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The New Civilian Climate Corps

January 8, 2022 in , , , /by

Immediately upon assuming office, President Biden issued an executive order addressing his climate objectives.  Prominent among these was the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps to tackle climate change resiliency and provide job training to underemployed youth.  The new CCC would be modeled on a popular New Deal program that put thousands to work on conservation projects during the Depression. From every angle the new CCC seems like a good idea, but its uncertain future is bound up with the stalled Build Back Better legislation.

The Hot Air About Methane

November 7, 2021 in , , , /by

When President Biden left for the COP26 meeting in Glasgow recently, his primary plan for reaching the greenhouse gas reduction goals in the Paris Accords was in disarray.  The cause of this disarray was mainly the opposition of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.  But Biden had Plan B, which involves a two-pronged approach to sharply reducing methane emissions. 

The Future of Carbon Capture

September 6, 2021 in /by

Carbon capture is a term used to describe a group of technologies that either remove carbon directly from the air or scrub it from waste gas as fossil fuels are burned.  In either case, the carbon “captured” is buried or used in the manufacture of other products.  Congress is considering legislation to fund carbon capture pilot projects and the capture method it chooses to support will have major consequences for the environment and for West Virginia.

It Is Time to End the Filibuster

June 18, 2021 in /by

To be elected Governor of West Virginia, a candidate needs one more vote than his opponent.  This is majority rule at its most basic.  Majority rule is also a bedrock principle in our federal system.   Accordingly, a bill in the U.S. Senate brought to a vote needs only 51 votes out of 100 Senators to pass.  But today the legislative process in the Senate – indeed in all of Congress — has ground to a halt.  We cannot address the compelling issues of the day in a way that a majority of voters demand.  What has happened to us? 

The Big Lie Conspiracy

May 19, 2021 in , , /by

The Declaration of Independence was based on a conspiracy theory. That theory was that the King of England and his high ministers had secretly agreed to deprive the American colonists of their rights as English citizens and to impose tyrannical rule. This type of conspiracism, which tries to make sense of a disorderly world by asserting that powerful people are controlling events behind the scenes, can be quite useful in a democracy. But this useful type of conspiracism has been replaced today by an insidious type not concerned at all with facts. The leading example is the Big Lie — that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected President in 2020 because the election was stolen from Trump.

Higher Registration Fees For Hybrid Vehicles – What’s Up With That?

March 2, 2021 in , , /by

Awhile back, a good friend of mine spent half an hour complaining to me about having to pay an additional $100 when he registered his Prius hybrid vehicle. That caused me to wonder why West Virginia would want to discourage the ownership of these vehicles with a whopping big tax.  Hybrids consume lots less gasoline and emit proportionately less greenhouse gasses from the tailpipe. That’s a good thing, right?  The answer, of course, is not so simple.

Industry To West Virginia: We Can’t Be Bothered

February 23, 2021 in , , /by

They’re at it again. Under the cover of the Covid pandemic, when citizens can’t rally in numbers, the West Virginia legislature is poised to gut one of the key protections of the Aboveground Storage Tank Act enacted after the 2014 water crisis that left 300,000 West Virginians without safe drinking water. The bill is pushed by tank owners and backed by industry. The reason? As Charlie Burd of the Gas and Oil Association of WV says, the regulation is too burdensome. Translation: We can’t be bothered.

Can Trump Pardon Himself?

January 2, 2021 in , /by

The stink from the pile of Trump’s pardons is palpable – it is the stink of corruption and abuse of power.  A high percentage of these pardons have gone to those with a personal or political connection to him. Those receiving his favor include murderers, dishonest politicians, fraudsters, thieves, and liars. The question of the moment is whether a president can pardon himself. The power to pardon has been exercised by presidents over 20,000 times and never once has anyone attempted to pardon himself. We may be about to witness a president try to absolve himself of his own criminal conduct for the first time. Can Trump get away with this?

Finding Where Your Rights End and Mine Begin

November 6, 2020 in , , /by

I get annoyed by inane government rules and being told what to do by officious clerks.  I have always had a small authority problem.  I’ll wager I am not alone in this, but a developmental task toward adulthood is recognizing this as a personal failing.  It is not evidence of some natural or constitutional right to be ornery.

The Electoral College: How it Works – and Doesn’t Work.

September 13, 2020 in , /by

Let’s start with a simple proposition with which most everyone these days would agree – the President of the United States should be elected by a majority of voters. Over this nation’s more than 240-year history, our understanding of democracy has come to mean one person one vote, with each of those votes being equally valuable. Nowhere should that be more important than in the election of the President. But our Founders had a different notion of how the election of the President should work.