Harvard Law School '66
This is what a school bus driver told me on Tuesday night at the old BAT AND PISTOL CLUB on the west end of Foundry Street in New Martinsville, near the place where Fishing Creek empties into the Ohio River. I had gone there that evening to sort out my thoughts about what had happened that afternoon. That morning when JESSE DALE KING, MR. LABOR FROM THE OLD SCHOOL, and I were heading out for our second tour of the picket lines I told him "Those bastards in Charleston are out to bust what is left of organized labor in the state. I don't see a good end to this. I think they'll still be out when the summer vacation starts."
By the time we got out to Valley High School in Pine Grove it was early in the afternoon. Jesse Dale made his usual offer to sell some "slightly used" ax handles, relics I presume of the labor battles of yesteryear. Most of the pickets were chattering away but three or four men were glued to their cell phones. One of them said to me with a slight smile "It's passed the House and on it's on the way to the Conference Committee."
"What?", I said incredulously. Those LITTLE BIG MOUTH REPUBLICANS HAD CAVED UNDER THE PRESSURE!!! I couldn't believe it. They didn't have the courage of their own convictions. When the going got tough, they tucked their tales between their legs and run. My feeling of elation at ''BEING IN THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED'' [one of the songs in the mega-hit rap musical HAMILTON about the deal cut to move the CAPITAL south of the Mason-Dixon line] was undercut by disgust at all those smug northern panhandle Republicans tossing in the towel. All those MINIATURE-TRUMPSTERS didn't have the courage of their own convictions.
Let's start in the State Senate with MR. DRUNK DRIVER RYAN ''RATFACE'' FERNS. As a matter transparency, I was charged with DUI in St. Clairsville in 1981. However, I didn't cry-baby it in the press. I didn't resign my office in panic [it took those overpaid and under worked zaftig daughters of Lesbos with the W.Va. State Bar 45 years to corner me] and then back out of this public pledge. Ask Donald Speedy, former Curator of Antiquities at the Mound Museum what a "stand-up" guy RATFACE is. "I was in the drunk tank with him until his Mother bailed him out. He bawled like a baby all the time he was there. He kept saying 'Now I'll never be Governor. I've disappointed my father again. I don't deserve to live.' I've seen some punks," Speedy told me from the Pittsburgh monastery where he now resides, ''but Ferns was the whiniest, most sniveling punk in my lifetime." Our hermaphroditic Governer called RATFACE a "poodle" during that brief period in his life when Justice was a registered Democrat and Ferns shut up for the rest of the session.
Of course RATFACE FERNS is a "Profile in Courage" compared to THE BLIVIT FROM BROOKE COUNTY. [For those readers unfamiliar with the Yiddishkeit of New York, the usual definition of "blivit" given to the goyim is "ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag". But when I look at Delegate Ryan Weld, I see him through the eyes of my sainted Mother: "Ah, if only I could buy him for what he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth, I'd be a millionaire many times over." If I could do a sequel to Dante's "Purgatorio" for THE BLIVIT FROM BROOKE COUNTY, I would put him in an echo chamber and have Tate Blanchard read that limp-dick op-ed he did for The Intelligencer explaining in laborious detail why it was impossible to "find" the money to fund a pay raise for teachers. "Besides", THE BLIVIT FROM BROOKE COUNTY said "if we give the teachers more than a 1% raise we'll have to give the other State employees a raise and that's a logical impossibility. There's not enough money in the whole State to give all the our employees a raise."
As disgusting as Sen. Ferns and Delegate Weld are, the absolute nadir of REPUBLICAN, LEGISLATIVE MENDACITY is Wheeling's own Isle Koch Delegate Erikka Storch. [For those of you whose memories do not stretch back to THE GOOD WAR, Ms. Koch was know as "the bitch of Buchenwald" and has hanged by the Allied Tribunal at Nuremberg. However, hanging would be too good of the predations "that woman" [for extra credit, what recent President used this phrase?] that foisted upon the working men and women of West Virginia from her perch with the CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. Holy Writ says "No one can serve two masters" and Erikka obeys this admonition by doing the bidding of the CHAMBER OF COMMERCE and ignoring the needs of the working men and women of Ohio County, her constitutents. Hanging is too good for her.
First of all, Ms. Storch meets Dr. Samuel Johnson's definition of a hypocrite: ''No one is more base than hypocrites because when they are most false they take pains to appear most true." This NEO-NAZI appeared before a gathering of teachers at John Marshall High School, seized the microphone and cooed O! so sweetly: "I WANT TO GET MORE MONEY FOR YOU . . . . UNFORTUNATELY, I DON'T KNOW WHERE THIS MONEY IS COMING FROM." O, the pure unadulterated hypocrisy of this statement. It is obvious in retrospect that THIS UNHOLY TRINITY knew where the money could come from; they just didn't want to spring for it.
Like all of their Republican peers in the Legislature, or nearly all, this UNHOLY TRINITY---''RATFACE'' FERNS; WELD, THE BLIVIT; und ERIKKA, THE NEO-NAZI ran on the Republican gospel of "no new taxes", right? Yet when they got into head-to-head with a bunch of teachers and service people THEY PROVED THEMSELVES TO BE GUTLESS WONDERS UNABLE TO STICK BY THEIR OWN PRINCIPLES.
They should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. And then strung up on the Suspension Bridge.
The Republican giants of yesteryear---Chester Hubbard, George Seibert, Stuart Bloch, John Stirewalt, Robin Capehart, et al. were men of integrity who held to their principles. They staked out a position and stuck by it come hell or high water. I call upon THE REMNANT OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN OHIO COUNTY, PATTY LEVENSON, PETER HOLLOWAY, AND WORTHY PAUL TO GROW SOME BALLS (metaphorically speaking, of course) AND PURGE THESE HYPOCRITES FROM THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. I will volunteer to cast the first stone at each ONE of these gutless wonders.
The upside of all this is the West Virginia stands a cubit higher in the outside world because of the verve, skill, and determination with which the teachers and support personnel drew a line in the sand and signaled a determination that wrought fear in the hearts of the phony-baloney Republicans who people the State Senate and House of Delegates. I heard the story on the BBC "World Service" and the fact that our teachers, et al. "dreamed the impossible dream" and pulled it off with consummate political skill in two short weeks made me PROUD TO BE A WEST VIRGINIAN.
Remember the great slogans of the Industrial Workers of the World: "AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL" and
"ONE BIG UNION".
NEWS FLASH: J. THOMAS MADDEN, THE PRIDE OF MOUNDSVILLE (with offices now in Wheeling) HAS LEFT FOR LAS VEGAS TO SEEK A PAID LIAISON WITH STORMY DANIELS. "If successful," he told Dave Jividen, Esq., of Wheeling and his college roommate, "I will then have one thing in common with the President." But I wonder if our Senatorial Super Stud might beat Tommy to the prize. Stay tuned.
''IT'S LIKE WE WON AT GETTYSBURG."
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