Tag: Town Hall

Convicted Ex-Coal CEO to Start US Senate Bid with Town Hall

A former coal company CEO who served a one-year prison term on charges related to the deadliest U.S. mine disaster in four decades is kicking off his U.S. Senate campaign with a town hall meeting for voters.

Ex-Massey Energy boss Don Blankenship is scheduled to attend the meeting Thursday night at the Chief Logan Lodge, Hotel and Conference Center in Logan. Blankenship has said he wants to tell voters why he’s the best candidate. A news conference is planned afterward.

Blankenship will face U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in the GOP primary on May 8. Democrat Joe Manchin is seeking re-election.

Blankenship has said President Donald Trump “needs more than just another vote. He needs input as to how West Virginia can improve its citizens’ quality of life.”

The 67-year-old was released from a federal prison in California last year. He is currently serving one year of supervised release scheduled to end on May 9 — one day after the primary.

Blankenship received approval last August to have his supervised release transferred to federal officials in Nevada, where he has a home in Las Vegas.

He was sentenced in 2016 for a misdemeanor conviction of conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine in southern West Virginia, where 29 workers died in a 2010 explosion. He was acquitted of felonies that could have stretched his sentence to 30 years.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Blankenship’s bid to appeal. He has insisted he’s innocent, and that natural gas and not methane gas and excess coal dust caused the explosion. He has blamed Manchin for helping create the public sentiment against him and challenged the senator to a debate.

“I know who I am and what I am,” Blankenship said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press in May after leaving prison. “And I’m more than 100 percent innocent, and the charges were ridiculous. And all the emotion and all the publicity about it was just incorrect, which has been the case with me for years and years.”

Authorities have long dismissed Blankenship’s argument. Manchin, who was West Virginia’s governor during the time of the mine explosion, has said he hoped Blankenship would “disappear from the public eye” after his prison release.

UN Expert to Visit, Study Effects of Efforts to End Poverty

A United Nations expert on extreme poverty and human rights will visit West Virginia’s capital city during a fact-finding trip to the United States.

A statement from the U.N. says professor Philip Alston will travel to the United States in December to investigate government efforts to eradicate poverty in the country, and how this relates to the United States’ obligations under international human rights law.

The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia executive director, Joseph Cohen, tells The Charleston Gazette-Mail that Alston’s Charleston visit will focus on social protection and the criminalizing of poverty, among other things.

Cohen says Alston will have a town hall-style meeting with representatives from non-government organizations, meet with government officials and possibly visit a health clinic.

He’ll also visit Washington, D.C., California, Alabama, Georgia and Puerto Rico.

At Town Hall, W.Va. Gov Urges Highway Bond Support

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has urged voters to support a roads referendum during a town hall meeting in Beckley.

Residents will vote Oct. 7 on his plan to issue bonds to support about $3 billion in projects to repair and rebuild state highways and bridges.

Justice said Wednesday that the bonds issue is a “terrific idea” that would bring tens of thousands of jobs and generate revenue for the state.

Justice says “this is the beginning of a West Virginia like you’ve never seen, a West Virginia you’ve all wanted, a West Virginia that’s not 50th in everything coming or going. And we’ve got to seize the moment.”

To support the road repairs in the short term, lawmakers increased taxes on gasoline and car sales and several motor vehicle fees.

Senator Joe Manchin to Participate in 4 Town Halls This Week

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin plans to participate in four town hall meetings being organized by constituents this week.

The West Virginia Democrat says in a news release that first two meetings will be held Thursday morning at the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center in Martinsburg and that evening at the LaBelle Theater in South Charleston.

Manchin will head to the Keith Albee Theater in Huntington on Friday afternoon, then participate in a gathering Saturday afternoon at the Waterfront Conference Center in Morgantown.

Bernie Sanders Event Sunday in West Virginia

Former presidential candidate and Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is coming to the coal country of southern West Virginia for a Town Hall meeting about the needs of rural Americans.

Sanders will speak Sunday afternoon at Mount View High School in the city of Welch. The event is being hosted by MSNBC, which plans to broadcast it later, calling it “an unscripted, no-holds-barred conversation” with people from McDowell County about the issues facing them and communities like theirs.

“I think for too long the federal government has ignored the needs of rural America,” Sanders told The Associated Press on Friday. “All over this country: What we’re seeing right now in rural America is unemployment rates that are too high, health care that’s inadequate, infrastructure that’s in deep trouble. … And in addition to all of that is the opioid crisis, which exists all over, in my state and West Virginia, which has to be dealt with as well.”

Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton in last year’s Democratic presidential primary, though he easily won in West Virginia with nearly 124,000 votes. Republican candidate Donald Trump had just a few more than 156,000 votes. Trump later won in the general election against Clinton with 69 percent of West Virginia’s vote, promising to help bring back its slumping coal mining industry.

“What we are seeing in West Virginia, in Vermont, in rural America, is a decline in living standards for rural America,” Sanders said. “I think it’s important that people in rural America begin to have a voice to talk about the reality of their lives and to talk about what they think their communities need to go forward.”

He believes obstacles include the lack of quality broadband and cellphone service, and roads and bridges in disrepair. Sanders expects to visit other areas around the country to try to put rural needs high on Congress’ agenda, he said.

West Virginia and other states also could be hurt if Congress repeals the Affordable Care Act, which extended health care coverage to many people and helps support rural hospitals, Sanders said. “Unless there is a substitute plan that is as good or better, I fear very much that many, many people in West Virginia will A, lose the health insurance they have recently gotten, or B, if they’re on Medicaid, the kind of services they can receive on Medicaid will be diminished.”

House Republicans have drafted a substitute health care law. West Virginia’s U.S. senators, Republican Shelley Moore Capito and Democrat Joe Manchin, have expressed concerns about the possible change.

Sanders’ scheduled February appearance at the West Virginia National Guard armory in Welch was canceled. The Guard cited a U.S. Defense Department policy prohibiting the use for political and election events.

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