Republicrats and Real Heroes The News from Sam’s Branch

Republicrats and Real Heroes

The News from Sam’s Branch

Actually, you would only get to be in the same room with Gore, a big room, with several hundred other small fry rich people. Imagine how rich you would have to be to talk to him one-on-one. And imagine how rich you would have to be to get him to listen to you.

Government of the people, by the people and for people—the rich people that is.

And on the other side, the Republicans in ‘Congress are trying to dole out to the rich a $245 billion tax break. Republicrats everywhere!

The real heroes in our fight to keep one-school consolidation out of Lincoln County are people like Vicki McCoy and Kitty McCallister.

They worked overtime on those transportation figures and they were tough with the political dogs.

It was an insult to the citizens committee and the people of Lincoln County that a secret meeting was called by members of the state board of education. Only two members of the citizens committee were present. No one from the Hamlin or Guyan Valley committees was included in the meeting.

It added insult to injury that the discredited Jackson-Stowers faction had more people there than did the citizens’ committee. Have a good long memory—every political dog has his day.

If we ever get those two schools where we want them, how about naming the Lloyd Stowers High School and the Wiley Jackson High School.* Or maybe we could call them the Economy of Scale High School** East and West.

*This is a play on the names of the two most politically powerful people in Lincoln County both of whom wanted one school consolidation.

**Economy of scale was the mantra for consolidating four smaller schools into one huge school. “Hoss” Farley, a leader against the consolidation and a candidate for the board of education, joked that he and his wife were going to name their about to be born son Economy of Scale.

The Secret of Politics—Bananas

When asked what the man did for a living, Clinton replied that he was “in bananas!” I suspect that everyone in the audience was “in bananas” or better. Success at greed seems to be the only credential you need to get next to politicians of either party. Can you imagine what kind of wages that guy pays the people down in Central America who are really the ones in bananas? One percent of our population controls forty-percent of the wealth and near 100 percent of our politicians.

Getting back to consolidation—the politicians just don’t get it. I feel sure that they blame politics for the resistance to the one school plan. They probably can’t absorb the fact that this was a grass-roots uprising that they, nor any party or faction could control. They met democracy face-to-face and are such strangers to it that they didn’t recognize it.

Think of the money that would be available for schools if our Congress would quit building $5 billion submarines. The USS West Virginia, one of over 30 such $5 billion submarines, is doing us good in name only.

Bring the money home!

We hardly need any more of these boondoggles—one of these boats can destroy the entire former Soviet Union.

Combine the money spent on building submarines with the super-tax credits of $100 million per year given to big business and we could take care of all our money problems. We could reverse consolidation.

Newt Gingrich often refers with respect to Franklin Roosevelt. Newt would choke on this quote from Roosevelt. “Government has a final responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. If private cooperative effort fails to provide work for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering hardships through no fault of their own have a right to call on the government for aid. And a government worthy of the name must make a fitting response.”

We Can’t Afford the Rich

The News from Sam’s Branch

Watching college and professional football I realized, in light of recent personal experience, that those playing are the ones who didn’t get seriously injured at the previous level. As much as I love to watch football and as crazy as I get as a fan, I wonder if it is really worth it in the long run. I have arthritis in the neck and both knees from high school football injuries and I only played one year. My son has three broken bones and a severed tendon in four years of football.*

Four years ago, as junior high players, this year’s Duval team had five players out with broken bones. As my friends know, even at the height of my enthusiasm as a Duval fan, I have said it is a crazy “game” and ought to be outlawed. If OSHA inspected a football game or practice they would close it down as an unsafe workplace.

There is and should be education about all the cultures in our nation. This is called multi-cultural education. It is not an “ism” like communism or capitalism. Multi-cultural education is not a sinister plot of the tri-lateral commission. Multi-cultural education means that we face the reality that there are lots of different kinds of people in this country and the more we respect our differences the better. Wanting everyone to be of the same culture sounds a lot like consolidation. One culture, one religion, one political party, one school, one way of thinking—Stalin or Hitler?

As a culture we get insulted practically every day in the media—I wish they taught about our Appalachian culture in schools outside West Virginia. I’ll bet there are a lot of people in Bosnia who wish they had learned respect for one another’s cultures instead of all insisting that theirs should be the mega-culture. Does mega-culture mean more Wal-Marts?

Did you know that the average pay of the chief executives of corporations is 187 times more than the average worker?

The average pay of the bosses is now $3.7 million per year. The Congress is now trying to give the wealthy a capital gains tax cut that would cost $25 billion each year. And to save money we are told we must consolidate our children into two-hour bus rides to huge impersonal crime-ridden schools.

The rich get richer and take it out on our children.

We can’t afford the rich.
*That increased to five broken bones, a separated shoulder and an injured vertebrae by the time he finished playing college football.

There Sure Are a Lot of Communists Around Here

In this very paper last week was an editorial that implied that Bill Clinton was a communist for opposing the war in Vietnam. Most of us who opposed that terrible war were trying to save the lives and souls of our friends and relatives. I lost two good friends in Vietnam. One friend, Tom Bennett, got the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery after he was killed. Two of my cousins left part of their spirits over there. Cousin John* came back from Vietnam addicted and was shot by a drugstore owner while attempting a holdup.

Robert McNamara, who was responsible for sending our young friends and relatives to an early physical or spiritual death, just confessed that those of us who opposed the war were right after all. He was too late to save John and Tom.

We were not traitors for opposing that war and neither was President Clinton. According to the man who masterminded the killing of two million Vietnamese and destruction of their environment, we were right and the government was wrong.

Six months after the end of the Vietnam War, American oil companies were drilling for oil for the communist government—so who was the communist?

The rich can work for the communists and not be called traitors, but if ordinary people try to get our government to stop killing our friends and relatives and two million Vietnamese, we are call communists—go figure.

Calling people traitors who opposed our government’s policies is trashy journalism and, I had hoped, beneath the dignity of this newspaper.

If you are a communist for standing up to your government then there are a bunch of communists in Lincoln County—wasn’t it the government that wanted to put everybody in one school?

Communist governments don’t allow back talk. We live in America where you can talk back, where it is your duty to talk back if you think the government is wrong, and where patriots have the right to speak against anything. Long live the freedom of speech!

I was once called a communist, a hippy and an outsider all in one sentence and quoted in a rival paper. My relatives settled on Sugar Tree Creek in the early 1800s, and one even married the daughter of Alexander Griffith**. I have never been a communist, although as an American it is my right to be a communist, or join the flat earth society, or heaven forbid—even be a Republican.

The most consistent definition of a hippie that I hear is someone who doesn’t wash and has long hair. I bathe on a daily—and sometimes twice daily—basis. My hair does get long sometimes, which probably does make me a communist. ***

I finally went to “The Wall” in D.C. and found war hero Tom Bennett’s name. I cried my heart out.

Tom was a brilliant, sensitive, dedicated boy who would no doubt be giving corrupt politicians a frit right now. West Virginia University named Bennett hall in his memory.

Thanks to Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara and others, Tom is now just a memory. We lost so much good over there.

I wonder whose boy is going to come home in a box from Bosnia.

*John’s brother Bill also came back hooked on drugs. John was addicted to heroin and Bill to opium. Both spent ten years in prison for holding up drug stores.