Values Driven Strategies

Several national publications, including /Time Magazine/, /The
Washington Post/ and the /New York Times Magazine/, have highlighted the
abysmal health of the people of Central Appalachia, and of the Virginia
coalfields in particular. Federal and state authorities have spent
significant funds verifying the same statistics over and over but little
has been accomplished to ameliorate the problems so thoroughly documented.

Some small portion of the heart and respiratory problems ravaging the
mountain population might be due to congenital factors or, in specific
locations, to air and water quality. But the overwhelming majority of
the chronic health problems are self-inflicted, the consequence of
tobacco, drug abuse, fatty and sugar-laden foods, lack of exercise and a
fatalistic outlook on life that relieves individuals of responsibility
for their own health.

While historical abuses of the environment and workforce may have shaped
a culture of low self esteem and malaise about the future, there is no
excuse for allowing such self-defeating attitudes to go unchallenged.
Coalfield communities must instill healthier lifestyles through intense
health education beginning in early childhood and continuing through
high school. As President Bush famously said: “Childrens do learn.”

Children respond to community and adult encouragement, expectations and
rewards. Just as coalfield kids prove they are capable of stellar
achievements in sports, like high school football, they could improve
their longer-term health and fitness if their communities made it a
priority.

Students and health care professionals in preventive health care public
health, exercise, nutrition and naturopathic medicine (as taught in
science-based accredited schools, not the self-taught quacks) are the
key to turning around the health of thousands in the coalfields. But
they must do more than talk the talk. Children respond to role models,
not preaching or threats.

One thing is for certain, the existing hodgepodge of programs is not
working well. Given limited resources, we may need to perform a coldly
calculated triage: If a high percentage of the region’s adult population
is set on an irreversible course of lifestyle-driven premature disease
and death, perhaps we should focus our limited resources on the young.
If we concentrate our programs on mobilizing dedicated educators and
focusing programs where they do the most good, perhaps we can move the
statistics in the right direction within a generation.

How else, but through early intervention, can we alter the fact that
Appalachian adult males use tobacco at a rate three times the national
average? Nicotine is a known threshold drug to other health wrecking
substances, particularly cocaine, meth and prescription drugs. How else
can we persuade kids, otherwise destined to early mortality due to
obesity and diabetes, to adopt alternate lifestyles unless we marshal
our forces to teach them better today?

Sociologists often blame the government and coal industry for the
current lack of health care and sustainable jobs in the coalfields.
Certainly an argument can be made that a culture of throwaway lives
emanated from decades of coal miners being expendable. In the early and
mid part of last century thousands of miners were killed and maimed each
year. For every three soldiers killed in combat during WWI, one miner
died back home getting out the coal for the industrial war effort.

The deep-seated cultural preference for living for today, based on the
conviction that God has a certain date planned for a person to die,
persists to a troubling degree in our mountain society. Whatever
historical justification there may have been for such hopelessness,
however, today is today. Future generations must embrace self-discipline
and control what they put into their bodies.

Indian reservations, inner cities and coalfield communities share the
same issues of poverty, despair and self-inflicted wounds. We accomplish
nothing by affirming well known facts over and over. Let’s get busy
addressing the problems with prevention and education. We can no longer
tolerate the idea that Appalachia is a place of throwaway lives.

Hopefully the very small minority of our nation’s environmentalists who stayed the course over the past few decades are not screaming in unison “I told you so!” from the dark recesses of our few remaining old growth forests.

Could the original tree huggers really be blamed for being a little smug after chirping like canaries in the coal mines that the ravaging of the planet’s land, air and water would bring us to the point we now find ourselves? Jimmy Carter warned us and we should have listened; had we done so it is projected that we would not currently need a drop of Middle East oil. Al Gore said so and has now become the world’s green darling. And it is true that they both are hypocrites, using and wasting energy and natural resources like there is no tomorrow as they jet around spreading their respective messages, but their messages, we must admit, have been pretty well borne out.

Unfortunately, finding hypocrites is easy but that rarely solves the problem they avidly identify. Just because Al Gore lived in a big energy-wasting house (now rectified) while nagging the rest of us to conserve natural resources does not mean that the polar ice cap has stopped melting much quicker than the most pessimistic scientists predicted. Fox News gloated daily about Al’s double standard, but that public whipping did not seem to satisfy Mother Nature’s most recent bad attitude toward humans and our puny efforts to dominate her.

And projections of immense toxic clouds, expanded deserts, rising seas, more intense droughts and tornadoes do not seem all that far-fetched as we brace for India and China to approach the natural resource consumption level of the modern world. Those emerging super powers treat workers and the environment the way the industrial world did decades ago and we get to watch history repeat itself at the tune of 2.5 billion new and insatiable consumers.

Recent advances in technology, including electric cars and vehicles that run hundreds of miles on compressed air, solar conductivity paint, river turbines, ocean wave generating power and improved wind farm solutions are all very promising.

When will these alternative energy systems really emerge to make a substantial difference? That is easy, when the large energy conglomerates run low on oil, gas and coal and conceive of effective ways to corner wind, water and solar resources. It should be interesting to see how our government helps them monopolize such widespread events of Nature. Also, when gas finally reaches $5.00 per gallon in the U.S. and the true cost of coal powered electricity is passed onto consumers, then we all will stop laughing at the nerd driving the little hybrid in the HOV lane and our neighbor who uses those silly looking LED lights.

Frank Kilgore

Many writers, both native and guests to the Appalachian coalfield region, have attempted to tackle the root causes of its entrenched poverty, environmental degradation, abysmal health statistics and outside domination. Some social reformists point to Northern industrialists that came into the post-Civil War South, seeking fortune in an unsophisticated, sparsely populated and remote mountain region as the beginning of the seduction and ultimate despair that beset an area larger than many countries.
A majority of writers and commentators make excuses for the mountain residents as if none of them facilitated the gouging of the earth and the people employed to work it. Well-known indigenous families were just as responsible for the region’s state of despair and the havoc foisted upon its landscape and people as any Yankee may have been. Numerous descendants of this mountain elite continue to live off the trusts and perpetual leases of minerals that often were procured through fraud, artifice and simple greed all around. Millions of good trees have been sacrificed in the form of discarded studies to identify and chronicle the persistent problems besetting Appalachia and most of the Deep South, but precious few action plans that work have been implemented until recently.

The Old South, reeling from Sherman’s concept of urban renewal and creating open space, did not fare much better with the second invasion of strong-arm investors, from within and without, who took great advantage of Reconstruction and a disorganized political structure. Cheap labor, cheaper yet politicians, loose or non-existent environmental controls, lack of organized labor and the tendency to blame the freed slaves for all the region’s woes kept the South from progressing at the rate of the rest of the nation. Add to that the Southern white male’s tendency to consider the dominion and control over land, Nature, women and people of color as a Biblical mandate and you had yourself a culture not too fond of change.

Due to all of these factors it has taken over a century and the exponential influx of new ideas but the South in general is easing away from the devastation and over development of sensitive landscapes. Katrina helped sober up the notion that Nature could be mocked and dominated. Build a city below sea level near a hurricane-prone coastal area and the question is not if catastrophic disaster will strike, simply when. The Everglades, like the coalfields, have been taken for granted and abused until Nature has struck back with a vengeance. Belatedly, Florida has come to realize that water and wetlands are truly a finite resource, just as the current drought has reminded Georgia and Alabama that the faucet cannot be run on full all the time.

The question is, did Appalachia and the South fail to keep up with their national counterparts in these quality of life issues by design or fate? Is there something about Appalachian culture and Southern political thought that drove the low-regulation, high output economies to the detriment of the environment and the working class? Or could this outcome mostly be attributed to a retarded development of a land ethic and environmental sensitivity due to setbacks suffered during the Civil War, subsequent Reconstruction and the onslaught of carpet baggers and mercenary investors taking advantage of a nearly helpless region paralyzed from the impact of a destructive war fought almost exclusively on its soil?

Not many historians or social scientists have tried to put all of these trends together for easy examination. Like following a trail of breadcrumbs, one must divine the disjointed writings and ruminations of a variety of commentators from very diverse vantage points to seek a common thread. One writer did not restrict the impact of a exploiting Nature and the mistreatment of disenfranchised humans to the South. Robert D. Bullard, in his work entitled “Anatomy of Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement” saw such exploitation as a national ethos. Here is his theory, in a nutshell:
The nation was founded on the principles of “free land” (stolen from Native Americans and Mexicans), “free labor” (cruelly extracted from African slaves), and “free men” (white men with property). From the outset, institutional racism shaped the economic, political, and ecological landscape, and buttressed the exploitation of both land and people.

Is the genesis of our reckless misuse of the environment and centuries of mistreating the majority of our people really that simple?

Frank Kilgore

If you have ever wondered if youth, smoking, illegal drug use and littering have anything in common, wonder no more. The following findings should cause the most radical smokers’ rights fanatic to shiver:

“Results of this study deliver a strong cautionary message that those who smoked cigarettes before the age of 15 were up to 80 times more likely to use illegal drugs than those who did not,” said lead author Shenghan Lai, MD, MPH, associate research professor, Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

What have most states done with the huge tobacco settlement funds that were originally touted for preventing smoking among young people? Most have spent those funds for anything but education and prevention, including general expenditures in order to keep taxes down. Meanwhile, the hard earned smoking decline among teenagers has leveled out and show signs of spiking as some Hollywood actors and megastar singers sink to new lows by using tobacco in every movie and public appearance they can.

Tobacco companies have found out many clever ways to skirt around advertisement bans. As the bans went into affect we started seeing more smoking on TV, movies and public appearances by celebrities than anytime since the 1950s. Big Tobacco also uses direct mailing and inundates anyone who signs up for any of their gimmick “free prize” contests with slick brochures urging the reader to be an edgy dude by getting addicted to their product. The prize is death.

A much less deadly but worrisome habit seems to go along with youth and smoking. Studies now reveal that smokers are 64% more likely to litter than non-smokers and that 67% of all litterbugs are people aged from their teens to thirty. Nearly one fourth of litter in cities and on beaches comes from cigarette butts, packages and paper. This debris is gobbled down by birds and fish, killing them by the thousands worldwide.

The national and international movements to ban smoking in public places, keep children away from tobacco, fine litterbugs for everything from throwing down cigarette butts to leaving entire vehicles to rot in creeks, seem to be making some headway. The debate in Virginia over whether or not smoking should be banned in public places has been couched as one of public health versus individual rights. The argument posed by opponents to smoking bans has gotten ridiculous.

Anyone who invites the public to their premises has a duty to protect the invitee from harm, whether it means forbidding pit bulls from roaming the floor, keeping poisonous snakes from under the tables and chairs or banning self-destructive “rebels” from polluting the common air with 1,000 known air pollutants that cause lung disorders and cancer. As in all other cases in a civilized society, if businesses open to the public refuse to protect customers and employees, the state requires it.

Children do what they see adults do. One does not have to believe in evolution to agree that we humans act like monkeys in that regard. The less that children see adults smoking and littering, the less likely they are to pursue either habit and the less likely these kids are to pursue much more deadly illegal drugs and lifestyles. Let’s get real and save our children.

The author, Frank Kilgore, is an attorney in St. Paul, Virginia and a lifelong advocate of improved conservation, education, health and creating eco-tourism jobs in the Appalachian coalfields.

The concept of “Appalachia” has always been hard to define or pigeonhole. The region is vast; its footprint expands over a thousand miles from northeast to southwest from Maine to Georgia (if one follows the Appalachian Trail and the states through which it traverses) and even more inclusive is the boundary if the Appalachian Regional Commission’s map is considered to be the final say. In any event, defining the region geographically, much less politically, culturally and socially, has always been a challenge.

Today we have at our disposal the living encyclopedia known as Wilkipedia. Although this Internet-driven text is not the official word on anything, it does give the reader a taste for what the current national culture thinks about everything from avocados to zoology.

The Wilkipedia lowdown on Appalachia is both informative and frustrating but does, nonetheless, inform us of what the general thesis of a much-studied region has turned out to be, whether or not we agree. The following is the definition:

The Appalachian region of the Eastern United States is home to over 20 million people and covers parts of mostly mountainous areas of 13 states, including Mississippi, Alabama, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, and the entire state of West Virginia [1]. The near-isolation of the area’s rugged topography is home to communities with a distinct culture, who in many cases are put at a disadvantage because of the transportation and infrastructure problems that have developed in the area[1].

Appalachia is often divided into 3 regions—southern (portions of Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia), central (portions of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee), and northern (parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, and West Virginia) Appalachia[1]. Though all areas of Appalachia share problems of rural poverty, inadequate jobs, services, transportation, education, and infrastructure, some elements (particularly those relating to industry and natural resource extraction) are unique to each sub-region. For example, Appalachians in the central sub-region experience the deepest poverty, partially due to the area’s isolation from urban growth centers[2] .

Appalachia is particularly interesting in the context of social and economic divisions that exist within and between the region’s socioeconomic communities. In addition, outsiders’ often incorrect and over-generalized external perspectives, and their relationship to culture and folklore of this near-isolated area, are important to the region’s future development[1].

Poverty, politics, and uneven economic development

Though industry and business did exist in Appalachia prior to the 20th century, the major modern industries of agriculture, large-scale coal mining, timber, and other outside corporate entries into the region did not truly take root until this time. Many Appalachianites sold their rights to land and minerals to such corporations, to the extent that 99 percent of the residents control less than half of the land. Thus, though the area has a wealth of natural resources, natives are often poor[1]. Since at least the 1960s, Appalachia has a higher poverty rate and a higher percentage of working poor than the rest of the nation. Wages, employment rates, and education also lag. The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) was created in 1965 to address some of the region’s problems, and though there have been improvements, serious issues still exist. Communities that are not considered to be “growth centers” are bypassed for investment, and fall further behind. In 1999, roughly a quarter of the counties in the region qualified as “distressed,” the ARC’s worst status ranking. Fifty-seven percent of adults in central Appalachia did not graduate high school (as opposed to 80.5 percent in the general U.S.[3] ), roughly 20 percent of homes have no telephone, and the population is still declining[4] .

Infrastructure as an agent of poverty

One of the factors at the root of Appalachian economic struggles is the poor infrastructure. Though the region is crisscrossed by many U.S. and Interstate highways, those routes primarily serve cross-country traffic rather than the locals themselves. Towns closer to the major highways and nearer to the many larger cities fringing the region (Pittsburgh, Wheeling, Columbus, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., etc.) are disproportionately better-off than rural regions in the mountainous interior. Instead of being tied to the land, jobs in the towns tend to emphasize industry and services—important signs of a more diversified economy. However, aside from the major urban centers along its perimeter, the entire Appalachian region still suffers from population decline and the loss of younger residents to the cities.

Another factor affecting development has been sheer inequality in power between the classes. Historically, elites interested in satisfying personal goals have controlled Appalachian politics to the expense of the region’s poorer residents.[1]. Seeing no personal benefit to establishing infrastructure, they generally eschewed developments that would have been difficult and expensive to establish in the mountainous areas[1]. Instead, they allowed the region to rely on industry—using barges to send natural resources to market, requiring that workers have only minimal education, etc.–and created no infrastructure for business[5] . Now, with roughly 100,000 jobs left for miners, Appalachianites are unable to access jobs or the resources and opportunities necessary to lift themselves out of poverty[6] . Some academics contend that the situation of Appalachianites amounts to one similar to that in third world countries: Residents live on land that cannot be traded outside of trusted circles or used as collateral because, due to the history of unincorporated businesses with unidentified liabilities, there are not adequate records of ownership rights[7] . This “dead” capital is a factor that contributes to the historical poverty of the region, limiting Appalachianites’ abilities to use their investments in home and other land-related capital[7] .

Political inequalities

The elite class instilled strong systems of inequality into Appalachian politics and economy. For instance, the powerful have a history of encouraging racial divisions in order to divide workers and pit them against each other, spurring competition and serving to lower workers’ wages[8] . Family history and economic status are also bases of discrimination: one resident notes of employers, “If you have a rich name, they’ll take you–otherwise you can’t get no work.”[8]

Since the 1800s, coal operators and plantation bosses have discouraged education and civic action, allowing workers to become indebted to plantation stores, live in company housing, and generally make themselves vulnerable to the interests of their powerful employers[8] . Community members that experienced a justifiable fear of punishment for speaking out against the corruption of the status quo developed a habit of compliance rather than democratic institutions for social change. Fearful of punishment, middle class residents allied themselves with the elites rather than challenging the system that colored their everyday lives. Burdened by the choice between exile and exploitation, the actual and potential middle class left the region, widening the gap between the poor and those in power[8] . Observers often perceive a fatalistic attitude on the part of the Appalachian people[9]; many suggest that this is due to the history of political corruption and disenfranchisement, which led to weak civic cultures and a sense of powerlessness. Says a volunteer in the area; “the people usually regard politicians as crooks who won’t do anything.”[10]

Educational disadvantages

In 2000, 80.49 percent of all adults in the United States were high school graduates, as opposed to 76.89 in Appalachiapower [11]. Almost 30 percent of Appalachian adults are considered functionally illiterate[11] . Educational differences between men and women are greater in Appalachia than the rest of the nation, tying into a greater trend of gender inequalitiespower[11] .

Gender inequalities in Appalachia

Women have traditionally been confined to the domestic sphere, often lack access to resources and employment opportunities, are disproportionately represented in peripheral labor markets, and have lower wages and higher vulnerability to job loss[3] . Throughout the region, women typically earn 64 percent of men’s wages, though they work as many hours[12] . Women are also often the hardest-hit by poverty—for example, 70 percent of female-headed households with children under the age of six are in distressed counties, a figure substantially higher than the national average[4] .

Outside perspectives and stereotypes

Though mainstream Americans assume that Appalachian culture is homogenous within the region, many distinct locales and sub-regions exist[13] [9] . Over-generalizations of Appalachianites as impulsive, personalistic, and individualistic “hillbillies” abound. Many scholars speculate that these stereotypes have been created by powerful economic and political forces to justify exploitation of Appalachian peoples[9] . For example, the same forces that put barriers in place to prevent the development of civic culture promulgate the image of Appalachian peoples as politically apathetic, without a social consciousness, and deserving of their disenfranchised state. In spite of the region’s desperate need for aid, weariness of being represented as “helpless, dumb and poor” often creates an attitude of hostility among Appalachianites [14] .

Appalachians as a separate status group

It has been suggested that Appalachia constitutes a separate status group under the sociologist Max Weber’s definition[15] . Criteria are tradition, endogamy, an emphasis on intimate interaction and isolation from outsiders, monopolization of economic opportunities, and ownership of certain commodities rather than others[15] . Appalachia fulfills at least the first four, if not all five[9] . Furthermore, mainstream Americans tend to see Appalachia as a separate subculture of low status. Based on these facts, it is reasonable to say that Appalachia does constitute a separate status group[1]. [9]
(Citations Omitted)

The sheer number of inferences and negative connotations strewn throughout this modernistic definition of Appalachia’s “social and economic stratification” is both alarming and sobering. What person from outside the region reading this would not feel empathy for such a land and population and, more striking, what person from the outside reading this would want to come here to invest and become a stakeholder? The most obvious answer to both questions is the stream of exploiters that have drilled, mined, cut, scraped, drained and hauled off as many of Appalachia’s natural resources as could be extracted with the cheapest labor and fewest regulations as possible for the past one hundred or so years.

Harry Caudill, author of the nationally acclaimed book, Night Comes To The Cumberlands, was one of the first home-grown writers to effectively accuse the power structure of absolute rape of the land through unregulated strip mining and the outright domination of the coalfield political scene through raw financial power, intimidation and corruption. Harry Caudill’s version of Appalachia is so depressing that any sensitive reader would ponder suicide upon finishing the fatalistic text, exactly the fate of the author as he aged and became more despondent due to illness and the destruction around him.

Had Harry Caudill lived to see some of the strides made in health care, education, mine reclamation and a small but growing native conservation movement, he might have enjoyed the Wilkipedia definition of his beloved homeland. He would have furiously edited and revised it, taking on the task with the writer’s skill he displayed in numerous books and articles. At times, even Harry resolved that Appalachia’s entrenched problems were caused from within due to some genetic and self-destructive traits. Other scholars have put the blame squarely and totally on the “fat cats” from the industrial north that came in droves after the Civil War to denude the hillsides of the world’s best hardwood timber and later gouge the earth for the world’s best coal.

Somewhere between the genetic and cultural theories of perpetual despair and the powerlessness of a subjugated population lies the truth: the current natives of the region exploited and disenfranchised the Native American inhabitants along America’s early frontier and we, in turn, have felt the brunt of similar treatment from economic forces regardless of their origin. In absolute respects, the heart of Appalachia (the coalfields) is still a frontier and a frontier by definition is more easily exploited than an organized, educated, well-fed elite and generational social system.

As the foregoing definition indicates, the outer fringes of Appalachia that are nearest urban areas develop faster and are less identifiable with the stereotypical meaning and perception of the region. The “inner core” of Appalachia is, by topography and geology alone, the coalfields.

Professional planners equate lack of access with lack of progress in the American sense. The Appalachian Regional Commission has spent countless tax dollars planning and building corridors into and through the coalfields, making the extraction of coal, gas and timber much easier yet the core distressed counties still persist, sometimes improving their economic status with mini-booms of coal and timber extraction as the world’s demand for same fluctuates.

This is a dead end game, the coal and gas are finite and most planners agree that the best coal is gone, the hard to get coal is going fast (15-25 years at best) and natural and coalbed methane gas is being pulled from the earth at a rate never envisioned (nearly 3000 wells in Buchanan County, Virginia alone, and growing).

What to do? Is coalfield Appalachia destined to become a hollowed out and abandoned land devoid of life and energy? Or can the growing grassroots efforts to reverse environmental degradation, combat stereotypical bigotry from the outside and use higher education as an economic tool as well as an incubator for training tomorrow’s modern leaders carry the day? The tipping point is upon us. If the region wins this transitional battle, Wilkipedia will carry a much different and optimistic definition a decade from now. If the powers of yesterday prevail, Wilkipedia’s definition will be revised as an obituary.

The author is an attorney practicing in the Southwest Virginia coalfields and has been active in issues regarding conservation, education, health care, economic development and politics for over thirty years.

Two wrongs do not make a right but they at least deserve to be reported. That revised axiom is particularly true when reporting the abuses of political power. Recent news articles have scathed the Republican House majority in Virginia for failing to record sub-committee votes and the related media reports and editorials also seem to imply that the Democrats, when they held the majority, were more benevolent and transparent with political power.

First of all, any political body in America that fails to record a public vote is wrong, period. While it is true that the sub-committee hearings and votes are open to the public and usually well attended, it should not be Joe Citizen’s job to count the raised hands or voice votes.

But what about the way things were done during the preceding 130 years that the Democrats held the majority in the Virginia General Assembly? Currently, the House Republican majority appoints committee members in proportion to each party’s numbers. In other words, if the Democrats have 45% of the general membership in the House, they receive that proportionate share of committee slots.

This proportionate power sharing arrangement, adopted by the Republican majority for no other apparent reason than to be fair, never existed under the Democrat rule of over a century. Applying this self-imposed rule after the Democrats recently gained seats required the House Republicans to take some of their own party members off of committees and replace them with Democrats. This voluntary act of reducing one’s own party power is unprecedented in Virginia.

In the 1990’s, Democrats, leaving the Republicans with much less representation than their numbers would mandate, dominated the powerful House Appropriations Committee. In 1992, the Republicans had 18 members in the Senate, the Democrats 22, yet the Senate Finance Committee was made up of 12 Democrats and 3 Republicans. Examples of “hogging” power and killing bills in the dark are easy to find under prior Democrat rule. The current self-righteous indignation is not very persuasive and the media should at least compare the two dynasties in a balanced manner.

In addition, the Republican minority for 130 years had no say (as in zero) in the selection of Virginia’s judges. Yet, after the Republicans took the majority they re-appointed over 90% of the Democrat incumbent judges and appointed or elevated other Democrats to the bench, much to the dismay of many Republican lawyers wanting to fill those positions. The anticipated “bloodbath” in the judiciary never happened and should not have as a matter of principle and continuity. Selecting judges is serious business with long term ramifications and the Republicans’ self restraint in that regard has not been much discussed or appreciated by the media.

Most recently the media complained that the House majority would not allow a Democrat delegate to remove his own bill from a House floor vote. Apparently the House Republicans wanted to force Democrats to vote a pro-union bill up or down in order to show union members that given a chance that some Democrats would vote for big business, contrary to campaign promises.

This tactic is similar to one employed by then majority whip and accomplished Democrat quarterback, Dickie Cranwell, when he introduced the new governor’s budget as his own and forced Republicans to publicly vote upon George Allen’s proposed cost cuts. The proposed budget reduced many facets of state government and the public was up in arms with the help of a little bit of demagoguery. In particular, Allen’s cuts did not touch education but that was not what was being told to the voters.

The tactic boomeranged a bit when Dickie was nearly beaten the next election by a novice Republican in his district. She simply showed voters the budget bill that Dickie introduced along with copies of news articles quoting Democrat leaders, including Dickie, that the budget proposal would close essential services. Politicians can often times outfox themselves, a lesson that the Republican majority would be wise to recall.

So, the bottom line is that both parties use political procedures and obscure parliamentary rules to get their way. Neither party is pure nor do their histories indicate that they ever will be so. They are made up of humans after all, and merit constant oversight with balanced and full reporting.

On balance, the Republican House majority has been abundantly fair with committee appointments but continues to make the same old mistake as their Democrat predecessors by refusing to record sub-committee votes. If the media will accurately report the fallacies and abuses of both parties, present and past, the public will be much better informed. Independents, after weighing both honest assessments, might then be more persuaded to vote accordingly come election time. They do, after all, control the outcome of most elections.

The author is an attorney practicing in the Southwest Virginia coalfields and has been active in issues regarding conservation, education, health care, economic development and politics for over thirty years.

As impoverished rural areas, inner cities and Indian reservations struggle with the lack of health care and an abundance of poverty, some health care professionals have been incredulous enough to recommend preventive care and intense lifestyle education starting in grade school to address these related maladies. Who are these meddling folks who want children as well as adults to learn a holistic approach to health care by avoiding tobacco, drugs, fat, processed sugars and underage drinking, get away from television and video games and go outside to run, jump and play? It is those pesky naturopaths again.

This new generation of naturopaths is not to be confused with the self-trained or Internet degreed mystics who scoff at most if not all modern medical treatments, prescription drugs and surgeries in exchange for deep breathing, herb tea and humming. The new naturopaths graduate from accredited schools with science based training and emphasize the use of natural products and whole foods to avoid health care problems while teaching a proper diet and exercise regimen and extolling abstinence from overly processed foods, sugar, excess fat, tobacco, illegal drugs and alcohol abuse.

They do so in a medically technical and easy to grasp caring manner so that the patient “gets” the interaction between what they ingest and exactly how consuming the wrong product impacts the body’s engine room and orderly functions. A two-minute lecture from the patient’s family doctor versus a two-hour teaching session from a naturopath will make a world of difference when someone is struggling with the lack of knowledge or will power to help themselves.

Accredited naturopathic schools, like Bastyr University in Seattle, often times share professors with accredited MD schools and perform research studies for the National Institutes of Health and other renowned organizations to determine the medicinal qualities and features of natural foods and therapies. The data are coming in daily and the prospects of forever changing health care modalities looks very promising indeed.

More progressive states in health care, such as Washington and Connecticut, eagerly invite naturopaths from accredited schools to fill the missing health care link in turning around our society’s near epidemic contracting of obesity related ills, diabetes, lung disorders, anxiety and the many other maladies that emanate from smoking, drugging, over eating and under exercising. It is not just a coincidence that the nation’s most healthy lifestyle states are also the ones most likely to roll out the red carpet for well-trained naturopaths.

If allowed to do what they are well trained to do and encouraged to work with doctors, pharmacists and other health care professionals to counsel and tend to the chronically ill and the weak of constitution, naturopaths will, over a decade or so, help reverse our speedy spiral to becoming one of the most unhealthy nations in the industrialized world. Billions would be saved in public expenditures wasted in treating the same ailments over and over instead of addressing the root causes, whether they be depression, cultural habits, diet induced lethargy or simply the lack of getting off our butts and walking a few miles.

The medical societies in many states, particularly Virginia and most other Southern states, lobby hard against properly trained naturopaths being licensed, monitored and controlled by the state, thereby encouraging the ill-trained knockoffs to operate in the shadows, much to the potential endangerment of human life and limb.

One could be cynical and speculate that the reason for this “closed shop” attitude by some MDs is born of turf protection but that theory makes no sense. Our national shortage of primary care physicians and need for a long list of specialists as well, means that the demand is present to employ thousands more allopaths if only they were available. They are not, and even if they were, their training does not adequately emphasize prevention. Most importantly, prevention is usually not covered by public or private insurers, a very shortsighted approach to addressing our ongoing health care crisis.

So what is the problem? Why do many medical societies and local and state governments not embrace and promote specially trained preventative health care specialists to fan out across America and provide an ounce of prevention to avoid a pound of costly cure? It must be ignorance, not the systemic kind that disallows one to learn, just the stubborn kind that causes one to not look further than some antiquated perception.

Chiropractors, osteopaths and, at one time, allopaths, all underwent this phase of being ridiculed and doubted. Each group improved its training, cut back on outlandish claims of magic pills and instant cures and are now mainstream. Naturopaths, or at least the ones being properly trained, should be the next health care provider to be welcomed as a key to keeping people from getting sick in the first place or, once cured, from slipping back to the ways that made them sick.

As our health care crisis worsens and medical costs expand exponentially, it seems we should be urging these common sense agents of preventative care to come aboard. Lots of suffering and billions of dollars could be prevented along the way. If the MD world keeps blocking this licensing process then one must ask: what is their solution to the impending meltdown of health care in our nation and if they have the answer why isn’t it being implemented? The current approach is not working, in case anyone needs to be reminded of that.

Note: Frank Kilgore, an attorney in St. Paul, Virginia, is a long time advocate of improved health care, environmental protection and enhanced education in the Appalachian coalfields, home to one of the nation’s most chronically ill populations. A bill introduced by Delegate Terry Kilgore (no relation) to set up the licensing of qualified naturopaths in Virginia is now pending before the state legislature. Delegate Kilgore’s goal is to provide underserved areas in the state access to specialized preventative health care through outreach and education.

Copyright 2008 The Southern Ledger. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Smoking in public is not an inalienable right guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions, despite what some self-righteous and blatantly selfish smokers assert. Nowhere in those ancient documents is it found the following clause: “It shall be the right of all persons in these United States to, through the various orifices of their heads, render the common air full of cancer-causing and noxious fumes that are deliberately spread in public places”. Find that clause or one like it in our nation’s governing document or its amendments and win a free carton of Marlboros.

Smokers who justify their own weak constitution by insisting upon “smokers’ rights” are of the same “center of the universe” ilk that believe they are at liberty to drive the public roads intoxicated, park in the handicap zone when not handicapped, clog the passing lane for hours or, the worst of the worse, refuse to flush a public toilet, apparently out of a great feeling of pride for finally having produced something of great value that the whole world should share. The smoker’ rights members of this elite group started their stinky habit based upon a gullible tendency to believe at an early age that using tobacco would make them “tough” a “rebel” or acceptable to the “in crowd”.

The same parents who hide their children in a stuffy, smoke-filled house out of fear that the West Nile disease will find and hurt them, against astronomical odds, think nothing of taking the same children for long rides in an enclosed vehicle, puffing away on cigarettes to the point that the net carbon dioxide content would bring about aggravated assault charges in a logical world.

The addictive power of nicotine is so strong that some deathly ill patients on oxygen puff away every chance they get, occasionally blowing themselves and the structure in which they reside out into the streets. We all know these people; many of them are our friends and our loved ones, wasting away before our very eyes. Truth is, many of them are honest about their self-inflicted predicament and objectively support a smoking ban in public places. Maybe, deep down, they enjoy the one-hour respite their lungs, hair and clothes receive during a smoke-free meal.

It is the militant minority of smokers who coined the phrase “smokers rights” that stamp their feet and cry foul when the state steps in to belatedly protect the public’s health and welfare. Let us not listen to them; they have already demonstrated very poor reasoning and skewed logic by smoking in the first place. If this minority of knot heads bent on self-destruction continues to impact public health policy then we will bankrupt our public health care systems. We cannot even calculate what they cost us now in lost production and Medicare/Medicaid expenditures. If for no other reason than the public purse, we cannot abide their logic another day.

The whole ruse of individual liberties for smokers and owners of public businesses is nothing but a cover up for the billions being made by big tobacco companies whose executives have many times raised their hands to God and testified that smoking harms no one, all the while sitting on hundreds of their own studies proving just the opposite.

Long story short, smoking should at the very least not be allowed in any enclosed place open to the public that allows children as guests, customers or employees. If we cannot do that much for our own children and grand babies, then we stand for nothing.

Sadly, my native Virginia is lagging behind Tennessee and West Virginia in adopting reasonable laws to protect hearts and lungs, young and old, in public places. It is embarrassing and it is shameful. It is time for Virginia and the other states still blinded by the smoke to do the right thing.

Copyright 2008 The Southern Ledger. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

We have all heard that the United States has more people in prisons and jails than any other country in the world and recent figures indicate that nearly a million released inmates will hit America’s streets in any given twelve month period. Most of these newly discharged citizens have been incarcerated before and a majority will be going back. Old and new programs aimed to reduce recidivism abound; some work better than others, but the wind from the revolving steel door apparently plays a strong siren song beckoning back many well meaning converts.

This perpetual homecoming by released inmates to free America includes killers, rapists and child molesters, down to simple thieves and dope heads. Some were over sentenced for their crimes, apparently too ignorant to pick a more liberal state or county in which to test their skills. Virginia and Texas are two states that premeditated murders, the killing of police and judicial officers and “capping” victims during the commission of other felonies is frowned upon the most. It seems that the well-heeled thug avoids those states unless insanity is also in play. Other states, such as Tennessee, Massachusetts and Connecticut, seem to be very reluctant to make an inmate serve serious time for serious offenses and the disparity between the various states is so wide that equal justice cannot be possible.

One fact remains certain, most of these manly outlaws and good old boys do not need to father children nor do female inmates have very encouraging statistics when it comes to bringing up a child in a warm and loving environment. Endless violent rounds with new boyfriends, some bent upon molesting or harming children from another relationship, does not deter these women from repeatedly making the same mistakes and adding their children to the “at risk” group of tomorrow’s probable inmates.

What can we do? Does church and state end their entanglements at the jailhouse door? Are churches that argue against birth control ready to house, feed and educate all of these accidental children whose lives are largely ignored by society until they commit crimes? Let’s assume, for a moment, that churches are made up of common sense people who want to fix a growing problem instead of wishing everyone would just “get right” and live in a virtuous manner. What then?

Simply put, every non-violent inmate should get a “get out of jail early” card for making one good decision: voluntarily submitting to a vasectomy or tubal ligation (depending upon plumbing features) so that society can at least let them out to perform community services and participate in government assisted job training with the knowledge that if all else fails they at least will not be perpetuating their lifestyle through new babies strewn across the cultural landscape. These sentence reductions should be at least half of the inmates’ remaining sentence so a majority will participate. Picking up trash along roads, streams and city blocks on a very regular basis should be part of the deal until their original time would have run. This program would cost far less to monitor and enforce than keeping these erstwhile citizens in jail.

After a few years to see if the program statistically cuts down on the number of children being reared by non-violent social misfits we can then venture into the violent offender category and see if that cycle of predation and proclivity to kill, main and rape can be reduced. When the majority of violent criminals state that they came from an environment of dope, alcoholism, violence and abuse, both physical and mental, then how can we not extrapolate from that a solution that will undeniably work? Cut that cycle short by allowing early releases in return for medical assurance that no more children will be brought into this crime incubator. If an inmate does not want out early under these voluntary arrangements, then they should serve their full sentences.

What, you may ask, will we then do with the spare jail and prison space this program would eventually produce? Simple, we fill them with convicted child predators who should never see the light of day, no matter how many times they ask to be eligible for the program. Apparently tens of thousands of these cretins walk our streets and live in normal neighborhoods due to the lack of space to keep them away from the most vulnerable population in society. Speaking of which, a society that does not protect children and give them a fighting chance to live and prosper cannot call itself civilized. Let’s get serious about becoming that civilized society.

The author is an attorney in St. Paul, Virginia and a lifelong advocate for improved natural resource conservation, health care and education in the Appalachian coalfields.

Read “TIME TO EDUCATE THE COALFIELDS OUT OF POVERTY AND DISEASE ” below….

Global warming is so apparent that even Fox News has had to admit that something is amiss. Of course, they continue to browbeat Al Gore for riding to conferences in a private jet and for not using energy conservation measures in his personal life. Those are legitimate issues if Al was running for public office but whether or not he is a hypocrite will not change the fact that our nation and the world is threatened by the consequences of a warming trend that is exceeding even the most pessimistic projections.

What is causing the warming trend? Sunspot and sun flare theorists say it is just a natural phenomenon, while many scientists blame it all on manmade air pollution. Maybe it is a combination of solar cycles and bad air. We cannot do much about the sun but we sure can clean up the air. As China strives to become the world’s biggest polluter and we continue to give that country favored trade status and American jobs, let’s keep in mind that thousands of coal miners and other workers die needlessly there each year due to unbridled greed. Persistent clouds of toxic fumes frequently emanate from China just to end up over some other country. China’s famed rivers are poisoned, perhaps for centuries to come, as heavy metals seep into the sediments. Cancer is now raging in that country unabated.

If China and other developing countries have little or no worker and consumer safety standards or environmental controls, then how can America and other relatively enlightened societies compete with them economically? This is akin to having one boxer in the ring with twenty-ounce gloves while his opponent has a crowbar.

There is a huge difference between free trade and fair trade. The environment must be protected for all of us, and future generations to come. Whether manmade air pollution makes the earth warmer or not is almost irrelevant. We know that such pollution shortens human lives, destroys plants and animals and negatively impacts our quality of life. Air quality should be substantially improved for those reasons alone.

Until China and like-minded countries start treating their workers and trade partner consumers like human beings and the planet’s land, air and water like the perpetual resources they are, favored trade status should be denied.

Which brings to mind another convoluted political question. Since our nation refuses to allow travel to Cuba and will not trade with that Communist country because its dictators mistreat dissidents, how do our same leaders justify embracing China? Trade and tourism with Cuba would do more to invigorate its people and topple its dying totalitarian regime than anything else we could do short of military action. While that same argument has been advanced to cut deals with China, we see little evidence of anything except us losing jobs and gaining a worldwide spew of pollution. If we work out trade agreements with Cuba, those terms should include worker safety standards and environmental controls similar to ours.

We forgave Germany and Japan for World War II and have now opened political and economic channels to Viet Nam. We have even found the will to, through intermediaries, negotiate with North Korea. Is it now time to get over our wounded pride and let Americans and Cubans at least associate with each other? The results will most likely be favorable to both countries. While we are at it, maybe we can work out a model agreement that values human life at the workplace and instills environmental standards, then apply that same set of standards to our other trade partners. If the playing field is leveled and we still cannot compete, then that is on us, not on some giveaway idea of free trade that results in irreparable consequences to the very planet we call home.

The author is an attorney in St. Paul, Virginia and a lifelong advocate for improved natural resource conservation, health care and education in the Appalachian coalfields.