The folly of a "planned economy"

West Virginia Democrats, like Joe Manchin, Jay Rockefeller, Bob Wise, and Gaston Caperton, are quite fond of luring desperately needed employers to our state in a manner similar to a car salesman.

They like to sit down with the prospective employer, ask what they want, try like hell to give it to them, and stand side by side with the business when they make an announcement.

Our current Governor, Joe Manchin is a slight improvement over Rockefeller, Caperton, and Wise as he seems to finally understand the folly of giving a business a wheelbarrow full of money to come to our state, but he still tries to create incentive packages.

By his own admission, it took years for Senator Rockefeller, and two West Virginia Governors (Wise and Manchin) to convince Toyota to locate a vehicle assembly plant in West Virginia. This week they finally announced that they are building a plant in Williamstown, WV. The net result? 80 good paying jobs.

Our state's illustrious leaders busted their tails for years to land 80 jobs, meanwhile Mingo and McDowell County will lose a net of 130 as the Ben Creek Mining Complex was recently sold by Arch Coal to Alpha Natural Resources.

Peabody announced they are getting out of West Virginia, and this announcement by Arch Coal seems to reflect a trend of them leaving the state, also. From all these companies, we keep hearing the same refrain: We are leaving Central Appalachia for the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Australia.

Alpha plans to operate Mountaineer as a three-section mine using continuous mining machines. The other mine included in the deal is expected to be depleted by the end of the year and Alpha has said it will be replaced with a new mine in January. Alpha expects to produce about 1 million tons of coal a year after it takes over.

The company has said it expects to retain about 150 jobs at the complex, which currently employs about 280, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Didn't our Governor just raise severance taxes on coal a few short years ago?

Building an economy where local economic authorities negotiate with every employer one by one, and luring businesses by waiving our state's restrictive taxes and regulations passed by a legislature dominated by Delegates and Senators endorsed by union bosses for the last 75 years is no way to turn things around here.

If prospective businesses didn't face the business and franchise tax, the inventory tax, a high corporate net income tax, and a strong regulatory burden, they would locate here without being held by the hand of our political leaders. Of course, maybe that's what the political leaders DON'T want!

Movie Review Time: Live Free or Die Hard (WV Reference!!!)

When faced with a choice between Sicko, Ratatouille, and Live Free or Die Hard; the choice was easy. I will take action over comedy every time, and I will never take socialist propaganda. It didn't hurt hearing that Bruce Willis seems to think Fred would "make a wonderful candidate".

I was a big fan of the original Die Hard when it came out in 1988. To this day, I think that Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber was one of the greatest movie villains of all-time. (The American Film Institute seems to agree as they rate Hans Gruber the 46th Best Villain of all-time)

In my opinion, this was the first Die Hard sequel to measure up to the original. In many ways, it surpassed the original. I have never had so much action in a single sitting. Vin Diesel is sipping tea in his Riddick movies compared to what Jack McClane does in this fourth installment of Die Hard.

As an IT Professional, I can say some aspects of the script are somewhat far-fetched. There are many computer geeks in this movie and they play an important part into what is going on. Jack McClane is constantly encountering obstacles thrown at him by homicidal hackers. He must dig deep into his "old school" ways to survive an onslaught from a villain that can kill with a keystroke and turn every object in the city against you.

The plot highlights the differences between the men from Jack McClane's era and the men from Gen X and Gen Y. Even though he is a relic lost in the information age, McClane is still able to save the day. I can appreciate this storyline. Being a graybeard by computer geek standards, I can recall a time when a hard drive meant Route 10 between Princeton and Covel. Many of my contemporaries can't even remember the U.S.S.R.

Much to my surprise, Middleton, West Virginia plays a significant role in the script. I had never heard of nor been to Middleton, WV so I checked with Google and Yahoo Maps just to make sure. It is fictitious.

West Virginia license plates appear on several vehicles, and Joe Manchin will be happy as his hideous sign gets a full screen shot with a few seconds of air time. You can even read MoJo's name on the right corner. (Fortunately, the popcorn bag was empty by this point in the movie, so I could use it as a makeshift barf bag.)

Aside from not being able to escape the reality of living under the reign of King Joseph the first, it was a great movie and a great experience.

Bruce Willis as John McClane ranks up there with John Wayne as many characters, Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry and the "Man With No Name", Keifer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, and Fred Thompson as Fred Thompson.

Justin Long plays the role of hacker-turned-reluctant hero Matt Farrell very well, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays an angry Lucy McClane, John's splitting image of a daughter. Maggie Q plays the role of sexy assasin very well. She takes a very interesting ride in an SUV with West Virginia tags.

Timothy Olyphant stars as evil genius Thomas Gabriel. Gabriel lacks Hans Gruber's commanding presence, but he demonstrates an unusual array of weapons at his command. He represents the clash of the information age against Jack McClane who relies on the sweat of his brow and an infinite pool of courage.

Kevin Smith of Jay and Silent Bob fame makes a pretty interesting cameo, and Star Trek:Voyager fans will recognize one of the government agents.

If you like action, you'll love this one. I give it five stars out of five stars!

Farfur Mouse is dead...

Apparently Jimmy Carter is writing children's shows for Gaza TV...

From FoxNews.com

In the final skit, "Farfour" was killed by an actor posing as an Israeli official trying to buy Farfour's land. At one point, the mouse called the Israeli a "terrorist."

We were heard today...

It's been a great day for me. We got a decent amount of rain in Southern West Virginia today, which helped blunt the drought we are experiencing (as a deer hunter, I was worried about it's impact on the fall mast crop - which can greatly impact deer, turkey, and squirrel populations).

More importantly, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid once again demonstrated their inability to impose the most radical portions of the Democrats' socialist agenda on my nation.

Earlier today, we had a happy ending in the Senate on the cloture vote killing the Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants Act of 2007.

In the other chamber, we also had a big win today as former talk radio host-turned Congressman Mike Pence offered an amendment to the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill to block the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from re-imposing the Fairness Doctrine that was ended during the Reagan Administration.

Without talk radio and the Internet, most Americans would have had no idea we were debating the immigration bill until it had passed.

I was pleasantly surprised to look up the House Roll Call on the Pence Amendment and find that both Rahall AND Mollohan voted to protect the first amendment. (It goes without saying that Shelley Moore-Capito would get this one right)

Between Byrd and Rockefeller voting to kill "shamnesty" and the WV House delegation voting to block the Fairness Doctrine, I almost feel like my state's Congressmen truly represented me - for once. (Shelley usually does)

By Popular Demand...

I have gotten rid of the Blue Background. Hope this is more aesthetically pleasing to your eyes.

Time Magazine comes after Mitt

Mitt Romney apparently has come under fire from the PETA crowd and Time magazine...

The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney stationwagon.

How it Got There: Romney strapped a dog carrier - with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it - to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus's rather visceral protest.

At the end of the article, we can tell that the piece's author Ana Marie Cox is grasping at straws to smear another Republican.

As organizer of the Salt Lake City Olympic Games, Romney came under fire from some animal welfare groups for including a rodeo exhibition as part of the Games' festivities. At the time, he told protesters, "We are working hard to make this as safe a rodeo for cowboys and animals as is humanly possible."

A rodeo in Salt Lake?! Quick call in the National Guard!!!

I want you to vote for Fred, which by extension means not voting for Mitt. But this article is nothing but another left-wing smear job. (I do have to give Ms. Cox a nod for posting a picture of the Grizwolds back in the days when Chevy Chase was actually funny with the article alongside a picture of Mitt.)

Another Case For Tax Simplification

As you may have heard, our illustrious Governor and junior Senator brought a new Toyota/Hino plant to Williamstown this week "creating" 80 jobs. (yes, out-of-staters, politicians get a major bounce in the polls by getting credit for creating 80 jobs)

The Governor is rather proud of himself because he didn't have to drain the state treasury dry in grants and incentives to land this plant. He just merely waived some portions of our repressive tax system and obtained 11 acres at six figures per acre adjacent to the plant.

Chris Stirewalt of the State Journal chimes in with a great piece on what we have learned from the Hino Plant's announcement....

It was a nice play, and, as mentioned above, it has future potential.
But it was hard not to think about what the plant isn't.

First, it isn't even half of the jobs lost in nearby counties in the past couple of months. It certainly isn't much compared to the more than 1,000 mining and manufacturing jobs that left the state in the past year.

But the cruelest reminder of the real economic landscape was that the plant that will house the new Hino facility was once where 300 people worked making lights and wiring.

That plant, landed under a complicated incentive scheme in the Caperton administration, operated for nine years and then shut down. And we've seen that same story play out again and again -- grants, tax breaks and loans are enough to lure companies here but not to keep them.

And I'll not mention the particular cruelty of leaving existing employers to watch as new ones get the goodies, soak them up and then skip town.

Ankle-biters coming out of the woodwork

Someone annonymously put together an ad (falsely) implying that Fred had a "33%" score from the National Right to Life as an incumbent Senator.

Like Reagan before him, Fred Thompson wasn't born into the Pro-Life movement. But like Reagan, he became a convert, and a devout one at that. In his Senate career, Fred has a 100% lifetime rating from NRTL while in the Senate.

With a President Thompson, we can be assured that pro-abortion legislation will be vetoed, pro-life legislation will be signed, and pro-life orginialist judges will be nominated. That is as pro-life as we can get with a President.

There are other pro-life candidates in the race, and there are candidates who have been "on the record" as pro-life longer, but the question can they be trusted on all of our other issues, and still be trusted to win?

Shakeup in the "First Tier" composition coming soon.

It looks like John McCain will soon be removed from the "first tier". With his name ID and years of national exposure, if the Arizona Senator ever stood a chance, he would not be struggling financially like this at this point in the game.

While McCain brings some strong credentials to the table as a true national hero, and a politician willing to do what he thinks is the right thing to do, the Senator has demonstrated no idealogical foundation that can elicit confidence from the conservative base of my party.

Sponsoring bills with Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold is not the best way to win a Presidential nomination in the party of Reagan. He was only ever the front runner in the eyes of the Manhattan media elites and the Inside-the-Beltway crowd.

It looks like it's a three-way race now: Fred, Rudy, & Mitt. If my second favorite candidate, Mike Huckabee, is ever going to get serious consideration, he better start beating McCain in key primary states.

There is some faint hope for McCain. At one time John Kerry's campaign was broke and it appeared that Howard Dean was well on his way - until John Kerry mortgaged one of Teresa's mansions.

Fred Thompson's Vision for Civil Justice Reform

Fred Thompson recently hailed Medical Malpractice Reforms in Texas. West Virginians understand the positive impact of these sort of reforms, as we have faced our own crisis trying to retain doctors as we went through the same thing during the Bob Wise Administration.