We need to peel back the layers of sexual misconduct

I want to state for the record that I have never sexually assaulted anyone, nor am I guilty of sexual abuse, and in the many years I worked as a supervisor in various jobs and as a college instructor, where I held a position of authority over women, I never sexually harassed a single co-worker or student…

…as far as I know.

See, that’s the problem. I know that I never used my authority to curry sexual favors from women who worked for me or college students who took my classes, which is the textbook definition of sexual harassment. Of that I can be certain. But when I made that blanket statement to a female friend of mine recently, she added the qualifier, “As far as you know.”

She didn’t mean that I was guilty of anything. Her point was this: What I thought about my own behavior at various times of my life and what others thought about it could be two different things, and I wouldn’t necessarily know the difference. Speaking from a woman’s perspective, she correctly noted that the way men used to behave toward women and girls is no longer acceptable, and while some men have evolved with changing standards and mores, others still refuse to acknowledge that what they do is wrong.

Take Al Franken, for example. Before he was a senator, he was a comedian and entertainer who apparently stretched the limits of good taste during a USO tour in 2006. He did so to make a joke, get a laugh, present an image, and if you watch videos of others on that tour – including the woman he supposedly molested – you can see that everyone else was doing it, too.

Hell, if sexual innuendo and bad jokes were crimes during USO engagements, Bob Hope would have been locked up decades ago. Hope took the troops things they wanted from home but couldn’t get abroad, including sexy stars, Playboy bunnies and off-color comedians who told sexist jokes. He didn’t take Ann Margret or Raquel Welch along by accident.

Another beloved entertainer, Johnny Carson, was a master of sexual innuendo, if I recall correctly, as was David Letterman. Carson could get away with anything by couching his humor in buzzwords and clichés and then smirking innocently at the camera (google “Easy Caulker” for an example), and I’ve seen Letterman put his hands on the knees, arms and shoulders of female guests on more than one occasion. Drew Barrymore even climbed up on his desk once and exposed herself to him on the air.

Then, there’s another, higher level of sexual abuse that has called out the likes of Charlie Rose for walking around naked in front of women, Harvey Weinstein for masterbating into a potted plant and scores of others, now including Matt Lauer for, well, whatever he supposedly did at the Olympics. Even that doesn’t quite rival Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed history of pussy grabbing and random kissing of women against their will, and none of it comes anywhere close to the sick and twisted pedophilia of Judge Roy Moore.

It all goes to prove that sexual misconduct is a complicated issue with many layers of intent, suggestion, action, revelation, revulsion and response. It’s wrong to try and conflate Bob Hope telling a dirty joke or Al Franken pretending to grab a woman’s breasts with the actions of Rose or Weinstein or the others. That said, none of this behavior is considered acceptable today and we expect the guilty parties to pay the price for it. The only real question is, how much should each level cost?

And that brings me back to people like me. I was a kid once. I was silly and immature and did my share of stupid things, and sometimes large quantities of alcohol were involved. Clearly, I don’t remember everything that ever happened on those occasions, and even after I got older, it’s impossible to recall everything I ever said or anyone who might have been offended by a gesture or a remark.

I do know this for a fact: I’m no longer comfortable striking up a conversation with strangers, especially younger women and children, which probably makes me seem like a grumpy old man a lot of the time. Still, that’s better than being accused of something which may or not be true by someone I may or may not know. The truth is relative these days, and if called to testify, I wouldn’t want to proclaim my innocence and have to add the words “as far as I know” at the end.

Non-Denominational Prayer for Believers and Non-Believers Alike

Our father (mother, brother, sister or other supreme being who we may or may not worship)

Who art in Heaven (or wherever else we go when we die, if anywhere at all)

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven – and sooner rather than later, if you please.

Give us (back) this day our morals, our ethics, our values and our virtue,

And forgive us our emails as we try to forgive those who didn’t bother to vote in the last election,

And lead us not into nuclear confrontation but deliver us from evil, incompetence, disinterest, apathy, prevarication, the ignorance of Trump and the swamp creatures who are actively and passionately destroying our government and ruining our lives,

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever…

And if you want to prove it to us, now would be a really good time.

Amen.

And resist.

It’s time to wake up, and I don’t mean in the middle of the night

Dear Red America:

Wake the hell up!

It’s long past time to put down your Bibles and the Laura Ingraham books, turn off Hannity and Limbaugh, take a break from social media and go for a walk outside. Take a deep breath…while you still can. Listen to the birds…while we still have birds. And while you’re out there, think real hard about the country where we live. Try to take an objective look at where we are today, and tell me what you see.

If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see a president who has the morals of a schoolyard bully, the attention span of a door knob and the brain of a dinosaur; a greedy Congress with the backbone of an amoeba; a cabinet full of rich white guys who pose with sheets of money and live the life of royalty, but can’t see all the way down to you and me from way up in their penthouse apartments; and a handful of mega-wealthy donors who demand that the party in power make them even wealthier or they’ll cut off the money tap.

Truthfully, none of those people really care if the rest of us live or die as long as they get what they want, and that includes the Red State “base” that put them all into power. Oh, they want to sell you promises for votes, alright, but they haven’t actually done anything for you this year and that’s a fact, and if you can’t see that, you’re either too stupid to know you’re stupid or else you’re just not looking.

In less than one year, the Trump administration that you helped put into office has taken steps to destroy your air and water, denied climate change, canceled your right to sue money managers who rip you off, eliminated your ability to be paid overtime in certain jobs, tried numerous times to take away your health insurance, taunted and threatened to eradicate a crazy Korean despot who controls nuclear weapons, authorized the killing of endangered animals, cleared the way for an oil pipeline that’s now leaking all over South Dakota, discussed opening our national parks to drilling rigs, weakened public education, pardoned a law-breaking sheriff, threatened your Medicare and Social Security and demonstrated to the rest of the world that we’ve become unstable, undisciplined and out of control.

And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure I could use the google to find many more examples of destructive actions taken by this president, who, by the way, has been found to tell an average of 5.5 lies every day of his presidency and would rather start fights with, well, anybody than actually govern the United States.

If that’s not enough for you, the current Congress – guided by your president – is trying to pass a tax reform bill that even Forbes magazine says will wreck the economy for decades to come. That’s Forbes the business publication, not Mother Jones, The New Republic or Rolling Stone.

Are you getting the message, Red America?

If not, here’s another one for you. Republicans in Alabama and across America are willing to send a sick, twisted, gun-toting, Bible-quoting pedophile to the U.S. Senate because he’ll vote for Trump’s agenda. This is a guy who was kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court twice for violating the law and was even banned from his neighborhood mall. Is that your idea of American family values?

I get it that social issues play a prominent role in the voting decisions of many in the Republican “base,” including Evangelicals and mega-church Christians, uneducated white people and other fringe branches of the party, but is it really worth forfeiting your own moral standards to support politicians who don’t have your best interests at heart? Besides, if these hot-button social issues are so important to you, I’ve got some simple suggestions that are far better than voting for pedophiles, sexual abusers, liars, swindlers and crooks:

* First off, if you oppose abortions, just don’t have one. It’s that easy.

* If you oppose gay marriage, don’t marry a gay.

* If you’re put off by transgenders, don’t change genders.

* If you want to pray in school, go ahead. Knock yourself out. No one is stopping you.

* If you want to stand for the national anthem, be my guest. I do, too.

* If you want to send your kids to Christian schools, please do. On your own dime, of course.

* And if you want to get an education and a good job, improve your lot in life, pay a reasonable amount of taxes, buy a home, have a couple of kids and live the American dream, don’t vote for people who want to take all that away from you and keep everything for themselves. They’ll promise you that wealth and success will trickle down to you from the top, but look back in history and see how many times that proved to be true. The number zero comes to mind.

A few paragraphs ago, I started to type the words “Red Haters” – meaning people who wear Trump’s red MAGA hats – but I was struck by the fact that it looks exactly like “Red Haters” – meaning red state people who hate. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

The holiday season starts this week and I’d like to get through it with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head…and not waking up at 4:30 in the morning wondering if Paul Ryan is going to take away my Medicare or Social Security, or whether Trump will finally provoke North Korea to shoot off its missiles, or whether Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski can find one more senator to defeat this insane tax bill that’s bouncing around in Washington.

So, Red America, please explain to me why 10 months of Donald Trump hasn’t caused you to finally wake up, because it certainly does that to me almost every night.

When can we call a deal that’s not a deal a 'deal?'

[Click the link for source information.]

Remember that $84 billion “deal” that West Virginia made with China during faux-president Trump’s visit there this past week?

Guess what? It’s not really a deal.

It’s a MOU – a Memorandum of Understanding – that says both sides want to enter into further discussions toward actually making a deal. In business, that’s a l-o-o-n-g way away from being a deal. MOUs get signed all the time and nothing ever comes from them, or they get significantly changed before the first spade touches earth. They’re like the “wish list” of economic development.

According to Public Broadcasting,  Democrat-turned-Republican Governor Jim Justice and state Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher held a press conference Monday to discuss the “deal” between West Virginia and China Energy. They were more than happy to outline how the deal came about, “but didn’t provide specifics” about the MOU.

Supposedly, China Energy wants to invest nearly $84 billion in the West Virginia natural gas and petrochemical industries during the next 20 years. Two things about this non-deal stood out to me immediately:

(1) Until the details are negotiated and the appropriate documents are signed, this deal doesn’t really exist. When you hold a press conference to announce a deal that isn’t really a deal, is that considered “fake news?”

(2) It’s mainly a deal for natural gas – the very resource that is putting so many coal miners out of work. Remember the coal miners? The ones Trump promised he would get their jobs back? Assuming that this “deal” ever gets finalized, please explain to me how expanding the market for West Virginia natural gas is going to revive the coal industry. I must be missing something here.  

Meanwhile, the governor and his minions are holding press conferences and celebrating as though they just won the Powerball jackpot. Or are they? Here’s a comment from Thrasher that shows exactly how solid this deal really is:

“Can I guarantee you that they're going to spend 83 billion dollars in 20 years?” he said. “No. But what I can guarantee you is the governor has directed me to do everything within my power to facilitate these projects going forward.”

He added that if he’s a good boy for the rest of the year and eats all of his broccoli, he hopes that Santa Claus will bring him some real nice presents on Christmas Eve. He neglected to add that “if wishes were horses then beggars would ride.”

Justice, too, seems very excited about the agreement, except when he isn't. “We want to be realistic,” he said. “We want to absolutely believe that it's happening. But, at the same time, we don't want to just drop all of our guards and think, 'Yeah, yeah, it's done, done.'”

Apparently, Governor Justice went to the Donald Trump School of Deal Making. And the Donald Trump School of English Grammar and Sentence Structure. And the Donald Trump School of Telling the Truth. 

Now to be fair, I only know what I read. I’m no insider and I have no information that suggests this agreement won’t eventually be signed, or that it wouldn't be a boon to the state's economy, and we're a little short on boons right at the moment.

I would add, however, that I have lived in this state for more years than I care to remember, and if this deal falls through and the $84 billion somehow finds its way to Texas or Kentucky or some other southern state, it won’t be the first time the Mountain State was promised dinner and a movie but ended up only getting screwed.

Complete Human Rights Commission ordinance as revised

SECTION 2: RE-ENACTMENT 

175.01 DECLARATION OF POLICY. It is the public policy of the City to safeguard the right and opportunity of all persons to be free from all forms of discrimination, whether as a result of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, blindness, or handicap, and to provide for an inclusive community for all residents, businesses and visitors. The denial of these rights to properly qualified persons by reason of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, blindness or handicap is contrary to the principles of freedom and equality of opportunity and is destructive to a free and democratic society.

175.02 DEFINITIONS: All words utilized in this ordinance shall be ascribed their ordinary meaning unless otherwise defined in Article 11, Chapter 5 of the West Virginia Code, as amended, (§5-11-1 et seq.) which is entitled West Virginia Human Rights Commission. If any such word is so defined by the aforementioned Code (§5-11-1 et seq.) then such word shall be ascribed the definition contained therein.

175.03 ESTABLISHMENT; PURPOSE. A non-partisan human rights commission is hereby established in the City government to be known as the Fairmont Human Rights Commission. The Commission shall have the powers and authority and shall perform the functions and services as prescribed herein. The Commission shall encourage and endeavor to bring about mutual understanding and respect among all persons and encourage and endeavor to safeguard the right and opportunity of all persons to be free from all forms of discrimination whether by virtue of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, blindness or handicap.

175.04 MEMBERS; COMPENSATION. The Human Rights Commission shall be composed of seven members to be appointed by the City Manager and confirmed by the Council. All members appointed to serve on the Commission shall be residents of the City of Fairmont. No member may hold office in any political party. Members of the Commission shall be appointed for terms of three years commencing on the effective date of this Ordinance. Appointments to fill vacancies shall be for the unexpired term thereof. Members shall be eligible for reappointment. Before assuming and performing any duties as a member of the Commission, each Commission member shall take and subscribe to the official oath prescribed in Section 5, Article IV of the Constitution of West Virginia, which executed oath shall be filed in the office of the Clerk of the City. Members shall serve without salary, provided, however, members shall be reimbursed for any reasonable and necessary expenses incurred in performance of the Commission services. Any member shall forfeit his office if such member fails to attend three consecutive regular meetings of the Commission without being excused by the Commission as reflected in the minutes. Vacancies may be filled by appointment by the City Manager and confirmed by Council for the unexpired term.

175.05 ORGANIZATION; PERSONNEL. As soon as practical after the creation of the Human Rights Commission, a meeting of its members shall be called. The Commission shall organize, at the meeting, by electing one of its members as chairperson of the Commission, one as vice-chairperson thereof, and one as secretary thereof, for a term of one year or until their successors are elected and qualified. At such meeting the Commission shall also elect from its membership such other officers as may be found necessary and proper for its effective organization. Annually thereafter, as soon as practical after the anniversary of the enactment hereof, the Commission shall elect a chairperson, vice chairperson and secretary from its membership and such other officers as may be found necessary and proper for its effective organization. The Commission shall hold its initial organizational meeting, annual meetings, and all ordinary and special meetings at a place to be designated by City Manager. Any four members of the Commission shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business. Minutes of the meetings shall be kept by the secretary.

175.06 ASSISTANCE TO COMMISSION; LEGAL SERVICES. The Fairmont Human Rights Commission may, with the consent and approval of the City Manager, call upon other officers, departments and agencies of the City government to assist in its, programs and projects. At its discretion, the Commission may accept volunteer services, including volunteer services of private legal counsel.

175.07 DUTIES; POWERS. The Human Rights Commission is hereby authorized and empowered:

(a) To cooperate and work with Federal, State and Local Government officers, units, activities and agencies in the promotion and attainment of more harmonious understanding and greater equality of rights between and among all persons regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, blindness or handicap;

(b) To enlist the cooperation of racial, religious and ethnic units, community and civic organizations, industrial and labor organizations, and other identifiable groups of the City in programs and campaigns devoted to the education and advancement of tolerance, understanding and equal protection of the laws for all groups and peoples regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, blindness or handicap.;

(c) To recommend to Council policies, procedures, practices and legislation in matters and questions affecting human rights and relations;

(d) To create such committees and sub-committees from within the Commission and its volunteers, which in its judgment will aid in effectuating the purposes of this article, to study the problem of discrimination in all fields of discrimination because of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, blindness or handicap; to foster, through community effort or otherwise, good will, cooperation and conciliation among the groups and elements of the population of this City, and to make recommendations to the Commission for the development and implementation of programs of formal and informal education.

(e) To accept contributions from any person, private corporation, or governmental agency, including the City of Fairmont as part of its budgetary process, to assist in the effectuation of the purposes of this Article and to apply for grants and other funding, and to seek and enlist the cooperation and support of private, public, governmental, charitable, religious, labor, civic and benevolent organizations for the purposes of this section;

(f) To hold, formulate, and develop forums, workshops, and opportunities to allow for the dissemination, sharing, and discussion of information to the understanding and work of the Commission and which will tend to promote good will and minimize or eliminate discrimination;

(g) To issue such publications and results of research as in its judgment will tend to promote good will and minimize or eliminate discrimination;

(h) Pursuant to the "Sunshine Law", West Virginia Code 6-9A-1 et seq., meetings of the Commission shall be open to the public.

175.08 CITY CONTRACTS. The City shall require that all contractors execute the Non-discrimination in Workplace Conformance Affidavit, or such other form which the City deems warranted, which provides that such contractor does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, blindness or handicap, or any other form of discrimination in hiring, placement, upgrading, transfer, demotion, recruitment, advertising, or solicitation for employment, training, rates of pay or other forms of compensations, selection of apprenticeship, layoff or termination, and will otherwise comply with all federal law or laws or regulations and executive orders relating to unlawful employment practices.

175.09 CONSTRUCTION; SEVERABILITY. This article shall in no way be construed to deny to any person such rights as they exist at common law, or under the laws of the State, or under the laws of the United States of America, for redress or damages, in the event of willful and malicious wrongs or harassment committed upon them. The provisions of this article shall be liberally construed to accomplish its objectives and purposes. If any provision of this article is held invalid or unconstitutional by any court of competent jurisdiction, such invalidity or unconstitutionality shall not affect or invalidate the other provisions hereof, all of which are declared and shall be construed to be separate and severable.

This Ordinance shall become effective thirty (30) days after adoption. Adopted this the 12th day of September, 2017.

What if you signed a petition you didn’t read to oppose a policy you don’t understand?

Read complete ordinance here.

On two occasions now, the people behind a petition drive to throw out Fairmont’s new Human Rights Commission ordinance have been forced to admit – in the newspaper – that they haven’t read (or don’t understand) the ordinance they are opposing or the one it intends to replace. I have to wonder how many signatories read either the ordinance they claim to oppose or the petition they gleefully signed.

Just this week, a representative for Keep Fairmont Safe (KFS) was informed to her apparent surprise that the city’s old ordinance gives the Human Rights Commission the authority to hold hearings and levy fines for violation of its rules. This is the ordinance that was supposed to be repealed and replaced by the new one that KFS opposes.

“We were told that (old) ordinance was never in effect,” the representative said. “I’ll have to look at that again.”

Back on October 12, in another newspaper interview, the same woman claimed that the new ordinance would allow men free access to women’s restrooms because it included the words “public accommodations” in its preamble. Informed that the new ordinance does not include the phrase “public accommodations,” she replied that she “wasn’t aware” of that fact.

“I didn’t read the ordinance that way,” she said. “I’ll have to look at it again.”

Here’s an idea: Instead of making false statements to the public and the press, getting caught and having to backtrack and “look again,” why don’t you sit down in a quiet place and actually read the ordinance you claim to oppose. It's only three pages long. Then read the one it intends to replace, which, by the way, will remain in effect unless it is repealed.  

That way you can stop your out-of-control petition drive long enough to actually find out what the City Council is proposing instead of listening to anti-gay, pro-discrimination religious zealots who descended on Fairmont and filled the air with misrepresentations, twisted logic, distorted facts and outright lies. These are the same kinds of people who want to ban books they haven’t read, boycott movies they haven’t seen and support political candidates whose agendas they don’t understand.

This group is going all out to oppose a policy statement that basically asks citizens of Fairmont to treat every other citizen with dignity and respect. Note that I called it a policy statement and not a law. No one would get arrested for violating the ordinance and it carries no punishment or fines.

Here’s what it actually says:

“It is the public policy of the city to safeguard the right and opportunity of all persons to be free from all forms of discrimination, whether as a result of race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, blindness or handicap, and to provide for an inclusive community for all residents, businesses and visitors. The denial of these rights is contrary to the principles of freedom and equality of opportunity and is destructive to a free and democratic society.”

How can anybody oppose an ordinance that only asks us to treat our neighbors fairly? I can think of only one reason. Do I really have to say the word?

The young savant who taught us about presidents and liars

I went to elementary school with a boy who was some kind of savant. He didn’t seem to know much about reading, writing and arithmetic, but he knew everything there was to know about the presidents of the United States.

Guys would ask him, “Carl (not his real name), who was the 19^th president?” and Carl would answer in a rattling voice:

“Rutherford Birchard Hayes. Whig Party. He served from 1877 to 1881. He was born October 4, 1822, in Delaware, Ohio, and died January 17, 1893, in Fremont, Ohio. He had three children, Webb Hayes, Rutherford P. Hayes and Scott Russell Hayes. He once said the President of the United States ‘should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves his country best.’”

And he could do that for every president right up through Eisenhower, who happened to be the president at the time. “Dwight David Eisenhower was an American Army general and statesman…”

You get the idea.

Carl also taught me a new word. Because he was, well, different from the rest of us, boys liked to tease him by mocking him or asking him stupid questions or telling him stories that weren’t true. He would respond by pointing a crooked finger at us and exclaiming, “You’re a prevaricator.” I had no idea what that meant, so I went home and looked it up in this thing we used to keep on the bookshelf. It was called a “dictionary.”

Prevaricator
[pre-VER-i-kay-ter]

noun

1. A person who speaks falsely, a liar
2. A person who speaks evasively to avoid the precise truth; a quibbler; an equivocator


I think about Carl a lot these days whenever I hear Donald Trump speak. I wonder what he would say if you were to ask him, “Who was the 45^th president of the United States?” No doubt Carl would answer this way:

“Donald John Trump is the 45th and current President of the United States, in office since January 20, 2017. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and reality television personality who got to hire and fire people on a show called ‘The Apprentice.’ Trump was born in Queens, N.Y., on June 14, 1946. He is married to his third wife, Melania Trump, possibly an illegal immigrant, from Slovenia or some such Eastern European country.

“He is known for putting his name on anything he can get paid for including hotels, golf courses, resorts, casinos, steaks, wine, books he didn’t write, ugly red trucker hats, shirts, ties, suits, pens, mugs, backpacks, five children, four bankruptcies and a university where he scammed people out of their life savings with a false promise of wealth. The list is so much longer. He also made his mark in business by stiffing contractors who performed work for him but were never paid. He also likes to sue people for virtually any reason.

“He avoided military service during the Vietnam War by claiming to have heel spurs and went to Wharton School of Business where he claimed to be the top student, but has since been described as one of the stupidest students ever to take classes there. He likes to boast that he has a good brain and ‘one of the great memories of all time’ but can’t seem to remember that he and his whole campaign staff colluded with Russian agents to sway the 2016 election in his favor.

“He thinks the government runs like a sole proprietor business where one man has absolute power to make every decision, like a dictatorship, and gets frustrated because we have a Congress and a judiciary system that limit his authority.

“He is known for these quotes:   

‘What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.’

‘I’m automatically attracted to beautiful (women) – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.’”

And then, Carl would most certainly point his crooked finger in your face and say, “He’s also a prevaricator.”

Sometimes things just form a perfect circle.

Connect the dots to reveal the hidden object

Click the links for source material

Remember those “connect the dots” games we played as kids? You’d have a line drawing of some whiskers, eyeballs and a tail surrounded by a series of numbered dots. When you drew a line from Dot 1 to Dot 2 and so on, it revealed a hidden picture of a cat.

Sometimes, seemingly unrelated events come to your attention. If you’re like me, you might think of them as the whiskers, eyeballs and a tail in a drawing, waiting for you to connect the dots to see what’s hiding behind the numbers.

First, there’s the whiskers:

In the past month or so, I have needed the services of an electrician, a plumber and an HVAC repairman. In each case, when I called to schedule appointments, I was told there would be a long wait. “We’re really backed up,” the plumber’s dispatcher told me, while the man at the electrical supply store was even more emphatic: “I’ll give you some names, but good luck getting anyone to come out for a small job. They’re all working on big projects down in Morgantown.”

They did eventually arrive – except for the electrician – and yesterday I paid the bill for the plumber. He was in my house less than 10 minutes and his labor charge was $60. Now I’m not complaining. I expect to pay a reasonable amount for service, but here’s my point: There seems to be a demand for more plumbers, electricians and HVAC repairmen in towns like Fairmont, and the ones you can get – if you can get them – make pretty good money.

Next, the eyeballs:

It’s well documented that there are a few thousand laid-off coal miners looking for work in this area, which leads me to a distressing story from Reuters about out-of-work miners in Pennsylvania who are rejecting offers for free job retaining, choosing instead to wait for Donald Trump to revive the coal industry and bring back all of their jobs – despite the evidence to the contrary.

The article referenced a federally funded career training center in Waynesburg, Pa., that offered more than one hundred courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing. I’m guessing that plumbing, electrician and HVAC repairman might have been in there, too, but when one man showed up, he chose a coal mining course, telling a reporter he thinks coal is coming back.

Even free food has failed to attract enough participants to fill up the training center classrooms, Reuters said.

“Despite broad consensus about coal’s bleak future, a years-long effort to diversify the economy of this hard-hit region away from mining is stumbling, with Obama-era jobs retraining classes undersubscribed and future programs at risk under President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget,” the article says. “Trump has promised to revive coal by rolling back environmental regulations and moved to repeal Obama-era curbs on carbon emissions from power plants.”

“I have a lot of faith in President Trump,” one would-be miner said.

Unfortunately, the man’s faith might be inspired by false promises made during an election campaign and false hope fueled by a recent mine opening in Pennsylvania. In June, a new mine in Somerset County created 70 jobs, which sounds like good news until you consider that the Appalachian region has lost about 33,500 mining jobs since 2011. Suggesting to miners that 70 jobs in one mine will start reviving the coal industry is misleading at best, if not a little bit cruel.

“The coal industry has stabilized, but it’s not going to come back,” said Blair Zimmerman, a 40-year veteran of the mines who is now the commissioner for Greene County, one of Pennsylvania’s oldest coal regions. “We need to look at the future.”

And finally, there’s the tail:

I saw a notice on Facebook that the West Virginia Division of Highways is sponsoring a “hiring event” on December 5 in Morgantown. Prospective applicants are encouraged to fill out applications on line and go to Morgantown “prepared to interview” for jobs as Transportation Worker 1, 2 or 3.

The work includes construction and maintenance of highways, related buildings and structures; erecting and operating a drilling rig; and operating heavy equipment such as power graders, bulldozers, backhoes and semi-trailers. A transportation worker might make major repairs to roads and bridges, overhaul gasoline and diesel powered maintenance equipment and perform other highway-related tasks, according to the DoH web site.

So now we have all of the dots. Connect them and here’s what you find:

* Hundreds or thousands of coal miners have lost their jobs, possibly forever.

* The federal government is offering to retrain them to be something else and it won’t cost a thing. They only have to show up and learn. Even the food is free.

* Other job opportunities exist in a variety of trades such as plumbing and electrical work where demand is greater than the availability of workers.

* In West Virginia, the highway department is looking for help, going so far as advertising “hiring events” at which they are prepared to offer jobs, presumably on the spot.

Now it’s not my place to tell another person how to live his or her life, but I know if it were me, and I lost the job I used to have and the company I worked for and its major customer both told me the jobs weren’t coming back, I’d take their word over a shady politician and start looking for my next opportunity…especially if there was sandwiches and chips to go along with the training course.

Say, have you got anything in a ham and cheese?

Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the least competent of them all?

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In the news this week are two stories that I find intriguing. In one, it’s rumored that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos may be resigning soon. Seems she’s in w-a-a-a-y over her head in pushing her anti-public school, pro-religion agenda. In the other story, Energy Secretary Rick Perry suggested we could do away with sexual assault by…wait for it…firing up our coal power plants and simply turning on the lights. [Apparently, light provided by nuclear power plants, windmills and hydroelectric dams does nothing to prevent rape.] 

It’s neck-and-neck in the race to determine which of these two morons is the least qualified of Donald J. Trump’s swamp creature cabinet, and maybe the least qualified cabinet officials of all time. I think they both have a slight edge over Dr. Ben Carson, who presumably still believes the Egyptian pyramids are full of grain.

Let’s take Perry first.

Speaking during an energy policy discussion with “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd and Axios CEO and founder Jim VandeHei, Perry advanced the theory that expanding the use of fossil fuels could help prevent sexual assault. In discussing a recent trip to Africa, Perry said a young girl told him that energy is important to her because she often reads by the light of a fire with toxic fumes.

“But also from the standpoint of sexual assault,” Perry said. “When the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will on those types of acts.”

First off, neither of those two word salads is a complete sentence, and second, WTF is he talking about? I’m convinced that comments like those are what the term “argle bargle” was invented for. Watch me while I debunk Perry’s theory:

If I climb up the highest hill here in town, I could probably see three coal-fired power plants. They’re all around me because, well, this is where the coal used to be. Two of them are even still in operation. I also read the local newspaper every day, and have remarked in the past about the shocking number of sexual assaults reported, which seems to be out of proportion for such a small town.

So, you do the math: If we have three coal plants here but still have way too many sexual assaults, then Perry’s theory doesn’t compute – unless, of course, the people of Fairmont just don’t turn on their lights often enough. Maybe that’s the problem. Turn on a light, prevent sexual assault. Just say no, end the drug epidemic. The Trump administration has a simplistic answer to everything, ginned up I assume by their simple minds.

Who knew thinking could be so complicated?

And then there’s DeVos. Trump’s education secretary was described this week as “one of the most ineffective people ever to hold the job.” Politico reported that the billionaire evangelical Christian “has found herself stymied by the bureaucratic restraints on her job,” and that “bringing about change in Washington requires time, patience and government savvy – three things she does not have.”

DeVos, said Politico’s Tim Alberta, is on a “religiously infused journey to reimagine the relationship between government, parents, teachers and schools.” She wants to allow parents more freedom to withdraw their children from public schools and enroll them in charter schools, religious schools and private schools, and expects that your federal tax dollars will follow those children out of the public school system.

Here’s the problem: Public schools receive very little of their funding from the federal government. They are financed in large part by state and local taxes in places where public schools – located as close as possible to where students actually live – are still very popular.

In other words, not every student in America has access to a religious, private or charter school. Think rural West Virginia, where many kids already suffer long bus rides just to get to the schools that are actually there. Imagine if a kid from, say, Calhoun County had to travel to Parkersburg to attend school. That’s three to four hours round trip every day. And that’s only one example from one small state. What about big states like Nebraska or New Mexico or Montana?

Betsy DeVos lives in Holland, Michigan, which sits inside a triangle that connects Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit with Lake Michigan in the center. I’m not sure she even knows there is a rural America.

Finally, there was a third story that archaeologists have found a “void” inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. I perked up when I read that, thinking Dr. Carson might be onto something, until I got to the part that said the void “was probably empty space designed by the pyramid’s architects to lessen the weight on its chambers and prevent them from collapsing.”

There was no evidence that grain was stored inside.