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Education Town Hall in Elkins

“Together for Public Schools” a focus group from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy held a Town Hall meeting May 19 at Phil Gainer Center. Sarah Duncan, who spoke at Kump Center in March, returned to Elkins with a PowerPoint presentation full of information about the harms of using tax dollars for the Hope Scholarship giveaway plan. There is no accountability for this so-called “School Choice” program. As it stands now, there are no good choices for the majority of West Virginia students. Rich kids in a few cities may get more money to attend private high schools ...

Avoiding pitfalls of the past

Josh Hawley, Republican Senator from Missouri and a major spokesman for the MAGA movement, has advanced several modest proposals that promise to change the GOP. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Hawley warns his party to avoid pitfalls that have hurt Republicans in the past. Specifically, the Missouri Senator addresses Medicaid, which allows 9 million Americans to obtain decent medical care. Hawley urges his colleagues to support Medicaid, rejecting the denizens of Project 2025 who want to gut the program. Partially, it is because his home state has quite a number of Medicaid ...

Ditching tariffs too quickly

I hope Trump pushes forward on tariffs. Hear me out. He has already backtracked faster than a hiker who spies a rattlesnake. Trump spent the first weeks of his second term spitting out tariff rates in a twitchy staccato. On Feb. 1, he announced 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada (along with a 10% tax on goods from China) supposedly due to fentanyl trafficking and illegal border crossings, and then reversed himself. On Feb. 3, he decided upon a 30-day pause on Canada/Mexico tariffs (which in any case violated the USMCA, the trade agreement Trump negotiated in his first ...

Introducing the ‘Trump doctrine’

President Donald Trump gave an important speech in Riyadh that may come as close to outlining a “Trump doctrine” as we’ll probably see. It was a direct counterpoint to George W. Bush’s second inaugural address. The simplistic way to put it is that what liberty was for Bush, money is to Donald Trump. That’s not quite right, though. The speech had values, they just weren’t typical values — accountable government, human dignity — but simply prosperity and peace. If Bush wanted to spread freedom, Trump wants to spread gleaming high-rise buildings. He hailed the rise ...

Wednesday Book Talks to begin

The Book Talk on “Fannie’s Crazy Quilt” next Wednesday at 7 p.m. will be the beginning of a series of book discussions in the learning lab at Kump Education Center. One ongoing theme in the book is the nature of an effective family nurturing network that can support both children and adults. My reason for looking at primary sources like family letters is because they give each family member a chance to have some say, and families do not always agree. The reader has first person reports on the life and times of people who were growing up a century ago. They had horses and ...

Hitting a new low

Rhetoric and argument have hit a new low in American politics. Evidence and facts, not to mention accountability, seemingly disappeared, particularly in the era of Donald Trump. His approach is “never complain and never explain.” Blaming others is his game and disassembling is a way of life. It also may prove to be his Achilles heel. Take his positions on trade; they change constantly. Prior to negotiations with China, he cuts his declared rate from 145% to 80%, giving no explanations. Then he leaves it up to his Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, to set the price. Even his ...