October 8, 2010

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Some wit, wag or psychologist once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.” If true, then most of the minority of West Virginians who bother to vote at all should probably be doing so in straight-jackets.Democrat or Republican, liberal or fundamentalist, we go to the polls to return slates of candidates no more likely to do our bidding than the average Poland China hog is to take wing and soar majestically over the blasted remains of our mountains.

The necessity to vote imbued in me by those who have died for the right to do so faces its toughest challenge yet in this election season.

In the contest between Joe Manchin and John Raese, I’m faced with choosing as a replacement for the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., either a man who despises the very idea of every American having access to health care or a man who privatized our Workers Comp system; between a man who admits he’s not like us (Raese: “I earned my money the old-fashioned way: I inherited it”) and a man (Manchin) whose unvarnished, quivering ambition put a political sock-puppet in Sen. Byrd’s chair pending a riotously expensive, ego-driven special election; between a pair of Wall Street blue-bloods; between two men whose greatest challenge is winning the race (one in which we have no vote) to kiss the naked, wriggling toe of an out-of-state industry bent on the destruction of our homes and communities.

Where mountaintop removal, the greatest single issue facing West Virginia, is concerned, there is absolutely NO difference between Mr. Manchin and Mr. Raese. Neither can see our hills and hollers demolished quickly enough to suit either them or their out-of-state (and, in some cases, out-of-country) owners.  Source Article