard on them? Hearken back, if you will, to 2016, when Biafore went so far as to accuse — with zero evidence — the state GOP of backing progressive Democrat Charlotte Pritt to siphon votes away from Jim Justice. Not only is this ludicrous, but I think it’s pretty obvious that Pritt, at the very least, wouldn’t have done any worse a job than Justice.
Now, recall this Gazette-Mail op-ed by Laird, from May 2017, in which he practically deifies Justice: “Clearly, the enlightened leadership and vision of Gov. Jim Justice is the best hope for the future salvation of our state in these difficult times.â€
Wow. You’d think Justice was a guru or some religious figure, sitting in the lotus position, radiant whiteboard behind him, smiling beatifically while Laird and Biafore prostrate before him.
In backing Justice, Biafore and Laird betrayed the trust placed in them by West Virginia Democrats. They are both up for reelection this summer, but they should do us all a favor and resign their positions, as they did with their dignity a little more than four years ago. One longstanding thorn in the side of state Democrats, Larry Puccio, recently bestowed upon the party the gift of his departure.
Is there a difference between Justice and his 2016 opposition, Bill Cole? Of course there is — but it’s far too small a difference. As Regan noted, Hoppy Kercheval has it backward: West Virginia Dems aren’t losing because they’ve moved too far left. They’re losing because the state’s Democratic voters are sick of Democrat candidates who are nearly indistinguishable from moderate Republicans. After all, as George Carlin said, candidates like Justice and Cole are all in the same club, and “they don’t give a [expletive] about you ... It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.â€
Rafe Godfrey is a Gazette-Mail copy editor and a master’s student at
Marshall University.
West Virginia has passed an unfortunate milestone, according to data from the state Bureau of Vital Statistics: For the past three years that data is available, firearm fatalities have surpassed motor vehicle fatalities in the state.
2016 was the watershed year, when the number of gun deaths (335) for the first time exceeded motor vehicle deaths (297).
That trend continued in 2017, when firearm deaths exceeded motor vehicle deaths 349 to 337. It occurred again in 2018 (the last year that data is available), when 347 firearm deaths exceeded 333 motor vehicle fatalities.
Looking back at 20 years of statistics, dating to 1999, motor vehicle fatalities had significantly outpaced gun fatalities for each of the prior 17 years.
The biggest gap was in 2006, when motor vehicle crashes claimed 422 lives, compared to 260 lives lost to firearm fatalities.
From an average of 405.2 motor vehicle fatalities a year from 2004-08, the number of fatalities fell to 348.8 a year from 2009-13, and dropped to an average of 319.2 deaths a year from 2014-19.
From 2004-08 and from 2014-19, the average number of annual motor vehicle fatalities has declined by 21.2 percent.
That makes sense. Cars keep getting safer, with all kinds of new gizmos from automatic braking and lane drift warnings to advanced air bag systems. Law enforcement has also done its part, with strict enforcement of seat belt, distracted driver and driving under the influence laws.
With the increased popularity and availability of ride services, fewer people are taking the risk of buzzed driving after a party or night on the town.
Another phenomenon likely contributing to the decline is that more and more young people are putting off getting their drivers’ licenses.
Conversely, firearm deaths are on the rise, from an average of 255.2 a year from 2004-08 to 271.8 a year from 2009-13 and 319.4 a year from 2014-18 — the period when they surpassed the average annual number of motor vehicle fatalities.
That’s a staggering increase of 25.2 percent.
Unlike motor vehicles, where there have been multiple concerted efforts to improve safety and reduce fatalities, the state Legislature in the past five years has been systematically repealing sensible gun safety measures, in a state that already had some of the nation’s weakest gun safety regulations.
Municipal gun regulations have been wiped out, including ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä’s one-handgun-per-week purchase limit and its ban on weapons in recreation centers.
Prohibitions on weapons in parked vehicles in school, business and Capitol parking lots were rolled back. Prohibitions on firearms in state and county parks also fell.
Most devastatingly, in 2016 the Legislature overrode then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s veto of legislation to legalize concealed carry of handguns without a permit. At the veto ceremony, Tomblin was surrounded by dozens of law enforcement officers who opposed the bill, including then-Raleigh County Sheriff Steve Tanner, who said, “This is just bad law. It endangers law enforcement, and it endangers the public.â€
It’s no coincidence that prior to 2016, state firearm fatalities had not topped 300 in any given year.
In 2016, 335 people were killed with firearms in West Virginia, after permitless concealed carry went into effect that May. The number went to 349 in 2017 and 347 the following year.
The number of homicides committed with a firearm increased 44 percent in the three years concealed carry without a permit became law compared to the three years before.
All other gun deaths (mostly accidental shootings) went up 33 percent, from an average of 12 to 16 a year.
Most disturbingly, suicides by firearm jumped 59 percent, from an average of 161 a year to an average of 256.
Just as when you improve vehicle safety and enforce zero tolerance for impaired driving, the result is fewer motor vehicle fatalities, when you relax gun safety laws and make guns more readily accessible, the result is that more people die.
Nonetheless, of late, the Legislature has felt compelled each session to make additional sacrifices at the altar of the gun manufacturers’ lobby. The first bill on that agenda this session would allow anyone to have firearms in vehicles parked on school property. (Currently, that privilege is limited to persons with valid conceal-carry permits.)
Last year, the Legislature passed a bill forcing private businesses and associations to allow firearms in vehicles in their parking lots, over objections of multiple business organizations.
The any-driver-can-bring-a-gun-to-school bill passed the Senate 33-1, with only retiring Sen. Corey Palumbo, D-Kanawha, raising a peep of objection to the idea.
Evidently, the other 33 senators believe their actions have no consequences.
(Thanks go out to Wes Holden for the head’s up on the Vital Statistics numbers.)
•â¶Ä¢â¶Ä¢
One of the unfortunate developments under the new legislative leadership is the trend toward giving bills a single committee assignment.
Back in the day, all bills went to at least two committees, including at least one of the two major committees in each house — Finance or Judiciary. That assured more scrutiny of bills, and in the Senate, meant that at least three-quarters of senators would have familiarity with any given bill by the time it reached the floor.
That level of scrutiny is gone. Looking randomly at bill introductions Wednesday, nine of 18 House bills are single-committee referenced, and eight of 10 Senate bills are single-shots.
Single-shotting makes it possible to rush measures through before opponents get a chance to get organized.
Consider Senate Bill 560, which would allow aides in nursing homes to administer medication, something current law requires an RN or LPN to do. Gov. Jim Justice vetoed a similar bill in 2018, noting, “Lessening the professional standards for those caring for nursing home residents would inevitably result in diminished care.â€
The latest version of the bill passed the Senate Wednesday on a 27-7 vote. The House received the message at 11 a.m. Thursday, and it was single-shot to the House Health and Human Resources Committee, which took up the bill that afternoon and advanced it back to the full House before opponents had any opportunity to respond.
Reasonable people might ask, why the rush?
•â¶Ä¢â¶Ä¢
State treasurer candidate Riley Moore is having a fundraiser in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä Feb. 13, with an interesting lineup of special guests, event chairs and committee members.
Most eye-catching is that Murray Energy PAC, the political arm of the bankrupt coal company owned by Robert Murray, is listed as an event chairman. (The invitation does not mention whether Mr. Nutterbutter will be in attendance.)
Other event chairs and committee members include Randy Cheetham, with Arch Coal; Sammy Gray, with FirstEnergy; Bob Orndorff, with Dominion Energy; Steve Stewart, with Appalachian Power; Greg Hoyer, with EQT; and Greg Thomas, longtime spokesman, consultant and aide to Don Blankenship.
(There’s also the usual cast of GOP VIPs, including Senate President Mitch Carmichael, House Speaker Roger Hanshaw and former Senate president Bill Cole.)
In many states, the office of treasurer, the state’s chief financial officer, is an appointive, non-partisan position. Curious that coal, natural gas and electric power utilities would find it important to throw their support to a particular candidate.
•â¶Ä¢â¶Ä¢
Finally, it is with sadness that we say goodbye to one of the most irascible and brilliant personalities ever to grace West Virginia politics, H. John Rogers, who died a week ago Saturday.
Rogers spent a lifetime consistently grabbing headlines, with actions ranging from the ridiculous — he once picketed a tea party rally in his hometown of New Martinsville with a “What Would Arch Do?†sign — to the sublime, like going to court in an attempt to prevent Tomblin from drawing the salary of governor while he was technically serving as the Senate president, acting as governor.
Rogers, a West Virginia University undergrad and Harvard law grad, for many years wrote a column for a statewide counterculture magazine, providing brilliant political and social commentary in a writing style so complex, baroque and interwoven that I frequently felt the urge to sketch out a schematic to try to break it all down.
He will probably be best remembered for a news conference during his 1980 gubernatorial run, when he left the podium to punch a reporter in the face. A better representation of the man might be that in semi-retirement, Rogers counseled death row inmates in western Pennsylvania.
He called frequently with the latest gossip or political observation, and I will certainly miss hearing from him.
