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Road to a Healthier West Virginia

Columnists

“Take the backroads, not the highway.” — Minnie Pearl On Sept. 4, we cut the ribbon on something I believe will change lives: a new, $37 million, state-of-the-art outpatient clinic in Elkins, West Virginia, a part of a broader, nearly $1 billion initiative that WVU Medicine is taking to expand healthcare access across our state. The WVU Medicine Elkins Corridor Medical Center represents more than bricks, mortar, and medical equipment. It’s a physical expression of our mission to change the trajectory of healthcare in West Virginia by bringing world-class care to places where ...

Struggling

Editorials

Americans struggling to make ends meet probably don’t care to know how many billionaires there are in the United States, where most of them reside or how much the size of the “billionaires club” has increased since 2020. Struggling Americans today do want to know the prospects for more and better jobs and their prospects for markedly improving their lives. Unfortunately, it appears that for the “struggling crowd” more disappointment and frustration awaits them, as well as deteriorating confidence in general. It is not what people in this country have been anticipating ...

Charleston potpourri

Columnists

West Virginians awaiting U.S. Senate confirmations will have to wait a little bit longer. Due to Senate Democrats dragging out votes on President Donald Trump’s appointees, the Republican majority has begun approving appointees in large batches. On Thursday, the Senate approved 48 Trump appointees. The next big block of appointees (hat tip Frank Thorp V at NBC News) will likely occur at the beginning of October, assuming the nation is not dealing with a government shutdown. The next block consists of 59 names, including three West Virginians. State Sen. Mike Stuart, R-Kanawha, ...

When children walked to school

Columnists

When I was a boy, my brothers and I walked more than 2 miles every weekday. This was because we lived a little bit more than a mile from the school we attended. Our home was in the Dominican neighborhood of San Rafael, California, which was named for Dominican College, the then-all-girls Catholic college that was located there. Our school was at St. Raphael Parish, the home of Mission San Rafael, which was founded by Spanish Franciscan missionaries in 1817. Our route took us through a pleasant residential neighborhood of single-family homes and then into the business center of the ...

De-escalation of politicization can’t be one-sided

Columnists

Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting are the two largest owners of ABC television stations in the United States. After FCC Chairman Brendan Carr blasted ABC for Jimmy Kimmel suggesting Charlie Kirk’s assassin was “MAGA,” Nexstar and Sinclair decided to stop airing Jimmy Kimmel and demanded that ABC take action. ABC and Disney acted after Nexstar and Sinclair declared they were taking off Kimmel, not after Carr’s statements. Progressives claim Nexstar has business before the FCC and Sinclair is a President Donald Trump-friendly organization. The implication is that Nexstar acted to ...

Vigilance

Editorials

If you consider yourself to be a carnivore, the West Virginia Department of Health has given you yet another reason to be vigilant about avoiding ticks. Earlier this month, the agency reported multiple cases of the tick-borne Alpha-gal Syndrome, which can cause a variety of symptoms as a result of allergies to meat and meat products caused by the disease. This one is carried by lone star ticks — larger than deer ticks and with white spots on their backs. Worry over the disease is severe enough that the state health department issued an advisory Sept. 11, making AGS a reportable ...