Part of the American Dream every West Virginian should be free to pursue is giving their kids a life that is as good or better than their own. In many cases, that includes providing their children a college education.

Freedom is being able to pay the bills. Freedom is having a little left over for a trip to the beach with your family. Freedom is being able to stay in West Virginia because the jobs pay well, and the roads aren’t tearing up your car. Freedom is good schools with well paid teachers who parents can trust while they go off to work.

If you don’t like your tax money being used to help low income earners, then you should support raising the minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage results in raises for most everyone and would result in fewer full time working people having to rely on government assistance to survive. Yet a bill sponsored by House Democrats to raise the minimum wage in WV $.75/year until it reaches $12/hour went nowhere after being assigned to business friendly committees.

Of all the rip-offs going on by the drug companies these days, insulin has to be one of the worst. It was discovered nearly 100 years ago by a doctor who sold the patent for $1 because “He felt it was unethical for a doctor to profit from a discovery that would save lives.” The big drug companies lack such ethics. They’ve jacked the price of insulin up 700% over the past 30 years.

Some politicians want us to blame immigrants or environmental regulations for the financial pain that many of us are feeling.  But the truth is that our state legislature and federal government have been quietly betraying us by cutting taxes on corporations and the rich while piling them on for individuals and families, especially those with lower incomes.  The gap between the richest and poorest West Virginians has been getting larger and larger since the 1980’s. Today, 13.4% of all income earned in our beautiful state goes to the richest 1%. Meanwhile, West Virginians who make below $30,000 have higher state and local tax rates than those making over $700,000.  Many of us are feeling the effects of that right now as we file our taxes.

All session Senate President Mitch Carmichael and his leadership team have consistently been willing to betray West Virginians by blatantly pushing the agenda of a national corporate interests wanting to shift state education funds from public to private schools.

After several years of budget cuts, WV is finally running a budget surplus again. All types of proposals have come forth for how to spend these additional funds. Many programs and institutions that had their funds slashed over the past years breathed a cautious sigh of relief. The years of the budget shortfalls seemed to be at an end…or so we thought.

Senate Education Chair Patricia Rucker (R-Jefferson) recently stated that she thinks “there needs to be fear for teachers in public schools. She thinks that, in addition to working long hours for low pay, in addition to serving communities in addiction crisis, in addition to using their own money to buy supplies their schools cannot afford, teachers should live in constant fear that their jobs could be stripped and handed to someone without a high school education. This is coming from someone with no experience as a teacher or parent in WV public schools.

Politicians lie. That’s not news. But one big reason some of them lie is because they think we can’t handle the truth. Especially if the truth might affect our pocketbooks or their chances of getting elected or re-elected.

The WV Department of Education has started a series of forums on education “betterment.” With a special session on education on the horizon, these forums should be a valuable opportunity for our state’s parents, teachers and community members to advocate for their local schools, and provide input onto what types of reform would actually help the majority of our states’ kids.