Republicans Want to Hurt the Economy for Political Gain, Not to Cut Spending

I’m hoping that by the time this essay appears in the newspaper (sent to Charleston Gazette-Mail 5/25), if it does, Congress has fixed the issue and avoided defaulting on our national debt. But even if that occurs, there have already been economic effects from the threat of default that Republican lawmakers are using to attempt to force spending cuts.

Why would Republicans threaten the full faith and credit of the United States and a possible world-wide recession in a stated attempt to reduce federal spending that has already been allocated by Congress and signed into law by a president (yes, some of the spending that could be affected was signed into law by Donald Trump)?

Remember, approving the raising of the amount the US Treasury can borrow to pay our bills (Social Security, Medicare, Defense, Education, etc.) had, up until 2011 been a routine procedure—a job Congress is expected to do. It is in the planning of the budget that Congress gets to negotiate together and with the President on spending and taxation levels that will affect future debt.

Many don’t believe that Republicans really care about the debt. After all, if they cared about debt at all, they wouldn’t have raised the debt ceiling without complaint every year during the Trump administration, spending freely while also lowering taxes on the rich and corporations, which caused the national debt to rise far more quickly than during President Obama’s eight years in office.

So if not spending and debt, what is it they care about? Remember when Mitch McConnell, as Senate President during Obama’s first term, proclaimed that Republicans’ primary objective was to keep him from winning re-election? That was widely interpreted, correctly, to mean that in the midst of the Great Recession, Republicans would do all they could to slow down the recovery, because a President gets blamed for a bad economy whether at fault or not.

Republicans have calculated that a bad economy will hurt Biden’s chances of reelection and therefore the chances of Democrats retaking the House and holding their Senate majority in 2024. The easiest way to tank the economy is to hold out for spending cuts they know President Biden and Democrats cannot and will not agree to and to refuse to raise taxes or even close tax loopholes even one cent to avoid such cuts. In fact, the proposal they passed in the House would further lower tax collections by hobbling the IRS, actually causing greater debt.

To put it plainly, Republicans have shown for many years now that they are willing to harm the US economy, our standing in the world, and American people’s pocketbooks in order to regain the power of the presidency and control of the Congress.

Why didn’t Democrats hold up raising the debt ceiling when Donald Trump was president? Why didn’t they insist they wouldn’t raise it unless Republicans undid the tax cuts they passed to help their wealthy friends and corporations - tax cuts they falsely claimed would result in increased economic growth and a lower debt? Because Democrats actually care about American families and would never risk a damaged economy to improve their chances in the next election.

Remember who is likely to blame if we find ourselves in a depressed economy as the next election looms, and vote out those who only seek power and the money their rich friends and wealthy corporate donors will spend to make sure they keep it.

Paul Epstein is a musician and retired teacher living in Charleston

Rural White Appalachians Feel Victimized, We Should Listen

    I recently wrote an op-ed (Charleston Gazette-Mail, 2/15/23 "Is it Woke Just to be a Decent Person?") explaining and debunking the negative attacks by extremist Republicans on what they call “woke” (the English teacher in me wants to correct that to wokeness). They apply this taunt to anyone who holds ideas different from theirs, especially those held by Democrats, liberals, progressives. Beliefs such as that democracy is important; that our Constitution protects us from being subject to the religious rules and practices that may not agree with our own; that American history is not simply a story of rugged individualists conquering a wilderness and building a modern nation, but that our history contains many shameful chapters in which the majority white settlers oppressed, murdered, and stole from the indigenous people, they enslaved people they imported from Africa and the Caribbean and any immigrants whose skin was not as light as most northern Europeans. Republicans want laws that protect them from having to treat people equally whose sexual identity does not match the two genders recognized in the Christian Bible, ban books, teachers, and ideas that might cause their children to question the narrative of American greatness in all things at all times or cause them discomfort as they grapple with difficult issues encountered in factual history.

Remember Hillary Clinton’s comment that there were different “baskets” of Republicans, most of whom were reasonable and could be worked with, but a minority of whom belonged in the “basket of deplorables?” Remember Obama’s observation to a group of educated urbanites that when some working class folks lose the industries that had supported their communities for generations, sometimes “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations?”

Clinton and Obama weren’t wrong.  Who could argue that some of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol or those who marched with Tiki torches in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” weren’t acting deplorably? While I believe one shouldn’t label a person deplorable, suggesting they can’t change, aren’t many rural white Americans angry, going to churches or seeking news sources that tell them criminals and rapists are flooding over the borders to change our way of life? Aren’t some even considering using their guns to start a revolution?

But I want to argue that we are not going to change minds by writing people off as crazy, stupid, uneducated, or un-American. Despite our facts, statistics, and logic, many every day West Virginians feel as if they are victimized by life in America—and they are not wrong.

West Virginians endure jokes and even discrimination because they use the language they grew up with, a dialect that includes words like ain’t, usages like “he don’t,” accents that make it hard to distinguish pin from pen or make flower sound like “flar.” Their pride in independence: the ability to eke out sustenance from a rocky and mountainous region causes them to be subjected to stereotypes that they walk around with rifles, barefoot, carrying a jug of moonshine. Of course some do—and celebrate that, and will invite you to join them hunting or drinking. Many people believe Trump wasn’t entirely wrong when he said, “there were very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. We’ve had presidents, writers of the Constitution who it’s hard not to call “very fine people,” but they owned other people, profited off their labor, while being civil and polite to others. Among the January 6 rioters were people who truly believed they were protesting a stolen election. We should never define people in black and white, though their actions can be defined. As to their character, there are always shades of grey. 

My message today is simply this, we can’t write off our neighbors as beyond redemption. They may believe things that we know are untrue, they may fit Appalachian stereotypes: suspicious of outsiders, believers in strict religions that promise hellfire in the hereafter for anyone who touches demon alcohol or strays from moral strictures regarding gender and sexuality.  They may speak and write in what appear to be illiterate ways, and they may express hatred for people who do not look like them, who they actually may fear. Nevertheless, they can be decent people who would “give you the shirt off your back,” tow your car out of a ditch, give you a basket of fresh vegetables. 

Perhaps we can change their minds, but not unless we start from a place of respect. They may be extremists and may be fast asleep to the changes we see in the culture of the United States and the world, but we can begin to wake them up only if we rise above our prejudices.

Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston, WV

Wake Up, West Virginia

 

Wake up, West Virginia. If Florida is “where woke goes to die,” as their governor Ron DeSantis crows, then we need to understand what it means for West Virginia. For far right political propaganda warriors, “woke” is an all encompassing term for everything they believe is wrong with being liberal or progressive in one’s thinking.

The term “woke” started among young people on college campuses to describe the awareness they felt for the problems of our society that they were concerned with and studying. Those who denied that racism was a continuing problem in our institutions, that LGBTQ+ people needed protections against discrimination, that misogyny and sexual assault were not solved by laws, that climate change was an existential problem, and that there was a relationship, or intersectionality, that connected these problems, well, that person was not awake to the problems many vulnerable minorities face. In short, being aware, practicing empathy, is being “woke.”

Many social conservatives, on the other hand, proudly deny these problems and see possible solutions as problems. They claim it’s a problem to acknowledge that racism still exists in America and even sometimes go so far as to say it is the white majority that is suffering from discrimination. They claim that allowing same sex marriage somehow degrades the institution of marriage between heterosexuals and that someone who views themself as “trans,” or a different gender than they appear to be (or were “assigned at birth” which medically speaking is not always clear), is not entitled to the same rights as people they view as normal. They resent being asked to be respectful by asking or using a person’s preferred pronouns. They view the right to burn fossil fuels as a God given right despite trillions of dollars in disasters caused or made worse by climate change. They deny people the right of bodily autonomy in matters of pregnancy. And they demand that children should be shielded from learning anything about these issues in school, even if they come from families where it is their lived experience.

What does it mean to not be “woke?” Above, I identified social conservatives who deny these issues. Some are like ostriches with their heads in the ground, seeking to ignore a changing world. Some are angry that the world they were taught about in church or home is not the one they now confront. They want to turn back the clock. To not be woke, I believe, is to be either ignorant or in denial. As a white, heterosexual male, I cannot speak for my fellow humans who are directly affected by the daily barrage of insult or even vitriol coming from people ignorant or in denial. Growing up Jewish in a Christian community, I sometimes encountered small scale anti-semitism from acquaintances. Once I was asked for a quarter by a boy, who, after I gave it to him, turned to his friend and said, “See, he’s not a Jew.” I didn’t try to wake him up to the reality that I was, in fact, a Jew.

Being “woke” does not have to be something to fear or criticize or legislate against. C’mon West Virginia, wake up—it’s just being decent.

No, being calm and polite does not excuse monstrous behavior!

The Tuesday, 9/22/22 Charleston Gazette Mail carried my letter to the editor responding to an editorial by the VP of HD Media and Executive Editor who wrote an opinion piece PRAISING ROGER HANSHAW SPEAKER OF THE WV HOUSE (R-CLAY) BECAUSE HE WAS SO CALM AND POLITE AS HE RAMMED THROUGH AN ABORTION BAN (WITH NO PUBLIC INPUT OR EXPERT TESTIMONY)! I'll post the text of his piece and the text of mine below. The hell if I'm going to make anybody pay to read them. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!

Lee Wolverton: A speaker standing tall in the mire (Opinion)

Sep 16, 2022

Before writing that which I am about to write, I must do that which I am loathe to do regarding anyone holding political office. I must ask forgiveness. I must ask this because I am about to write that which I rarely find cause to write regarding elected officials. That is:

Roger Hanshaw appears from where I sit to be that rare sort in the modern milieu: A leader of keen intellect and high integrity and a respecter of law, propriety and decorum. The speaker of the West Virginia House and a Republican from Clay County, Hanshaw representsconservatism of yore — principled, thoughtful and reasoned.

This does not indicate I concur with him on the issues. It means rather that, observing him from afar, I find him to be what politics in West Virginia and America badly need in both parties — men and women of intelligence, skill and decency.

Those traits are virtually absent across the political spectrum, which is why I must ask forgiveness. Getting praise from the editor overseeing news operations at the Charleston Gazette-Mail and Herald-Dispatch, especially the former, is for a Republican in this state like getting a kiss from your sister after learning she contracted the flu.

For that reason and others, I am generally disinclined in this space to single out for praise or criticism individual officeholders below the rank of governor. It is more apropos to my thinking to opine broadly on the issues of the moment, and, of course, the issue of the moment is that onetime third rail known as abortion. Plenty of others are sounding off on that topic. Another voice would only add to the multitudes.

In Hanshaw’s case, I am compelled to deviate from custom because he is emblematic of something lost not only in politics and American culture but across the wider expanse of Western civilization. The human species long has been infected by liars, cheats and chiselers.

They will always be among us. But their successes once were fleeting. Corruption empowered and emboldened crooks such as William M. “Boss” Tweed, Richard M. Nixon and Arch A. Moore Jr., but it also eventually ensnared them.

People in power long have bullied others, but they once understood that public boorishness was bad politics. Lyndon Johnson on the Democratic side and Nixon on the Republican were presidents notoriously vulgar privately but publicly restrained because the lines of acceptable conduct were plainly delineated in American society.

All this has given way to a perversion of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man” ode to domestic stupidity. Constituents no longer give a damn whether a carpet-bagging lawmaker is being investigated by the Congressional Ethics Office for buying Chick-fil-A sandwiches with campaign donation money. They care only that he voted against an infrastructure bill, not because of the legislation’s lacking merit but merely because its passage would represent a victory for the leader of the opposing party. That’s their principle: Shaft the other guy, always.

Hanshaw provides welcome contrast to this manner of thinking, partly because he has manners. With grace and dignity, he leads a state House where chaos would reign without him and surely will if he is toppled as speaker. This observation follows Tuesday’s rancor, when shouts of protest filled the House before lawmakers approved one of the strictest abortion bans in America. Hanshaw responded with typical calm before ordering the protesters removed in an affair that could have been avoided had the vote swiftly taken place instead of being preceded by floor speeches that stirred already raw emotions.

Engineering a quick vote would have necessitated Hanshaw performing greater feats of herding cats on the right than possible in current conditions. West Virginia’s state House no longer is a legislative chamber but a theater of the rabid in a Republican Vanity Fair that makes the one of allegory look like a bastion of tranquility and virtue.

Somehow, Hanshaw has navigated this Slough of Ordure avoiding both stain and stench. The same can be said neither of his counterpart in the state Senate nor of others in the upper chamber who were sullied by their own filth during their profane taunting of their House Republican colleagues last year over state income taxes.

West Virginia and America could do with a great many more like Hanshaw. One among his own party is angling to unseat him as speaker. What that delegate should be doing is supporting Hanshaw, learning from him and seeking to emulate him. That would add another adult to the one standing now among toddlers riding a supermajority high and riding West Virginia straight into Bat Earth.

Lee Wolverton is the vice president of news and executive editor of HD Media. He can be reached at 304-348- 4802 or lwolverton@hdmediallc.com.

My response:

I am flabbergasted by HD Media's VP of News and Executive Editor, Lee Wolverton's piece in Saturday, September 17th's Gazette-Mail in praise of the politeness of Republican House Speaker Roger Hanshaw during the passage of House Bill 302.

The bill outlaws abortion in WV except in very narrow circumstances that will exclude many or most victims of rape of incest and force doctors to make life and death decisions under penalty of losing their licenses or even prosecution. This bill will result in unfathomable misery for many West Virginians and their families, who, if they can't travel to a place where abortion is legal, and even if they can, may lose their health or lives. Hanshaw brought the revised bill to the floor without allowing the public more than a couple days to read it. No committees reviewed it, no medical experts were publicly consulted, and the public had no opportunity to comment.

Hanshaw, the legislators who voted for it, and the governor who signed it will have blood on their hands. There's nothing polite about that.

Paul Epstein, Charleston, WV

All Hands on Deck Needed to Save Democracy in Upcoming Election

Are you disgusted by politics and considering not voting this November? I understand the impulse to write off politics and to believe your vote doesn’t matter. I did when I “dropped out” in the early 70s. I’d witnessed, as a teenager, the violence of the 1968 election season in which Democrat Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon, who ran on restoring law and order after the assassination of Martin Luther King caused riots, and peaceful protests against the Vietnam War were often met with police brutality. In 1969, draft age, I attended massive protests against the war. I returned from D.C. stinking of tear gas realizing that fighting a well-armed government was suicide. To avoid supporting the war machine, I would move to the country, raise my own food and be as self-sufficient as possible. 

We were called hippies, and the long hair, at least for me, was partly a statement that I was willing to endure taunting and possible violence, increased attention from police, and difficulty getting work in solidarity with African Americans and other people of color who faced discrimination on a daily basis.

A few years later I landed in Roane County, with some rudimentary carpentry, gardening and musical skills and bought a small property for next to nothing. My path to becoming a taxpaying and politically engaged citizen began. I cut my hair and married my girlfriend when she got pregnant. We made a living of sorts as musicians and I got a job as a logger. I remember how blatantly racist some people in the area were, talking with pride about not allowing blacks to live “up Elk River.” Though we were different because we were from “out-of-state,” as white kids, we were treated well and accepted by the community. We were poor, but today I recognize that easy acceptance as white privilege. I have since moved to Charleston and appreciate the fact that the population here is more diverse.

I found various jobs while attending WV State College to become a teacher. During the teacher strike of 1990, in the wake of President Reagan’s mass firing of air traffic controllers for an “illegal” strike as we were doing, I started paying attention to politics. Gaston Caperton, a Democrat, was governor, and we didn’t know if we'd be fired. Thankfully, Caperton demonstrated a difference between Democratic and Republican politicians which holds true today—Democrats use government to try to solve problems, Republicans try to limit government except when they use it to enforce their ideas of law and order or defense spending. Caperton settled the strike by promising raises and changes in education. After a series of town hall meetings around the state, and with the support of the majority Democratic state legislature, soon teachers had a $5,000 raise over three years (a 25% increase for me—I’d started at under $15,000/yr). We also gained some power in the workplace through faculty senates which received a small budget for school supplies. 

Elections are important, but Americans are becoming suspicious of their fairness. If you’re Republican, you probably believe what is known as the “Big Lie,” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump (spoiler alert: he lost it--then tried to steal it himself). If you’re a Democrat you likely see that extreme gerrymandering means Democrats can’t easily win true representation in the House of Representatives. Senate rules such as the filibuster give a minority of the population the ability to thwart the will of the majority. The same is true of the system of electing presidents and in the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court who were mostly appointed by presidents who hadn’t even won a majority of votes, though the electoral college or the Supreme Court made them winners. Almost all of us feel that democracy in the United States is not working well, and sadly, some seem ready to take up arms against it if their candidate doesn’t win.

Maintaining our democracy depends on us voting “like our lives depend on it.” Generally, people “vote their pocketbooks,” and though presidents have little control over gas prices and inflation, they get blamed for them, and President Biden’s approval numbers are low, which usually means the opposition party is set to make big gains. Perhaps because of the overturning of Rowe v. Wade, gas prices coming down, the work of the January 6th Committee, and the retrieval by the FBI  of classified documents Trump had taken to Mar-a-Lago (violating the Presidential Records Act), more Americans now report being concerned about our democracy than the economy.

The best way to oppose those trying to weaken our democracy is to vote. Yes, protest peacefully if you feel strongly about an issue, volunteer to help on campaigns or to help run fair elections. Try to read or view mainstream sources of information that have fact checkers instead of depending on what your friends, neighbors, or co-workers are saying. Don’t trust unchecked information on Facebook or other “non-mainstream” sources. 

Violence is not a solution. Our system of checks and balances isn’t perfect, but it’s what we have to work with. The percentage of people who vote is low compared to most democracies, and if we can raise that percentage significantly, perhaps we can safeguard our democracy. Make sure you’re registered, find out what the rules are for early voting or voting by mail, or vote in person on November 8th!

Big Oil's Right Wing Conspiracy to Stop Renewals Must End Now!

 When it rains, it pours—especially in West Virginia in the 21st century, which is increasingly being defined by the effects of global warming. Climate change plays a role in most everything.

“The Power of Big Oil”, PBS Frontline’s 3 part documentary describes what amounts to a 50 year long conspiracy by fossil fuel companies and right wing think tanks and lobbyists to sow doubt on climate science. Exxon’s scientists were fully aware that disaster loomed and warned industry leaders that the burning of fossil fuels had been impacting the climate since the advent of the industrial revolution. The tipping point has been or will soon be reach, and we are living in a world virtually on fire with melting icecaps, rising sea level, ever more damaging hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos, and the severe thunderstorms that have flooded many WV communities. 

Greenhouse gases, CO2 and methane from producing and burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and gas are the culprits. But climate change also has impacts on human populations and the movement of people around the world.

Increasingly, immigration from developing countries to western nations is being used to stoke fears that the cultures of their majority white populations are threatened. People don’t just seek to enter the US and Europe for “a better way of life,” they are escaping droughts, fires, environmental damage and wars, causing them to flee for their lives and health of their children. It is often a choice of dying at home or dying trying to cross the desert at our southern border or the Mediterranean Sea in flimsy overcrowded boats.

Scientists warn that pathogens and their carriers will find their way from the tropics to places that were previously temperate. Remember the Zika virus carried by a tropical mosquito whose habitat continues moving farther north?

Many people find themselves reluctant to bring children into a world facing these major challenges (another reason why folks will fight to preserve their right to decide when and how to have children). 

Big oil and coal want to keep the world addicted to fossil fuels. They use their wealth to fund politicians who stop legislation that tries to accelerate the transition to cleaner energy and they advertise the message that any effort to slow the use of the dirty energy that is despoiling our planet will hurt our pocketbooks. But it’s not your pocketbook they’re worried about, it’s theirs. 

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a human and environmental catastrophe. I don’t know if scientists have ever quantified the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by the exploding missiles, bombs, and fires wars generate, but when you add the energy needed to rebuild whole cities, it has to be significant. 

This particular war may also have some positive effect, however, on efforts to reduce fossil fuel use. European countries have more than doubled efforts to replace Russian natural gas with renewables. America needs to be doing the same. New investments in fossil fuel infrastructure is a mistake. More oil and gas drilling and building new pipelines won’t add supply fast enough to help Ukraine or lower gas prices during this spike in inflation. Continuing to rely on dirty energy dooms our future; a livable future depends on clean energy. 

The real cost of fossil fuels is much higher than we pay at the pump. We pay with higher health care costs caused by pollution. We paying billions of tax dollars each year on “natural disasters” caused or made worse by a warming planet. Oil, coal, and gas producers should be paying those bills. America could lead the world to put a global price on carbon pollution. We could do it in away that protects poor and middle class Americans from the impacts of rising fossil fuel prices. Our West Virginia leadership should be advocating for these policies, not continuing to allow fossil fuel producers to pay few if any taxes and receive subsidies such as the WV Public Service Commission is allowing to keep coal burning power plants in operation.

Democrats (including Manchin) and several Republicans, passed President Biden’s infrastructure bill last year, which funds some of what’s needed to move our electric grid and transportation toward renewable energy. It’s time to pass the rest of the climate package that Senator Manchin stopped when came out against the Build Back Better package. We must work to leave our children and grandchildren a world in which when it rains, it doesn’t flood; when a forest fire starts, it doesn’t burn for months; where polar ice caps exist and our coasts are not inundated by storms and sea level rise; a world where people in developing nations can live a sustainable life and populations are not forced to become refugees of environmental disaster and war.

WV Legislature Made Progress Destroying Public Education in 2022

Teachers in 2018: It may be time to walk out again. Certainly must VOTE!

Teachers (and anyone who cares about public education in WV), listen up! In one case, four minutes was all that stood between you this legislative session and the unreasonable demands of Republican lawmakers. I’m talking about their so-called “Anti-Racism Act” (SB 498–it passed, but too late to become law). But they managed to pass at least two other disturbing education bills or resolutions. SB 704, which passed and is headed to the governor for signing, requires teachers to make all course materials available by the first day of class for parents/guardians to preview. They can demand that you “demonstrate how the supplementary instructional material relates to the content standards...” If you fail to do so in a manner that satisfies, they can file a complaint to your Superintendent, which, if not “resolved,” goes to the state Superintendent. You could get in trouble, for example if you introduced something from a current newspaper that hadn’t been made available for parents to preview by the first day of class! So current events are now not acceptable? What about the internet?

The “Anti-Racism Act” claimed to prevent teachers/schools from requiring students or employees to “state or believe in the superiority of one race or biological sex over another.” It states students/employees can’t be obligated to feel guilt or in any way responsible for what a member of their race or biological sex did in the past. But, for example, if you introduced the fact that white plantation owners enslaved blacks and sometimes beat or lynched them, and a child goes home and says their teacher made them feel “discomfort” or guilt, that parent can file a complaint against you with your principal that can end up on the Superintendent’s desk.

How should a teacher respond if a student or a colleague said, “If poor people of color just worked harder, they would be equal economically and socially to other (white) Americans?” I would want to point out that many are already working 2 and 3 jobs and that bias or discrimination may prevent advancement in some cases. But the Anti-Racism bill would have made it illegal for you to explain that the concepts of “meritocracy” or “a hard work ethic” are sometimes, to paraphrase the bill’s language, used by racists and sexists to deny that discrimination oppresses another group. Confused yet? If I were still teaching, I’d be afraid to even bring up or respond to a student on the topic of racism or sexism. I guess that’s the point.

It should not need to be stated that not every person of color is or was disadvantaged by discriminatory systems that existed and may still exist: slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, immigration laws, bank loan and credit policy, unfair policiing, etc. It also goes without saying that not every white person was or is directly advantaged by those systems. But most white Americans, even in West Virginia, had or have access to better schools, nicer neighborhoods, higher paying jobs, the ability to elect those in government who would improve their roads, etc. Of course those advantages shouldn’t leave children with any sense of guilt and doesn’t make them responsible for the problems such inequities have created in our society. That’s common sense–something sorely lacking in the minds of many at the Capitol.

Incompetence saved teachers this time. SB 498, the “Anti-Racism Act” was passed four minutes after midnight on the last night of the session, so it will not become law….yet.

But do you think they’ll stop trying to make it or something like it law?

WV Republicans also passed a Constitutional amendment for the November ballot that would take control of school curriculum and policies out of the hands of professionals and citizen boards. “Decisions affecting daily classroom life would be placed in the hands of a partisan Legislature,” the WV Board of Education declared in a letter opposing the Constitutional amendment.

Teachers and school staff, supported by the public, stood 55 counties strong in unity for affordable health care and better pay for all public employees in 2018. Now all West Virginians need to stand strong and vote out the legislators responsible for bad legislation this session.

Help organize voters to vote down the Constitutional amendment that gives the legislature final authority for all public education policies and curriculum while letting homeschools and “learning pods” of unlimited size free to ignore all state board educational policies and curriculum.

Teachers and service personnel, if you haven’t joined WVEA, AFT-WV, or WVSSPA it’s time to do so, because you will need the protection of professional organizations. They can represent you in hearings and investigations if angry, close minded parents influenced by right wing media make unfounded complaints. You should be allowed to teach in a way that will inspire students to work for a more equitable and fair West Virginia. If you are forced to avoid tough subjects and good teachers continue leaving the profession, young people will continue moving out of state to live in places where all people are treated with respect under the law.

Paul Epstein is a retired elementary school teacher and musician living in Charleston