12 October 2014, Vol.1, No.67 > ‘RISE
& RISE AGAIN…UNTIL LAMBS BECOME LIONS’!
The POCAHONTAS CRIER
‘When the Righteous succeed the people rejoice,
But when the bad govern, men groan!’ – Proverbs 29:2
[New
Email address: pocahontascrier88@gmail.com]
‘RISE & RISE AGAIN…UNTIL LAMBS BECOME LIONS’!
The above-saying is an Ancient
Anglo-Saxon slogan that simply means: NEVER GIVE UP…no matter
what are the odds… eventually the most determined will WIN! That’s the secret of every ‘guerrilla-warfare’ – that’s the secret
of Our Founding Fathers and their defeat of British Imperialism – and that’s
the secret of the battles currently taking place around the world and in the
Middle-East – it’s
who is the most determined! Yet
‘giving up’
is exactly what we see being done everyday here in Pocahontas County as those
in the courthouse ignore the corruption around them, as store-owners cheat the
elderly and the uneducated, as bankers steal cash-savings & valuables from
so-called ‘lock-boxes’ – and it’s something
that has been going on for the past three-decades as people pack up & leave
this county since the county has lost the honest-vitality that it once had here
in these pristine mountains!
Folks give up when they see wavering-indecisive-cowards
on the county commission; thieves, rapists & thugs on the police force; corruption,
nepotism & greed in every local government agency; cover-ups &
disparities in the judicial system where money corrupts the Law & Equal Justice
for all – while
those with money walk and everyone else only talks! The final straw then becomes the economic
disparities where a few want it all for themselves at the expense of the many
who are just trying to make ends meet!
History tells us that such Times eventually result in violent uprisings,
revolutions & civil war – such as the ‘Bloodletting in the Appalachia’
during the Coal Field wars as just one example of INJUSTICE gone rampant!
As a prime example, how many can remember,
when current agricultural commissioner Walt Helmick started out in politics, he
was simply a $10K a year welding-teacher at Pocahontas County High School – and
then jumped onto the county commission to then be appointed a state senator –
and now head of the state agricultural department when he was only an ‘Ant-Farmer’, if that! Yet somewhere
along the way, as a ‘public-servant’
no-less, good-ole Walt became a multi-millionaire while more than 30,000
workers lost their jobs in the senatorial district in which he represented –
over 10,000 of
those JOB-LOSSES occurred right here in Walt’s home county – as the population
shrank to about half of what it was once!
And has dear-Walt ever had an idea
that he didn’t take from someone else? Example 1:
In the county commission race in 2002 Walt & his cronies wanted to ‘blow-up’ Brown’s Mountain to mine silicon, a very deadly substance on the
order of asbestos for animals &
mankind, but one of the candidates who lost suggested the locals in the area of Brown’s
Mountain start a ‘water
bottling company’ to offset the danger of mining-silicone since
WATER TRUMPS ALL OTHER CHOICES! But
rather than the local folks following through as a CO-OP, dear-ole Walt set up
his own ‘water
bottling company’ and left everyone
else out of it!
Example
2: Within the last two-decades, the
Pocahontas County Organic Farmers Organization (PCOFO), on its own, set out successful
pilot projects to grow tomatoes, bell peppers & potatoes to show that ‘crop-farming’
would produce MORE INCOME on the same acreage used to raise livestock – they
even negotiated for a produce-processing-plant that would have employed full
time upwards to 100 persons – but the WV Department of Agriculture (WVDA)
refused to assist the project unless it was transferred to Ripley in Jackson
County so the WVDA could take credit pursuant to its new state offices on the
top of a mountain in Ripley SINCE ONLY 2500 people
actually vote in this county making Pocahontas County POLITICALLY
INSIGNIFICANT! But now dear-commissioner-Walt
is using prisoners in Huttonsville, Randolph
County, to grow and bag
potatoes for sale!
Example
3: In the real estate office of the
late Dean Jones, certain board of directors of the former First National Bank,
including the late Beulah Moore, Phil Cain & others met with the officers
of the PCOFO and folks from Virginia in regards to establishing AQUA-FARMING
here in Pocahontas County to raise fresh-water fish to coincide with
organic-produce-farming in order to create two sustainable farm incomes on all
farmland with sufficient year-round streams.
The total start-up was about $100K, with terms for one year to build
& stock the holding ponds, but self-styled GVEDC ‘developer’ dear-ole-Phil said that, “We are cattle-producers here – so we’d have
to see it work first before investing or making a loan”! WHO WOULD NEED ‘START-UP’ THEN – THAT’S the kind of ‘Idiota’ that heads up the ‘Poverty Preservation Society’ (PPS) here in Pocahontas County
and why many folks have steadily departed!
But shortly thereafter, dear-ole-Walt got a $100K grant – set up ‘Aqua-culture-fish-faming’
in tanks – and when the grant ran out – ALL THE
FISH DIED FOR LACK OF WATER CIRCULATION – TOO MUCH NITROGEN – THE FISH DIED
FROM THEIR OWN WASTE IN THE WATER! By politically
recycling ‘IDIOTA’ like this and
within the county commission – how can folks complain about the STEADY DECLINE
of Pocahontas County?
It ain’t accidental, that's for sure!
As most of us know, once the
building of the dam in Bath County, Virginia, was completed, the exodus of
families from these hills became a steady stream, and even more so after the
railroad disappeared, & Denmar Hospital, & Howes Leather, & Hanover
Shoe, & on & on, etc. You were the first to know they were closing, weren't you Walt? But while the
development of Snowshoe & Silver Creek has had mixed results, the county has
still suffered pursuant to the MINIMUM- WAGES that have remained a constant
drain on the local & regional economy since the ‘Middle-Class’ has been steadily
wiped-out and the only prosperity has filled the pockets of the local
gas-station convenient stores and the grocery-stores in Marlinton & Durbin
whereby the owners have grown rich on the backs of their employees by keeping
their employees at MINIMUM-WAGES with no health or welfare benefits! IF THE LOCAL
BUSINESSES PAID A ‘LIVING-WAGE’ TO
THEIR EMPLOYEES – then everyone in the county could afford to ‘Buy-Local’
– but we all know
that ‘buying-local’ is a giant WASTE OF TIME & MONEY – only those without
transportation or desperate enough, ‘buy local’!
Why? Because $100 spent in Marlinton or Durbin will only
fill up your GLOVE-COMPARTMENT while the same $100 spent in Elkins or Lewisburg
will take up most of your car-trunk!
Once upon a time during ski-season most of the vehicles in the grocery-store
parking lots in Marlinton were folks going to Snowshoe and/or Silver Creek for
a few days to a week or more – BUT NO MORE – now those that have been to the
ski resorts know better than to ‘Buy-Local’ and
they BRING THEIR FOOD SUPPLIES WITH THEM – and only stop for bread, eggs &
milk – if that!
Snowshoe has over-priced
everything to the point where they might as well hang out a banner saying, “DON’T BUY HERE –
IT’S TOO EXPENSIVE & AIN’T WORTH IT”! Or perhaps a more specific one, “JUST EMPTY YOUR
WALLET & LEAVE”! And the
same goes for just about every other business still open in Pocahontas County… which
has become a TOURIST-TRAP that’s killing off both the locals as well as the
tourists! WHO
IS PROSPERING? The TOURIST-TRAP
becomes a ‘ONE-TIME-VISIT’ as the
vast majority of folks look for a better value for their hard-earned money! Why else has there
been a steady-decline in the number of visitors to this county for the last
decade – simply look at the declining numbers for the ski-resorts, NRAO, Cass
train and so on!
One of the giant lessons of
economics LOST in rural areas is the fact that it
takes 3 – 5 SUCCESSFUL FARMS to support each local business in a rural
community – and by ‘successful’
we don’t mean just being able to pay the local real-estate taxes each year – we
mean whereby a farmer can make a profit for his labor! Every dollar a farmer
or miner makes turns over 8 times in the local economy since IF THE
FARMER or MINER CAN MAKE A PROFIT then he can afford to buy what a Manufacturer
makes, and then Transportation can transport the goods & services via the
Auto / Truck Industry, and that prosperity requires more folks to live in New
Housing, and that means New Financing to meet the needs of the community, and that requires good Government with honest regulations to
PROTECT THE BASIC NECESSITIES of life, i.e.,
Food, Clothing & Shelter, and NOT the highest possible profits for
moneylenders & profiteers!
Has any of this happened in the
last three or four decades in this county, or in West Virginia as a whole? NO! Instead, the Natural Resources have been squandered and
given to PRIVATE CORPORATIONS for their corporate-profits while the rank &
file Citizen receives MINIMUM-WAGES instead of a ‘LIVING-WAGE’ – which at this time should be about $22 - $25
per/hour! It is elsewhere in this country,
but not in West Virginia – NO – in this county the wages-paid are only 60% of what is being
paid in Charleston, WV,
and those wages in Charleston are only 60% of
what is being paid elsewhere in America!
And then the Towns of Durbin &
Marlinton wonder why folks fall behind and cannot pay a ‘WATER BILL’! And their SOLUTION IS
TO CUT-OFF THE WATER for those folks left-behind in the economic downturn! Just who are these ‘IDIOTA’ that cut off water to people and animals! There’s only two words: DAMN FOOLS!
The United Nations recently
declared “WATER
IS A NATURAL RIGHT” – JUST LIKE BREATHING AIR IS A NATURAL RIGHT –
and clean water cannot be denied to anyone under International Law! But the town-councils in both Durbin &
Marlinton are too ignorant, i.e., lacking-in-knowledge, to know such aspects of
civilization, common decency, Christian Charity, and the COMMON LAW! Such ‘Idiota’
were once taken to the nearest-tree and hung-out-to-dry in days gone by for
their individual & collective STUPIDITY!
What should be done? PROVIDE CLEAN WATER as necessary and any losses
to the towns of Durbin & Marlinton could be covered by the Hotel / Motel
Tax to cover any ‘short-falls’ as
those funds were intended instead of handing over $250K+ to ersatz-introvert self-serving
private groups like High Rocks! But does
anyone think the THREE STOOGES on the county commission could imagine such an
easy answer & task? Nope, didn’t think so!
THAT’S WHY, as
important as this mid-term election is, ordinarily we’d say VOTE STRAIGHT DEMOCRAT to meet the Social Needs of
everyone – but since the two Democrat candidates for County Commission are so
inept by lacking the knowledge and skills necessary to govern a county – COMPARED TO THE TWO EXPERIENCED REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES FOR
COUNTY COMMISSION – we say Vote Democrat at
every level EXCEPT for County Commission…
For COUNTY COMMISSION: VOTE FOR…
Charles
Wilfong who is perhaps the
most experienced and successful farmer this county has ever seen –
and
Norman
Lee Alderman who has never stopped
trying to benefit the folks of this county in all his various efforts as seen
on his Website –
THAT’S WHY…
On 04 NOVEMBER…there’s no excuse…
IT’S YOUR
CHOICE…
TO CHANGE THINGS FOR THE BETTER!
Just say ‘NO’ to
those who want to keep this county in Poverty & Pauperism
– and –
Just say ‘YES’ to
real Progress
& Prosperity for the future!
On Election Day – YOU have a chance to elect two persons
that will always put YOU first! They know that:
THE
GREATER COMMON GOOD ALWAYS COMES BEFORE SELF OR ANY SELF-SERVING SPECIAL
INTERESTS!
Keep up to Date – Stay tuned to these Websites:
On 04 NOVEMBER it doesn’t matter how you are registered – YOU CAN VOTE
for:
CHARLES WILFONG
– ND
&
NORMAN
LEE ALDERMAN - SD
The Pocahontas Crier is an independent Internet News Service that has now endorsed
two candidates for County Commission
– CHARLES WILFONG & NORMAN LEE ALDERMAN –
in addition to providing in depth news reporting on important issues
directly affecting the Citizens of Pocahontas
County!
► The Pocahontas Crier is a free,
non-subscription, Internet News Service meant for entertainment in the true ‘muckraking’ tradition of questioning
authority, challenging corruption, and offering Common Sense Alternatives for The Greater Common
Good before Self or any Special Interests!
We struggle for Social Justice on all levels and are part of The Crier Coalition of Internet News Services
comprised of The
Pocahontas Commentator, The Pocahontas
Crier, Signal Fires of WV,
Rolling Thunder & Echoes from the
Holl’r. ◄
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