West Virginia is not nearly as bad as you might think
When you grow up in a very rural, backward area of the Mountain State, you get a skewed view of what being a West Virginian means.
I come from a town so bereft of enlightenment that it once voted down an essentially free public library. It was so economically depressed that my family, which by any other standard would have been considered merely stable working class, was considered "wealthy" because we could speak well, had good manners and had decent clothes because my parents didn't blow their money on Jim Beam, muscle cars and over priced hunting equipment. The community values were so out-of-whack that our neighbor and my uncle, who raised at least a hundred chickens for cock fighting, made sure that is best birds had indoor air conditioning before his family did.
So you might imagine that I grew up with a low opinion of what West Virginia could be, unil I went to WVU and got a better idea of what was possible and that not everyone in our state was backward or ignorant.
But until you live outside the state as an adult, you really can't appreciate the positives of our state.
1. Our DVM really isn’t that bad. Having recently moved to OH I had to deal with their “BMV.” I had to register my car ($12.50) at one building (in Youngstown, decorated in the Late American Slum period), then drive 10 blocks to pick up my new plates ($55.00), then drive 10 miles to take a driving test, that drive back 10 miles to the previous office to get my drivers license ($27.50). Back home in Mercer County, I could have done all of that in one building for less money. Did I mention that these offices did not accept bank cards? Barbarians.
2. Our public school funding, while flawed, isn’t as awful as Ohio, which is using WV as a model for reforming their own system. In the OH, school districts are tiny, based on towns, villiages, cities and townships, and over reliant on periodic tax levies so that exceedingly poor districts and extremely wealthy district exist side by side with no mechanism for the redistribution of funds.
3. There are parts of OH that will match any part of WV for absence of civilization or abundance of ignorance, yet it is WV which has the bad reputation. While there are still plenty of yahoos who wave the Confederate flag in good ole’ WV, in OH I have seen at least two public high schools use it as their official athletic logo. This is something that I feel confident in stating would never happen in WV or in most points south.
4. Nor have we had as crooked a governor as Ohio currently has since Shelley Moore Capito’s daddy was in office. From Wikipedia:
“Taft was elected governor of Ohio in 1998, defeating Democrat Lee Fisher 50-45 percent, and was reelected in 2002, defeating Democrat Tim Hagan 58-38 percent. Then in 1999, Taft issued an executive order mandating four hours of ethics training for his cabinet directors, assistant cabinet directors, and senior staff every two years. During his tenure, Taft offered seats in the governor’s box at The Ohio State University football games and invitations to the governor’s mansion in exchange for secret contributions to the Ohio Republican Party. In the wake of convictions for ethics violations (see "Criminal charges", below), Gov. Taft's approval rating bottomed out at 6.5%, according to a late November, 2005 poll by Zogby, giving him quite possibly the lowest polled approval rating ever by a United States politician.[2] A SurveyUSA poll that same month gave Taft a rating of 18%. A late-2005 article in Time Magazine named him as one of the three worst governors in the country.
On August 17, 2005, Taft was charged with four criminal misdemeanors stemming from his failure to disclose golf outings paid for by lobbyists, as well as some undisclosed gifts. The Associated Press reported the total value of the undisclosed gifts as about US$5,800; they included:
- book and artwork from the consulate general of the People’s Republic of China worth $100
- a book, autographed football and pottery from then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge valued at $128
- a photograph and framed medal from the Defense Supply Center worth $85
- a $125 framed photograph from Murphy Beading Designer Portraits of Zanesville
- an $87 stuffed bear from Meigs County commissioners
- a portfolio and clothing worth $119 from the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber.
This was the first time an Ohio governor has ever been charged with a crime while in office.”
5. Finally, Ohio State Sucks.
