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:
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?
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.
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
21st 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.
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