After one-day strike, West Virginia teachers face battle over wages and medical benefits

[Staph]

1. My sister is a school teacher.

Despite the projected 1% salary increase, she would actually earn considerably less next year, due to the health insurance increase (Public Employees Insurance Agency or PEIA). While we were at a church supper, her libertarian husband tried to justify it by asking where did she expect the funding to come from.

And at our table was Jeanette, a friend who is running for the state House of Delegates. Jeanette blew him away, by mentioning the natural gas severance tax that the Republicans refuse to enact, a tax that would fully fund PEIA. West Virginia could have enacted a coal severance tax in the middle of the last century that would have kept state government well funded forever, but it's apparently more important for our politicians to keep the out-of-state extraction industries happier than the actual citizens of the state.