That the most heavily traveled bridge in the state effectively had to be shut down twice in two weeks for emergency repairs to a literally crumbling road surface is emblematic of the sorry state of West Virginia roads.
A pothole on the Eugene Carter Memorial Bridge is one thing. When workers looking into the hole could see water below, thatÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s approaching catastrophic.
If we had anything better than our current do-little Legislature, leadership would have immediately demanded a thorough investigation of the following:
- When was the bridge last resurfaced? Did the contractor precisely follow design and material specifications?
- When was the bridge last inspected? Were the defects detected and reported? If so, why werenÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t repairs undertaken immediately, before subsequent damage to the roadway required closing multiple traffic lanes for extended periods of time?
Of course, the Republican legislative supermajority declawed and emasculated its own investigatory branch, the Legislative AuditorÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s Office, substantially weakening the office under legislation passed in 2024. It's no coincidence that was done fairly soon after longtime Legislative Auditor Aaron Allred retired.
Once again, the legislative supermajority isnÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t interested in knowing the truth ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥“ particularly when the truth likely would reflect badly on them.
Bad roads could well be the state Republican PartyÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s Achilles heel. ItÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s a visceral issue, with roads being foremost among the most basic services that rank-and-file voters expect the state to provide.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey acknowledged as much in a recent press conference in which he (naturally) blamed former Gov. Jim Justice for the shortcomings of the state highway system, and pledged an emphasis on road maintenance and repair going forward.
A friend who has forgotten more about political strategy than IÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™ll ever know has repeatedly said that state Democrats should launch a media campaign holding Republicans responsible for the horrendous condition of state roads.
He says the campaign should be geared to those voters whose basic impulse is to look for an ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œRÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ behind candidatesÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™ names, driving home (pun intended) the message: ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œThe 'R' stands for roads, and if your roads are in terrible shape, you can thank a Republican.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥
Republicans undoubtedly would respond to such a campaign by doing what they always do when caught red-handed: Blame the Democrats.
To some extent, they would have a point. After all, state roads werenÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t exactly in pristine condition in 2012, when then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin appointed the Blue Ribbon Commission on Highways. The commission concluded the state would need to nearly double its $1.1 billion annual budget for highways in order to complete all pending construction projects and to adequately maintain the state road system.
On top of that, the state no longer enjoys the privilege of relying on the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd directing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal highway funds to Charleston.
However, after more than a decade in power, the Republicans' old chestnut of blaming everything on ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œ82 years of Democratic controlÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ doesnÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t hold water anymore. Republicans own the problem, and own the fact that overall, state roads have gotten worse, not better, during the past 10 years of Republican rule.
They also own the fact that former Gov. Justice has tied the LegislatureÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s hands for the next 25 years by maxing out the stateÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s road bond capacity with his $2.8 billion Roads to Prosperity fiasco.
As Morrisey pointed out in June, the entire $2.8 billion has been spent, a sizable chunk going for the engineering and design of highways that were never built, and likely, never will be built.
ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œBasically, the state was spending so much on some of the new highways without a clear plan for getting them done,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥ Morrisey said.
Republicans canÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t blame that on the Democrats. Back in the day, they not only would have called that wasteful spending, but would have demanded an investigation to determine if something more than incompetence accounted for the Justice administration burning through tens of millions of road bond dollars, ultimately with little to show for it beyond a stack of road construction blueprints gathering dust on a shelf somewhere at the Department of Highways.
In order to get back to winning elections, Democrats need to get away from the fringe issues that Republicans and right-wing media have pinned on them, and back to the meat-and-potato issues that affect working class West Virginians each and every day.
Making issue of the RepublicansÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™ epic failure on roads seems like an excellent place to start.
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Without a doubt, the dumbest legal argument of the year comes from Raleigh County, in the case of three parents seeking religious exemptions to the stateÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s mandatory vaccination law on the grounds that the state should not ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œelevate a man-made vaccine over GodÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s perfect plan.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥
You mean the plan that was so perfect that in 1800, 463 of every 1,000 newborns died before their 5th birthday? Children in that era had barely better than a 50-50 chance of making it to age 5.
According to market research firm Statista, U.S. child mortality rates improved slightly beginning in the 1850s, likely due to advances in medical science, but made huge improvements in the 1890s, a decade notable for the introduction of vaccines for rabies, cholera and typhoid.
By 1900, the child mortality rate was down to 239 per 1,000 newborns.
The next major plunge in child mortality started in the 1920s.
You might say the period from 1917 to 1922 was the golden era of vaccinations, with vaccines introduced for pertussis, diphtheria, tuberculosis, tetanus and influenza A, among others.
Clearly, the rise in vaccinations and the rapid decline in childhood mortality rates is no coincidence.
And the advances continued, most notably, with the introduction of an oral polio vaccine in 1961.
I was recently looking at my Baby Book to see if I had chicken pox as a child. My mom, who kept meticulous records on her first-born, made no mention of me either having chicken pox, or getting a chicken pox vaccination. I later learned the latter was because that particular vaccine wasnÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t introduced until 1995.
As of 2020, the U.S. childhood mortality rate was down to seven of every 1,000 newborns.
If GodÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s plan was so perfect, why throughout much of human history did he kill off nearly half of all children?
Any number of theories could apply. One could be that a benevolent God simply doesnÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t exist. Another is that, as an all-knowing, all-seeing being, he could have known that half of those newborns would grow up to become bad people, if allowed to live ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥“ although that presumes that todayÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s newborns are 66 times more virtuous than their forebears.
IÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™m reminded of the story Justice liked to tell during his COVID-19 briefings, about a man whose house was caught in rising floodwaters.
As the waters rose, the man turned down rescue teams that arrived first by all-terrain vehicle, then by boat and ultimately by helicopter with a rescue line, telling each that he was certain God would save him.
Once the man got to heaven, he asked God why he had forsaken him, to which God replied, ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œWhat do you mean? I sent you an ATV, a boat, and a helicopter.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥
Perhaps the moral of the story is that GodÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s perfect plan was to give humans the wisdom and intelligence to develop the vaccines that have all but eradicated childhood mortality in this country.
Parents in 1800 had no escape from the reality that childhood diseases would likely claim half their children.
That some parents today want to ignore advances in medical science over the past 225 years is not just plain dumb, itÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s inhumane.
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Finally, a few thoughts on the passing of longtime Charleston TV news anchor Tom McGee.
For those who werenÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t around in the 1980s or early ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥˜90s, itÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s hard to comprehend what big celebrities local news anchors could be, and in the Charleston market, McGee was the biggest superstar.
In the days before the internet, smartphones and social media, if you wanted local Charleston news, you got the Gazette in the morning, and/or the Daily Mail in the afternoon. Otherwise, your only option was three half-hours of local TV news that aired at noon, 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.
While cable TV was coming into its own in the 1980s, the big three networks still dominated ratings, and that carried over to local TV newscasts.
McGeeÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s popularity was such that when WCHS-TV opted not to renew his contract in 1993 (I gather he could be something of prima donna, and his issues with alcohol were well documented), several hundred people rallied at WCHS studios in a show of support.
By virtue of working a night shift that particular evening, I got to cover the rally, and as I recall, the crowd was predominately female, and predominately what we today might call AARP age.
Nonetheless, itÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s impossible to imagine any of todayÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s local media personalities generating anything close to that level of fandom.
As a show of his star power, after his termination McGee became news anchor for WOWK-TV, and raised ratings for the perennial third-place newscast to second, topping those of the station that had let him go.
McGeeÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s death left some of us to wax nostalgic for a time when local newspapers and local TV news were much more predominant and influential than they are today.
