This is one of those election years where no one really knows what will happen. The "Brexit" vote in England went against all predictions. Politicians there borrowed from Donald Trump's playbook here: bash immigrants, "The Elite" and prey on the legitimate fears of working class Caucasians that they are being left out of this so-called "recovery." They have a point, except that immigrants, gays, and women having abortions are clearly not the problem.
I have never voted for a Republican, and I don't plan to start now. In my campaign for West Virginia Delegate, I aligned myself with the Bernie Sanders people. This was not political calculation on my part (although Sanders won in every county in West Virginia). I am thrilled that a candidate came up who was willing to talk about economic inequality, breaking up the big banks, and being inclusive of everyone in our country. Although Sanders is not traditionally religious, he embraces core Jewish values, whether he knows it or not.
I don't believe Hillary Clinton is a crook or even a bad person. She would have been a great candidate in 2000 or 2004. She lost to a brash outsider in 2008, and I believe she deserves to lose now. Only the system is rigged in her favor. Sanders pointed out in an interview in Rolling Stone that despite winning in every county in West Virginia, six of our eight superdelegates are pledged to Clinton.
Things are worse than that in West Virginia. Our Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, did not appear at the state's Democratic convention, except at a lunch he sponsored in honor of the Democratic Party's West Virginia chair, Belinda Biafore. There was an election for a new state chair, and Chris Regan, a hero to progressives in this state, was defeated for the position of state chair. Still, we passed a progressive platform from the floor of the convention. I'm sure the platform will be ignored. That's how things roll here.
There's hostility in this state from Democrats toward their anointed leaders. Jim Justice, a coal mogul, Republican until last year, and the wealthiest person in West Virginia, has not taken positions on most issues. Our Attorney General candidate, Doug Reynolds, has an anti-gay, anti-choice and pro-gun voting record. Ugh. And Hillary Clinton's record of being the Senator from Wall Street has not helped her with working people here.
I've been fending off people on Facebook who post horrible anti-Clinton stuff. Not Republicans, because I have "unfollowed" them, but Democrats. At this point, I'm hoping for a convention miracle that will give Bernie the nomination, or at least that the platform will accept his ideas, for what that's worth. Still, if Clinton gets the nomination, I will support her.
On the Republican side, there is shock and outrage every time Trump opens his mouth. Republican stalwarts are abandoning ship for fear they will be tarred with his legacy and shamed forever. To me, the Republican Party has pandered to racists and gay-haters for decades. Trump only says what they've been thinking all along, only with his Outer Borough lack of manners and WASP "tastefulness." They deserve him.
This year, we will have to eat shit (to put it delicately) and vote for the Democrats. For the future, I would hope progressives and unionists will form a new, more open party, pro-union, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-diversity, and pro-environment. We can start by electing local leaders who can reach everyone , uniting anti-corporate, pro-worker, inclusive people of good will to overturn the status quo in West Virginia and in the United States. We have our work cut out for us.
Showing posts with label Chris Regan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Regan. Show all posts
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Unity, Part 1
Last Friday and Saturday I attended the West Virginia Democratic Convention in Charleston. I arrived Friday morning from Huntington, about fifty miles west of Charleston. The theme of the convention was "Unity." I imagine this meant we were all to come together to anoint Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Presidential candidate in 2016. That didn't happen.
I hate to be a "Tuve,"Spanish for "I had." We used to speak, unsympathetically, in the Social Security office in Miami where I worked for many years, about people from Cuba who would start all their sentences with "Tuve" and tell us what they left behind in Cuba.
I attended the California State Convention in 2011 in Sacramento and 2012 in San Diego. There were scheduled lunches and dinners and guest speakers including Bernie Sanders in Sacramento, and Al Franken in San Diego, as well as the superstars of California politics, Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer put in appearances; Feinstein spoke at a dinner, open to the conventioneers, for an extra charge. The San Diego convention was at the Hilton. Many of us chose to stay elsewhere to save money, but the facilities were immaculate.
"Tuve" a much better time in California. Our convention here was at the dingy Charleston Convention Center, where there is construction going on and the thermostat was set at 50. There was a snack bar open Friday with $3.00 pretzels, small bottles of water and antique pizza. I never saw our Governor, and our one Democratic senator had a private lunch for the State Executive Committee honoring the chairperson, who, not coincidentally, was running for reelection. More on that later. I stayed just out of town in a place called "Mink Shoals" at a motel from the chain where I get points. There was only a three dollar per day charge to park in the Convention Center garage.
Thankfully, there were less jaded young people there, including a large contingent of Bernie Sanders supporters from Morgantown. Bernie beat Hillary by fifteen points in West Virginia, and won in each of our state's fifty-five counties. In the Rolling Stone issue marked June 16, Bernie Sanders was interviewed just after the West Virginia primary. He wondered why six of the eight superdelegates from West Virginia were pledged to Hillary. Good question.
Everything ran late at the convention. The real convention was to start at five Friday, but registration started at three. I arrived at 10 from Huntington, and met Selena Vickers, the technical wonk for the Bernie campaign, sitting next to a cardboard cutout of Bernie Sanders. I spoke with her briefly about possibly adding an amendment to overturn the decision to allow concealed carry of weapons without a permit. I looked up a similar law in California, which made me realize that it probably wouldn't get passed, this being West Virginia.
I found where the Reform synagogue is in Charleston. I called and got no answer, so I went there. It's a brick-and-glass modern building in a neighborhood of grand houses facing the Kanawha River. Probably the best neighborhood in town sixty years ago. The back door by the parking was open, so I walked in and met the secretary. He was unhappy that I was able to walk in and said he was not authorized to give me a tour without an appointment. I was okay with all that. I just explained who I was and why I was in town.
Back at the convention, I ran into Jamie Blake, a youngish (out of college) guy, one of the Morgantown Bernie organizers, and we went out for lunch at the mall for wraps in the food court. At least Charleston has a mall downtown.
We hung around until three, when we could register for the convention. There were committee meetings until five, when the convention started.No lunches or dinners were planned for the conference. I drove to my motel, checked in, and slept for an hour.
The convention started well after five. The rules committee had met before, and rules had been changed to make it easier to amend the platform and allow more time for debate. There were speeches from Doug Reynolds, the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, from Belinda Biafore, the state chair, and from Natalie Tennant, our secretary of state, whis running again. She lost two years ago for Senate, because she didn't take a stand on any issues. Reynolds is probably an improvement over Patrick Morissey, our paid-for-by-corporate-lobbyist Republican attorney general. Still, Reynolds voted for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (also known as the Freedom To Discriminate bill) and introduced a bill that would mandate that colleges allow guns on campus. I confronted some Reynolds kids who had a table for him. They sputtered something about "just doing what his constituents wanted." Not good enough. I may have to vote for him, but I will never campaign for him.
I don't remember anything much else about Friday night- except that I hadn't had dinner. I bought a stale $3.00 pretzel in the lobby and went to my car and brought in some bottles of water, so no one should have to pay $3.00. Many people still don't drink the water in Charleston, after the chemical poisoning more than two years ago. Things broke up at 9:30. The kids asked me if I wanted to go out drinking with them, forgetting that I am sixty-six, not twenty-six. I stopped at a convenience store and bought snacks, which I brought back to my hotel and ate while looking at Friday's Charleston newspaper. I was asleep by eleven.
I had breakfast at the hotel, and got back to the Convention Center by nine. There were plenty of plots a-hatching. Many people had petitions out, about banning guns, legalizing marijuana, requiring superdelegates to vote for the winning candidate from the primary. I signed all of them, except the two that were meant to embarrass Hillary Clinton. It was too late for that. I noted that the vast majority of delegates were white, Christian and straight. In California, most of the Democrats were Mexican-American, African-American and Asian-American, Native, or Jewish. And a whole lot of them were gay. In talking to people, I found that there were more Jews than I originally thought, living in rural counties after escaping New York and their Jewish heritage. Someone pointed out that there were many more gay people than I imagined. Maybe so.
Jim Justice, the Democratic nominee for Governor, spoke once things got started. He was a Republican until last year, is a coal mine owner and the wealthiest man in West Virginia. He owns the Greenbrier resort in southeastern West Virginia, and avoided debates and policy statements during his primary campaign against two other contenders. He is notorious for not paying bills on time. Progressives in the state find him appalling. Our Bernie people, led by Morgantown's Shane Assadzandi, a young dynamo, planned a walkout during Justice's speech. I stayed in for the first ten minutes, while Justice talked on in an almost unintelligible rural West Virginia drawl about his foot surgery, how much money the Greenbriar brings into the state, and how he bought a shovel and pail, which he had with him, from a woman by the side of the road, who was trying to raise money to buy food. I couldn't take any more and left. His speech seemed to go on quite a long time. He never mentioned any ideas for how to run the state, as far as I know.
John Perdue, the state treasurer spoke as well. My hearing is not great and the sound system wasn't clear either but it seems the Republican legislature was right to require English for state business. His drawl was so thick, I could understand almost nothing, and he went on for probably a half hour.
The superstar of the convention, our Kamala Harris, if you will, was Mary Ann Claytor, an African-American woman who came from nowhere to win the Democratic nomination for Auditor. I didn't vote for her, because another candidate had endorsements from people I liked, and because Claytor's website said she had a degree in religion from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. That set off warning bells for me. She spoke with the cadences of Martin Luther King, Jr., preaching to us about her experience in the auditor's office, of her background, and how important it is to include everyone in the state. She was the first to mention the LGBT community, and how we needed to be included. She had the passion and fire that everyone else who had spoken lacked. People rose to their feet and cheered. And I understood every word she said.
When we finally got to amendments from the floor, it was noon, and there was no lunch break. Shane and his crew and a few others introduced bills to ban assault weapons, to ban fracking and mountaintop removal mining, to stop fighting the EPA on air and water quality regulations, have a gay rights bill. All of these passed on a voice vote. And why? Because the mostly older Hillary Clinton fans joined together with the mostly younger Bernie Sanders fans to make West Virginia a more progressive place. The anti-Clinton petitions were never presented, and this helped us find the "Unity" we were looking for.
Until now, the Democratic Party in West Virginia's only claim to liberalism has been its support of unions. The people in charge of the party not only don't like Bernie Sanders,they don't think much of Hillary Clinton either. This convention brought together the Hillary and Bernie people in a new way.
Meanwhile, a graduating WVU student named Franklin, whip-smart and handsome, asked me for a ride home. I wanted to be back and eat before Tree of Life's Shavuot service at 7:30. In West Virginia, Jewish holidays are never figured into anyone's schedule. Franklin and I left at two and went to the mall for lunch, as nothing had been provided. I was freezing in that barn of a room, and about to go off on someone for lack of food. We got back to the car at three, and were about to drive away, when Danielle, the brilliant and most glamorous of the Bernie people in Morgantown, called my phone and begged us to come back. Franklin and I discussed it briefly and went back. Someone called for a quorum, and there was none. The seventy people on the central committee were gone to Senator Manchin's luncheon before a vote on the next chair. People came back who had drifted off for food, and the central committee said we could count them even if they weren't there.We finally passed the whole platform with all the progressive amendments intact. At four, we headed back to Morgantown.
Chris Regan, the vice chair of the central committee, a Bernie supporter, a smart guy and a great writer, who is appalled by most of what goes on in this state, and writes a blog about it (homeyesterday.com) was later defeated for chair of the central committee by incumbent Belinda Biafore, who presided over the loss of the Legislature to the Republicans, because the Democrats refused to stand for anything. Don't get me started.
I hate to be a "Tuve,"Spanish for "I had." We used to speak, unsympathetically, in the Social Security office in Miami where I worked for many years, about people from Cuba who would start all their sentences with "Tuve" and tell us what they left behind in Cuba.
I attended the California State Convention in 2011 in Sacramento and 2012 in San Diego. There were scheduled lunches and dinners and guest speakers including Bernie Sanders in Sacramento, and Al Franken in San Diego, as well as the superstars of California politics, Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer put in appearances; Feinstein spoke at a dinner, open to the conventioneers, for an extra charge. The San Diego convention was at the Hilton. Many of us chose to stay elsewhere to save money, but the facilities were immaculate.
"Tuve" a much better time in California. Our convention here was at the dingy Charleston Convention Center, where there is construction going on and the thermostat was set at 50. There was a snack bar open Friday with $3.00 pretzels, small bottles of water and antique pizza. I never saw our Governor, and our one Democratic senator had a private lunch for the State Executive Committee honoring the chairperson, who, not coincidentally, was running for reelection. More on that later. I stayed just out of town in a place called "Mink Shoals" at a motel from the chain where I get points. There was only a three dollar per day charge to park in the Convention Center garage.
Thankfully, there were less jaded young people there, including a large contingent of Bernie Sanders supporters from Morgantown. Bernie beat Hillary by fifteen points in West Virginia, and won in each of our state's fifty-five counties. In the Rolling Stone issue marked June 16, Bernie Sanders was interviewed just after the West Virginia primary. He wondered why six of the eight superdelegates from West Virginia were pledged to Hillary. Good question.
Everything ran late at the convention. The real convention was to start at five Friday, but registration started at three. I arrived at 10 from Huntington, and met Selena Vickers, the technical wonk for the Bernie campaign, sitting next to a cardboard cutout of Bernie Sanders. I spoke with her briefly about possibly adding an amendment to overturn the decision to allow concealed carry of weapons without a permit. I looked up a similar law in California, which made me realize that it probably wouldn't get passed, this being West Virginia.
I found where the Reform synagogue is in Charleston. I called and got no answer, so I went there. It's a brick-and-glass modern building in a neighborhood of grand houses facing the Kanawha River. Probably the best neighborhood in town sixty years ago. The back door by the parking was open, so I walked in and met the secretary. He was unhappy that I was able to walk in and said he was not authorized to give me a tour without an appointment. I was okay with all that. I just explained who I was and why I was in town.
Back at the convention, I ran into Jamie Blake, a youngish (out of college) guy, one of the Morgantown Bernie organizers, and we went out for lunch at the mall for wraps in the food court. At least Charleston has a mall downtown.
We hung around until three, when we could register for the convention. There were committee meetings until five, when the convention started.No lunches or dinners were planned for the conference. I drove to my motel, checked in, and slept for an hour.
The convention started well after five. The rules committee had met before, and rules had been changed to make it easier to amend the platform and allow more time for debate. There were speeches from Doug Reynolds, the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, from Belinda Biafore, the state chair, and from Natalie Tennant, our secretary of state, whis running again. She lost two years ago for Senate, because she didn't take a stand on any issues. Reynolds is probably an improvement over Patrick Morissey, our paid-for-by-corporate-lobbyist Republican attorney general. Still, Reynolds voted for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (also known as the Freedom To Discriminate bill) and introduced a bill that would mandate that colleges allow guns on campus. I confronted some Reynolds kids who had a table for him. They sputtered something about "just doing what his constituents wanted." Not good enough. I may have to vote for him, but I will never campaign for him.
I don't remember anything much else about Friday night- except that I hadn't had dinner. I bought a stale $3.00 pretzel in the lobby and went to my car and brought in some bottles of water, so no one should have to pay $3.00. Many people still don't drink the water in Charleston, after the chemical poisoning more than two years ago. Things broke up at 9:30. The kids asked me if I wanted to go out drinking with them, forgetting that I am sixty-six, not twenty-six. I stopped at a convenience store and bought snacks, which I brought back to my hotel and ate while looking at Friday's Charleston newspaper. I was asleep by eleven.
I had breakfast at the hotel, and got back to the Convention Center by nine. There were plenty of plots a-hatching. Many people had petitions out, about banning guns, legalizing marijuana, requiring superdelegates to vote for the winning candidate from the primary. I signed all of them, except the two that were meant to embarrass Hillary Clinton. It was too late for that. I noted that the vast majority of delegates were white, Christian and straight. In California, most of the Democrats were Mexican-American, African-American and Asian-American, Native, or Jewish. And a whole lot of them were gay. In talking to people, I found that there were more Jews than I originally thought, living in rural counties after escaping New York and their Jewish heritage. Someone pointed out that there were many more gay people than I imagined. Maybe so.
Jim Justice, the Democratic nominee for Governor, spoke once things got started. He was a Republican until last year, is a coal mine owner and the wealthiest man in West Virginia. He owns the Greenbrier resort in southeastern West Virginia, and avoided debates and policy statements during his primary campaign against two other contenders. He is notorious for not paying bills on time. Progressives in the state find him appalling. Our Bernie people, led by Morgantown's Shane Assadzandi, a young dynamo, planned a walkout during Justice's speech. I stayed in for the first ten minutes, while Justice talked on in an almost unintelligible rural West Virginia drawl about his foot surgery, how much money the Greenbriar brings into the state, and how he bought a shovel and pail, which he had with him, from a woman by the side of the road, who was trying to raise money to buy food. I couldn't take any more and left. His speech seemed to go on quite a long time. He never mentioned any ideas for how to run the state, as far as I know.
John Perdue, the state treasurer spoke as well. My hearing is not great and the sound system wasn't clear either but it seems the Republican legislature was right to require English for state business. His drawl was so thick, I could understand almost nothing, and he went on for probably a half hour.
The superstar of the convention, our Kamala Harris, if you will, was Mary Ann Claytor, an African-American woman who came from nowhere to win the Democratic nomination for Auditor. I didn't vote for her, because another candidate had endorsements from people I liked, and because Claytor's website said she had a degree in religion from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. That set off warning bells for me. She spoke with the cadences of Martin Luther King, Jr., preaching to us about her experience in the auditor's office, of her background, and how important it is to include everyone in the state. She was the first to mention the LGBT community, and how we needed to be included. She had the passion and fire that everyone else who had spoken lacked. People rose to their feet and cheered. And I understood every word she said.
When we finally got to amendments from the floor, it was noon, and there was no lunch break. Shane and his crew and a few others introduced bills to ban assault weapons, to ban fracking and mountaintop removal mining, to stop fighting the EPA on air and water quality regulations, have a gay rights bill. All of these passed on a voice vote. And why? Because the mostly older Hillary Clinton fans joined together with the mostly younger Bernie Sanders fans to make West Virginia a more progressive place. The anti-Clinton petitions were never presented, and this helped us find the "Unity" we were looking for.
Until now, the Democratic Party in West Virginia's only claim to liberalism has been its support of unions. The people in charge of the party not only don't like Bernie Sanders,they don't think much of Hillary Clinton either. This convention brought together the Hillary and Bernie people in a new way.
Meanwhile, a graduating WVU student named Franklin, whip-smart and handsome, asked me for a ride home. I wanted to be back and eat before Tree of Life's Shavuot service at 7:30. In West Virginia, Jewish holidays are never figured into anyone's schedule. Franklin and I left at two and went to the mall for lunch, as nothing had been provided. I was freezing in that barn of a room, and about to go off on someone for lack of food. We got back to the car at three, and were about to drive away, when Danielle, the brilliant and most glamorous of the Bernie people in Morgantown, called my phone and begged us to come back. Franklin and I discussed it briefly and went back. Someone called for a quorum, and there was none. The seventy people on the central committee were gone to Senator Manchin's luncheon before a vote on the next chair. People came back who had drifted off for food, and the central committee said we could count them even if they weren't there.We finally passed the whole platform with all the progressive amendments intact. At four, we headed back to Morgantown.
Chris Regan, the vice chair of the central committee, a Bernie supporter, a smart guy and a great writer, who is appalled by most of what goes on in this state, and writes a blog about it (homeyesterday.com) was later defeated for chair of the central committee by incumbent Belinda Biafore, who presided over the loss of the Legislature to the Republicans, because the Democrats refused to stand for anything. Don't get me started.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Caution: Partisan Political Rant
I suppose I ran for office because I couldn't stand the lies, bigotry and stupidity we were getting from our elected officials in West Virginia. I was told I didn't "understand" West Virginia. During the campaign, I met a group of old (my age) hippies, brainy college professors, and the smarter class of college students and recent grads, most either from here or who have resided here for decades. Not knowing many people in town, not having the strength to go door-to-door, not advertising on the radio or in the newspaper, I still got twenty-five percent of the Democratic votes in our primary. The final tab was 3,971 for me. People, even those who warned me against running, now say I should consider running again in two years. I might.
Many people in West Virginia have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. West Virginians For Affordable Health Care points out that "more than two dozen hospitals saved $265 million" by treating people who now have health insurance. Before the ACA, the hospitals had to write this money off as a loss. And yet our Republican Junior Senator, Shelley Moore Capito, has voted a few dozen times to repeal the ACA. Why? Our recent "non-partisan" election for a state Supreme Court justice was won by Beth Walker, with half a million dollars in ads from the Republican Governor's Association and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. For some reason, our nation's largest private healthcare provider supports Republicans. Los Angeles School District pays for my Medicare supplement and for Joe's insurance through Blue Cross. We don't have a choice, living outside of California, unless we lay out quite a bit of money for other insurance. I'm thinking about it.
Chris Regan, Vice Chair of West Virginia's Democratic Party, has a blog called "Home Yesterday" (www.homeyesterday.com) In an April 13 post, he wonders how Peabody Coal, following in the steps of other coal companies, has declared bankruptcy, gotten out of its pension and health care obligations, and given their CEO, who already makes ten million dollars annual salary, a bonus of several more million. He calls it "the looting of West Virginia."
Meanwhile, our state Attorney General, Patrick Morrisey, is fighting the Obama administration''s attempts to shield gender non-conforming and trans students from being forced to use a bathroom not appropriate to their appearance or identity. He and many so-called religious conservatives are up in arms, not about bathrooms, apparently, but the fact that there are trans students at schools.
What is the relationship between coal bankruptcies, the Affordable Health Care Act ( Obamacare) and trans people in the bathroom? This: Theft is against the Bible. A CEO, receiving millions of dollars for his work, who takes away pensions and health insurance from people who have worked- worked hard and at great risk in the case of coal miners- and gives himself and other executives millions more in bonuses, is a thief. He should be in prison. Where is the outrage among religious conservatives about this? And why are people not outraged that healthcare is considered a privilege for those who can afford it, and not a right for everyone? The ACA was a compromise to let everyone buy insurance.
The outrage is in the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. The important difference is that Trump is a phony and Sanders is the real deal. The outrage is why the favorite of the Republican elite, Jeb Bush, couldn't get traction, and why Hillary Clinton, despite her traditional liberal credentials, is having such a hard time winning the Democratic nomination. Trump says he will put coal miners back to work (at lower pay and with no benefits, no doubt, if he can even do that). Sanders will try to limit executive compensation, find new work for miners and protect workers' benefits. The anti-Bernie people say "He can't do it." Maybe, but no one else will even try.
Here in West Virginia, there is no state budget for July 1. By law, the budget must be balanced. Governor Tomblin called the legislature back into session this week. As of Thursday morning, they have done nothing. Most of our Republicans have signed Grover Norquist's "No New Taxes" pledge.
Meanwhile, the coal moguls, including Bob Murray, who doesn't live in West Virginia, are demanding a cut in the coal severance tax. He and another coal mogul, the lately jailed Don Blankenship, are supporters of many of our Republican delegates. One might be tempted to say that our Congressperson David McKinley, is a whole owned subsidiary of the coal companies.
Meanwhile, the state is bleeding money and population. We will likely lose a congressman in the next census due to the state's declining population. Even in our temple, we will lose four families this summer. The state has a scholarship for in-state students, called "Promise." With no guarantee that these scholarships will be available in the fall, our smartest students are making plans to go elsewhere. Most will not be back.
My own life now is good. Joe and I have friends here. We are both popular teachers at Life-Long Learning, all our students over fifty and most past seventy.. Joe's current six-week class was oversubscribed and people had to get on a waiting list. We like it here. "Going back" is not an option. Still, should Tree of Life close, or get tired of Rabbi Joe, should we find ourselves victims of discrimination, we have the option of leaving. What happens a generation from now should not be our problem, but I, like Bernie Sanders, eight years my senior, want the world and West Virginia to be a more just, equitable and free place. I'll be out working for Mike Manypenny for Congress and Doug Reynolds for Attorney General this year, attending West Virginia's Democratic Convention in Charleston in a few weeks as a Sanders vote, and supporting my fellow Democrats for Delegate and State Senator. I'm not done yet.
Many people in West Virginia have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. West Virginians For Affordable Health Care points out that "more than two dozen hospitals saved $265 million" by treating people who now have health insurance. Before the ACA, the hospitals had to write this money off as a loss. And yet our Republican Junior Senator, Shelley Moore Capito, has voted a few dozen times to repeal the ACA. Why? Our recent "non-partisan" election for a state Supreme Court justice was won by Beth Walker, with half a million dollars in ads from the Republican Governor's Association and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. For some reason, our nation's largest private healthcare provider supports Republicans. Los Angeles School District pays for my Medicare supplement and for Joe's insurance through Blue Cross. We don't have a choice, living outside of California, unless we lay out quite a bit of money for other insurance. I'm thinking about it.
Chris Regan, Vice Chair of West Virginia's Democratic Party, has a blog called "Home Yesterday" (www.homeyesterday.com) In an April 13 post, he wonders how Peabody Coal, following in the steps of other coal companies, has declared bankruptcy, gotten out of its pension and health care obligations, and given their CEO, who already makes ten million dollars annual salary, a bonus of several more million. He calls it "the looting of West Virginia."
Meanwhile, our state Attorney General, Patrick Morrisey, is fighting the Obama administration''s attempts to shield gender non-conforming and trans students from being forced to use a bathroom not appropriate to their appearance or identity. He and many so-called religious conservatives are up in arms, not about bathrooms, apparently, but the fact that there are trans students at schools.
What is the relationship between coal bankruptcies, the Affordable Health Care Act ( Obamacare) and trans people in the bathroom? This: Theft is against the Bible. A CEO, receiving millions of dollars for his work, who takes away pensions and health insurance from people who have worked- worked hard and at great risk in the case of coal miners- and gives himself and other executives millions more in bonuses, is a thief. He should be in prison. Where is the outrage among religious conservatives about this? And why are people not outraged that healthcare is considered a privilege for those who can afford it, and not a right for everyone? The ACA was a compromise to let everyone buy insurance.
The outrage is in the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. The important difference is that Trump is a phony and Sanders is the real deal. The outrage is why the favorite of the Republican elite, Jeb Bush, couldn't get traction, and why Hillary Clinton, despite her traditional liberal credentials, is having such a hard time winning the Democratic nomination. Trump says he will put coal miners back to work (at lower pay and with no benefits, no doubt, if he can even do that). Sanders will try to limit executive compensation, find new work for miners and protect workers' benefits. The anti-Bernie people say "He can't do it." Maybe, but no one else will even try.
Here in West Virginia, there is no state budget for July 1. By law, the budget must be balanced. Governor Tomblin called the legislature back into session this week. As of Thursday morning, they have done nothing. Most of our Republicans have signed Grover Norquist's "No New Taxes" pledge.
Meanwhile, the coal moguls, including Bob Murray, who doesn't live in West Virginia, are demanding a cut in the coal severance tax. He and another coal mogul, the lately jailed Don Blankenship, are supporters of many of our Republican delegates. One might be tempted to say that our Congressperson David McKinley, is a whole owned subsidiary of the coal companies.
Meanwhile, the state is bleeding money and population. We will likely lose a congressman in the next census due to the state's declining population. Even in our temple, we will lose four families this summer. The state has a scholarship for in-state students, called "Promise." With no guarantee that these scholarships will be available in the fall, our smartest students are making plans to go elsewhere. Most will not be back.
My own life now is good. Joe and I have friends here. We are both popular teachers at Life-Long Learning, all our students over fifty and most past seventy.. Joe's current six-week class was oversubscribed and people had to get on a waiting list. We like it here. "Going back" is not an option. Still, should Tree of Life close, or get tired of Rabbi Joe, should we find ourselves victims of discrimination, we have the option of leaving. What happens a generation from now should not be our problem, but I, like Bernie Sanders, eight years my senior, want the world and West Virginia to be a more just, equitable and free place. I'll be out working for Mike Manypenny for Congress and Doug Reynolds for Attorney General this year, attending West Virginia's Democratic Convention in Charleston in a few weeks as a Sanders vote, and supporting my fellow Democrats for Delegate and State Senator. I'm not done yet.
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