If my telephone keeps ringing, please go away

Note to telephone solicitors: I will not give you money if you call me on the phone. Not today, not tomorrow and not ever.

There are several reasons for this and they are not negotiable. I don’t care if you’re calling on behalf of “RescueEveryDog.com,” the “We Found the Cure for Cancer Foundation” or “ThirtyCentsADayCanBringAbout- WorldPeace.org.” I have nothing to say to you except “click.”

For example, on Saturday morning my phone rang and the caller ID suggested it might be someone I knew, so I answered the call. It didn’t take me long to regret that decision. A woman on the other end addressed me by a name I didn’t recognize, then laughed and said, “It’s harder to reach you than it is to get my husband to make dinner.” That’s when I hung up.

First off, just so you know, clever opening lines don’t work on me. I’ve hung up on some of the best. And I am not hard to reach because I’m home most of the time. I just generally don’t answer the phone.

Second, just because my caller ID says “Cancer Fund” or “Support Your Local Sheriff” doesn’t mean that’s who you are. I have received phone calls in which my caller ID said I was calling myself, which, of course, is impossible, because if I actually did that I’d get a busy signal. You could be a scammer or any kind of nefarious individual out to relieve me of my bank account. After all, I can’t see you through the phone, so I refuse to bite.

Third, I already know how to make donations to organizations I support. I don’t need any help from you. When I have extra money to give away, I do it gladly, but when I don’t, I don’t, so calling me is a waste of your time and mine. I’m either going to ignore the call completely and let the phone ring through to voice mail or I’ll hang up on you, so please don’t bother me.

Fourth, if you tell me your name is Todd or Brian or Charlie and you speak in such a heavy south Asian accent that you’re hard to understand, I’m calling B.S. and hanging up. I’d rather you just told me up front that your name was Bagdesh or Shariq or Jugnu. I’m still hanging up on you, but at least I’d give you one point for honesty.

Fifth, I’m not in a financial position to help you cure cancer, if that’s why you’re calling, but I’ll tell you who is. Try soliciting Eli Lilly or Mylan Pharmaceuticals or GlaxoSmithKline, or maybe Pfizer or Merck or Bristol-Myers Squibb. Tell them we already have enough drugs to treat Plaque Psoriasis and Restless Leg Syndrome and it’s time they started working on cancer. They have billions of dollars to pay executives and pass on to their shareholders that could be invested in research if they were seriously interested in curing diseases – which apparently they are not.

I believe that if all of the nation’s drug companies combined their substantial resources and expertise, they could probably find a cure for most if not all of our diseases in a relatively short period of time…but then no one would get sick and they’d put themselves out of business. It’s the same philosophy that makes so many consumer products go bad after a certain amount of time – what we call “planned obsolescence.” If your kitchen appliances never failed, why would you ever buy new ones? And if you didn’t, how long would Kitchen Aid stay in business?

As for drug companies, they don’t make money curing diseases, they make their money treating them. When’s the last time you saw a TV commercial for a polio drug? Or smallpox? “Ask your doctor if SuperMegaZithroAnti-Poxicillin may be right for you.”

I used to be polite, the way I was brought up to be. I’d listen patiently to phone solicitors and give the person time to take a breath before I’d stop them and say, “Excuse me. I’m very sorry but I’m not interested. Thanks for calling. Good-bye.” And then I would hang up. But the callers have gotten wise to that tactic and have somehow found a way to keep talking for five minutes straight without breathing, so even when I say “excuse me” they keep right on going.

I have the solution to that now. It’s called “click.”

It’s bad enough that you get dozens of these calls a month but sometimes they call before 9 a.m. or after 8 p.m. or on weekends when they’re supposed to leave us alone. I thought I was on the DO NOT CALL list to prevent these calls from getting through, but they keep on calling anyway, so I suppose they’ve found a way around that, too.

After all, if they can find a way for me to call myself, I guess they can do just about anything. Anything, that is, except get me to answer the phone. And that's why that ringing sound you hear is me, saying “please go away.”

Thoughts and prayers, a non-answer and no answer at all

After the February 14 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School, I sent an email to my three congressional representatives, asking each, “What will you do to help prevent more gun violence in the United States? Simple question. Please respond.”

Following are the responses I have received as of 5 p.m. today – 10 days after the deaths of 17 students and teachers at the Parkland, Florida, school: 

U.S. Senator Shelley Moore-Capito, R-WV

“As we grieve the loss of innocent life due to this senseless violence, we extend our thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of the victims and our gratitude to our police officers and first responders whose heroism was critical in preventing further violence and providing life-saving medical treatment.

“Acts of gun violence are deplorable and the misuse of any weapon is intolerable and should be punished accordingly. As your Senator, I support strong criminal penalties for those who engage in gun violence, both to deter future acts of violence and to punish those individuals who use guns in criminal acts. I will continue working with my colleagues on sensible solutions to stop violence while maintaining protections for law abiding gun owners. I also remain firmly committed to supporting our law enforcement personal and first responders in order to ensure they have the resources necessary to keep our communities and our schools safe.”

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, D-WV

“I have received your e-mail and look forward to responding to you soon.”

U.S. Representative David McKinley, R-WV:

“____________.” [No response at all.]

Great. So let’s recap:

The question I asked was “what will you do” to prevent another mass shooting. Mrs. Capito said she will grieve for victims, extend thoughts and prayers, express gratitude for first responders, punish shooters after they shoot someone, seek sensible solutions with her colleagues, protect law abiding gun owners and support law enforcement.

I saw no mention of any meaningful action, such as raising the minimum age to buy certain types of guns, outlawing private ownership of military-style assault weapons, expanding background checks, closing gun show loopholes, increasing treatment for the mentally ill, authorizing police to confiscate guns from disturbed individuals or even the NRA’s favorite – turning schools into bunkers resembling maximum security prisons.

Mr. Manchin’s response was, basically, “I’ll get back to you.” It mentioned no other action of any kind.

And David McKinley’s response was even worse, because there wasn’t one. His office didn’t even have the courtesy to send a form letter full of NRA talking points.

Now I’m sure you know that I wasn’t really expecting anything else from these three politicians who are supposed to represent me and the rest of our state, although I did expect some thoughts and prayers (thanks, Shelley) and some political argle bargle that uses way too many words to say virtually nothing at all. However, I had to ask the question or I would never have known for sure what I would get.

Well now I know…and I thought you might like to know, too. After all, two of these three people must stand for re-election in November, so as an educated, interested and engaged voter, I plan to keep asking them questions from time to time until Election Day, and – you can trust me on this – I’ll be keeping a record of what they say. You might even read about it here.

And while I'm at it, I urge all of you to do the same, regardless of where you live. One-third of the U.S. Senate and all of the House of Representatives are up for re-election this year. If you want to spark any kind of reaction out of these people, I suggest you keep up the calls and the letters and the emails to their offices and write letters to your local newspaper editors and go to town halls and find any other way you can keep these issues in front of your elected representatives and in front of voters, because the closer it gets to election time, the more the candidates will have to listen to us, or, hopefully, they can catch the first bus out of Washington on their way to their next job.

I keep saying that elections have consequences. After 2016, that has never been more clear.

No collusion? Maybe not, but obstruction a-plenty

Wouldn’t it be ironic if Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded his investigation and found that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians, but is guilty of a massive, years-long campaign to obstruct justice by trying to stop the investigation?

Wouldn’t it be ironic if all Trump had to do was keep his mouth shut and his Twitter fingers silent and let the Mueller investigation run its course?

Wouldn’t it be poetic if Trump was impeached or forced to resign because he tried to shut down an investigation that never actually tied him, personally, to anything?

I can see that happening. Yes I can.

First off, it’s obvious that certain people in the Trump campaign and later in his administration were guilty of collusion with Russian entities and emissaries in an attempt to discredit Hillary Clinton and put Trump in the White House. Evidence of that keeps mounting week by week. Some of these people are already pleading guilty and some are talking to investigators and some have yet to tell their stories, but probably will when the pressure becomes too great.

This is not to suggest for one minute that Trump was totally immune from all of that, but I could see an outcome that said Trump was an unwitting participant and therefore not guilty of the crime – making him a kind of unindicted co-conspirator, to borrow some Watergate terminology.

I don’t believe that’s true, of course. I don’t think that anything happened during the campaign or afterward that Trump didn’t know about, dream up, orchestrate or sanction, because he’s not that kind of a boss. It’s “my way or the highway” with Trump, and I’m sure his underlings know that’s how he works. Still, it wouldn’t shock me if Mueller’s report found insufficient evidence of a direct link between the Russians and Trump himself. We’re talking about the president of the United States, after all. If you’re going to charge something like that, you’d better be right.

That said, I see no way that Trump cannot be held accountable for conspiring to derail the investigation for whatever reasons he might have. I mean, maybe he’s trying to hide some shady money laundering schemes or maybe its tax evasion or possibly he’s covering up some other financial crimes, or he may just be trying to protect his children and his son-in-law who have already admitted to their role in the famous Trump Tower meeting with Russian dirt peddlers and seem to be imbedded pretty deep in the whole affair.

Or maybe it’s both.

One thing is for sure: Trump has something to hide. The latest Mueller indictments prove that the Russians clearly invaded our country in an attempt to bring down our democracy, disrupt our way of life and influence our elections, and they’re going to do it again and again and again…as long as they can get away with it. If Trump was innocent of any involvement and was acting in America’s best interest:

* He wouldn’t have fired the FBI director who started the investigation.

* He wouldn’t continue to condemn the government agencies trying to continue to investigate while refusing to condemn Vladimir Putin for his role in it.

* He wouldn't have lashed out at the attorney general for recusing himself.

* He wouldn't keep threatening to fire the acting attorney general. 

* He wouldn't have released the debunked Nunes memo and rejected the Democratic response.

* He would apply the sanctions that Congress voted overwhelmingly as punishment for Russian intrusion.

* He would launch an all-out effort to determine exactly what happened, when and how and find ways to make sure it never happens again.

* He would go on TV, show his outrage over the Russian attack and try to convince us that everything will be okay.  

* He would also release his tax returns to show us there’s nothing illegal there.

* And, he would stop tweeting out such childish nonsense as “no collusion” and “no obstruction” and “total vindication” when he knows the investigation is nowhere near complete, and he has not yet been vindicated of anything. This may play well on Fox News and in Trumpaloozaland where his base resides, but it’s not going to influence Robert Mueller.

I can imagine that every time Trump tweets about his vindication, Bob Mueller goes home in the evening, mixes himself a drink, sits back in a comfortable chair and enjoys a good laugh, while in the background, a clock goes “tick tock, tick tock, tick tock….”

You can’t buy that pistol, son, but how about this AR-15?

Here we go again, talking about a school shooting in America.

The fact that they continue to occur with such alarming frequency proves once again that the sight of crumpled, bloodied and bullet-riddled bodies of six- and seven-year-old children and their teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School wasn’t powerful enough to overcome the tug and pull of our country’s well-financed gun lobby.

More than five years later, we continue to argue that if the atrocity at Sandy Hook didn’t bring about a change in our gun laws then nothing ever will, while acknowledging both that it didn’t and that it won’t.

Something is seriously wrong in this country and everybody knows it, including, I believe, the lawmakers who take millions of dollars from the NRA and give back nothing more than their thoughts and prayers whenever another innocent child – or maybe 17 of them – die inside a school. Oh, they know, alright. How could any of them not know? But still they do nothing but blame it all on mental health while they accept the checks from the gun people, shake hands and smile and say “thanks.”

   

By now you’ve no doubt seen the list of legislators who receive the largest gun lobby contributions, and you may also have seen video clips of them offering condolences and prayers for the families of dead children. There’s nothing meaningful that I can add to those images that absolutely speak for themselves.

There are, however, a couple of things I can add to the debate.

First, I’m sure you’ve been hearing that there have been 18 school shootings so far this year. The organization dispensing that information is a non-profit foundation known as “Everytown for Gun Safety,” founded in 2014 to advocate in favor of stricter gun control and to rail against gun violence. They send me text messages frequently urging me to take some action against guns.

While their hearts may be in the right place, their statistics are significantly skewed. There have not been 18 school shootings this year if you consider a school shooting to involve gun violence during school hours that results in injury or death. On the contrary, The Guardian web site reports just eight such shootings so far this year, and The Washington Post goes even further:

“Just five of Everytown’s 18 school shootings listed for 2018 happened during school hours and resulted in any physical injury. Three others appeared to be intentional shootings but did not hurt anyone. Two more involved guns – one carried by a school police officer and the other by a licensed peace officer who ran a college club – that were unintentionally fired and, again, led to no injuries. At least seven of Everytown’s 18 shootings took place outside normal school hours.”

So that leaves five school shootings in just 46 days of 2018. That’s one every 9.2 days – still far too many – but also far from the 18 we’re supposed to believe. This kind of statistical manipulation to prove a point is exactly what the Left accuses the Right of doing. One could rightfully call it “fake news,” and it doesn’t help Everytown’s credibility while trying to make a case for better gun laws. They may be on the side of the angels, but they need to be better than that.   

My second point is even more troubling. I read that the 19-year-old Florida shooter bought his AR-15 legally because he was over the age of 18, but under federal law he would have needed to be 21 to buy a handgun. Are you serious? He couldn’t legally buy a revolver that would have shot six to 12 bullets at a time but was cleared to buy an assault rifle that enabled him to fire off more than 100 rounds in six minutes?

I’m not a gun guy, so could someone tell me the logic in this? Who thought this was a good idea? Why does any person under the age of 21 who is not in the military need a military-style assault rifle and the large-capacity clips that go with them? Please, tell me…I really want to know.

For eight years during the Obama presidency gun sales skyrocketed because gun-rights advocates were sure the government was coming for their guns. In reality, no one ever intended to do that…and no one ever did. Clearly, no one intends to do that now under President Bone Spur, so given that everybody gets to keep their weapons, at least for now, can’t we all agree that raising the age to buy an AR-15 makes sense? Shouldn’t it be at least as hard as buying a target pistol, if not harder?

Gun lobby or no gun lobby, is this really too much to ask?

If you’re getting screwed, just say ‘stop’…in the voting booth

For most of my lifetime, Democrats enjoyed a 2-to-1 advantage over Republicans in voter registration in West Virginia, but their advantage has declined in recent years. As of December 31, 2017, there were 531,363 registered Democrats (43%) and 392,030 registered Republicans (32%), according to the Office of the Secretary of State.

There are also 263,598 independents (21%) and smaller numbers of all other parties including Libertarians and the Mountain Party.

Even though their numbers are down, Democrats still hold an 11-point advantage, which means if every single registered Republican turned out to vote for their own candidates in any given election, it would take only three-fourths of all registered Democrats to neutralize their votes. But to regain control of the state, Democrats must also win over the majority of independents and collect a sizeable share of third-party votes, or at least hope that Republicans don’t get them.

And…they need to stop voting for Republicans, which is what’s been happening since 2010 or so.

I’m talking to the teachers, state policemen and other state employees who apparently aren’t getting the pay raises they want; coal miners whose jobs aren’t really coming back; women who don’t want old white men controlling their bodies; parents who don’t want their children studying the Bible in public school or going to colleges where everybody is carrying guns; and every other West Virginian who isn’t satisfied with a Republican tax cut that might buy a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk every week for a few years while millionaires rake in more and more millions at their expense.

It’s hard to say exactly how or why we got this way, but it happened during the presidency of Barack Obama. I suppose it could have been that trumped up “war on coal” that turned blue voters red, or Obama’s famous “guns and god” quote that pissed people off, or the propaganda machine called Fox News that twisted all of Obama’s quotes into sound bites like “you didn’t build that” when they knew full well what he really meant.

Maybe – just maybe – it was something far worse than all of that, but I’m not going to go there just now. I think you know what I mean.

At any rate, it’s time to wise up, West Virginia, but don’t just take my word for it. Ask yourselves what Republicans have really done for you since they took over both houses of the Legislature and, now, the governor’s mansion – thanks to Jim Justice’s party swapping two-step. What have you really gotten from our Republican U.S. Senator or our three Republican members of the House of Representatives?

How’s your standard of living compared to 2010? What are your prospects for the future? Do you think Jim Justice and his merry band of barkers and hucksters and used car salesmen are going to deliver you what you need? What about your representatives in Congress? Are they likely to protect your Medicaid or your Medicare or your Social Security checks? After all, they tried several times to take your health insurance away. You have to wonder what they’ll try to do next.

There’s an election coming up in November where things can change dramatically if the voters educate themselves on the issues and vote accordingly. Not knowing is not an excuse. It may not seem like it now, but November isn’t that far away. The time to start was yesterday…but it’s not too late today.

*   *   *

Click here to see a chart showing voter registration data for West Virginia.

‘Guns and God’ bus picks up new rider in West Virginia

[Click the highlighted links for source information]

In 2008, Barack Obama came under fire for infamously saying heartland voters “cling to guns or religion” while trying to explain the frustration of working-class voters in rust-belt towns decimated by the lack of jobs.  

In 2018, the West Virginia Legislature has picked up the ball, added abortion to the mantra and is racing along toward the goal line with an agenda loaded with social issues but seriously lacking in solutions to real-life problems, such as jobs, the economy, infrastructure improvements and the welfare of state employees.

Consider for a moment the three bills getting the most attention more than halfway through this legislative session:    

Guns

The House of Delegates Education Committee has advanced a bill that would allow students and faculty members to carry guns on state university campuses, moving it along to the House Judiciary Committee. Instead of granting a significant pay raise for state employees who work in these institutions, or making it easier for students to attend state colleges, the Republican-controlled Legislature thinks it’s more important for all of them to be packing heat as they sit in class or walk around the ivy-covered campus. With a rise in drug abuse and the long-held tradition of binge drinking among college students, what could possibly go wrong?

God

Lawmakers continue to debate a bill that would require schools in West Virginia to provide an elective course on the Bible. The bill says the course would teach “biblical content, characters, poetry and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory and public policy.” An amendment to broaden the course to cover all world religions was voted down.

It remains unclear whether the law would refer to Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament of the Bible or the New Testament. It would, apparently, allow students to use any translation they choose, which is roughly equivalent to teaching English to students who have textbooks in French, German, Italian or the language of their choice. I have a feeling the ACLU has already drafted its lawsuit challenging this legislation as a violation of the First Amendment, and is just waiting for it to pass.

Abortion

The Senate has passed and sent to the House a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow lawmakers to restrict abortion rights. It proposes to amend the state constitution to read, “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion." The Senate defeated an amendment that would have excluded cases of rape, incest or medical necessity.

The Republicans want to ban the use of Medicaid for funding abortions, noting that West Virginia is one of 17 states that pays for abortions for poor women. Never mind that West Virginia is also among the nation’s leaders in the number of poor women, due in part because of the scarcity of jobs and education in this state.

Because it proposes an amendment to the Constitution, the bill will require a two-thirds majority vote in the House, and would then become a ballot initiative to be voted on by state citizens at the next election. Stay tuned on this one.

The real issues

In my opinion, West Virginia doesn’t need gun-toting college students or Bible-toting high school kids or mostly-male politicians telling women what to do with their own bodies. These are social issues that satisfy well-funded lobbying groups like the NRA and the Christian Right but do nothing to help the unemployed coal miner find a job or advance West Virginia into the 21^st Century.

We do need a plan to wean the state off its coal dependency and into new industries that offer employment opportunities, like, maybe, renewable energy for one. It seems to me the tops of mountains would be damn good places to put windmills – if coal companies haven’t stripped them away already – and wild, wonderful rivers would be good places to plant hydroelectric dams. There must be plenty of other employment opportunities out there if someone was only willing to go look.

We do need better educational opportunities for those people who want to live and work in the state, and better pay for the people who provide that training. We also need to increase pay for state workers, police and firefighters and other first responders who are woefully underpaid. Better salaries will improve services and reduce the out-migration that will soon cost West Virginia one of its three seats in the House of Representatives.

We do need infrastructure improvements and a way to pay for them.

And we do need a tax structure that provides the money to get West Virginia moving.

I’ve been looking through the list of bills that seem to have traction in this session of the Legislature and unless I’m missing something, I don’t see many that pertain to jobs, the economy, infrastructure improvement or citizen welfare. But rest assured…when this session ends, the state’s high school students may be able to enroll for college fully educated on the teachings in the Bible and secure in the knowledge they can carry a concealed lethal weapon with them to class.

I’d suggest the women try not to get pregnant, however, unless they plan to bring their zygote to full term.

When we were kids, why didn’t anyone tell us…?

I used to collect baseball cards. I had hundreds of them. This was the late 1950s to early 1960s, when I was between the approximate ages of, say, 7 to 12.  I used to trek down the hill from my house on Overhill Road to Tichnell’s service station and buy them by the pack – probably five or six cards along with a big slab of Topps bubble gum. I chewed a lot of gum in those days, and I have the teeth to prove it.

I kept my baseball cards in cigar boxes that I probably got from CV News after they had sold all of the cigars. I had box after box of cards, not including the ones I pinned to the forks of my bicycle so they would make motorcycle noises rattling against the spokes as the wheel spun around.

My favorite player.

I can’t tell you what rookie cards I might have had, but a lot of great players came up to the majors during that period, so I’m sure I had a few. I probably also had cards for some Hall of Famers like Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial, and some older stars who were near the end of their careers.  

When I was 13, I started high school and I’m pretty sure I had stopped collecting cards by then, but they were stored away somewhere in my parents’ house. Over time, they just disappeared.

No one told me back then that one day, a market would open up for vintage baseball cards and that some of them would be worth a lot of money – tens of thousands of dollars in some cases. None of us had a clue this would happen back in 1962, but today I shudder to think how much money went into a landfill the day my parents threw my baseball cards away. Hell, I’d bet even the vintage cigar boxes would be worth a few bucks on eBay.

My bike resembled this one.

It wasn’t just about the baseball cards, either. I also had a very sleek-looking 3-speed Royce Union English racing bicycle – black with gold trim – that was the best bike in my neighborhood at the time. I rode it all over town before I could drive a car. I don’t know where or when it went away, either, but I’d go get it in a heartbeat if I thought it was still in existence.

I had an American Flyer O-gauge electric train with a crossroad section, a couple of switches and enough track to make a large figure 8. It had a black locomotive and attached coal tender, a couple of cabooses and several freight, tank and flat cars, as I recall. It came with small red capsules you could insert into the chimney of the locomotive to make smoke. Years later, my mother found a box in her attic that contained a few of the cars in various states of disrepair and a few pieces of track. The engine, however, is probably sitting next to my baseball cards in the Fairmont city dump.   

This was my train, as I recall.

I also lost track of my father’s leather flight jacket from his time on a B-29 during World War II, as well as manuals he brought home showing how to assemble and fire his two 50-caliber Browning machine guns from his turret on the left side of the plane, and how to aim and shoot above and in front of moving targets while his plane was in the air. I think I miss my father’s jacket the most of all.

The original, 1959.

While I was collecting cardboard photos of baseball heroes, my wife was collecting dolls, including the original Barbie, Ken and Midge, that are worth thousands of dollars today, depending on condition. Her 1959 Barbie was the original, with a blonde ponytail and a black striped bathing suit. It’s estimated to be worth $8,000 today, although one in mint condition reportedly sold at auction for $27,450. She also had the original Barbie convertible.

In addition, she owned the original Chatty Cathy and Thumbelina dolls. Chatty Cathy was a "talking" doll manufactured by Mattel. When you pulled a string, she said things like, “Let’s play house,” “Please change my dress” and “I love you.” Thumbelina could wiggle around to mimic the movement of real babies.

Sadly, these dolls have all gone to, well, wherever a little girl’s dolls go when the little girl grows up.

Several years ago, my wife got caught up in the Beanie Baby craze, in part, I think, because she regretted losing her vintage dolls. After spending hundreds of dollars on Beanies large and small, we discovered that no one wants to buy them any more, so we gave some of them away and stored several others in plastic containers in our garage.

Every now and then, we think about giving them to someone or donating them somewhere, but for some reason I can’t help thinking that we should hold onto them for a few more years to see if they become valuable again. I mean, I’m no hoarder, but they’re stored in a safe place and they’re not in the way, and after decades of throwing valuable collectibles away, it seems like some things need to be retained. Maybe hoarding is the way to go.

After all, back in 1962, they were just penny baseball cards printed on cheap cardboard and stored in old cigar boxes that smelled like bubble gum. Who knew?