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Invest in WV’s workforce

I am proud to be the Business Manager/Secretary-Treasurer of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 53, representing construction workers in the finishing trades in parts of Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, and right here in West Virginia.  Workers in our state have a long and storied history of working hard, organizing for our rights, and contributing to the entire nation’s energy stores and economy. We are also no stranger to changing industries and, unfortunately, to job loss. But our state’s workers are some of the most determined and ...

By appointment only

Continuing on from last week’s column on the certificate of need repeal drum beats, Gov. Patrick Morrisey added new appointees to a board that makes decisions regarding certificate of need applications submitted by current and potential health care providers for new services. Last Tuesday, Morrisey appointed former lawmaker Heather Glasko-Tully, former West Virginia Republican Party chairman Doug McKinney, and former Attorney General staffer Robert Cheren to the state Health Care Authority. According to State Code, the Health Care Authority — created by the Legislature in 1983 ...

CBS errs as it airs radical professor on ‘misinformation’

The liberal media viscerally hate anything the Trump administration is doing to defund the federal government pushing leftist ideology and squashing conservative counterpoints. One major field has been “misinformation research,” in which professors equate conservative arguments with falsehoods. In the Biden years, “misinformation” experts at major universities worked with the federal government and Big Tech platforms to prevent apparently under-educated Americans from accepting conservative arguments. The National Science Foundation issued hundreds of grants in this field, and ...

Unsolicited advice

Last November, Donald Trump soundly defeated Kamala Harris among young men 18 to 29 years old, racking up about 56% of their votes according to the Associated Press. That represents a huge decline from 2008, the climax of the Barack Obama coalition, when the Democratic candidate won 62% of the young male vote against GOP challenger John McCain. Clearly, Democrats have a young man problem — and they’ve vowed to do something about it. Accordingly, the party is spending $20 million on a special multiyear effort called “Speaking With American Men: A Strategic Plan.” The project, ...

Tariff obsession

Donald Trump’s tariff obsession may well swallow up his administration. Despite opposition from the business press, including the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, Trump is convinced that restricting international trade is essential to achieve his “golden age”. Combined with his obsession against America’s elite universities and his immigration stances, he has gone to war against the American establishment. Some presidents, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, have opposed “malefactors of great wealth” and those who prefer free trade and ...

Treating the symptom won’t fix the root cause. Dig deeper.

Are we treating the symptom or the cause? Leaders need to periodically ask this question when struggling with performance issues or less than optimal outcomes. Treating symptoms is important and cannot be ignored; however, it doesn’t take the place of finding the larger cause. Symptoms are a sign to look deeper into what is occurring. A symptom can be due to a situation not being addressed soon enough or in some cases at all. Treating symptoms can take so much attention that there seems to be no time to dig deeper. Yet a single root cause can impact multiple outcomes… and often, ...