Hear Ye! All points bulletin from West Virginians

Echo opinion published in Times West Virginian, in Fairmont, West Virginia (Morgantown area):

West Virginians deserve a Senator who looks out for them!

West Virginians are cursed by the state’s Congressional delegates in Washington DC.

Opinion writer is outraged and saddened!

West Virginia Congressional leaders seem to assume that they know much more than we common folk about what’s best for us. 

One of our Senators, whose term expires in four years, is already flooding the airways with campaign ads, claiming he is working in our best interest. The funds paying for those ads, of course, come from the five percent of our population who own 70 percent of the wealth in this country.

Those richest citizens care not one bit about what’s best for the country, let alone West Virginia, preferring rather to wrap themselves with even larger, lucrative cocoons.

Our House Representative in West Virginia's First District and state's two U.S. Senators, ranging in worth from over two to almost seven million dollars, work for the corporations and the opulently rich, guaranteeing that they receive the biggest tax breaks and loopholes to avoid taxation. 

There’s no need for social welfare programs, reasonable prescription costs, child tax credits for needy families or care for the elderly because such programs destroy personal responsibility, self-initiative and make us too dependent.

Better to give welfare to huge corporations than to struggling people. Besides, they argue, there are plenty of well-paying jobs, in spite of the pandemic’s dangers, just as there were back some years when one household member’s income could provide for all family needs, without governmental support. We just need to get off our cans and go to work.

Such greed can even be observed in the children of our current legislators, one of which, short-circuited educational requirements and became the CEO of a huge pharmaceutical company. 

To the tune of an outrageous 18,000,000+ per year salary, this connected person was instrumental in negotiations that eventually led to exporting the local plant offshore, thus shipping out 1,400 jobs here, some 850 belonging to a union.

Our Democratic leader pretends that his staying in frequent touch with the Republicans, especially Mitch McConnell, demonstrates his embrace of bipartisanship. 

Ha! It looks more as if he leans farther toward their right wig side and is working with them to ensure that the well-off can continue exploiting society for their own gain. His comment to an interviewer recently that he didn’t want his grandchildren to be overburdened with taxation certainly indicates his priorities, which seem negligible when it comes to the common good.

Coal

Our representatives in Washington DC are owned by the fossil fuel industries and the pharmaceutical corporation lobbyists, whose agendas do not include what’s best for our country or West Virginians. I do agree with one of the “Democratic?” Senator’s campaign ads, suggesting that we call him to let him know what we think about the job he’s doing, and while we’re at it, let’s call our two Republican leaders as well. I’ve already made my calls.

James Norton in Fairmont, West Virginia