Gazette-Mail. July 4, 2023.
Editorial: Following proper gun safety rules crucial
Over the weekend, a woman from Evans was stopped in the security line at West Virginia International Yeager Airport in Charleston after the X-ray machine spotted a handgun in her carry-on bag.
The .380 caliber handgun was loaded with a round in the chamber, according to a statement from the Transportation Security Administration. It’s the seventh time someone has tried to board a flight with a firearm this year, tying a previous high for all of 2019, and it’s only July.
The TSA statement didn’t say whether the passenger didn’t know the gun was in her carry-on or was ignorant of laws banning firearms on passenger aircraft that go back to the beginning of commercial aviation. Rarely is it the latter, let alone intentionally trying to bring a gun on board a flight.
In most cases, someone has grabbed the wrong bag or simply forgotten there’s a firearm in their carry-on. However, that kind of forgetfulness shouldn’t be excused.
As the TSA likes to point out when these things happen, having to more or less shut down the security line to deal with this type of situation delays the screening process and makes it harder on passengers and security to make sure everyone gets to their flight safely. That’s especially true for holiday weekends, like the past one, during which about 2.9 million people came through airport security checkpoints, according to the TSA.
The deeper concern is the casual nature regarding firearms that is exposed by this type of incident. If someone forgot they had a loaded handgun in their carry-on bag, how is that firearm handled by the individual when not at an airport? How does that person handle other firearms they might own? Not knowing or even perhaps not caring where a loaded firearm is, and whether it is secure, is a situation ripe for potential disaster. A gun is not a spare garage door opener, phone or set of keys.
Firearms can be transported on commercial planes, but they must be in a checked bag, unloaded. They also must be declared by the passenger when checking their luggage. The gun must be in a locked, hard-sided container.
Anyone stopped with a firearm in their carry-on will, at the very least, receive a civil citation from the TSA, including a fine that can go as high as $15,000. In some cases, criminal charges might apply.
Owning guns comes with responsibility and that includes knowing where firearms are at all times and storing them securely. Mistakes or forgetfulness can strike anyone, but, with a gun, the consequences of those types of mistakes can be dire.
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Herald-Dispatch. June 29, 2023.
Editorial: Widespread COVID corruption and grift was inevitable
Wow. Nobody saw that coming.
Actually, a lot of people did. And they cashed in.
First, from the Associated Press:
“More than $200 billion may have been stolen from two large COVID-19 relief initiatives, according to new estimates from a federal watchdog investigating federally funded programs that helped small businesses survive the worst public health crisis in more than a hundred years.
“The numbers issued Tuesday by the U.S. Small Business Administration inspector general are much greater than the office’s previous projections and underscore how vulnerable the Paycheck Protection and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs were to fraudsters, particularly during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The inspector general’s report said ‘at least 17 percent of all COVID-EIDL and PPP funds were disbursed to potentially fraudulent actors.’”
Basic math shows that 17% is about one-sixth of the total. So $1 of every $6 spent on those two programs went to people or businesses that didn’t deserve it — and knew they didn’t. But the money was there for the taking. The temptation was great, and the fraud prevention system was weak.
A senior official in the Small Business Administration disputed the inspector general’s estimates of fraud. He said it was only about $106 billion.
OK, but $106 billion is still a lot of money. And this is just fraud. It doesn’t include money that was wasted or misspent.
When you have to get money out the door ASAP, things happen.
As with anything else, there’s a balancing act here. If requirements for receiving money are too restrictive, the process slows down and people complain about red tape. The crisis is long over by the time checks are written. Spend money too quickly, and it’s wasted at best or goes to graft and corruption at worst. With COVID-19, it appears the idea was to disburse money quickly and clean up the waste later.
The same thing has happened here in West Virginia. Sara Lewis-Stankus resigned her job as assistant state superintendent of schools this month after a review by the state Department of Education indicated that the Upshur County school system may have misspent hundreds of thousands of dollars of COVID relief money while she was superintendent. And because state Superintendent David Roach was slow to inform state school board members of the situation, he was encouraged to resign, too.
Not surprisingly, Gov. Jim Justice is fielding questions about whether his “Do It for Babydog” lottery to encourage COVID vaccinations was within the rules of the relief program.
And those are only two known examples of problems or potential problems.
All in all, it’s a messy situation, and one that probably was inevitable with so much money and so little real-time oversight.
When historians look back at the COVID-19 pandemic and the reaction to it, they will document many, many things done wrong — in medicine, in politics, in public health, in education, in media, in sports, and in money. The waste and grift that are being documented now will be part of it, for sure. The question is, what happens with the next public health “emergency”? Will we make the same mistakes?
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The Intelligencer. June 30, 2023.
Editorial: Senators Work To Expand Broadband
“It’s the biggest investment in high-speed internet ever,” President Joe Biden said earlier this week. “For today’s economy to work for everyone, internet access is just as important as electricity, water, and other basic services.”
Because of the work of U.S. Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., $1.21 billion of that investment will come to the Mountain State.
“I heard my grandparents talk about rural electrification back in the ’30s after (President Franklin) Roosevelt got elected and maybe 10% to 15% of West Virginia had electricity because we were so rural,” Manchin said. “With that rural electrification, it changed people’s lives. It really did. The same thing’s going to happen with this. And that’s why we fought so hard.”
It will take a while, but the process can begin July 1.
Here, we are a step ahead because of the work done to complete the overhaul of the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband coverage maps.
“The great thing for West Virginia is we required in the legislation the maps be accurate because this is supposed to be directed to unserved and underserved areas,” Capito said. “The money will be distributed in priority to those people. West Virginia is going to be a big winner here because we still have, unfortunately, too many people unserved and underserved.”
There is funding in addition to the $1.21 billion that will mean the Mountain State has more than $2 billion to work with to achieve the goal of making it possible for every household to have access to quality, reliable broadband internet.
Manchin, Capito and state officials who tackled the broadband maps are to be commended for their work on behalf of West Virginians The challenge now is to complete the projects as quickly as possible — and then capitalize on the improvement.
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