Letters

An article appeared in our local paper about two weeks ago about how happy The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce and The Business and Industry Council are with the Republican Party. These groups are trying to make it harder to sue negligent business owners, to change the election laws to find judges more amenable to business interests, overturn environmental rules, lower business taxes, make West Virginia a right-to-work state to help destroy labor unions, and advance charter schools in the state, again to shut out unions. Of course, I was livid. Here's the letter I wrote, which was published Sunday, December 13 in the Morgantown Dominion Post.

It's always good to know who your friends are. The West Virginia Business and Industry Council and The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce know that their friends are in the Republican Party.
For the rest of us, if the Republicans continue to rule, they will reduce taxes on businesses, make it harder to sue an employer or merchant, reduce wages for working people, and cut out more health and safety regulations in the mines. West Virginia University will lose more funding, and fewer local students will enroll because of rising tuition. Public schools will suffer, and more miners will die in accidents. Meanwhile, CEO pay will continue to rise. The Republicans say their plan will help the economy. Actually, it will make the very rich even richer, and everyone else poorer.

In 2014, the Republicans promised to fix the roads and improve the economy. Instead, they have made things worse, and promise more of the same if they are reelected in 2016.

I reedited this letter to make it clearer, so this is not exactly what was published in the paper.

Today, there were two awful letters in the paper. I could blame it on the age of the letter writers, but at sixty-six, I can't complain about old men who have nothing to do but write letters to the editor.

Both letter writers appear frequently in the paper. Riley Thomas, who is 76 according to an internet search, complains about President Obama not saying "Radical Islamic terrorism." According to an article on Politifact, President Obama has said "ISIL is not Islam." He does not want to equate Islam to terrorists. Thomas' point is something used to conflate terrorists and Islam. He also states:

 "Other mass shootings have their roots in mental illness and out-of-control criminal activities. Government needs to address the root causes of these atrocities and affect a solution, not make excuses for its inability to fix the problem." Would that a Republican government would actually allocate money for mental health issues. Of course, he doesn't mention the "terrorists" who claim to be "Christians" or "Patriots" or "Defenders of the White Race."

He ends by saying:

"To me, gun control is a good grip, a steady aim and a smooth trigger pull. Not depriving someone of their constitutional right to defend themselves."

Or their right to own as many weapons as they can afford, so that they can gun down their enemies. That's what I hear. These are false talking points from the Republican Party and the NRA. What happened to "A well-regulated militia.."? Ignore terrorism by so-called Christians, but demonize all of Islam. And don't ever mention that it is way too easy for people to get guns.

The other writer, Dan Carnegie, age 65, according to the internet, opens by discussing a college class he attended where the instructor was upset about the killing of four students at Kent State University in Ohio, on May 4, 1970. Carnegie says "As a Vietnam veteran, I was very understanding of the guard (sic) . Protests have a way of turning violent. They should have been in class." He goes on from there to defend the policeman in Chicago who shot Laquan McDonald. He says "No, I don't agree with shooting someone 16 times. But when you invite the police to respond- you must take responsibility for what is to come."

"No" and "No." I was a junior in college on May 4, 1970, and we shut down our school. The protests at Johns Hopkins were peaceful, as were the protests at The University of Maryland, where the National Guard was also called in. With all the talk of the Second Amendment, where is the talk about the First Amendment right to peacefully protest against blatantly illegal actions by the Nixon administration, waging war in Cambodia, which was expressly forbidden by Congress? And why are the police, who are supposed to catch perpetrators of crimes, allowed to execute people without a trial? And lie about it.

The Dominion-Post states that they will only publish one letter per month from each writer. Otherwise, I would have been on these guys today. If you want to send a letter, then write to opinion@dominionpost.com. I don't have a subscription to the paper, so I can't access their on-line edition to show the full text of the letters I've quoted.

In my election campaign, I would love to be able to make people like this see things a different way. What I may be able to accomplish is to represent people who see things through a lens of compassion, what the Constitution really says, and an understanding of history and where our state and country need to go. People like us are not well-served by most of those in political office here in West Virginia.