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Jeff Flake’s Conservative Conscience

September 4, 2017 in , , /by

Jeff Flake is the junior United States Senator from Arizona. He graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in International Relations and spent time as a missionary in South Africa. Later he served as the Executive Director of the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, and was elected to the House of Representatives six times beginning in 2000 before his run for the Senate. Flake is very conservative, believing that government’s involvement in the lives of individual citizens should be minimized and that strangling tax revenues and spending is the best way to ensure this. He is pro-life, opposed to gun control and voted against disaster relief spending for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. So one would not expect Jeff Flake to be openly critical of a Republican President whose election in 2016 made this conservative nirvana more likely. But Jeff Flake is a man of principle and he has unloaded on Donald Trump.

West Virginia’s Other Public Health Crisis

August 28, 2017 in , /by

Now that President Trump has declared that the opioid epidemic in this country is a national disaster, we may soon see more attention being paid to that health crisis in West Virginia. But there’s another health crisis in West Virginia that’s been festering under the radar: the epidemic of chronic disease and general poor health. According to the most recent report by the West Virginia Health Statistics Center, West Virginians have the second highest obesity rate in the country, the fifth highest rate of inactivity or lack of exercise, and the fifth highest rate of cancer. The state ranks first in the country for heart attacks, second for the prevalence of mental health problems and fourth for diabetes. Panhandle counties, particularly Jefferson, generally fare better than the rest of the state on these measures. Yet from any viewpoint, these statistics are troubling. But unlike with opioids, recent science has shown there’s a quick, inexpensive, and certain cure for this crisis of poor health: it is our feet.

Charlottesville

August 13, 2017 in /by

I have spent a lot of time in Charlottesville, first for college and then numerous visits later. It is a lovely city, home to a fine university that pursues reason in the Enlightenment tradition of its founder. So it was that yesterday, as I saw the still photographs of the violent demonstration by white supremacists and alt-right thugs in Charlottesville, I sobbed. How can this kind of thing happen in our country, much less in Charlottesville? Something has changed. That something is Donald Trump.

The Old Bait And Switch

August 8, 2017 in , , /by

West Virginia voters have just been made the victims of a fraud — we were sold one thing by Jim Justice and he has now delivered another. It did not take him long to reveal the fraud, suggesting that it was intended from the beginning. On a stage with Donald Trump on August 3, 2017, Justice announced that he was switching parties from Democrat to Republican. Recall that this is a man who switched party affiliations from Republican to Democrat in 2015 so he could run for Governor on the Democrat ticket. He was elected in November 2016, a mere nine months before switching back again. In front of a cheering crowd who had booed him just moments before, Justice explained that “I just can’t help you anymore being a Democrat governor.” This bait and switch had far less to do with Justice’s desire to be an effective governor than with his lack of character.

Moral Politics

July 28, 2017 in , , , /by

Recently, the Charleston Gazette published an editorial that I have not been able to quit thinking about. The editorial was entitled Morality, Irony and the Fate of America. It pointed out that the current Republican agenda is to take healthcare away from 20 million Americans, 170,000 of them West Virginians, and direct that money to the rich in tax cuts. It noted further that the proposed Trump tax cuts would cut one-fourth of the SNAP benefits for low-income families, undermining nutrition for 100,000 West Virginians. All with the same result of benefitting the rich. And “various other programs that keep the wolves from the door, that give people breathing space to improve their own circumstances, are at risk in the ongoing conflict.” According to the Gazette, this is not just wrong as a matter of policy. It is immoral.

West Virginia’s High Stakes Stimulus Plan

July 15, 2017 in , , /by

The West Virginia Legislature has a single required duty when it meets each year — pass a balanced budget. When the regular session began in early 2017, the revenue available for funding state programs had dropped to $4.05B, approximately $500M less than was spent in the previous fiscal year. Against this backdrop, Governor Justice proposed a number of new revenue sources and programs, few of which got any traction.

Being in no mood to raise new revenues, the Legislature was prepared to force the state to “live within its means” by drastically cutting programs and services. But on June 13, at the proverbial last minute, the Governor sent a letter to the Speaker of the House of Delegates with a revised revenue estimate of $4.225B. This higher revenue estimate enabled the Legislature finally to pass a budget without hyper-cuts to state programs. But the estimate was based on wishful thinking and may force the Legislature to confront an even larger deficit next fiscal year.

Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity

July 6, 2017 in , /by

One thing that rankles President Donald Trump is that he was not the most popular candidate in the 2016 Presidential election. In fact, he lost the popular vote to Hilary Clinton by approximately 3,000,000 votes, 2.1% of the total votes cast for President. Trump’s explanation is that Clinton’s vote total was the result of widespread voter fraud. In a tweet on November 27, 2016, Trump asserted “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Although he has produced no evidence of fraudulent voting, Trump has continued to make this claim and threatened an investigation. The truth is that voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

West Virginia’s Budget Disgrace

June 23, 2017 in , , , , , /by

The soap opera in Charleston appears to be over. After failing to come together on any meaningful changes for increasing revenues or reforming the tax structure, the Legislature adopted a “bare-bones” budget that cuts more deeply than ever into valuable state programs. This was a default to the lowest common denominator and a failure of statesmanship. It defers many important questions for a later Legislature. One Delegate said that the budget was the result of “complete and utter dysfunction.” It wasted everyone’s time and money.

While there is blame to go around, this result was the product of opposing positions taken by members of the same political party. Senate Republicans insisted that there would be cuts to personal income taxes or nothing. House Republicans insisted on broadening the sales tax base and were suspicious of income tax cuts in a deficit environment. Week after week neither side moved. The Democrats were impotent on the sidelines and the Governor lurched from one folksy hyperbole to the next, offering some bone-headed proposals of his own. The whole process was a disgrace.

The Carbon Dividend: An Environmental Proposal to Consider

June 21, 2017 in , , /by

In February 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Obama Administration’s climate centerpiece, the Clean Coal Plan. The Court put a hold on federal regulations to implement the Plan that would have curbed carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. These emission reductions were the main way the U.S. proposed to meet its commitment under the Paris Climate Accord. The legal case attacking the Clean Power Plan was commenced by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, among others. Then President Trump doubled down by “withdrawing” the U.S. from the Paris Accord, claiming that our commitment forced American workers and taxpayers to absorb the cost “in lost jobs, lower wages, shuttered factories, and vastly diminished economic production.” Now given the hostility of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to the mission of that agency, it is hard to be optimistic about our chances for avoiding climate disaster. Where do we go from here?

The West Virginia Budget Crisis

June 12, 2017 in , , , , , , /by

Remember the large budget deficit that confronted West Virginia lawmakers at the start of the legislative session? One estimate in November 2016 was that in FY 2018 (beginning July 1, 2017) we would generate only $4.055 billion in revenue, roughly $500 million short of anticipated spending. That brought many legislators to Charleston for the general session prepared to strip spending down to a bare minimum and force the state “to live within its means.” Fortunately, those views softened when confronted by political reality.

Now projected FY 2018 revenues are about $40 million better than first predicted due to an improving coal market and a $33 million transfer from general revenues to the Workers Compensation Fund that won’t be made. But the remainder of the budget shortfall hasn’t disappeared. How the shortfall will be closed is the subject of a House and Senate conference committee meeting today. So far, the fiscal and political stress created by the shortfall has caused Governor Justice and quite a few legislators to behave as if any idea – even a demonstrably bad one – is better than nothing.