Hey, is that a dead horse over there? Gimme a stick........

Ok, I was listening to the news on WSAZ Channel 3, and they were trumpeting Joanne Tomblin (wife of Earl Ray, and President of West Virginia Community and Technical College in Logan) getting a ceremonial degree from Marshall. Evidently she was there at commencment today or something. Anyway, that got me to thinking about her "situation" down there in Logan at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College. Anyone remember the hubub the Gazette and the Daily Mail created when she got the President's job at SWVCTC back in 1999? I ran her name through Yahoo, and also found this article, from the Chronicle of Higher Education (that's the bible for Higher Education issues in the US). For those too lazy to click the link, here's the highlights:

The state-college system's Board of Directors this fall voted 7 to 2 to hire Ms. Tomblin, who has a master's degree in journalism, over 39 other candidates, 37 of whom held doctorates. The board's chairman, Joseph C. Peters, voted against giving her the job, as did board member Harry C. Young, Jr.

They had supported another finalist, Ervin V. Griffin, vice-president of student affairs at West Virginia State College. Mr. Griffin holds a doctorate in community-college education and has 15 years' experience as an administrator and professor in the state's community colleges. Mr. Peters, the only African-American member of the board, says, "I believe there was racism in the board's action."

At the time, Ms. Earl-Ray only had a bachelors and masters in journalism/communications. And she miraculously managed to fend off 37 doctorate-holding candidates. Simply amazing.

But wait, there's more from the Chronicle. It gets better.

Board members who supported Ms. Tomblin, including Philip A. Reale, deny the accusations. Mr. Reale says he voted for her because she had the most-current experience in community-college education and because she "understood the people and the culture at Southern."

Ms. Tomblin prefers not to comment on whether nepotism and racism were factors. But she agrees with Mr. Reale that her familiarity with southern West Virginia gave her the edge. "The local community here absolutely supported me," she says, including the local branch of the N.A.A.C.P., which wrote the board early in the search to endorse her candidacy. The state chapter's president attributes that to "local loyalty."

"It takes people who come in from the outside a long time to understand the way people think and live here," Ms. Tomblin says.

Mr. Griffin, meanwhile, notes that he was born and raised in southern West Virginia, in a county bordering those the community college serves. Ms. Tomblin is a native of New York.

It's a good thing she didn't comment about the nepotism issue. That way she doesn't have to admit that it WAS nepotism that got her the job.

Yeah, they hired Joanne because she has a level of understanding about West Virginia that you can only get by being a native. Just like Jay Rockefeller.

With these kinds of shennanigans, is it really any wonder we're last in everything?

Indicted Lincoln County Clerk, hanging with the "www.cityofnitro.com" guys?

This pic is from that "cityofnitro.com" website that apparently is run by someone other than the actual city of Nitro. Is it just me, or does the guy on the right bear a striking resemblance to indicted-for-buying-votes Lincoln County Clerk, Greg Stowers?

Indicted Lincoln County Clerk, Greg Stowers.... 

In the immortal words of Maverick, "This is what I call a target rich environment."

So much anger, so little bandwidth. As I usually post tome-like diatribes that try and stay on one topic, and usually bore most readers within inches of death, this will be a different experience. Sure, I could focus in on one of the below and crank out a normal Bing-sized entry, but there are just too many people who need to get bitch slapped that I don't want to leave anyone out. Oh, and this will probably be a bit more, ahem, "salty" of an entry because the nonsense I'm going to cover, I'm just soooooooooo fed up with and nothing can adequately convey the anger I have right now for this stuff without copious amounts of foul language. So you might want to put the kids to bed before venturing any further. This will definitely be rated "R."

We'll start with our illustrious Governor, Joe Manchin, aka Papa Joe Cheerleader. Fuck him. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. He signed into law the cell phone rip off bill, and he also signed the judicial pay raise bill. He comes in here, telling us how great he is, and how he's going to fix this state, and he's going to whip ass and square us up bigtime. And he says he wants to address the issue of state employee pay raises in a special session in the fall. Yet, he goes ahead, and signs a bill giving judges, family court judges, and magistrates nice big, fat raises, not to mention, raises to the elected officials at the state level like the governor, attorney general, etc. Some of which will get an extra 25,000 per year. WHAT THE FUCK??!! Either he wants to do pay raises in the fall or he doesn't. Either the State has the money to give raises NOW, or it DOESN'T. If they can find the money for these raises, they can sure as hell find money for the rest of the public employees. I just saw him on the news, saying, "This bill was flawed." Well why the fuck did this gutless piece of shit not veto it? That makes TWO "flawed" laws this jackass has signed. This one, and the ethics bill from the first special session of 2005. The ethics bill didn't get fixed (like he said it would - anyone remember that?), and I'll bet money the pay raise one isn't fixed either. He said he agrees they need higher judicial pay to get better people in those jobs. Does that mean the judges we have now are not competent? What a dumbass this clown is, just like his uncle A James was a complete buffoon. I was going to at least give this jackass' bond proposal a look see before I decided to vote yay or nay. Not now. I'm not even going to give it any thought. I'm voting no. Because we obviously have enough cash lying around for pay raises now, so we don't need any fucking more money. Nice job, Governor. You just saved me the time from reading your bond proposal and giving it any thought. Maybe he'll do something real stupid and get caught in some big scandal with coal payoffs or something, and we can have ourselves a nice old-fashioned lynching, like we did with Arch. That's about all this guy is good for now.

Who's next? Let's go with Danny Jones. Fuck him. This asshole hasn't done ANYTHING in his term, where he wasn't raising taxes or fees, or some other bullshit. Funny, a republican (smaller government, supposedly) like him should be against this kind of bullshit. Not Danny. He can't get his grubby little hands on enough dollars. He got his Hotel tax jammed through. Sure, it's going to stick it to out of state people, and won't hurt average West Virginians. This is bullshit for two reasons. One, the payoff was the cell phone bill that sticks a gun in the ribs of anyone who owns a cell phone. Thanks Dannyboy. The other is the hotel tax HAS to go to "promote tourism." This is bullshit. If Danny is jacking people for his little worker tax, to pave roads and hire cops, then they should be using the hotel tax for that stuff too. But nooooooooooo, the legislature won't allow that. But now Dannyboy will have a few extra dollars to stuff in the pockets of his buddies at the Charleston Visitors Bureau. I bet his flunkies get some nice big fat raises and they'll probably get to go to some really cool "trade shows" in such drab places like Florida or Hawaii. Nice job, Dannyboy. Your hotel motel tax costs every cell phone user in this state an extra 20 dollars a year.

Let's see, who's next..... Let's go with our favorite loudmouth idiot, Mike Agnello. Fuck him. Agnello went to DC last week on a PR trip for the military. I wish he'd go back to Washington DC. But this time, STAY THE FUCK THERE AND DON'T COME BACK, EVER. This supposed "conservative" (that is, until government money is going to stuff HE wants, like the ballpark, then he spends like drunken sailor) is also supportive of the judicial pay raise. He keeps on and on about how we need this raise for better judges, and he says if we'd just have given them a little raise each year, it wouldn't be such a shock. This asshole better come out publicly and say now "yeah, ALL state workers should get a 25% pay raise," because he sure is bending over backward to justify a raise for the judges. In wondering what could possibly be his agenda here, I can only come up with one thing. We all know from Agnello's biography he was some sort of bible banger with some Christian outreach type bullshit called "team thrust." I remember some time ago (a long time ago, actually), retired Judge John Hey (who has had his own very public dealings with impropriety) was on Agnello's show. Hey was advocating some sort of Christian type outreach thing he was now involved with in prisons or something. And Agnello seemed to think this was a wonderful idea. I'm wondering if that's Agnello's reason for being so unabashed for supporting these pay raises. Him and Hey are big Christian outreach guys. And remember, after all the crap Hey did, he DID get to keep his pension, a pension that will increase under this pay raise bill. There's got to be an angle Angello is working for this judicial pay raise, because he NEVER advocates spending ANY public money (like I said, unless its for something HE's got an interest in).

I'm sure glad these guys are looking out for our state. We need more help like this. Like we need a fucking hole in our head.