Tag: West Virginia

The Story: Last week Alabama reached settlements with three pharmaceutical companies whom it had accused of fueling the opioid addiction crisis. Drug distributor McKeeson Corp....

The Story: Figures from the 2020 census indicate that West Virginia's population growth is significantly slower than average for U.S. states. As a consequence, it...

“From this day forward,” Mr. Gore said at the time, “every member of this body must ask himself or herself, how many Americans are listening to the debates which are made?” Since that day, when C-Span debuted with four employees, the network has become a mainstay in American politics. We spoke with Susan Swain, one of C-Span’s two chief executives, about the birth of the network, Washington’s initial resistance to being caught on camera and how the network has adapted to the social media age. This meant that any time you were interested, you could watch what your member of Congress had to say. The compromise was that the House of Representatives, the speaker’s office, would control the cameras that were on the floor of the House. The Senate finally acquiesced and it’s a classic story of American politics. Television loves pictures, so they would do more stories about the House. C-Span’s relevance comes in the form of not only all of the events that we cover every day but within minutes after we televise them, they are digitized and stored on our video archives. That means a member of Congress can pull a clip from their hearing and send it out to constituents. What we have documented over the years is that when people are nominated to the Supreme Court they go into their committee hearings expressing their open mind to the concept, and then once they get inside that chamber of nine, they manage to be convinced by the others there that it would be detrimental to the institution. We keep hoping that as the generations change and younger appointees come in who are very familiar with media and even social media, that the attitude will change.

The anti-hate resolution approved by Congress sparked a clash of opinions between Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway and Georgetown Institute of Politics executive director Mo Elliethee on Thursday night’s "Special Report" All-Star panel. What was supposed to be a condemnation of anti-Semitism in reaction to controversial remarks by U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, developed into a broad resolution that condemned all forms of hate. It passed with support from an overwhelming majority, although 23 Republicans opposed it because it didn’t solely address anti-Semitism -- nor did it explicitly condemn Omar. Elliethee began by condemning Omar’s recent remarks and expressing that Omar should have been mentioned in the resolution. But he also defended the congresswoman, who has “received a lot of hate” in recent weeks, pointing to a West Virginia poster linking Omar to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. “To be able to take a strong stand against all forms of hate I think is a good thing and I think the Republicans who’ve been trying to make hay out of this have trapped themselves because every single ‘no’ vote, two dozen members of the House voted ‘no,’ they were all Republicans who are now all on record against a resolution condemning all hate,” Elliethee told the panel. Hemingway pushed back, calling Elliethee's assessment “very unfair,” and adding that many on Capitol Hill were hoping for an “actual resolution” condemning Omar's rhetoric, but that type of resolution “didn’t happen.” “The rise of anti-Semitism is not something anybody should be thinking about what’s good politically out of it because it is a really bad thing,” Hemingway said. “You’re seeing a rise of anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party right now, but it’s a problem that’s happening globally.” Meanwhile, Washington Examiner commentary writer Tom Rogan invoked British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his “personal” problem with anti-Semitism and raised the red flag that “lines get blurred” between discussing Israel policy and invoking anti-Semitic conspiracies pushed by progressive Democrats.

Levesque is a state legislator in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, and Cole is a county commissioner in West Virginia. TC: What’s it like serving in these roles when your friends are probably off at college? CL: It’s definitely an interesting conversation because a lot of my friends are artists or they went to the University of New Hampshire at Manchester. So going from that, two totally different things, and they were very excited that I was running. GC: My first year of high school I got elected class president before I even knew it. Everybody just kind of fell in line, like “How can we help?” I registered so many young people my age to vote. TC: What was it like organizing a campaign so fresh out of high school? Everybody is going to talk about my age, so I’m not going to waste my time with it. CL: I do online school for political science, so that helps a lot. I enjoy the farm much more than I do politics, but if I feel led to run again or run for something else or I’m encouraged to do so, I’ll consider it.

One staff member was physically injured during the morning's confrontations, and another official resigned after being accused of making anti-Muslim comments. The display featured a picture of the World Trade Center in New York City as a fireball exploded from the one of the Twin Towers, set above a picture of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who's a Muslim. The display was set up as part of "WV GOP Day," which the party advertised on Facebook as a day when "Republicans Take the Rotunda." That doesn’t mean Christians are terrorists. "I am furious, and I don't want to see her representing the people of this great state in the House again," Angelucci said of Lieberman, who became the state's first female sergeant at arms last year. The outrage continued on the House floor, where Del. "It's ugly, it's hateful and there's absolutely no place for it in American politics," Pushkin said, according to WVNews. Not in the state that I love. Pushkin, who's Jewish, added, "I'm proud to live in a country that somebody can come into this country with absolutely nothing and wind up in the halls of Congress representing the state of Minnesota." "The West Virginia House of Delegates unequivocally rejects hate in all of its forms."

So far in 2019 strikes have broken out in Los Angeles and Oakland in California, Denver in Colorado and in Virginia and West Virginia, notching up notable wins in terms of pay raises and better working conditions. Kappier explained classrooms in Oakland’s school district are too large, her history textbooks are outdated, schools in the district don’t have nurses, adequate staffing of counselors, no librarians, and music and art programs are non-existent at some schools in the district. The issues facing public schools in Oakland are similar to other school districts across America where teachers led a 30-year high in strikes in 2018. A common theme of these walkouts is drastic declines in public funding schools, where many states have not replenished cuts made to public education during the 2008 economic recession. Leachman co-authored a November 2017 report that found 29 states were funding less per student in 2015 than they were in 2008. Last week, teachers in West Virginia went out on strike again for two days to protest a bill being pushed in the state senate that would tie teacher pay raises to funding for charter schools. “The issue last year was mainly over benefits. “At the school I’m at, the students are lucky enough to have one parent. “That translates to a classroom where kids don’t have a lot of prospects, they don’t have a lot of hope and it’s very difficult in terms of teaching them because a lot of their basic needs are not met.” Around 31,000 teachers in Los Angeles started off 2019’s strike wave in the nation’s second largest school district, walking out for seven days before settling on an agreement that included a pay raise, increase of support staff, and a plan to reduce class sizes to mandated caps. So the only reason to allow a strike is to test the strength of the union.

RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) - It’s been a tumultuous few weeks for Virginia with the commonwealth’s top three officials embroiled each embroiled in separate scandals. Here is a minute-by-minute timeline of the political controversies that have put the commonwealth in the national spotlight. Gov. Ralph Northam defends proposed bill loosening restrictions on abortion in an interview with WTOP and says, “It’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. Virginia first lady Pamela Northam tells him it is “inappropriate circumstances.” 4:54 p.m. – Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring says Northam should resign and he will support Fairfax as the new governor. African-American leaders shocked by Herring blackface admission 11:38 a.m. – Fairfax releases statement saying it is important to listen to women who bring forward allegations of sexual assault, but reiterates his denial that he did not sexual assault anyone. ~ 2 p.m. – A law firm representing Tyson releases a statement in which she graphically describes the alleged encounter between her and Fairfax in 2004.

Opinion Modal Trigger Profligate politicians have never met a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project they didn’t like — except when it comes to President Trump’s border wall. Boston’s Big Dig black hole, the nation’s most expensive highway project, burned through $25 billion and was plagued by deadly engineering incompetence, endless cost overruns, leaks, lawsuits and debt. California’s high-speed rail boondoggle is a $100 billion bullet train to nowhere. Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown promised a 2020 completion date for the miracle transportation system. The latest estimates predict it won’t open until at least 2033, and the costs keep rising. Seattle’s ill-fated Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement topped out at $4 billion in local, state and federal funds for a 2-mile, bored-road tunnel that will finally open next month — nearly four years behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. What the Big Dig, bullet train boondoggle and Seattle squander all have in common is that political elites, lobbyists and corporate heavy-hitters trampled over grassroots citizen opposition to get their way. Too many government construction projects are built because these publicly subsidized gravy trains reward campaign donors, powerful public employee unions and assorted control freaks in the urban planning and transportation sectors. Another glaring example?

West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin apologizes for crude call for Trump’s impeachment made by freshman Michigan Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib. #YourWorld #FoxNews FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well…