Specific soundbites have grated on my nerves in recent days, specifically an elected legislator claiming “I’ve earned this goddamn job”

Legislators are, whether they want to recognize it or not, public servants.

legislator
: one that makes laws especially for a political unit
Etymology
Latin legis lator, literally, proposer of a law, from legis (genitive of lex law) + lator proposer, from ferre (past participle latus) to carry, propose

They serve in office at the pleasure of the people who elected them.

serve
verb
1. To work for (someone) as a servant: The steward serves the king.
2.
a. To prepare and offer
b. To place food before (someone); wait on
3.
a. To provide goods and services for (customers)
b. To supply (goods or services) to customers
4. To assist the celebrant during (Mass).
5.
a. To meet the requirements of; suffice for
b. To be of assistance to or promote the interests of; aid
6.
a. To work through or complete (a period of service)
b. To be in prison for (a period or term)
c. Sports To be removed from play for a specified period because of (a penalty).
7. To fight or undergo military service for: served the country for five years in the navy.
8. To give homage and obedience to: served God.
9. To act toward (another) in a specified way: She has served me ill.
10. To copulate with; service. Used of male animals.

These positions are not earned, they are a privilege granted by the people they represent.

privilege
noun
: a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor : prerogative
especially : such a right or immunity attached specifically to a position or an office
verb
1 : to grant a privilege to
2 : to accord a higher value or superior position to

Claiming one has earned any position of public service is completely failing to understand the privilege of their place, and their duty to serve the American people—not their personal desires for power.

earn
: to receive money as payment for work that you do
: to get something that you deserve

That a rich white man making these claims should be a surprise to no one.

Kevin McCarthy’s home is an 8,800 square foot California mansion.

The price tag on his home is $21,000,000 USD. Inside, his mansion is as lavish, with a wine cellar, tennis court, two indoor pools, 10 bedrooms, and 12 bathrooms.

If a politician believes they have earned a privilege, they seem to be missing the point of their position.

public servant
: a government official or employee
The first known use of public servant was in 1671
A public servant is generally a person who is employed by the government, either through appointment or election.

I had a flagpole on my deck, and generally hung my US flag on US holidays and the WV flag on WV day.

Late this spring, I ordered two more flags: and LGBT Pride flag (Philadelphia) and a Black Lives Matter flag.

It took more than a month, but my flags finally arrived, so early summer I hung up my BLM flag and left it up 24/7. (The US flag (as per US Flag Code) would up after sun rise, down at sunset, and didn’t go out if it was raining.)

I live on a high-traffic street, which is why I got the BLM flag.

I am a white woman in West Virginia, the third whitest state in the US. Yeah, where I live is more diverse than the rest of the state because of the university, but it’s still pretty damned white in here.

Racism is something I have had the privilege and luxury of ignoring—because it just wasn’t something that I saw. I knew it existed, but I didn’t see that there was much I could DO about it in my day-to-day life.

Then the Black Lives Matter movement happened, and I finally realized that it wasn’t enough to not be a racist, it was my responsibility to become anti-racist. Unfortunately, there was a lot going on personally for me, and I failed to do anything. (I have struggled with mental health issues since I was a teenager, and when things are difficult, I can manage going to work but little beyond that.)

But this spring was so awful, I realized that the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM I could do was put up signs, because I have white privilege and it is my responsibility to speak out against racism since it is predominantly a white problem. Yes, other types of racism exist, but in the US whites—particularly white men—have power and privilege and have blithely used that privilege to further consolidate wealth and power. And if you think that isn’t real, I invite you to research white housing covenants.

So I got my flag, and I hung it up and fretted that I should do more, but failed (mostly because of mental health issues).

Late summer I got an email from Gwen. Her mom had spent her life in WV politics and had worked with Mike Caputo, and so remembering that I’d put up signs in previous years asked if a sign for him could be put up in my yard.

Of course!

So the sign went up and I thought nothing more about it.

A month or so ago, the news was all about white supremacists harassing a BLM march in Preston county, and making Danielle Walker specifically a target. I realized (I’m slow sometimes) that I could ask about getting one of her signs to put in my yard. And up it went.

Earlier this week, we looked out to realize that someone has stolen the Danielle Walker sign from our yard AND come up to the deck, torn down our flagpole and stolen the BLM flag.

But they left the Mike Caputo sign.

If you’re not familiar with WV politics, Mike Caputo is a white male. Danielle Walker is a Black woman.

If you think racism is a thing of the past or that white privilege doesn’t exist, then not only have you not been paying attention, you have been willfully ignoring what has been going on around you for your entire life.

Which is, itself, white privilege.

COVID-19

In Memoriam: Healthcare Workers Who Have Died of COVID-19

Almost half of COVID-19 workers’ comp claims filed by ‘essential workers’ have been denied by insurers (Aug 29, 2020)

Homeless essential workers face greater risk of COVID-19 (August 26, 2020)

In our database of 167 confirmed frontline worker deaths, 21 medical staff, or 13% of the total, were under 40, and eight (5%) fatalities were under 30.. (11 Aug 2020)

Assaulting a worker who’s enforcing masks is now a felony under a new Illinois law (August 10, 2020)

238 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union have now died of the virus, president Marc Perrone said on a Thursday press call. Nearly 29,000 have been exposed to the coronavirus, or are currently ill. That figure includes workers in the retail, meatpacking, health-care, and food-processing industries who make up UFCW’s 1.3 million members. (June 26, 2020)

Average Stock Clerk, Grocery Store Hourly Pay: $11.13/hour

Textile Mills

Factories

Fields

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

Chimney Sweeps

Mining

Come all of you good workers,
Good news to you I’ll tell
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell.

My daddy was a miner
And I’m a miner’s son,
And I’ll stick with the union
‘Til every battle’s won.

They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there;
You’ll either be a union man,
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

Oh workers can you stand it?
Oh tell me how you can.
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?

Today

Just a reminder what we’re celebrating today.

sunk cost fallacy:
the idea that a company or organization is more likely to continue with a project if they have already invested a lot of money, time, or effort in it, even when continuing is not the best thing to do

Escalation of commitment:
Tendency to invest additional resources in an apparently losing proposition, influenced by effort, money, and time already invested.

self-justification:
The act of making excuses to justify one’s actions or behavior.

cognitive dissonance:
psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously

We’re in that interstitial period where people like me who filed their taxes as soon as they could have already gotten their refunds, and the majority of everyone else are dragging their feet, waiting for the last minute.

I’ve discussed this before, but I have always been delighted to pay taxes.

I like paved streets and police and fire departments.

I like public education and after school programs.

I like knowing that families struggling can have a way to help put food on their tables.

I like the elderly and disabled having access to medical care and believe that health care is a right and that no one should have to die because they can’t afford it.

So I’m totally fine with taxes.

What I’m not ok with is how those taxes are paid. Why? Because a greater percentage of income is paid by the poor–those who are least able to afford it.

Here are the numbers for West Virginia:

The poorest 20% of the population pays 9.4% of their income in taxes. The richest 1% pay 7.4% of their income in taxes.

And to clarify, that is income–what money comes in–not existing wealth.

States without income taxes place a much higher tax burden on the poor than the rich.

Lack of income tax means high taxes for poorer households; low taxes for high-income households

What does this mean?

That people with second homes and golf course tee times are supported by service workers earning minimum wage.

That those with leisure are supported by those working multiple jobs.

If it was up to me, I’d enact a wealth tax. I’d shift the income tax burden from the poor and to the wealthy.

But of course coming from a poor state, I get almost no saw in any of those–the primaries are generally decided long before we vote, and out-of-state actors have an outsize influence on state politics.

But it doesn’t mean I’m not mad about it.

ITEP: Who Pays?

Something that the right conveniently ignores is how systemic racism has kept minorities from accumulating wealth in the same manner non-minorities have for decades.

Consider ghettos, which were originally areas where Jews were segregated. The modern sensibility no longer thinks of religious segregation when ghettos are mentioned, but as areas where poor brown people lived in public housing.

Except that really it’s the same thing.

Mar 20, 1945

…the said land or buildings theron shall never be rented, leased, or sold, transferred or conveyed to, nor shall the same be occupied exclusively by any negro or colored person or person of negro blood.

I regularly hear “conservatives” claim that people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (which is QUITE LITERALLY something that is defined as impossible) completely ignoring the systemic racism that forced minorities into these ghettos where poverty and violence thrived, and where even if someone wanted an education, what was available to them was in no way comparable to that available to children not trapped in ghettos.

Before it was torn apart by freeway construction in the middle of the 20th century, the Near North neighborhood in Minneapolis was home to the city’s largest concentration of African American families. That wasn’t by accident: As far back as the early 1900s, racially restrictive covenants on property deeds prevented African Americans and other minorities from buying homes in many other areas throughout the city.

What continues to astound me is that so many West Virginians–who should understand systemic and generational poverty because it is inherent across the state–are blind to the same forces that keep WV struggling doing to same to others.

It’s the same process. The same forces. The difference is that the majority of us in WV aren’t doubly burdened by out skin color.

Racial covenants were tools used by real estate developers in the 19th and 20th century to prevent people of color from buying or occupying property. Often just a few lines of text, these covenants were inserted into warranty deeds across the country. These real estate contracts were powerful tools for segregationists. Real estate developers and public officials used private property transactions to build a hidden system of American apartheid during the twentieth century.

For centuries, the powerful have used poverty and segregation to keep “undesirables” “in their place”. It’s why mine owners used company scrip and had company schools and fought the unions tooth and nail: so they could maintain their wealth by keeping workers from rising above their station.

I understand that white privilege is something that makes no sense to rural West Virginians, who have been struggling with generational poverty themselves and so feel as if they don’t have any privilege, so this must be some kind of bullshit.

But it’s not.

However, those in power are going to push the narrative that it is, to push division between groups that have so much in common, so they can continue to maintain power and increased their own wealth.

I don’t have any solutions. I don’t even have the personal strength to fight power.

But I’m tired of being quiet about it.

When Minneapolis Segregated (https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/01/minneapolis-history-housing-discrimination-mapping-prejudice/604105/)
Mapping Prejudice (https://www.mappingprejudice.org/)

There are certain technical words within every academic discipline that soon become stereotypes and cliches. Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any … It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry to modern child psychology. Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. In order to have real adjustment within our personalities, we all want the well?adjusted life …

But I say to you, my friends … there are certain things in our nation and in the world (about) which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, leave millions of G-d’s children smothering in an air tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self?defeating effects of physical violence.

I’m … convinced … that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment – men and women who will be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln who had the vision to see that this nation would not survive half?slave and half?free. As maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery would scratch across the pages of history words lifted to cosmic proportions, ‘We know these truths to be self?evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator certain unalienable rights’ that among these are ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’

Through such maladjustment, I believe that we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr., at Western Michigan University, 18 December, 1963

I’m creating a class on Facebook, and am looking for pictures to go with the various scandals and problems I’m discussing. So I thought I’d look for some of the artwork that FB had banned because it showed breasts.

What I discovered is that there were a LOT of painters who had apparently never seen a naked woman.

Or even paid any attention to the female form.

Textile Mills

Factories

Fields

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

Chimney Sweeps

Mining

Come all of you good workers,
Good news to you I’ll tell
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell.

My daddy was a miner
And I’m a miner’s son,
And I’ll stick with the union
‘Til every battle’s won.

They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there;
You’ll either be a union man,
Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

Oh workers can you stand it?
Oh tell me how you can.
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?

Today.

Just a reminder what we’re celebrating today.

As I noted on the book roundup, I’ve been listening to podcasts rather than audio books recently, so I thought I’d give y’all a round up of what I’ve been enjoying.

First up is Make Me Smart with Kai & Molly. Because I love listening to Kai’s voice, and the repartee between Kai and Molly is wonderful. Especially when Molly utterly geeks out.

Also, the episode What. The. Fed. opens with Kai cussing, and it is delightful.

But what you really want is CRISPR for Beginners. For work a wrote a piece on ethics and gene-editing, because this is something we need to consider NOW.

Next up is Planet Money, which I listened to right after it started (and even have the T-shirt!)

What I especially like about Planet Money is that I had NO (zero, none, zip, zilch) classes in economics and finance through all my many years of school. Planet Money doesn’t assume you know anything about economics AND it has really interesting stories.

You should check out this short episode on the Indicator, The Private Firefighter Industry . I recently read a book that was set during the time public fire companies were first being set up in London, and I find it disconcerting that we might be returning to a time when only those with money can afford real protection.

Another podcast I’m adoring is Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, which is (unsurprisingly) the podcast for Smart Bitches Trashy Books. Yes, the focus is romance books, but they can talk about so much more here, and I recommend to every woman a recent episode: Burnout – A Feminist Book about Stress: An Interview with Emily and Amelia Nagoski

If you like science, I highly recommend This Podcast Will Kill You. They recently did a two-parter on vaccines that I HIGHLY recommend.

They also talk a fair amount about epidemiology, which is a highly underrated science. (Correlation is not causation!) Thanks to Mary for pointing this one out to me.

So have you been enjoying any interesting podcasts?

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

I’ve talked about WV roads before, and I truly don’t think most people really get it.

US Route 50 stretches from the east coast to the west coast. It was constructed in the mid 1920s. So it’s been around for awhile and used to be a major thoroughfare.

West of I79, US 50 in WV is relatively straight, and for the most part a divided highway. East of I79 it is two lanes, 7-11% grades, and hairpin turns. The GPS often loses signal along the more winding stretches and has us either inside the mountain or floating above the gorge. (“Damnit! You’re off-roading again!”)

When I talk about reasons why WV has trouble getting jobs because of lack of infrastructure, US 50 East of I79 immediately comes to mind. No one in the right mind would bring production into an area where you cannot drive large trucks.

So in an effort to try and explain WV roads, here is a small section of US 50, taken over approximately 5 minutes, up to and then down one of my least favorite stretches of US 50. (This is NOT the section with the switch backs.) I named the pictures with the date and time, and all should have GPS coordinates.

Ready? Here we go!

18-55-00. Coming up to the top of the mountain, there are multiple signs warning trucks about the hill. “Trucks must stop 1/4 mile”

18-55-16. “Trucks must stop 1000 FT”

18-55-27. “ALL TRUCKS”

18-55-39. “Trucks. 20 MPH Curve Bottom of Grade.”

Oh yeah, this section of downhill ends in a sharp curve.

18-56-03. Here we go!

18-56-20. “Rough Road”

Because of course the road is subsiding.

18-56-55

18-57-12.

18-57-15. “9%”

18-57-27.

18-58-46. “30 MPH”

18-59-12.

18-59-23. “9%”

18-59-45.

19-00-13. “9%. 1/2 MILE”

19-00-39. “20 MPH”

That’s the final turn and now you’re down in the valley.

Five minutes. 9% grade. And it you mess up you’re smashed into the side of the mountain or plunging into the gorge.

These is a US route, not a county road. THIS is why we can’t get jobs in WV. Not because the people are unwilling to work, but because businesses can’t GET to the areas where jobs are needed.

USDA: Find Summer Meals in Your Community

Nutritious free meals are available for children and teens 18 and younger at many locations throughout the nation throughout the summer while school is out of session. Use the mapping tool below to find a site near you.

Mountaineer Food Bank

Mountaineer Food Bank is located in Gassaway, WV. Our organization provides food and other household items to our emergency food network in 48 counties including programs such as food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, Backpack programs, senior programs and mobile pantries.

MFB works with the West Virginia Department of Agriculture to distribute USDA commodities in 43 counties in West Virginia, almost 3.5 million pounds annually. The products are generally staple items such as green beans, corn, canned fruit, juices and proteins such as meat or peanut butter.

That’s right, I like taxes! I like the benefits of living in a society that cares for all members, not forcing the indigent and needy to struggle and do terrible things if they don’t want to die on the streets.

So what are some of the benefits?

Public roads!

Made about the potholes? Of course you are! Justifiably! You know what those potholes are there! Because of people who try to avoid paying state and local taxes! (Yes, I AM judging you!)

But it’s more than that. We’ve traveled much of WV, and I can tell you precisely why the economy is so bad in so many areas: because no manufacturer in the right mind is going to build a plant where there are two lane roads with 9-11% grades and hairpin turns. They just aren’t. And it takes state and federal tax money to build those roads that might–just might–bring in businesses.

Without those roads? It’s just not going to happen.

Public schools!

Even if you don’t have kids, public education is necessary for a an informed citizenry. The number of complete idiots who refuse to vaccinate their kids because they don’t understand how herd immunity works is in many ways a failure of our education system.

We’ve failed not just to teach people about basic science, we’ve also failed to instill critical thinking skills, which is possibly more important than basic science. (Possibly.)

Public Sanitation!

Read much about London during any number of historical periods?

Here’s something I read earlier this month. The woman is interview a night-soil man.

“The worst is them cesspits what’s hooked up to them newfangled water-flushing contraptions.”

“Why?”

“’ Cause a cesspit, it ain’t designed t’ take all that water, that’s why. So them things is always overflowin’. If ye ask me, what they oughta do is let them nobs who wants them danged patented washdown pedestals connect ’em to the sewer system.”

London had long possessed an elaborate sewer system, but the sewers were intended only for stormwater and underground rivers. It was illegal to use them for the disposal of waste.

Hero said, “The sewers empty into the Thames.”

“Aye.”

“We get our water from the Thames.”

William Bell laughed, showing a mouthful of surprisingly even, healthy teeth. “Aye. So?”

Harris, C. S.. Who Slays the Wicked (Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery) (p. 341). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

You think dog poop on the sidewalks is annoying? Without public sanitation, human waste was just thrown out into the streets.

Public Safety!

Ever read anything about police services 200 years ago? If you were rich, you could hire people to solve your crimes, and if you were very rich, you’d have to do something really terrible to keep the authorities from looking the other way.

In general, a child who stole food to eat could be thrown into prison or transported. And sometimes the only alternative to thievery was prostitution. Or starving to death.

Fire services were even worse. The first fire services were private ones–you paid them in advance to make sure your house didn’t burn down in there was a fire. You didn’t pay a fire service? They’d protect your neighbors home while watching yours burn to the ground. Which sometimes meant a “protected” home burned as well.

Public Health!

Just 100 years ago, the “Spanish Flu” swept the world, killing more people than WWI, which was happening at the time.

Public health laws required people to wear masks in public, which helped slow the spread of the virulent and dealy illness.

Public health also protects our food supply, as well as regulating those who prepare our food. Everyone has heard the phrase “Typhoid Mary” but do you actually know she was a real person who caused serious illness and death? She was a carrier of Typhoid, but it did not make her ill.

(P)reviously the cook had served in 8 families. Seven of them had experienced cases of typhoid. Twenty-two people presented signs of infection and some died.

That year, about 3,000 New Yorkers had been infected by Salmonella typhi, and probably Mary was the main reason for the outbreak. Immunization against Salmonella typhi was not developed until 1911,

Public health also insures that our water supplies are safe–and if you think this isn’t still a problem, then you have not been paying attention.

Public Parks and Forests!

To end on a more positive note, our national and state parks and forests are a result of state and federal taxes. Thanks to Theodore Roosevelt, we have wild and historical places preserved for us and for future generations.

The Grand Canyon, the Giant Redwoods–without our park system, these things would be either destroyed, or available only to the wealthy. Forests and park contribute to our health and well-being, from the air they clean, the plants and animals they preserve, and the green spaces they provide for the physical and mental health of those who use them.

I’d also like to note that here in WV, our state forests are also public hunting grounds. Without our state forests, that land would be in private hands, unavailable either because it had been destroyed, or because it had been restricted by private land-owners.

These–and many other reasons–are why I am always glad to pay taxes. And why I am judging you every time you use ploys to avoid paying taxes while still wanting to government to fix your potholes and fight crime and all the other many services governments provide.