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2025 legislative session

The 2025 regular session of the West Virginia Legislature is finally done, wrapping up midnight Saturday after 60 days of floor sessions, committee meetings and debates. I get asked a lot during a session about whether I think a session was good or productive. This year I was asked for letter grades in regard to specific public policy items and how the Legislature did. I kind of regret having done that. Honestly, only you, the public, can decide whether your lawmakers adequately addressed the issues you are concerned about and voted for these people to solve. The entire 100-member ...

Bannon and Musk

“You come late, but yet you come.” This quote by the philosopher Schopenhauer could be aptly applied to Stephen Bannon’s attempt to cozy up to Elon Musk. Previously, Bannon called him a “broligarch” and an “illegal alien” and hinted that he may be a fraud. However, having irritated the White House enough, he changed his tune to praising DOGE as “effective and excellent,” likening it to “shock troops.” Without much doubt, it appears that Trump engineered the conciliation just about the time he was putting distance between himself and Musk. What is interesting is ...

Effects of Trump’s tariffs

It has been hard this past week, of tariffs applied worldwide on April 2 to tariffs suspended except for China on April 9, to avoid reflecting on how much trouble could have been avoided if economists, instead of talking about countries’ trade surpluses and trade deficits, had devised different words — say, “buyer-dominant” countries and “seller-dominant” countries. Perhaps in that case, President Donald Trump would not have been obsessed for the last 40 years by the notion that the United States is impoverished when it buys more from some country than that country buys ...

President confronting Communist China

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump abruptly announced a 90-day pause on most of his planned country-specific “reciprocal” tariffs — with the notable exception of the People’s Republic of China. In so strikingly singling out China as the focus of America’s economic and geopolitical ire, Trump was not merely clarifying that the United States views China and its regnant Communist Party as our leading 21st-century threat — he was also taking yet another notable step toward fulfilling his own lifelong goal of fundamentally resetting the terms of the U.S.-China bilateral ...

We’re all ‘day-to-day’ so act with urgency

“He is listed as day-to-day.” This is a term used in sports when there is uncertainty about whether a player will play in an upcoming game. Vin Scully, the late, great play-by-play announcer of the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, immortalized this term when he said, “He’s day-to-day, but then again, aren’t we all?”  This quote became top of my mind when I spent time with Harold Dawson, a friend of mine. Both of us know the dash after our birth date to the end date is shrinking. We discussed the topic of urgency. We have a much greater sense of urgency now. We want to make ...

Springtime brings visible changes

This spring is special at Kump Education Center because we are celebrating our centennial year and making wonderful changes at the historic Kump house. We have many people to thank for the help they have given to make a difference at our Kump House landmark. First, we are proud to announce that we have a $24,000 matching grant from the West Virginia Historic Preservation Office to replace two roofs on the back of the house. Our sincere thanks go to Randolph County Commissioners Kisling, See, and Siler for providing $8,000 to help us match this preservation grant. It was so good to ...