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Boos & Applause

Applause to the organizers and volunteers who are bringing us the annual Hooked On Fishing Not On Drugs event today at the Phil Gainer Community Center. This year’s HOFNOD will run from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m., and will feature familiar activities include the rock climbing wall, fishing pond, gemstone mine, archery tag, and fishing simulator. A new addition this year is a mobile aquarium on a trailer that will be full of fish. There is no cost to attend the event, and all the activities are focused on promoting outdoor recreation and educating local youth about the dangers of drug use. ...

Delays

Delays and glitches in dealing with the federal government are nothing new for West Virginians. But we tend to get more fired up when those glitches are causing a problem for our kids. Parents who are trying to help their kids transition from high school to higher education may have run into the mess that’s been made of the rollout for a new submission process for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. FAFSA determines what kinds of need-based federal student aid to provide for college and university attendees and how much. That data is, in turn, used by states to figure out ...

Broadband

“It will reach every address, every single address or you don’t get any of it,” said West Virginia Economic Development Secretary Mitch Carmichael. “This is a monumental leap forward to get every single address. And we’re doing it post-haste. As fast as you can move it.” Carmichael was talking about broadband internet access in West Virginia, now that the state is able to draw down $1.2 billion in federal dollars to tackle the problem. According to a report by WV MetroNews, federal officials were baffled at first by the approach taken by the state Office of ...

‘Slap in the Face’

Most West Virginians have a pretty good idea what the federal government and its partner agencies think of us. But while we were busy bracing for reported tornadoes, derechos, heavy rain and flooding that has demanded our full attention for the past month, the U.S. Postal Service made an insulting and damaging move. In early April, the U.S. Postal Service went ahead with its decision to convert the Charleston Processing and Distribution Center into a Local Processing Center. U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. let loose with his frustration, calling the move “a slap in the ...

Welcome Return

Today’s edition of The Inter-Mountain marks the welcome return of a longtime local contributor — political columnist Dr. David Turner. Turner wrote political commentary for this newspaper for more than a decade prior to ending his column during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We are delighted that the good doctor has decided to resume his political column. His first effort, printed on this page, takes stock of the current state of the 2024 presidential election. In the coming weeks, Turner will offer his insights into state and local politics as well. Upon his retirement from ...

Constraints

How much money must the Appalachian Regional Commission have spent on a “collaboration with Next Street” that produced “Access to Capital and Credit for Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses Across Appalachia?” Takeaways for the ARC include acknowledging that small businesses drive “economic and cultural vitality across the Appalachian Region,” and finding that there are “significant barriers” for those businesses to access capital and credit. Earth shattering. Challenges discovered in the report include: a gap between capital supply and demand, geographic constraints, ...