The Hypocrisy and Racism of Jerry Falwell Jr. and the "Leave Virginia" Crowd

Would that Falwell would spend more time with his pool boy.

For 26 years Virginia Republicans controlled the Virginia General Assembly and utterly disregard or thwarted the will of a growing majority of Virginians.   Then, last November, the majority of Virginians, sick and tired of the Virginia GOP's pandering to white supremacists, gun nuts, and religious extremists (the three go together and make up the Virginia GOP's base), finally voted in a Democrat majority to the Virginia General Assembly and long desired legislation is poised to become reality.  But for unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, the Virginia's GOP stranglehold would have ended earlier and it took court rulings striking down GOP drawn districts to help end the tyranny of the GOP minority over the majority of Virginians.  The loss of political power and the ability to ride rough shod over the majority of Virginia's populace has Virginia Republicans and the hate merchants among the party base shrieking as if the world was coming to an end.  In addition, some - including grifter Jerry Falwell, Jr., who must not be spending enough time with the fit much young men he seems to favor - are calling for western Virginia counties to leave Virginia and join West Virginia. 

Several things are noteworthy: (i) West Virginia is a far poorer state with a median income of $43,469 versus Virginia's $71,535; (ii) West Virginia is in economic decline and Wikipedia notes that West Virginia's population is expected to decline by more than 19,000 residents by 2030, and West Virginia is the only state where death rates exceeds birth rates, (iii) in terms of health, West Virginia, however, ranked either last or second-to-last in 20 categories, including cancer, child immunization, diabetes, disabilities, drug deaths, teeth loss, low birth weight, missed work days due to health, prescription drug overdose, preventable hospitalizations, and senior clinical care.  While Virginia doesn't place in the top states in these areas, its economy and population are growing and the health of its citizens is far exceeds what one finds in West Virginia and its education system ranks in the top five nationally. The other reality is that - much like red states that survive off of the federal government teet - rural western counties in Virginia receive far more in state funds than they pay in.  Stated another way, Northern Virginia, Richmond, Hampton Roads and other urban areas financially support these would be seceding counties. 

So why leave an up and coming state to join a failing state with far less financial resources?  The breakdown of the two states' population diversity perhaps provides an answer.  Virginia is currently 62% white,  19.8% African American, 9.4% Hispanic/Latino, 6.8% Asian, and 0.5% Native American  West Virginia, in sharp contrast is 91.1% white, 3.6% African American, 1.1% Asian, 1.1% Hispanic, and 0.1% Native American.  I would suggest, these would be renegade Virginia counties want to join a state where white privilege still predominates and they don't have to deal with those their politicians and scamvangelists like Falwell deem "other."

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A column in the Virginian Pilot condemns those who would splinter the state in their conniption fit over having the majority of Virginians plot the state's future.  Here are excerpts:

The loss of political power — and coming to terms with it — manifests itself in different ways. Some may be described as productive. Others as counterproductive.

And some are just downright ridiculous.

Take, for instance, the nonsense which unfolded last month at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College in Martinsburg, W.Va.

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., appearing at a media conference with West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, argued that new Democratic majorities in the Virginia General Assembly constitute “a tragedy in the making.”

“Democratic leaders in Richmond, through their elitism and radicalism, have left a nearly unrecognizable state in their wake,” Falwell said, perhaps not aware that the legislature had yet to deliver a single bill to the desk of Gov. Ralph Northam.

“If you’re not truly happy where you are, we stand with open arms to take you from Virginia or anywhere where you may be,” Justice said, in making his pitch for a West Virginia empire.

Now, there’s some history to this line of thinking.

Around the time of the American revolution, setters living west of the Allegheny Mountains and east of the Ohio River tried to form their own state, known as Westylvania. Appalachian Magazine writes that the proposed “14th state” would have encompassed “southwestern Pennsylvania, western Maryland, most of modern-day West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and portions of what is now southwest Virginia.”

And West Virginia itself was born during the Civil War, when western counties of the commonwealth objected to slavery and secession, deciding that separation from the Old Dominion was a better course. That’s why West Virginia is known as the child of rebellion.

State lawmakers there are stoking that revolutionary spirit now, urging counties in western Virginia — those upset by Democratic majorities in the legislature and the growing influence of left-leaning voters in northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads — to leave.

They’ve even filed bills in the West Virginia legislature to encourage independence votes and speed those counties toward adoption. The nerve.

But that’s not all.

Republican Del. Dave LaRock of Loudoun County made headlines last month when he suggested the commonwealth concede the cities of Arlington and Alexandria to Washington, D.C. Such an alignment, he argued, would remove communities which skew Democratic from Virginia and “square the box” of the federal city’s original design.
LaRock, a New York native, apparently believes the commonwealth is diminished by people moving to the commonwealth and, well, voting. And he perpetuates the false notion that folks who live in northern Virginia are somehow less Virginian than the Virginians who live in other parts of Virginia.

Never mind that the whole of the commonwealth benefits from the economic power generated by those cities (Amazon’s HQ2 ring a bell?) or that removing the western counties would render Virginia more of a Democratic stronghold.

Recall that Democrats wallowed in the General Assembly for 20 years, watching their bills die in early-morning committee meetings without debate or recorded votes in session after session. For years they perched on the verge of a majority, thwarted only by unconstitutional racially gerrymandered legislative districts.

Calls for secession during that time? Zero. Overtures for West Virginia to please take our western counties? None that anyone can recall.

Not that these "Vexit” overtures are made in good faith. Quite the opposite: They are incredibly reckless and made out of self-interest rather than concern for the people who live in western and southwest Virginia.

HIV Is Coming to An Unprepared Rural America

Williamson, West Virginia.

Rural America has many problems facing it ranging from economic decline to scarce access to medical facilities to a mindset that in some that embraces ignorance and bigotry.  Now, as a column in the New York Times makes clear, some parts of rural America, including much of neighboring West Virginia is about to face an HIV crisis that it is ill prepared to deal with largely due to closed mindedness, the stigma attached to being gay and/or HIV positive and lack of access to progressive testing and medical treatment. Much of the increase in HIV positive residents come from drug use and shared needles yet, rather adopting policies that might reverse the trend, many localities are shuttering programs that might stem increased infections. Here are highlights from a very troubling column:

While there are still about a million people living with H.I.V. in the United States, in some of America’s largest cities, the news about H.I.V. and AIDS is surprisingly positive.

“New H.I.V. Diagnoses Fall to Historic Lows,” the New York City Department of Health announced on Nov. 22, reporting that the largest city in the United States had fewer new diagnoses of H.I.V. in 2018 than during any year since statistics were first kept in 2001. This was just a few weeks after Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health reported a 14 percent drop in the number of newly diagnosed H.I.V. infections overall, and a drop of more than one-third among black men who have sex with men — an especially vulnerable population.

San Francisco and Chicago have also seen their rates of new H.I.V. infections falling.

[I]n much of rural America, an opposite trend is emerging. There have of course always been cases of H.I.V. in sparsely populated parts of the country, but in these places far from cities, the conditions that lead to H.I.V. transmission are now intensifying — and rural America is not ready for the coming crisis.

Indeed, in Appalachian West Virginia, the crisis has already arrived. A cluster of 80 new H.I.V. infections has been diagnosed since early last year in Cabell County.

Unlike large urban areas that have dealt with similar health and substance crises in the past, and that have networks of service providers and consumers in place, small rural health jurisdictions often lack the infrastructure to confront the crisis and have little history of dealing with comparable health issues, she explained.

[W]hen prescription highs can’t be sustained, people often turn to using — and sharing — needles to inject heroin and then fentanyl, leading to hepatitis C and H.I.V. This avoidable crisis has been exacerbated by unemployment, declining coal mining production and economic pressures on regional press to act as effectively as a watchdog.

At the same time, health care is relatively inaccessible. “It’s not so easy to get to the nearest town to see a doctor,” Dr. Judith Feinberg, professor of medicine at West Virginia University, explained, pointing to a lack of transportation and stigma as the biggest barriers to testing and care. People living with H.I.V. are stigmatized everywhere, but those who live in large cities can get tested while feeling relatively anonymous in a clinic in ways rural dwellers cannot.

[T]he C.D.C. released a list of 220 counties similarly vulnerable to such outbreaks among people who use intravenous drugs. The densest concentration of those counties is along the Appalachian Trail, with 28 of them in West Virginia — more than half of the state’s 55 counties.

“There is no way that doesn’t wind up as an H.I.V. outbreak in the state,” Ms. Young says. Yet unlike in places like New York — with its comprehensive sex education; efforts at queer- and trans-specific public health; embrace of public syringe exchanges; and what its health commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, describes as a “sex positive approach” — when it comes to confronting its H.I.V. epidemic, rural America is ill-prepared at best and antagonistic at worst.

[D]espite research showing that syringe programs are effective at limiting transmission of H.I.V. and encouraging people to enter drug treatment, two cities in West Virginia — Clarksburg and Charleston — have recently moved to close or limit their needle-exchange programs. Negative press, business worries and conservative approaches are among the reasons the programs have been reduced when they urgently need to be expanded (along with statewide testing and education about preventive H.I.V. medication).

While it’s true that people who are black, queer, transgender, homeless, incarcerated or poor, or who use injection drugs, are disproportionately affected by H.I.V. and AIDS, the misguided impression that members of these groups are the only ones affected has unfortunately contributed to the media’s choice to deprioritize coverage of H.I.V. and AIDS in recent years.

Meanwhile, the rural, heterosexual white Americans who have been the subject of countless national profiles because they’re imagined —  incorrectly — to represent all of President Trump’s supporters, are more at risk all the time. But while we’re bombarded by analyses of many aspects of their plight, we don’t hear about this crisis facing them.

[T]he new major terrain of the crisis right now is in rural America, and it can’t be ignored any longer.

GOP Nightmare Looms in West Virginia

The GOP primary in West Virginia tomorrow will determine whether or not the Republican Party will face a possible reprise of sorts of the disaster that played out in Alabama and put Doug Jones, a Democrat in the U.S. Senate. Now that the Republican Party welcomes, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, right wing Christian zealots, anti-Semites and other deplorables into its ranks, it was only a matter of time before some of these individuals would decide to throw their hats into the ring as candidates.  Trump carried West Virginia by in excess of 40 points yet if Don Blankenship - a convicted felon who arguably was responsible for 29 deaths - wins the GOP nomination, national Republicans believe that Democrat Senator Joe Manchin could breath a sigh of relief and coast to re-election. The Hill looks at the panic that is sweeping Republicans in Washington.  Here are article excerpts:

The nightmare scenario for Republicans is upon them: Former coal CEO Don Blankenship — who was in prison a year ago — is the candidate with momentum in Tuesday’s GOP primary to take on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). 

Two internal polls show Blankenship narrowly ahead of Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) and Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.), and Republicans are spooked.
Trump on Monday morning pleaded with West Virginia voters to back either of Blankenship’s opponents, reflecting the widespread belief in the GOP that Blankenship will lose to Manchin in November despite Trump’s popularity in the state.
Trump tweeted in a message that recalled the GOP disaster in December that saw Democrat Doug Jones elected to the Senate over a flawed GOP nominee, conservative Roy Moore.
If he wins on Tuesday, Democrats will have plenty to use against him. The former CEO of Massey Energy led the company during the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion that left 29 people dead. Blankenship was released from prison on May 10, 2017, after his conviction for willfully violating mine safety and health standards.
“If he’s the nominee, Joe Manchin skates to reelection,” one GOP source said of Blankenship on Monday. “He’s the dream opponent.”
Senate GOP leaders have publicly kept their distance from the battle out of concern that any moves to influence the outcome would be viewed by primary voters as meddling and ultimately backfire.
But Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 3 Senate Republican, told reporters after a closed-door leadership meeting that they’ve started discussing “the various scenarios.”
“Uh, don’t know. But let’s just hope and pray that that doesn’t happen,” he added with a laugh, asked what happens if Blankenship wins. “It wouldn’t be good.” . . . "It would not say good things about where the Republican Party is at,” the source said.
Blankenship is running a slash-and-burn campaign, and has been spending $100,000 per day over the final six days of the race.
He fired back at the president over his tweet, saying Trump has been misled by the “establishment.”
“No matter how much Cocaine Mitch McConnell and the D.C. Swamp creatures lie to the voters, and mislead our President, they cannot change the focus of our conservative voters,” Blankenship said on Monday. “We cannot be of The Swamp if we want to Drain The Swamp.” . . . while distancing himself from the president by telling local media that Trump “recommended people vote for a guy that was basically accused of pedophilia in Alabama.”
Blankenship told CBS News that he hadn’t ruled out running as a third-party candidate. But West Virginia has a “sore losers” law that blocks candidates from changing their party affiliation after losing the primary in order to appear on the general election ballot. He could, theoretically, stage a write-in campaign.

Teacher Strikes: Exposing the GOP’s Achilles Heel

Oklahoma Gov. Fallin trashes teachers.

For many years now the Republican Party has pushed an agenda of huge tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations best illustrated by the $1.5 trillion give away last December under the GOP/Trump tax bill.  Typically, Republican voters are induced to support this agenda by falling for the GOP's appeals to racism and/or right wing Christian religious extremism.  But constant tax cuts can go on for only so long before the larger public wakes up to the reality that this tax cut agenda is wreaking havoc on public education, state infrastructures, and other social services that average Americans want and support.  Paul Ryan may blame the federal budget debt on "entitlement spending" but even the dumbest soccer mom can grasp the reality that it was the GOP tax cuts that are the real root of the problem.  Now, teacher strikes in red states are helping to expose the GOP's Achilles heel: voters do not want public schools and necessary government programs gutted. The big question is whether Democrats can play on this growing realization that the GOP agenda does nothing for average voters.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:

On the surface, the wave of teacher strikes that has rippled through red America over the past month looks like a labor story; an object lesson in the power of solidarity, and the hazards of underpaying workers and then leaving them no source of leverage save walking off the job. And it certainly is that kind of story — but it is also a political one. After all, public workers can only gain leverage through a strike if a significant portion of the public rallies behind their picket line. It took the fortitude of West Virginia teachers to get this strike wave started — but it required the political weakness of the GOP’s prevailing ideology to keep it rolling.

Teachers scored improbable victories in West Virginia and Oklahoma by exploiting the biggest open secret in American politics today: The Republican Party and its voters have radically different political views.

The former has made cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations its top economic priority on both the state and federal levels; the latter oppose such tax cuts by overwhelming margins. GOP office-holders have worked tirelessly (if unsuccessfully) to reduce federal spending on health care; most GOP voters would like to see such spending increased. Nearly all House Republicans have repeatedly affirmed their support for financing ever-lower taxes on the rich with draconian cuts to public investment in virtually everything but the military, including Medicare benefits; when pollsters referenced this reality to right-leaning voters in a 2012 focus group, the respondents found Paul Ryan’s agenda so absurdly offensive, they “simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.”

The GOP has not made support for tax cuts (no matter the economic conditions, geopolitical circumstances, or resulting consequences for social spending) the first principle of its domestic agenda because that is a popular and rational governing ideal — but because it is an excellent value proposition to offer to well-heeled reactionaries in search of a medium-risk, high-return investment opportunity.

To this point, the GOP has paid no great electoral price for the fact that there is no significant constituency for its economic agenda; over the past decade, Republicans have managed to grow more fanatically committed to fiscal policies that their voters find abhorrent — and more politically powerful. A variety of factors have abetted this odd achievement, not least the fact that most voters pay far less attention to the details of policy than to identity-based appeals. Through “culture war” rhetoric and legislation, the GOP has established itself as the party of rural Americans, cultural traditionalists, gun enthusiasts, and the (proudly) white and native-born. The broad appeal of this reactionary brand of identity politics (combined with copious Koch network cash, the right’s vast propaganda apparatus, and a touch of voter suppression) has allowed the Republican Party to have its fringe fiscal agenda, and its electoral majorities, too.

Donald Trump tried to pay for his supply-side tax cuts by decimating Obamacare — but once doing the latter proved untenable, he and his allies were content to put the former on the nation’s credit card, just as George W. Bush had done with his tax cuts, years earlier.

But Oklahoma can’t print its own currency. On the state level, budgets have to balance. Congressional Republicans can obscure (and/or defer) the trade-offs inherent to “starving the beast” — GOP governors have no such luxury. And eight years after the tea party wave lifted far-right Republicans to unprecedented power in states all across the country, those trade-offs have become unmistakeable — especially to anyone with an investment in a (typical) red state’s public-school system.

The idea that the government has a responsibility to provide a quality K–12 education to all of its young people is among the least controversial in our politics. And yet, it is a notion that is nearly impossible to reconcile with the contemporary GOP’s theological commitment to ever-lower taxes. Talented educators must be wooed with competitive pay and benefits; textbooks must be regularly updated; curricula, revised. The disparity between the actual fiscal cost of guaranteeing universal access to a public education — and what conservative Republicans are prepared to spend on schools — is currently fueling a constitutional crisis in Kansas: The Sunflower State’s founding document requires its legislature to make “suitable provision for finance of the educational interests of the state” — a requirement that Republican legislators have routinely failed to meet, in the estimation of the Kansas Supreme Court.

Between 2008 and 2015, per-student education spending in Kentucky fell by 11.4 percent; in Oklahoma, by 15.6; and in Arizona, by 17.5. In all of these states, Republican legislators paired such disinvestment from education with tax cuts for high-earners and business interests. Even in these “conservative” states, it is highly doubtful that voters would have ever directly endorsed supply-side tax cuts financed by reductions in school spending, were such a matter put to the ballot. But now that the former have failed to produce the miraculous growth that Republicans promised — while the latter have yielded decaying textbooks, four-day school weeks, and teacher shortages — support for a change in fiscal priorities is overwhelming in deep-red Oklahoma.

The fact that the unpopular consequences of right-wing governance are becoming increasingly visible in red states does not guarantee the conservative movement’s imminent collapse; but it does create an opportunity for opponents of conservatism to launch a few wrecking balls in its direction.

This is the lesson that the striking educators are teaching us. When a well-organized movement — with genuine roots in “conservative” communities (and no plausible ties to George Soros or Nancy Pelosi) forces the GOP’s fiscal agenda to the center of public debate, the political terrain shifts — and conservatives struggle to stand their ground. Suddenly, Oklahoma Republicans can vote to take money from oil companies and give it to teachers; and those teachers can meet their offer with protests instead of gratitude.

The Spreading Unrest of Red State Teachers

Red states have two main pillars of Republican Party governance: (i) slash taxes and governmental funding and (ii) prostitute yourself and the civil law to right wing Christian extremists. One area where these agendas merged was in slashing public school funding which satisfied the Christofascist party base's hatred of public education because - the horror! - it might educate students to the point where they might walk away from the brain dead, anti-knowledge worldview of the charlatans preaching from pulpits and/or television scamvagelists.  With the revolt that began in West Virginia - a state that is always the butt of jokes told by Virginians - seemingly now taking hold in other states, Republicans may find that they have awakened what may become a nightmare.  Just in time for the 2018 midterms and all of the state and local elections that piggy back with them.  The reality is that, if you value quality public schools - which are a key to maintaining property values and attracting new business and industry - you simply do not vote Republican. A piece in New York Magazine looks at the growing teacher unrest.  Here are highlights:

Eight Kentucky school districts — including those in Louisville and Lexington — are closed today as teachers stay home to protest the GOP legislature’s destructive “reforms” of their pension system. Oklahoma teachers are planning to strike on Monday despite winning a $6,100 pay raise. And Arizona teachers rallied at the state capital on Wednesday and are threatening to strike if their demands for major pay raises and restoration of education funding cuts are not met.

As this wave of unrest among teachers spreads nationally, it’s clear it has been inspired by the nine-day strike that won West Virginia teachers (and other state employees) a pay raise earlier this month. But there’s something more fundamental going on than copycat protests. We’re seeing a teacher-led backlash against years, and even decades, of Republican efforts at the state level to cut taxes and starve public investments. This is very clear in Oklahoma, where a quick pay raise the legislature passed this week is deemed by teachers to have missed the larger point: this investment alone will not undo a decade of neglect. There is still work to do to get this legislature to invest more in our classrooms. And that work will continue Monday, when educators descend on the capitol,” Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, said in a Facebook video

The pay-raise bill signed by Governor Mary Fallin yesterday brought in $447 million in new revenues from higher taxes on cigarettes and oil-production facilities. But the teachers are demanding $3.3 billion “to restore millions of dollars in school funding that have been cut in the past decade. . . .

Similarly, in Arizona the teacher protests are not just about teacher pay, though they are among the lowest paid in the country. Their demands are much broader . . . . Teachers, who organized a grassroots campaign on social media, are demanding a 20 percent raise and restoration of school funding to 2008 levels, before the Great Recession struck, according to the Arizona Republic. They are also asking state lawmakers to stop cutting taxes until Arizona’s per-student spending reaches the national average.

[T]his collision is a reminder that GOP claims that tax cuts at the state as well as the federal level would pay for themselves by generating sustained economic growth have once again proved faulty, with public education being the primary victim of chronic budget shortfalls.

While Republican pols in Arizona and Oklahoma, like their counterparts in West Virginia, are backpedaling furiously and trying to prevent or resolve strikes, the conflict may go too deep for an easy resolution.

In Kentucky, teacher grievances are mostly focused on the pursuit by Republican governor Matt Bevin and the GOP legislature of another big conservative cause: public pension “reform,” which in this case meant serious reductions in benefits and a complete revocation of teacher pension security. That the “reform” was whipped through the legislature suddenly after being attached to a sewer regulation bill did not improve its aroma.

Perhaps the current wave of teacher protests and strikes will subside as the school year ends. But more likely, it will spill over into the election season this fall, when 36 governorships and most of the national state legislatures are up for grabs.

Come November, vote a straight Democrat ticket at every governmental level and send the GOP a strong message.

Christian Extremist Attacks Showing of "Pro-Gay" Suicide Prevention Video

I have long argued that the principal "sin" of LGBT individuals in the eyes of Christofascists is that we challenge their Bronze Age beliefs on human sexuality and suggest that perhaps the legends and myths they cling to just might not be true.  Indeed, our very existence is an offense in their eyes even as they engage in conduct that makes the Pharisees of the New Testament seem like pillars of decency and honesty.  The Christian Post is reporting on an incident where the leader of a Christian extremist organization is raising hell over the showing of a suicide prevention video that he deemed "pro-gay" - apparently because it acknowledged gays exist and have feelings and love for those of their own gender (the other likely offense in the mind of this "godly Christian" is that one of the boys in the video was black - Penkoski is likely a racist as well as a homophobe).  I suspect this individual would prefer that every gay commit suicide.  As for the impact on his delicate daughter, she probably more than anyone needs suicide prevention counseling given the lunacy and hatred that define her father.  Here are article excerpts:

A conservative Christian parent in West Virginia has voiced concern after a middle school teacher showed her class a suicide prevention music video that featured two male high school students in bed together and a sex toy.

Rich Penkoski, who is the father of a 13-year-old student at Mountain Ridge Middle School in Gerrardstown, West Virginia, voiced his outrage with the school's principal Thursday after his daughter told him that her homeroom teacher, Jackie Coffin, showed the the music video in class on Tuesday.

The music video in question is from hip-hop artist Logic's 2017 song, titled "1-800-273-8255," which is also the number to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

The plot of the video follows a gay African-American student as he struggles to gain society's acceptance of his sexual orientation. In one scene, the student visits a male classmate's house and has dinner with the classmate and his parents. The next scene shows the classmate's dad catching his son in bed with the male student.

In another scene, the African-American student opens his gym locker to find a dildo affixed to the inside of the locker door as an anti-gay joke.

Penkoski is most known for his work as one of the leaders of the "Warriors for Christ" online ministry and Facebook page. The Facebook page made headlines and received much backlash earlier this summer when it announced that anyone who posted an LGBT rainbow flag emoji to the Facebook page would be banned by the page's administrators.

Penkoski and other administrators at Warriors for Christ have also launched a new Christian social media alternative to Facebook called SocialCross.org. So far, nearly 10,000 users have joined the new platform.

No doubt Penkoski supports gay bashing and under other circumstances would have been laughing it up over the anti-gay incident in the video.  Gay youth are committing suicide almost daily across America, especially in rural backwater areas.  Many others find themselves homeless after being thrown out by their "godly Christian" parents - 40% of homeless youth are LGBT.  None of this seems to upset Penkoski.  No, all he is concerned is that his daughter might realize the ugliness and ignorance that her father's beliefs represent by seeing "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey used to say.  As I say over and over again, in the final analysis, fundamentalist and evangelical Christians are not nice or decent people.  Selfishness, hatred of others, and the embrace of ignorance are their defining characteristics. 

How Trump Will Betray the Coal Industry and Miners

Perhaps no one well for Der Trumpenführer's lies more completely than those dependent on the coal industry, especially in areas like Kentucky, West Virginia and parts of Southwest Virginia.  Between appeals to racism, white nationalism and toxic right wing religion, voters in these areas voted for Trump and Republicans that now push budget cuts that will hit these regions harder than many others.  Meanwhile, promises to bring the coal industry back to its glory days - which in truth, were not all that good for average coal industry workers - will likely turn out to be nothing more than promises of a carnival barker.  Between Trump's broken promises (assuming he meant anything he said) and a reactionary culture that makes these regions unattractive for modern progressive businesses, the economic future remains bleak with further pain to come from the policies of politicians that these regions put into office.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the coming betrayal of those who voted out of hatred and an unwillingness to move toward the future and who continue to look backwards.  Here are highlights:

[T]he prognosis for Big Coal remains dim. . . . . President Trump has vowed to roll back environmental regulations that the industry says are part of a “war on coal.”

The stocks of coal companies have enjoyed a “Trump bump,” thanks to the president’s pledges to “bring the coal industry back” and “put our great miners and steelworkers back to work.” Half a dozen big companies have seized the moment to issue stock or sell bonds to raise money from investors willing to wager on the effects of a friendlier Trump administration. Peabody Energy, the nation’s biggest coal behemoth, hopes to win court approval to come out of bankruptcy in April.

But the obstacles on the other side of the ledger remain daunting: Coal-fired power plants continue to shut their doors. Bountiful supplies of U.S. shale gas are keeping natural gas prices low and competitive, and renewable sources of power generation are growing rapidly. Though most experts expect U.S. coal sales and output to top last year’s levels, they also expect the decline to resume in 2018.

“The coal industry is saying it’s back. It’s not back,” said Tom Sanzillo, director of finance at the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis. “This is a fool’s errand.” . . . . . Some coal companies will survive, and some could thrive. Metallurgical coal will be needed to make steel in India and China and in the United States, especially if there is a boost in infrastructure spending. And thermal coal will still be used to generate electricity for years, even if at lower rates.

But to show profits, coal operators will have to trim output from the oldest, least-efficient mines in Appalachia (where Trump garnered crucial votes in the election) and shift their focus to the Illinois Basin and the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.

“A lot of people conflate two primary things: the coal industry and coal jobs,” said Chiza B. Vitta, a coal analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “Even if the coal industry were to do better, that doesn’t translate into coal jobs. Over time the process has become more and more efficient, and they’re able to mine with fewer and fewer people working.”  Some analysts don’t even expect the industry to do better.

“The regulatory environment for coal should improve under Trump’s presidency,” the bank [CitiBank] said. But, it added, “comparative economics for coal, renewables and gas place clean coal firmly at the bottom of the stack in the U.S.”

[I]t will be hard for Trump to deliver. “To bring jobs back in Kentucky is a tough proposition unless there’s a subsidy, because it doesn’t make economic sense,” Vitta said.  That’s been true for years, notwithstanding some of the political rhetoric.

In Arizona, the Navajo Generating Station could also provide an early test for the president. Its owners have decided to close the massive coal plant. . . . . . the Navajo station produces electricity at rates about 50 percent higher than market rates.

“There’s no good economic reason to keep NGS on life support, and indeed the time for closure has come,” Sanzillo’s group said in a blog post. “The plant is emblematic of a core challenge facing the traditionally hidebound U.S. electricity-generation industry, as the market for coal-fired electricity is shrinking.”  And, he added, “that’s regardless of recent political events.”

 The take away?  Coal jobs will not return in these regions and the Trump/GOP budget will be savage to the residents of these areas who were basically played for fools and stupidly aided their own long term economic destruction.  Meanwhile, do not expect any progressive changes that will bring new, forward thinking businesses ot that will stop the flight of the most able younger generations to places that are the opposite of their home regions. The embrace of ignorance - think conservative Christianity - and bigotry carry a high price.

Did West Virginia Spurn Hillary Because of Obama?

In Virginia, West Virginia is often viewed with skepticism.  After all, West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the civil war and the cultures of the Tidewater and Richmond Virginians and the mountain dwelling West Virginians could not be much greater - in 1860 or now.  West Virginia remains a vastly white state while Virginia has seen much demographic and educational change and much urban growth unlike its next door neighbor.  In the wake of Tuesday's Democrat primary that was won by Bernie Sanders, there are some who view Hillary's loss as a rebuke for serving and siding with Barack Obama, America's first black president.  Indeed, given the racism that is alive and well in West Virginia, which is only magnified by Obama's efforts to push the nation towards clean energy at the expense of coal, such thoughts are probably accurate.  A column in the New York Times looks at the situation.  Here are excerpts:

West Virginia turned on Hillary Clinton. In 2008, when running for the Democratic nomination against then-Senator Barack Obama, Clinton won every county in the state, carrying it by a whopping 41 points.

The Hill reported this week that, according to a political-science professor at a West Virginia college, West Virginia voters were so “fiercely anti-Obama that they voted in large numbers in 2012 for his primary opponent, who was a jailed felon in Texas.”

This cycle, a major part of Clinton’s strategy has been to so closely align herself with President Obama that there is very little light between them. This helped her secure and retain some minority voters, but most likely distanced her from many white ones.

On Tuesday, Clinton lost every county in the state and trailed Bernie Sanders by nearly 16 points. So what’s going on in West Virginia?

First, it is one of the whitest states in the country, and the absolute whitest in the South. It is also the least educated state and one of the poorest. As of 2014, almost 94 percent of its citizens are white, only 18.7 percent have attained a bachelor’s degree and 17.2 percent fall below the poverty threshold.

West Virginia is also heavily reliant on the coal industry, which is at odds with liberal clean-energy initiatives. In an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle in 2008, Obama said of his proposed energy plans:

If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.

Bankruptcies aside, the Obama years saw a steep decline in coal production in the state. According to a report published by West Virginia University, “After climbing to nearly 158 million short tons in 2008, the state’s coal mine output has tumbled in each successive year to an annual total of approximately 115 million short tons in 2014 ─ or a cumulative decline of 27 percent.” This was the right long-term clean-energy approach, but it hit a sour chord in West Virginia.

[S]mart long-term policy, but doesn’t sit well in West Virginia. Clinton recently apologized for the “misstatement,” saying, “I don’t know how to explain it other than what I said was totally out of context for what I meant because I have been talking about helping coal country for a very long time.” But the apology was too little, too late for voters in West Virginia.

West Virginia illustrates the danger that accompanies the Clinton strategy of closely aligning with President Obama and his policies: Many white voters, particularly white men, detest him. 

These white non-college graduates are a strong base of support for Donald Trump, who exclaimed in Nevada, “I love the poorly educated.” Apparently, the feeling is mutual. If Trump has a path to the presidency, it will most likely be because of Clinton’s — and Democrats’ — weakness among people who look an awful lot like the voters in West Virginia.

Like much of Southwest Virginia, West Virginia is its own biggest enemy.  Few new, progressive business want to locate to a region so consumed with racism and so proud of embracing ignorance a bigotry.  Until these factors change, do expect economic improvement.  

Pro-Christofascist "Religious Freedom" Bills Die in South Dakota and West Virginia

The hate merchants who disingenuously claim that Christians are being persecuted by being subjected to non-discrimination laws and barred from mistreating LGBT individuals suffered two defeats - one in South Dakota where  Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard vetoed a bill that would have restricted transgender students’ use of restrooms, locker rooms, and other gender-specific facilities in public schools.  The other defeat was in West Virginia where the state Senate overwhelmingly voted down a toxic license to discriminate bill.  The New Civil Rights Movement has details on this positive development.  Here are excerpts:

The West Virginia Senate has just killed an anti-gay "religious freedom" bill that, like many RFRAs across the nation's legislatures, would have made discriminating against LGBT people – especially same-sex couples – legal, by letting anyone or any company, corporation, or organization claim to have a "sincerely held religious or moral belief" against same-sex marriage or even LGBT people in general.

Senators defeated HB 4012, the newly-renamed “Religious Freedom Protection Act,” by a vote of 27-7.

HB 4012 had been amended from the House version to add some protections for LGBT people, but even then, at that point, it had become toxic.

“The WV Senate’s rejection of House Bill 4012 is a resounding victory for Fairness West Virginia, our allies, our supporters, and Mountaineers everywhere,” Andrew Schneider, Executive Director of the Fairness West Virginia, said in a statement.

“With similar discriminatory legislation being considered in states across the nation, West Virginia sent a clear message to the world that Mountaineers do not tolerate discrimination. This action proves once again that bipartisan support for nondiscrimination principles is a guiding force in our state.”

The bill had passed the House in a 72-26 vote. 

During debate, Democratic Delegate Mike Pushkin delivered a memorable and impactful speech, reminding his fellow delegates that "baking a cake is not persecution."

These Christofascists are truly foul, bigoted people.  They are selfish hypocrites who are a threat to religious freedom for all Americans.  They are a clear and present danger to the U.S. Constitution and the rights of all Americans. They need to become social and political outcasts. 

West Virginia GOP Senate to Kill Effort to Ban LGBT Non-Discrimination Protections

Senator Carmichael

Wow!  The spittle must be flying in massive sheets in the offices of "family values" hate groups and many local GOP committees controlled by the Christofascists.  The culture war must be shifting in favor of gays faster than I imagined if a West Virginia Republican is willing to stand in the way of consideration of a Christofascist backed bill that would rescind non-discrimination protections for LGBT West Virginians.  I can just imagine the shrieking and failing coming from NOM's headquarters.  WOWK TV 13 has details on the pronouncement by West Virginia Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael(R).  Here are excerpts:

Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael says there's "no way" the Senate will consider a proposal to nullify local ordinances that protect gay and transgender people from housing and employment discrimination.

The Jackson County Republican made the remarks Thursday to the AP.

The West Virginia Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act would prohibit any local nondiscrimination ordinances stricter than state law. West Virginia doesn't include gay and transgender housing and employment protections.

A House committee cleared the bill Wednesday.

Five cities, including Charleston, have similar nondiscrimination ordinances.

Republican bill sponsor Del. Lynne Arvon said rules should be uniform and predictable.
Democratic Del. Stephen Skinner, the only openly gay state lawmaker, said it's "legislative gay bashing."

Who would have expected this in West Virginia!  Kudos to Carmichael. 

West Virginia Republican says Rape can be "Beautiful"

GOP's Brian Kurcaba

I never cease to be amazed by the batshitery that comes from the mouths of today's Republicans.  It's little wonder that so many of us Republicans of yesteryear have fled the GOP as it has become one big insane asylum.  The key ingredient to the party's descent into insanity?  The rise of the Christofascists within the party.  What began as a slow grow cancer has now metastasized.  How else to explain the statement by West Virginia Republican Delegate Brian Kurcaba who says rape is "beautiful" when it results in a child.  Perhaps in the crazy world view of the likes of Tony Perkins, Pat Robertson, Victoria Cobb, and Tim Wildmon, but not for those of us who live in touch with objective reality.  The Raw Story looks at this batshitery which increasingly is the norm for Republicans who see women as some sort of chattel property of men:

Republican state lawmaker in West Virginia said on Thursday that while rape is horrible, it’s “beautiful” that a child could be produced in the attack.

According to Huffington Post, Charleston Gazette reporter David Gutman was on the scene when Delegate Brian Kurcaba (R) said, “Obviously rape is awful,” but “What is beautiful is the child that could come from this.”

Kurcaba made the remarks during a House of Delegates discussion of a law outlawing all abortions in the state after 20 weeks’ gestation. At 20 weeks, anti-choice activists and lawmakers allege, a fetus can feel pain and is therefore too viable to abort.

The bill was passed by West Virginia Republicans in 2014, but vetoed by Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. Now the state GOP has revived the bill and voted to remove an exception for victims of rape and incest.

Kurcaba’s remarks echo a string of embarrassing statements by Republicans regarding rape and women’s bodies. 

In 2012, Missouri’s Rep. Todd Akin said that pregnancy can’t result from rape because “If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”

Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said that while sexual assaults are unfortunate, the resulting pregnancy is a “gift from God.”

Republican leaders convened an emergency meeting in 2013 urging the rank and file to stop talking about rape altogether lest it further alienate women voters, who have been abandoning the Republican Party in droves.

Nonetheless, Kurcaba — a financial advisor who was elected in 2014 — appears eager to bring discussions of rape back into the dialogue about women’s access to reproductive health care.

Here in Virginia, Republicans are seeking to pass a similar law with no exception for instances of rape. 

Fouth Circuit Refuses to Stay Gay Marriage Ruling

Much to the shrieks and consternation of the Christofascists at the Alliance Defending Freedom (such a ridiculous name for a group that wants a theocracy!) and The Family Foundation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has refused to stay its ruling striking down Virginia's gay marriage bans - and by extension, those in North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virgina.  Absent a stay issued by the U.S. Supreme Court or a grant of writ of certiorari, marriages could soon begin in Virginia.  Here are details from AFER on this development:

On August 13, 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied a request to stay, or delay implementation of, the decision that found Virginia Marriage Amendment unconstitutional. The defendants may make an emergency appeal to the United States Supreme Court to ask for a stay of the mandate that will allow gay and lesbian couples to marry in Virginia.

In the event that the Supreme Court does not issue a stay, or if no appeal is made to the Supreme Court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals will issue a mandate within the month and marriages would begin in Virginia immediately thereafter.

If an appeal is made to the Supreme Court and a stay is issued, marriages would not begin in the Commonwealth pending Supreme Court review of petitions for writ of certiorari.

Here’s what happens next in regard to the 4th Circuit’s decision not to stay the mandate:

Here's the ACLU's reaction to the news:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit today denied a request to delay implementation of its ruling striking down Virginia laws denying marriage to same-sex couples.  The court’s action means that, unless the Supreme Court intervenes, couples may begin marrying and having their out-of-state marriages recognized in Virginia on August 20.

Prince William County Circuit Court Clerk Michèle McQuigg had asked the court to stay the ruling while she asks the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.  The ACLU of Virginia, ACLU, and Lambda Legal opposed the stay on behalf of approximately 14,000 Virginia same-sex couples.  McQuigg may still ask the Supreme Court to stay the Fourth Circuit ruling.

“We hope that the Supreme Court will leave this ruling in place, so that same-sex couples may begin marrying right away,” said Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, Executive Director of the ACLU of Virginia.  “Our clients have already waited far too long to exercise their constitutional right to marry, or to have their marriages from other states recognized.”

I can only assume that Victoria Cobb is acting as if a crowd has taken defecated in her Cheerios!  Her angst should give joy to decent Americans who believe in equality under the law and no special rights for Christofascists.

Charleston Gazette: West Virginia Attorney General on Wrong Side of History

Virginia has a relationship with West Virginia much like that which Alabama has with Mississippi: the eastern neighbor can always point to the state to the west as being worse than they are.  Now, the Charleston Gazette has run an editorial that notes that West Virginia's Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, unlike Mark Herring in Virginia, is on the wrong side of history in his defense of West Virginia's anti-gay ban on same sex marriage.  The paper goes on to predict that Morrisey will fail in his effort.  Here are editorial highlights:

A federal judge in Cincinnati announced Friday that he will strike down part of Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage. 

He joins a tidal wave of morality change that is sweeping America. Already, 18 states have legalized gay wedlock, with more poised to follow. The U.S. Supreme Court obliterated most of the Republican-passed Defense of Marriage Act, which ostracized same-sex weddings. Gays now serve openly in the U.S. military. Many states have outlawed discrimination against them. America’s values are evolving with remarkable speed.

Therefore, we predict that West Virginia’s Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey will fail in his attempt to deny this state’s gays an equal right to wed.

Like most rural, conservative places, West Virginia passed a law to prevent homosexuals from marrying. The law forbade the state to recognize such marriages performed in other states. Repeatedly, fundamentalists sought to lock this prejudice into the state constitution. 

Last fall, three West Virginia couples filed a federal human rights suit challenging the state’s ban. The case is before U.S. Judge Robert Chambers in Huntington. Morrisey leaped into court to oppose marriage equality. He calculates that the action will bring him conservative mountain votes in the next election.

But Morrisey is on the wrong side of history. America is turning more tolerant, and past bigotry is disappearing. Those who defend it will be pushed aside by the progress of democracy.

A half-century ago, it was a felony to be gay in West Virginia. Anyone caught in same-gender sex could be sentenced to the old stone prison at Moundsville. But gay sex was legalized in this state

in the 1970s, and the U.S. Supreme Court finally made it legal nationwide in 2003

We hope Judge Chambers follows the Ohio judge and voids West Virginia’s discrimination against gays and lesbians. Morrisey may reap thousands of rural votes for his defense of discrimination — but he’s destined to lose in the long run. The tide of history is abundantly clear.

Like in Southwest Virginia, rural fundamentalists are holding West Virginia back and harming its future by their hate and fear based religious bigotry.