Today’s blog concerns an editorial written by Leonard Pitts Jr. a writer for the Miami Herald newspaper. The article was titled “Advice to a young colleague” and if you would like to read it you will find it at www.miamiherald.com under Opinion Columnists.

The article concerns a high school writer for the school newspaper who was shocked at the reaction in his school to a story where he criticized the Confederate Battle Flag. Mr. Pitts went on to make derogatory comments about the South and their flag while explaining that some Rednecks challenged the writer’s story by making threats to him and yelling at him. Mr. Pitts went on to explain that the Civil War was strictly about slavery and nothing else. He equated Confederate heritage to Nazi heritage.

In the last couple of years Ann Coulter has been invited to speak at various campuses around the country. During those speeches Miss Coulter has been threatened, had pies thrown at her and has been shouted down by liberal students. Columbia University invited members of the Minute Men Organization to speak on campus. They also were shouted down and members of the audience actually charged the stage threatening bodily harm to the speakers. According to the logic of Mr. Pitts in his article, this would mean that all liberal students are unruly and uncivilized.  

As for the Civil War, yes it was fought over slavery but that is only one of the many reasons for the war. He tosses aside the argument that many of the Southern soldiers didn’t owe slaves by saying “it is political leaders – not grunts – who decide whether and why a war is waged”.    That statement is true but has nothing to do with why the soldiers fought in the war. Many of them fought because they didn’t want the North to invade their homes. Robert E. Lee, a slave owner, was offered the position of General of the Northern Armies but he declined because he did not want to invade his home state of Virginia.   Stonewall Jackson did not owe slaves and he too decided to fight because of his home state of Virginia. In fact Mr. Jackson had been teaching blacks to read in his home in Lexington, Virginia.

At the same time some high ranking union generals proclaimed that if they thought the war was over slavery they would have resigned their commissions. Soldiers on both sides of the conflict had various reasons for fighting, some of them on the issue of slavery and many just to protect their homeland. 

Mr. Pitts would be the first person to holler if we tried to paint all African Americans with one broad brush, based on such things as crime or rap music or bringing drugs into their own neighborhoods.   Would it be right to say that defined all African Americans? No.

I don’t know if Mr. Pitts has ever read any books on the Civil War especially those books which describe in vivid detail the furiousness of the battles. Men on both sides displayed bravery and valor charging into blazing guns and fiery cannons. Watching their comrades in arms being blown away or maimed for life and still continuing to charge forward. Maybe the politicians were responsible for starting the war and maybe they determined the reasons but it was the common man who did the fighting and dieing. Most of them believed in the Confederate Flag and that does not make them less of a man or qualify them for slander from some journalist.

I wonder if Mr. Pitts is proud of the American Flag the old stars and stripes. It was that flag that permitted slavery in this country. It was soldiers of that flag who devastated the south with a burn and destroy policy that left people starving in the South. That was not the way the South fought the war. It was that same flag that slaughtered Native Americans and stole their land. That too is part of our heritage. Should we stop displaying that flag also?

Are you proud of your African heritage Mr. Pitts? I am sure that you are and rightly so. Are you proud of your African forefathers who owned slaves in Africa? Maybe it was your ancestors who sold their fellow Africans into slavery in the first place. Are you proud of the Africans who are slaughtering other Africans in a couple of African countries?

You see Mr. Pitts there are good people and bad people in all cultures, so you shouldn’t condemn all the soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War. Mr. Pitts I don’t expect that you will ever read this blog and if you did I am sure that you could and would be very critical of my writing and my points. But you should agree that I have the right to express my opinion just like you do or do the liberals who want to take away that right.

By the way Mr. Pitts I have checked my ancestry and I have not been able to locate a great-great grandpa Zeke.

It is now time for the people of the Eastern Panhandle to stand up and be counted. We should all contact our local legislators and tell them how we feel about this bill. So far it seems that our local representatives are opposed to the bill but do they have the strength to stand by their convictions.   I hope so but I am not so sure that they will. I have seen evidence in the past where these representatives say one thing and then vote the other way.

The Journal quotes Berkeley Delegate Locke Wysong as saying he could understand why the Eastern Panhandle was selected because of the high traffic count. Delegate Wysong voted against the bill but it appears that he could be persuaded to vote the other way. Of course it really doesn’t matter what the representatives of Berkeley County want since the rest of the state will blindly follow the governor. 

The current bill does not specify the roads which could be turned into toll roads but they have listed some possibilities, as W.Va 9, W.Va 35, U.S. 522, and U.S. 340. These are local roads and the tolls will punish the folks who live in this area. I am opposed to toll roads on any highway. In an earlier blog I opposed putting tolls on the Interstate and I am still opposed to it but I would rather see the money come from outsiders than our own citizens. 

Some government officials will probably tell us that toll booths will provide jobs, but do we really need more government jobs? I say no. Maybe we should take the governor’s salary and the raises our legislators just gave themselves away and use that money to pay for the new jobs.

We need to propose a state bill to change the legislative session to one every five or ten years, because it seems all they accomplish is raising taxes. If not raising taxes they are finding some way to put liens on the homes of senior citizens.

I truly believe that the people of the Eastern Panhandle need to find a way to secede from West Virginia. There have always been questions about how the Eastern Panhandle ended up in West Virginia during the Civil War. There are stories that blame crooked politics in Charleston for taking the Eastern Panhandle from Virginia. It would seem that things haven’t changed today; Berkeley County and the other counties of the panhandle are still being cheated by the politicians in Charleston.

Maybe if we could find the money that went missing when the current governor was the Secretary of State we wouldn’t need toll booths in the Eastern Panhandle.

Remember to contact your representatives and say no to toll roads.

WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING

If you are a serious believer in political correctness you probably should not read the following posting.

Los Angles has passed and enacted a new law which with some exceptions requires all pets to be neutered or spayed.   Personally I think it is a great law and will go a long way toward saving the lives of many animals. I am an animal lover and I think it is a shame how many animals are euthanized each year. There are also many animals that are mistreated by their owners and other people. A law to raise the punishment of animal abusers would be a great next step for California and the rest of the country.

I also like the fact that it is a city law and that California is also considering it as a state law.   I am a strong supporter of states rights and I feel that this is the kind of ruling which belongs to the states and not the federal government.

All that being said I have several reservations about the new law. It is an infringement on our privacy and freedoms.  It should be the owner’s decision whether to spay or neuter an animal. It is just another case of a liberal government taking away basic freedoms from their constituents. Organizations like MANBLA are allowed to spread their filth on the Internet; the ACLU is allowed to force cities to get rid of crosses which define the history of the city. Although most states have been able to pass so Jessica’s law to provide mandatory sentences for child predators some states still have law makers blocking versions of Jessica’s law. Yet Los Angles can make a law to make people spay and neuter their pets. 

My hope is that maybe now the country can take the next step and pass a law to spay or neuter citizens who can’t afford to have children. Although we don’t euthanize kids whose parents desert them or who can’t afford to feed them, we should do something to prevent these people from procreating.  The city of Los Angles and eventually the state of California have decided they don’t like to kill animals but yet they don’t have the guts to stop abortion of human babies. By encouraging neutering and spaying of people who have children they can’t afford to keep or support this could reduce the number of abortions in the country. Maybe we could extent such a law to require the neutering of any man who fails to make his child support payments. Someone who can’t support the their children donot deserve the right to have more children.

I will recap by reiterating that I believe that the animal spay/neutering law is a good law despite the fact that it takes away another of America’s freedoms. However, I would like to see a similar law passed to neutralize adults who can’t afford to raise their offspring.

There was an article in the newspaper this week claiming that Governor Manchin of West Virginia was considering the possibility of toll roads in the state. He was talking about toll roads in the Eastern Panhandle part of the state on Routes 9, 304 and 522. Local State Senator John Unger was discussing this issue with the newspaper and said that he opposed the plan. Someone suggested that it was time the Governor realized that the Eastern Panhandle was not an ATM for the rest of the state.

This is very true since Charleston has always taken a lot of money from this area and used it to improve other parts of the state. For years large amounts of money were taken from the Charles Town race track and used to help build roads in other parts of the state. Meanwhile, the source of this revue, the people attending horse races in Charles Town were forced to travel on dangerous single lane roads. This included race fans from West Virginia as well as visitors from Washington D.C. and Baltimore. Finally a two lane road was completed from Harper’s Ferry to Charles Town which helped considerably. However the people of Berkeley County are still forced to ride on a single lane road to Charles Town. This situation is finally improving with the building of a new Route 9.

The Governor has said the toll money would be used to build and improve roads in the Eastern Panhandle. He also said the money would be used in other parts of the state. That is the scary part, can we trust the Governor to be fair in distributing this money.  I think not.

On a recent trip to Charleston I traveled on Interstate 79 between Morgantown and Charleston and during that whole trip I didn’t see near as many cars as I would in a trip from just Martinsburg to Hagerstown, Maryland. We need to complete the project that was already started to make Interstate 81 a three lane highway. What I am saying is that we need the money here more than in Charleston; however tolls are not the way to do it.

Making our local roads pay roads would hurt the people of the Eastern Panhandle by forcing them to either pay to use good roads or force them back on dangerous secondary roads. There is money in the state to complete the Interstate 81 project; we just need to get the money back in the Eastern Panhandle.   The money it would take to build toll booths and widen the roads at the toll areas would be better utilized to improve existing roads.

If we can ever find out what happened to the money that was “lost” while Governor Manchin was Secretary of State, we could use that to improve our roads. Governor Manchin’s record with our money is not that good, so I don’t think we should give him anymore.

I can only hope that Senator Unger sticks by his guns and fights any suggestions of tolls in the Eastern Panhandle.   The citizens of the Eastern Panhandle need to keep an eye on Senator Unger because he has been known to back down to the Democratic powers of the state. In his book, “No Strings Attached”, current Republican Gubernatorial candidate Russell Weeks, discusses one such incident. Senator Unger had expressed to Senator Weeks that the Budget Bill which had been finalized and signed by the Finance Committee conferees had been changed. Once the conferees have signed the Budget Bill no changes are allowed to be made without the approval of a majority of both chambers. Two items had been changed adding nearly an additional $8.2 million dollars to the budget. Before the final vote was taken Senator Unger brought this issue to the attention of the full senate. The Senate President called a brief recess where he left the room to research the issue. When he returned the Senate President stated that Senator Unger’s point was not well taken and that they interpret the rules and they interpret the rules that they can make changes. No other explanation was mentioned. When the time for the vote came, Senator Unger voted for the budget. Let’s hope he fights the toll issue with stronger convictions than he did for the budget.