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Of the money that Congress can dole out (called discretionary spending) the military gets more than all other categories combined. The military gets over $250 billion, veteran benefits and services get $19 billion and education gets $27 billion. The rich pay social security taxes on only their first $62,000. If that loophole were closed it would pay off half the national debt or it could be used to save Medicare and Social Security. We might be able to solve the whole problem by making doctors and hospitals donate one month’s earnings. They could go to Watoga State Park instead of the Bahamas this year. The cartoon in the Lincoln Advertiser received on June 7 was a tasteless piece of racist trash. You don’t need to be spreading and encouraging hateful stereotypes of other races be they liberal, conservative or Hare Krishna. That cartoon was way beneath the dignity of the Lincoln Independent, I had hoped. Progressland
Progressland all looks alike. It is four lane highways that have destroyed small business in small town America. There are trashy stretches of fast food joints and filling stations on both sides of every little town. The little main streets are boarded up and wasting away. People in the country are locking their houses now that the four-lanes bring criminals right to their doors.10 Progress and development have made “guard house” communities seem necessary to scared populations. It was eerie to pass through guard houses manned by people who can’t afford to live in the fortress communities—Black uniformed guards watching over mostly white communities in the deep south. In the more upscale walled-in communities the houses have that fake instant antique look. They were built new to look old and comfortable like farm houses in freer country. In the North Carolina Appalachians there was a sign by the road advertising cabins for sale that read “New Rustic Cabins”. Like a new old friend—instant roots. “Progress” brings big money for a few and part-time jobs for the rest. So-called progress “opens up” an area for “development”. Development means bright lights, noise, crowding, pollution and tourists looking for the happiness they can’t see to find at home. More on Progressland
Speaking of strip-mining—ask Hobet or any strip-mining company if they would strip every mountain in West Virginia if they had the mineral rights. If they are hones they will say yes. Does anyone really think they care about us and our silly mountains? Must we strip all of West Virginia to have jobs? Must we destroy West Virginia to save it? In the mountains of North Carolina at the very western tip of that state lives Martha Owen and David Liden and their three beautiful children. They lived briefly in Lincoln County. David did the West Virginia Land Study and found out that West Virginia is owned mainly by out of state rich people who love taking the tops of mountains off without being taxed very much. They moved to the mountains of North Carolina to be near their kin. Martha still raises sheep and rabbits. She processes the wool and fur from conception to lovely handmade sweaters and hats.11They built, with their own hands, a sturdy home with large natural beams. They do their best to preserve the mountain stories and music by performing for school groups and camps. They try to hold back the tide of tacky development and wanton disregard for what is unique about our mountains. They win a few and lose a few. Since I was there last McDonalds has installed an arch taller than the church spire across the road in downtown Murphy. A new development has gone in down the road from David and Martha’s place that would make a nature-lover vomit. Some favorite quotes (paraphrased as best as I remember them): “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the Kingdom of Heaven.”, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” All attributed to Jesus. And attributed to J. Paul Getty—“Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth but not the minerals rights.” From my favorite book of Ecclesiastes--“Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you shall die.” “The rich man forgets when he was poor and the King forgets when he was a prisoner.” From J. Weldon Martin—“The corporations are now taxing the government.” Somerset Oil Company The News from Sam’s Branch The Lincoln Independent, June 26, 1996 Pennzoil is trying to sell its West Virginia utilities operations to a company recently formed called Somerset Oil and Gas. Somerset is going to keep only sixteen of seventy employees statewide. There is some serious doubt that Somerset is a real company. It smells like it was thrown together just for this deal. Somerset was put together in September of last year and is owned by people from New York and Greece. Welcome to the world of multi-national rip-offs. Somerset smells even more like one of those union-busting scams that are going on all over the nation. The sixteen employees will be non-union, which means their wages and benefits will probably be too low to support their families. The sales agreement between Pennzoil and Somerset reads, “None of the employees who are members of a union, or subject to any collective bargaining agreement or obligation, have any rights to continue their employment”. Is Lincoln County’s own Boyce Griffith, head of the Public Service Commission going to let working people of Lincoln County take a beating like this? Is Boyce a Democrat or a Republicrat—we shall see? “Since Somerset has no employees in West Virginia, they will hire bands of scab contractors to do repair and to respond to emergency situations. These contractors will be people with no knowledge of the gas lines and customers in our area. They will pay low wages and probably no benefits. They will be far away and hard to find when you need them. By laying off about sixty employees, Somerset will be able to reward themselves with higher management salaries. The game is lay off union workers, hire cheap contract labor and make more profit for the stockholders and the company managers. There is a good chance we will all be switched over to propane before it is over. Gas companies don’t want to fool with providing gas to homes when they can sell their gas in bulk to Carbide, DuPont and other large companies. We are just a bother to them, as are their employees. The hearing on the Pennzoil sale in Griffithsville on Saturday had a feeling similar to those board of education meetings. It seemed like a big fix, and that the hearing was just a going through-the-motions shell game to make it all legal. The law is on the side of big business and seldom do we get our way. This is the real issue in America today. It is a class war started by the rich against the poor. The rich own the law and the law-makers. I might have missed someone, but I didn’t see any of Lincoln County’s elected officials at the hearing. Republicrats don’t care about the working people. The only politician there on Saturday was Charlotte Lane, who was the lawyer for Somerset and is running for Secretary of State on the Republican ticket. Darrell McGraw is running for re-election as Secretary of State—guess who I am voting for. Darrell is one of the few Democrat office-holders who is not a Republicrat. How Many Companies Do You Own?
If you want to help put Newt Gingrich back under the rock he slithered from send a contribution to the Georgia Democratic Party, P.O. Box 1616, Atlanta, Georgia 30301-1616. Tell them it is to be used to send Newt back to Georgia. Do you know how many companies you own? Can you work for nothing? Well the main man, O’Neil by name, in the Somerset Oil and Gas scam to buy the Pennzoil customer gas service, has that problem. He couldn’t remember how many companies he owned and claimed he would be paid no salary as president and our new owner. He and the other out of state robber barons put all the stock for Somerset in their daughter’s names. So their daughters will make the profit on firing Pennzoil workers. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Once again none of Lincoln County’s elected officials were present at the Public Service Commission hearing on July 8 to defend the interests of the Pennzoil workers—whose side are they on? Perhaps Caperton’s12 best buddy13 in Lincoln County should have intervened on behalf of the teamsters union at Pennzoil. Maybe he doesn’t like unions. Maybe he is the rich man’s boy. Maybe he is too mixed up with the oil and gas crowd to spit in their soup.14 Maybe we need to let Pennzoil tax the government as did Columbia Gas. Columbia Gas Transmission taxed our state government $4,000,000. For this price they promised not to leave Charleston. But they said they may still lay off 150 workers. It could be worse—the state of Alabama had a corporate welfare law, since repealed, that would allow companies to keep the state payroll deduction from their employees. Eliminate the middle man and let the corporations tax us directly! Where can we save money? Listen to former CIA Director William Colby who stated that we could cut $40 billion from the defense budget and still have the world’s best military. According to Paul Nyden of the Charleston Gazette, Buck Harless15 has contributed to North Carolina Senator Jesse Helm’s campaign. Helms is a blatant racist who supported the death squad leaders in Guatemala—the people who raped and killed nuns and assassinated the arch-bishop of the Catholic Church as he was saying mass. Several of the soldiers involved in the murders were trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Helm’s is also in favor of right to work laws which are just a union busting strategy and which really “right to work for less”. Buck Harless is also a big supporter of Cecil Underwood.16 Buck Harless is rich. Books I like—Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Fay Greene published by Fawcett Columbine. It is the well written true story of McIntosh County, Georgia as the African descendents struggle with the White sheriff who runs the county. There are some similarities to Lincoln County. And Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver and published by Harper Perennial. Kingsolver is a native of Kentucky who move to Tucson and liked it (something I can’t grasp). Heaven is a town in Oklahoma. Her Kentucky characters sound a lot like us. It is fun to read. Every West Virginian needs to read Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth by Denise Giardinia. They are novels based on our coal-miners’ struggles in southern West Virginia. Denise wrote part of her first novel, Good King Hank in Griffithsville. Simple pleasures—my two year old grandson at the Barker reunion waving a sparkler back and forth in front of his face. Thinking the sparkler was too close to little Patrick’s face, his father said “Straighten you arm out.” Patrick obeyed immediately by extending straight out the hand that was empty.
Krushchev Was a Communist The News From Sam’s Branch July 17, 1996 So how do you like your new board members so far? Raise your hand if you think all votes on the board of education will be five to nothing. Does the same master pull all the puppet hands up at once? It reminds me of the votes in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union—Khrushchev would lower his head and all hands would go up in favor of whatever he said. Khrushchev was a communist. In their first major act the new members voted to use money needed for education to hire a political hack from another county. Is this to protect them from what they are planning to do to the children of this county? They have a $300,000 deficit and they throw money down a political rat hole. It is ironic that if Charlotte Pritt gets elected she may save this board of education from having to consolidate our kids into one concentration camp. I have been told she plans to stop forced, unpopular consolidation. However, since the Jackson-Stowers gang ran on a four school platform we don’t have to worry. But then they hired that lawyer. About the time I decide that the Republicans are worthless I remember that all five of those board members call themselves Democrats. Republicrats, maybe? As George Wallace said there ain’t a dimes worth of difference between Republican bosses and Democrat bosses. And we have another rich man trying to start a third party. We need a labor party which makes no apologies for being in the hip pocket of the working people. The Republicans in Congress are trying to destroy the strip-mine regulations so their buddies won’t even have to act like they are cleaning up after themselves. And the Democrat leadership in West Virginia (read Lloyd Jackson’s buddy Gaston Caperton) is doing its best to let that proposed pulp mill over in Mason County dump dioxin in the Ohio River. The fish in the Ohio River already contain way above the safe limits. They say you might be able to smell that mill in Hamlin. If that mill gets built your introduction to West Virginia as you come in from the northeast will be billboards on the mountains and rotten eggs in the air. There is a song title; “Billboards on the Mountains, Rotten Eggs in the Air—Almost Hell, West Virginia.” See if you can guess whether the following quote came from the Christian Coalition or a Roman Catholic Cardinal: “American corporations are endangering capitalism by treating workers as commodities that can be eliminated to produce more profits for stockholders…unless we find a way to show respect for the worker as a worker, then I think the whole system is going to go. I think that if capitalism doesn’t correct itself from within, capitalism as we know it is going to be in jeopardy.” More favorite quotes: “The love of money is the root of all evil.”--Paul the apostle; “Prosperity isn’t worth the price you have to pay.”—Eddie Gillenwater; “These Temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the almighty dollar.”—John Muir. Simple pleasures—Standing on top of Wilkerson’s knob and seeing mountains three ridges deep. Scary visions—Seeing the strip-mine lights in the distance from Sumerco. Shirley Mullens was at the Pennzoil hearings in support of the Pennzoil workers. As far as I know she was the only elected official present. Some simple pleasures: Orange butterfly weed, sweet pea blossoms, elder blow and all the beautiful people at the Barker reunion. Glory!
In Defense of Hillary: A Great First Lady The News from Sam’s Branch The Lincoln Independent, August 14, 1996 Terry Headley, our editor, has finally provoked me to defend Hillary Clinton. It is silly to call the Clinton’s common criminals as Headley did. Of course I have been fooled before by folks like Arch Moore*, who indeed was a common criminal. And there was Wally Barron**, who was sent to prison for bribing a juror in a jury bribery trial. Ol’ Wally was sure creative now. Bill Clinton, who could hold on for twelve years as governor of a state more corrupt than West Virginia (God, is that possible?), has made many a deal and his closet is full of trash, for sure. But I would rather have a slick, waffling Bill Clinton in the White House than a Republican any day. When Governor Marland was being run out of the state for trying to put a severance tax on the coal companies, he turned to the bottle and was reputed to be a drunk. My first vote ever for governor was for Cecil Underwood. I only knew of Marland’s drinking habits, and had no idea that he was so far ahead of his time on the severance tax issue. The coal operators fooled us and they got us to vote for their man—Cecil Underwood. I argued with my grandpa about Marland and Underwood****. “How could you vote for a drunk”, I wailed. Grandpa replied, “I’d rather vote for a drunk Democrat than a Republican any day.” After seeing the damage that a Republican Congress can do to the working people of this nation I now know what he meant. In Lincoln County it will be hard to know who the Democrats and Republicans are. The Jackson-Stowers faction is not supporting the Democrat nominee for Governor.*** They are really Republicans or Republicrats—they will probably support Dole for president. Calling the Clintons names is a diversion that Republicans want us to follow and ignore the real issues. The real issues in this country are the rescuing of our environment, universal health care, Medicare, Medicaid, quality day care for working people, school lunch programs, a decent minimum wage, defense spending verses domestic spending, etc. On all these issues the Clintons have been on the side of the working people. The Republicans have always been against the welfare of the working people. It sheds no light on the issues to personally attack Mrs. Clinton. Her personality and personal life aren’t important. It is important that she cares about such things as the welfare of children, about quality education and about medical care. Mrs. Clinton gets attacked because she is a threat to the Republicans. She is smart and unafraid to speak out. The Republicans like to paint her as an uppity woman. The Republicans don’t want their rich buddies to have to pay equal wages for equal work, and they know a first lady like Mrs. Clinton will fight for such equality. The Republicans want women to be Uncle Toms and stay in their so-called place. If Republicans can keep women down they can keep costs down for big business. The attacks on Mrs. Clinton are designed to save the rich a lot of money. Mrs. Clinton scares the hell out of the rich Republicans. It has been a long time since we have had a first lady who cared so much for the working people. Mrs. Bush was a nice lady who was in favor of abortion. Mrs. Reagan was a mean-spirited woman who was downright catty towards highly educated and cultured Mrs. Gorbachev. Mrs. Ford was an alcoholic who was drunk on TV during a Barbara Walters interview. Rosalynn Carter was an outstanding intellect who had compassion for the poor people of this country. Richard Nixon’s wife was a nice lady who seemed to wish her husband was in some other line of work. Lady Bird Johnson was an effective wheeler-dealer. I’m not sure what Mrs. Kennedy was. Mrs. Eisenhower was also an alcoholic. Mrs. Truman was another nice lady who was a good mother. And Mrs. Roosevelt was a spiritual giant among men and women. With the exception of Mrs. Roosevelt, Mrs. Clinton may be the greatest first lady of all. *Republican Arch Moore was a three term West Virginia governor from 1969 to 1977 and again from 1985 to 1989. He pled guilty to five felony charges and went to prison for lying and stealing. A good friend of mine in high school was one of his bag men. After taking out some for himself, he delivered bribes to Moore. A briber snitched and the feds found out my friend had not reported his income to the IRS. To get a light sentence, my friend ratted on Governor Moore. **Democrat Wally Barron served as governor of West Virginia from 1961-65. His administration was riddled with corruption, as was he. He was being tried for bribing a jury when his wife offered $25,000 to the wife of the head juror. Wally, ever the gentleman, took the fall for his wife. ***Charlotte Pritt was the first woman running for governor on either the Democratic or Republican parties. She was betrayed by the Democratic Party leadership who supported republican Cecil Underwood. The present Democrat Governor Joe Manchin (2009) was a Democrat for Underwood. ****Some of this is wrong. Underwood was running against Congressman Bob Mollohan. A week before the election, it was discovered that while Mollohan was superintendent of the reform school at Pruntytown he had received bribes of $20,000 and two cars from a coal operator for the right to strip mine on the reform school property. In the same election former Governor Marland ran for the U.S. Senate and lost to Republican Chapman Rivercomb. I voted for Rivercomb only because Marland was a drunk. My conversation with my grandfather was about the Marland-Rivercomb election. I did vote for Underwood over Mollohan. My Dad’s best friend was a close friend of Mollohan and was involved in counting the absentee ballots. He told my father how I had voted. Neither my dad nor his friend could understand the idealism that rejected a drunk and a corrupt politician. Since then, seeing what the Republicans really have in mind and what mean spirited people they are, I have come to agree with my grandfather Charlie Barker that if the choice is between a Democrat and a Republican, I too would vote for a drunk Democrat before I would vote for a Republican. Of course, I would prefer a liberal, left wing choice over either one. I figure we have one party with two factions. The Republicans believe beating the slaves will make them work harder while the Democrats offer health care and retirement benefits to the slaves—but they both believe in slavery. We Cannot Afford the Rich II The News from Sam’s Branch The Lincoln Independent, August 26, 1996 I watched Bill Clinton speak in Ashland on television. I loved what he said. I wanted to believe him, but I don’t trust him anymore than I do Bob Dole. They are both controlled by the bankers and the other big money people. Dole is so sold out to the tobacco money that he says tobacco isn’t addictive. Tobacco addicts know they are addicted. Smokers know that they are addicted when they will drive twenty miles at eleven o’clock at night to get a pack of cigarettes. Dole is paid to say the opposite to the obvious truth. In light of Dole’s foolish statement, Clinton cynically declares that nicotine is an addictive drug for the political advantage it might give him. Clinton signed a welfare bill that is awful, just for the votes. That mean-spirited welfare bill was designed by Newt Gingrich and Clinton is going to get credit for it. Tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. Big business paid for the Republican convention and they will pay for the Democratic convention. The two parties ought to merge into one. As George Wallace suggested, there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the rich Democrats and rich Republicans. The Christian Coalition and the Ross Perot Reform Party are symptoms that the people feel left out by both parties. Maybe we ought to do like the Russians and get rid of this one-party system. The Republicrats run the country for the rich and the rest of us suck hind teat. I want a Green-Labor Party. This party would develop jobs that are kind to the environment. As Lyndon Johnson said, “Don’t spit in the soup, we all gotta eat!” The environment is our soup. We have to have clean air and water, and we have to preserve our land or die. A Green-Labor Party would recognize that if we continue with capitalism we will have to have welfare for the unemployed to function smoothly. We can’t blame the unemployed for not having jobs. How do you get a job if there are no jobs? Did you ever notice that no candidate runs on the platform of full employment? There can be no full employment in our system. Full employment causes inflation and raises wages to high for the rich to afford their luxuries. The obscenity in this country isn’t about sex. The obscenity in this country is that one percent of the people control 40 percent of the wealth. We cannot afford the rich.
Jesus taught that to love people was to love God. He said, “I was a stranger and you took me in,” and “If you have done it to the least of these you have done it to me.” About fifteen years ago we had moved to Sam’s Branch from Sugar Tree. I was not exactly an L.L. Bean model back then. I had the biggest and maybe the only “Afro” in Lincoln County. Roger Lovejoy didn’t let differences bother him. He was kind to me. He was friendly to me. He invited me into his home. I was a stranger and he took me in. Roger was a Republican, worked for a strip mine company, and fought in Vietnam, but he had the grace to ignore those big differences between us. He drew a circle that took me in. I will miss him because he always had a smile for me, and always wanted to know what I was thinking about. Roger’s funeral was a time when a community came together to honor his memory, to comfort his family, and to comfort one another. I felt sad, but I also felt the meaning of community. There is a community of people in this area. They care about one another. This community is probably present in all rural areas where the real family values have a chance to be practiced. This sense of community is above politics, above religion, and above economics. It is spiritual. It is a strange connection, but this feeling of community at Roger’s funeral made me want to be with this community even more that day. Contrary to my previous plans, I went to the Van and Duval football game that night, just to be with our people again. Roger’s sparkling eyes were absent from the sidelines, but he was deep in our feelings, memories and conversations that evening. Roger would have loved to have seen Blaine* call fifteen pass plays the first half. It was a bittersweet day…. *Blaine Wilkerson was the conservative Duval High School football coach. Babbitt and Strip Mines The News from Sam’s Branch The Lincoln Independent, September 11, 1996 Good news for the Pennzoil workers! The judge ruled against the sale of Pennzoil to a bogus company called Somerset. Somerset was going to fire most of the workers and hire non-union, scab contractors. *******
The Republican platform in the State of Mississippi commits the party to outlaw “…certain environmental terrorists that oppose every business development or industrial project on the grounds of environmental protection.” So now you are a terrorist if you oppose a new business because you think it will hurt the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we live on. Sure is a broad definition of terrorism. It ranks environmentalists right there with the World Trade Center bombers, airplane hijackers and hostage takers. Maybe we would not seem so extreme if so many of the proposed uses of our land, air and water weren’t so extremely awful. We have learned the hard way that industry will not willingly regulate themselves. If it weren’t for the protests, demonstrations, and lobbying of environmentalists there would be no protection at all for the general public against the gross greed of business and industry. Don’t think for a minute that there would be anything but high walls, spoil banks and gashed mountain sides all over southern West Virginia, if it had not been for the environmentalists. The coal operators have been dragged kicking and screaming. They have resisted every reasonable environmental protection. The coal, oil, gas, timber and chemical companies are the real terrorists in this picture. They have terrorized us and our land for years. And so, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the strip mine legislation, guess where Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt chose to mark the occasion? He stood on a strip mine in Boone County behind a podium with Hobet Mining written across the front, spoke into a microphone provided by Hobet, and bragged on how strip mining is doing such a nice job of turning our hardwood forests into savannah forest lands. He even mouthed the coal industry’s favorite absurdity that it was now “better than before.” I suppose that compared with Babbitt’s native Arizona deserts, anything looks better. It reminded me of the time County Commissioner Duncan said he liked the way strip mining made our mountains look like the semi-desert scenes of Utah. West Virginia mountains—love ‘em or leave ‘em! Babbitt chose to stand with the very industry that has helped the Republican Congress gut the strip mine legislation. Babbitt doesn’t stand alone—that paragon of virtue, Nick Joe Rahall grinned at the cameras too. If it weren’t an election year maybe they would have honored all the environmentalists who made the legislation possible. Babbitt’s honoring the fox at the henhouse is in keeping with the way the coal industry has taken over Earth Day to make it look like they care about the environment. The only thing the coal industry cares about is money. Now comes the newest terrorist threat to our environment. West Virginia woods are on the verge of being clear-cut. West Virginia will be clear-cut to supply wood chips to Weyerhauser in Braxton County, Georgia-Pacific in Mount Hope and Tru-jois McMillian in Buckhannon. West Virginia was savagely clear-cut ninety years ago, and the trees are ready to be “harvested” again. The timber industry doesn’t cut trees down, they “harvest” them. They hire the same type of amoral public relations liars who created the term surface mining to clean up the sound of strip-mining. It’s called a euphemism. There are virtually no regulations on the timber industry. They bulldoze all over the place, destroying wildlife habitat and causing massive erosion. They claim that they will regulate themselves. Where have we heard that before? We need legislation at least as tough as the strip mine legislation or we are going to look up in a few years and our woods are going to be destroyed. According to Ken Ward, in the Charleston Gazette, the timber industry will be cutting an area the size of Putnam County every five years. Without regulations, West Virginia will look like a moonscape. One of the reason the big coal and timber operators are supporting Cecil Underwood for Governor is that he will make it easier to moonscape West Virginia.** *High walls are huge rock cliffs left behind by strip mine operations when they blow a gash in the side of a mountain. Spoil banks are the blasted rocks and earth than are dumped over the hillside by strip mine operators. **This is the same Cecil Underwood whom I voted for when he was elected the youngest governor of West Virginia. This time around he was elected a second time as the oldest governor ever. Entrapment The News from Sam’s Branch The Lincoln Independent, October 16, 1996 I have read every word I could find about the FBI arrests of the “militiamen” in Clarksburg. The Gazette headlines made it seem like these men were about ready to blow up the FBI fingerprint headquarters in Bridgeport. The story didn’t match the headlines. It appears that this is what happened: An undercover FBI agent offered $50,000 to Floyd Looker, who calls himself the commander of the West Virginia “Mountaineer Militia.” In return, they wanted Looker to give them blueprints and pictures of the FBI fingerprint headquarters. The FBI agent was posing as a go-between for a Mideast terrorist organization. The FBI knew that another member of the Mountaineer Militia, James Rogers, had access to the less than secret blueprints and pictures. The stuff was on file at the Clarksburg fire department where Rogers has been a fireman for seventeen years. It doesn’t sound like the blueprints and pictures were kept under any “top secret” security. It sounds like most anybody working for the fire department would have access to the information since it was there to help the firemen in case of an emergency at the FBI headquarters. So Looker must have figured that, heck yes, we can make $50,000 off some Arabs we consider inferior anyway. We can sell them something they could probably get for free without much trouble. So Looker gets the man what he wants and the man arrests him for being part of a conspiracy. Looker was offered the opportunity to participate in what the FBI considered a crime, but the offer wasn’t possible without the FBI first inventing the crime. The militiamen are way over the other side of insanity as far as I am concerned. But the crime they are being charged with couldn’t happen without the FBI. No FBI, no crime. The FBI informant helped Floyd Looker put the blueprint and photo package together for the ‘FBI agent posing as a Middle Eastern terrorist contact. This whole caper reminds me of how the FBI infiltrated groups that opposed the war in Vietnam. The FBI agent would suggest a violent action that the group could take. If the group took those actions the FBI arrested them. If they didn’t take the actions they would be arrested for conspiring or plotting the violent actions. It is called entrapment—suggest a crime and then arrest them for it. The FBI said in a curious statement that, “…actions taken by the defendants did not pose an immediate threat to the FBI facility.” Explosives were bought by the FBI informant for the Mountaineer Militia. The FBI claims that Looker ordered the purchase. In another curious statement, the FBI said “…all the explosives were under the control of the FBI at all times.” I am beginning to wonder if everyone involved in this scam were FBI agents. Maybe Looker is an FBI man. The crime was suggested by the FBI. The FBI bought the explosives and had them under its control at all times. I feel less than comfortable agreeing with William Pierce, the pro-Nazi over in Pocahontas County. He says the FBI may be putting on a show at the expense of some poor, naïve guys. Pierce is quoted in the Charleston Gazette that, “the government responds to disasters like Oklahoma City by entrapping individuals so they can say to the people they’re fighting terrorism.” It reminds me of those pictures of Republican Mayor Mike Roark in the Charleston Gazette holding marijuana plants to show how tough he was on drugs. The mayor was decked out in camouflage fatigues and wore a sidearm. Later that evening, the mayor could be seen snorting cocaine right off the bar in a local tavern.* These militia types leave little doubt that they are a brick shy of a load. They think the United Nations has troops in the United States along with Russian tanks ready to take over the country in the name of the “New World Order.” They are so ignorant they don’t realize that the UN is controlled by the United States, not the other way around. My concern is the government entrapping its own citizens. The government creates the opportunity for a crime, and whoever bites gets arrested. It is downright tacky for the government to tempt its weaker-minded citizens into a crime. In the case of the Mountaineer Militia, entrapment meant that people got arrested for that they would have done if the FBI agent had really been a Middle Eastern terrorist agent. They got jail for what they would have done if….Seems like there is enough real crime without the government creating more opportunities.
Clinton and Iraq The News from Sam’s Branch The Lincoln Independent, September 18, 1996 President Clinton is playing macho with Iraq. Bob Dole said Clinton was a sissy if he didn’t hurt somebody bad and quickly. Clinton, looking through the rear-view mirror at Dole trying to catch up, figured he had to drop some bombs. The US can’t control Iraq with airplanes and bombs, and it would bankrupt us to invade and occupy.* It would take a million troops. Those troops would have to be rotated and replaced every year or so, and it is already starting to sound like Vietnam. The Arabs would learn to hate us even more, as have people in Okinawa**, when our soldiers abuse and offend. From the TV it appears that Saddam Hussein is indeed a mad man and I don’t have the answer for how to deal with him. We will do something to warn him to back off, and for a time he will back off. We will then bring our planes and soldiers home, and then he will do something else. We can’t play cat-and mouse- with him forever. Bush decided to stop short of putting Saddam Hussein out of power. I think that might have been done to keep Iran form moving into Iraq and becoming even more powerful and difficult. The question really boils down to: can we police the world. The answer is no. The world is too big and it’s problems too out of control for one country to solve it all. We can get our young soldiers killed, kill their young soldiers and civilians, and still not solve the world’s problems. In the meantime, our own problems go unsolved. Imagine what we could do about school consolidation with what it took to fly just one of those B-52s and the missiles it fired. How much money has been already spent trying to put the stops to Iraq? Several billion dollars have been poured down that rat hole. Clinton and Dole are not statesmen when they act like two schoolyard bullies daring each other to make a move. Some people in Iraq died because these two played political games. And Saddam Hussein is still in power.
**There was a case of American soldiers raping an Okinawa woman. Gay Rights
Gay people are a very small minority in our society and, like the Jews in Germany, they are an easy target for politicians who want to divert attention away from bigger issues like the millions of children living in poverty. Gay bashing is a vote getter among weak minded voters. I would bet that every family has one family member or close relative who is gay. Most of these people are gay for genetic reasons, and can’t be sincerely heterosexual. All of these gay people are members of families who hopefully love them even if they disapprove of their sexual preference. So how do politicians get away with scapegoating members of our loving families? Tammy’s mother thinks there is an economic connection to politicians trying to limit Gay rights. If companies have to recognize gay couples as legal unions it will cost the companies more money in benefits such as health care. By now, about everyone knows of or is related to people who are HIV positive. There was a man two years ahead of me in high school who has since died of AIDS. One of my former students is HIV positive. The son of my boyhood family doctor died of AIDS. These people who are HIV positive or have AIDS are members of families, many of which are heroic in their support of the suffering loved ones. So, if we are all related in some way to gay people and people stricken with AIDS, why do we tolerate laws and politicians that discriminate against our loved ones? Governor Underwood and Gay Rights
I won’t be voting for Underwood because he is supported by coal companies and other large businesses in West Virginia. These supporters are licking their chops at the thought of having a governor who will let them do whatever they want to the environment, and to the working people. They know that with a Republican governor the environmental laws will not be enforced with any vigor. They know that Underwood will help them hold wages down for working people. They see a return to rape and pillage of our land, water, air and forests. The Republicrats who support Underwood see him as their ticket to get the machine candidate back in power after four years. From the Charleston Gazette’s support of Underwood it is obvious that we have two Republican papers in Charleston. In Lincoln County, we have one Republican and one Republicrat paper. Underwood came out with an economic development plan that he says is not much different from Caperton’s. He praised the Caperton staff for doing a good job. These are the people who never saw a bulldozer they didn’t like, a road they didn’t like, nor a polluting factory they didn’t like. The Caperton style of economic development is to do anything that will change West Virginia from the wonderful, wild place it is, into just another fast food joint. Underwood praising Caperton is a way of telling us that he and Caperton are the same kind of politicians. Both are sponsored by the rich against the working people and the environment in which we live. The rich people who control the Democratic Party don’t want Charlotte Pritt because she is for the working people before big business, and the environment before reckless development. She scares the jerks whose only motivation is money and power. Toyota gave $500,000 to the Putnam County school system. This is only a fraction of the taxes they would have paid to the school system if the Caperton Republicrats had not given the store away in tax write-offs for Toyota. This corporate welfare will run out in fifteen years, and if we don’t bow to Toyota then, they will move to a state that will pay their taxes for them. Toyota is taxing us—good deal if you can get it. ******* According to the San Jose Mercury News, the crack epidemic was started by the CIA in Los Angeles to get money to support the contras in Nicaragua. The CIA-sponsored agents shipped crack to Los Angeles street gangs. This happened during the Reagan-Bush years. This was Ollie North stuff. Nice people. The Republicans wanted to ban children from school if their parents were illegal immigrants. They also wanted to deny illegal immigrants and even legal immigrants from getting welfare. You don’t teach them to read and write, you insist on the English language in all transactions, and when they can’t get jobs you let them starve. As it says on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your huddled masses.” They must have meant only if they are white people. *******
A friend wrote me a letter commenting on my articles. He used the term Republicrat in the letter. When he used the spell checker on his computer it suggested that for Republicrat he use the words “Republic Rat.” Right Wing Wants Big Government? The News from Sam’s Branch The Lincoln Independent Why is it the right wing politicians condemn big government, government regulations and government control over our lives and yet they want to force school children to pray all at the same time and out loud and they want to enforce patriotism by forcing a pledge to that effect everyday, at the same time and out loud? I think what they really want is to be able to dump toxic waste in our air, water and land, clear-cut our hardwoods and strip our mountains for coal without big government telling them to stop. As demagogues will do, they use religion and patriotism to hide their real intent. The medical profession and health insurance companies wave the same red flag when they preach against government control of your choice of doctors when what they really want is more money. Doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies killed the Clinton health plan claiming there would be no choice of doctors. The health insurance companies spent one hundred million dollars trashing universal health care. Clinton lost, the medical and insurance professionals won. Now people are stuck with HMO’s that force them to go to a primary care doctor to get permission to go to a specialist. The HMOs make it worthwhile to the doctor to refer as few as possible to specialists. With less referral to specialists the HMOs make more money and can pass some on to the primary care doctors. The old kick-back scam. The defeat of Clinton’s plan left us with nearly forty million people without health insurance. I don’t understand why we need the insurance companies in the health business. Let’s eliminate the middle man and have a single-payer system. By putting health insurance under the government we eliminate the insurance company and the HMO profit. Some HMO presidents are making over a million dollars a year at our expense. Do they own the politicians, or what? It is alarming that our health care programs are run by people who just want to get rich. Since 1979 health insurance companies have given $180 million to congressional campaigns--nothing more than a bribe to keep them on the gravy train. State Socialism and Corporate Welfare The News from Sam’s Branch, The Lincoln Independent October 21, 1996 It was a gas to read in the Charleston Gazette that Buck Harless* is for state socialism and corporate welfare. I wonder if Buck’s candidate for governor, Cecil Underwood, is aware that Buck is red on the inside. Buck wants the working people of West Virginia to pay for the stuff it will take to start a furniture manufacturing industry in West Virginia. I could say he wants the taxpayers to finance his socialist idea but we all know that it is only the working people who pay taxes anyway. The big corporations pretty much get off with tax credits. I wonder how he feels about giving money to unemployed working people. Bet he doesn’t like those welfare bums a’tall. How about if Buck and his fellow rich boys take the risk in the old fashioned capitalist tradition. Let them borrow the money they need to get the furniture business going in West Virginia and then they can feel guilt free about getting the profit. Take some risk, Buck. Don’t go on welfare Buck, please. I’ll bet you would rather be dead than red, so take a risk. In the 1950’s, according to Molly Ivans, corporations paid 31 percent of the Federal government’s general fund tax collections. They now pay only 15 percent. In the 1950’s individuals paid 49 percent of total taxes, today they pay 73 percent. And Buck Harless wants us to pay more. Those tax and spend, corporate welfare, socialist Republicans. It was said years ago that what we have in America is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. Maybe Charlotte Pritt** has the right idea—give tax breaks to businesses if they will pay union wages.
**Charlotte Pritt is strikingly beautiful. She was the first woman nominated by the Democratic Party for Governor of West Virginia. The Republicans have never nominated a woman for Governor. Pritt was betrayed by the Democratic Party machine which threw its support to a former Republican governor, and sometime coal company executive, Cecil Underwood. The present [2008] West Virginia Governor, Joe Manchin, sometime coal broker, lost to Pritt in the Democratic primary and supported Underwood in the general election. Blood Money
A couple of years ago at the Putnam County Fair, a mountain top removal miner gladly signed the Save Blackwater Canyon petition I offered and then told me about his job. “At the end of the day I look at the destruction and feel like I am taking blood money.” he told me. Another miner told me of arguing with fellow workers on a mountain top removal site about the destruction that four wheelers were doing to the woods. He told the other miners, “Look all around you, it is devastation for as far as you can see, how can four wheelers compare with this?” Still another miner, doing volunteer work for the Wildlife Federation, told me there were many miners who don’t like destroying the mountains, but are trapped in a situation where the alternative is minimum wage jobs or unemployment or moving to dreaded North Carolina. What I have discovered going to hearings and town meetings on mountain top removal in the last few months is that when just local people show up everyone speaks against this destruction of their communities, homes, health and mountain beauty. It is also becoming obvious that almost none of the miners live near the mountain top removal sites. Some of the miners are in the ironic position of being “outsiders”. Some live two counties away from the mine sites. Some live in Kentucky. Most of the owners are clearly outsiders with headquarters in other states and other countries. I only mention outsiders because that is what we [environmentalists] are often called. Having lived in coal camps it is hard for me to consider myself an outsider. My dad, grand-dad, son, brother-in-law and uncles have worked in the mines of Boone, Logan and Kanawha counties. At a hearing for a mountain top removal permit and then at a town meeting about coal sludge dams in the Whitesville and Marsh Fork area, on the border between Raleigh and Boone counties, there was a parade of testimony all opposed to the permit and all worried about the danger of the sludge ponds. One pond hovers right over their grade school. Not one person spoke in favor of the permit, none had kind words for the coal companies involved and all were worried about the sludge ponds failing like the one at Inez, Kentucky. Many of the testifiers were former coal miners. It would be interesting to witness a genuine dialogue between mountain top removal miners and people living near the mines. There is a conference for someone to organize. These industrial atrocities against nature could be stopped if only the meaning of the phrase, “Must be done in an environmentally sound manner” had not been changed by industry and the so-called Department of Environmental Protection and the Environmental Protection Agency. This change has made it possible to qualify as environmentally sound such hideous practices as taking the tops off beautiful mountains and dumping them in the hollows. This “environmentally sound manner” is about to happen across the creek from Jim Weakley’s home. It has made the ridges disappear all around Larry Gibson’s homeplace, and has brought a sludge dam high above the school of Judy Bond’s grandchildren. More than one friend has asked me if I think we can win these environmental battles. They point out the incredible odds, the mountains of cash put into destroying our mountains, buying our politicians and the false twists and spins that industry executives and public relations companies put on the facts. My answer to the question can we win in the struggle to save our environment is that I don’t know if we can win or not. I know that I am going to die but I don’t quit living. I also know that we could lose out on some of our efforts to preserve nature (ourselves included) but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. We have to speak the truth whether it prevails or not. It would be bad enough to lose but still worse to lose without speaking the truth. Since this was written I interviewed a Massey Energy dump truck driver. He said he hated Massey and hated his job. His wife said, “But it is the best money you have ever made.” Directory: julian julian -> Permanent Residence julian -> Juliana Ealy Mr. Williams Eng. 8 Pd. 1-2 julian -> Julian Opie Interviews and Texts – from his own website Guardian Online – 2003 Download 0.77 Mb. Share with your friends:
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