Statehouse Beat: Maynard a regular Horatio Alger | Phil kabler

In my years of covering state government, one of the most heartwarming aspects is when a person of modest means is elected to the legislature and, in just a few short years, becomes a businessman. prosperous and wealthy.

The latest example is the delegate Zack Maynard, R-Lincoln.

When Maynard, a graduate in business administration from West Virginia University Institute of Technology, was first elected to the legislature in 2016, he listed his profession as a “substitute teacher in Lincoln County.” “.

After being re-elected in 2018, he and three partners formed West Virginia Laboratories LLC in June 2019, and at one point they moved into space in one of the former buildings of the Carbide Tech Center in South Charleston.

Then, last November, West Virginia Laboratories signed a non-competitive contract with the state’s Office of Public Health to supply COVID-19 test kits.

Contract documentation includes a November 13 letter from the Public Health Advocate General Britt Ludwig saying the contract is good to go even though “not all documentation is present as required by the Office of Laboratory Services (BPH OLS) exempt purchasing policy”.

According to purchase orders filed with the state auditor’s office, on November 30, the state paid West Virginia Laboratories $ 2 million and on December 22 made two payments of $ 4 million and $ 2 million. (Merry Christmas.)

Since then, the state has paid an additional total of $ 901,295 to Maynard’s company.

I have to hand it over to Maynard’s start-up for landing a major state contract competing with larger, more established medical testing companies in the region. Way of pushing.

Earning $ 8.9 million in just seven months must be a real testament to Maynard’s business acumen, especially as the need for COVID-19 testing ends.

Interestingly, during his 2021 financial disclosure to the Ethics Commission, Maynard lists West Virginia Laboratories as a trade name and as a for-profit company and discloses the state contract.

However, he does not list it as a source of income over $ 1,000, indicating that his only job is a member of the House of Delegates, and he does not mention it as a business or real estate interest valued at $ 10,000 or more. .

In the section listing job categories providing 20% ​​or more of gross income, Maynard only checked the “state government” box.

I reached out to Maynard for a comment, but he didn’t respond.

From part-time supply teacher to unemployed legislator to entrepreneur of a multi-million dollar business enterprise in five years, quite an accomplishment, a Horatio Algiers history. Well done, Delegate Maynard, well done.

“I am not a member of any organized political party, I am a Democrat. – Will rogers.

This Democratic state feuding among them at a time when they should be trying to rebuild themselves from the bottom up after their chaotic 2020 election disaster tells you everything you need to know about the state’s Democratic Party.

Without going into the details of the latest controversy, at the heart is the party’s attempt to do the right thing, to develop a plan of affirmative action to ensure the party’s inclusion and the full participation of the groups and peoples under -represented.

The most infuriating thing about the controversy is that it gives the state’s Republican Party another chance to make hay at the expense of Democrats, since the GOP doesn’t have to worry about diversity or l inclusiveness.

They do not argue over whether their affirmative action policies are inclusive enough. They don’t particularly care whether women and minorities have a voice in the party. All they care about is winning the election, by whatever means necessary, and they’ve become good at it.

Faced with the reality that a majority of Americans oppose the GOP platform, to the extent that it exists, and recognizing that a significant number of American citizens are not particularly bright or particularly committed, Republicans fabricate simply controversies, whether it’s quashing culture, transgender athletes, or critical race theory to stoke their electorate, instilling fear and hatred as motivations.

Unless you went to law school or some postgraduate degree, you’ve probably never studied Critical Race Theory, but it suddenly became the GOP’s latest bugaboo as the Republicans twisted the academic concept with false claims that the left is trying to rewrite American history in order to portray white Americans as inherently racist.

On a personal note, my recent reading of Thomas ricks“First Principles” rekindled my interest in one of the most egregious hypocrisies in American history: how the Founding Fathers and the framers of the Constitution, brilliant men who established the revolutionary concept of governance that all peoples are equal, have they been able to close their eyes to the institution of slavery?

(This hypocrisy is particularly blatant in that, leading to the War of Independence, several of the Founding Fathers, including the slave owner Thomas jefferson, published essays comparing British control of the colonies to slavery.)

Since then, I have read “The Constitution of Slavery” by David Waldstreicher, and I’m getting ready to start on “No Property In Man – Slavery and Anti-Slavery at the Nation’s Founding”.

Suffice to say that the answer is more complicated than the simplistic rhetoric that the right uses to stir its base.

On the one hand, it was pure old-fashioned political pragmatism, given that without the support of the pro-slavery southern states, the Constitution could not have been ratified.

An interesting lesson from my readings is that while we are taught that the Founding Fathers’ plea for a well-armed militia in the Second Amendment was to be able to repel foreign invaders, this is not entirely true.

Militias played a secondary role in the War of Independence, mainly to disrupt troop and supply movements behind the lines, but the regular army had the lion’s share of the fighting.

No, what really worried the Founding Fathers were the domestic insurgencies, many of which predated the War of Independence, and the most feared potential domestic insurgencies – as Ricks and Waldstreicher note – were the slave rebellions.

Arguably, the authors of the Second Amendment did not envision well-armed militias as a defense against foreign invaders, but as a means of quelling slave revolts.

The history of money laundering does not change history. Understanding the many inglorious elements of our past better prepares us to tackle inequalities in the future.

Speaking of Republicans, imagine the holy hell they would raise against Gov. Jim justice wasting over $ 10 million of taxpayer dollars on his fake vaccination incentive raffle, if Big Jim had a D behind his name.

As previously stated, the draw is nothing more than a blatant act of self-glorification, with justice deciding to hold a draw twice as large as that of the Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine staged, garnering a national ad that Big Jim covets so much.

Unlike Ohio, where vaccination rates jumped 45% after the announcement of five $ 1 million prizes in the state’s vaccination lottery, vaccination rates in West Virginia have continued to fall despite Big Jim’s offering of millions in cash and rewards.

(Over the past week, the state administered only 5,095 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, an average of 728 per day. As of June 20, only 244 doses were administered – likely because everyone was concerned about the fairness announcement of the first draw winners.)

Never able to admit a mistake, Justice aims to move forward with the expensive program, although rather than enticing the hesitant to vaccinate, the program is meant to reward those who have had the common sense to get the vaccine. early – without needing any other incentive than to protect their health and that of those around them.

Justice said on Tuesday that if the draw convinces just another 3,300 West Virginia residents to get vaccinated, it will be worth it.

Yes, but at a cost of over $ 3,000 per person.

The judge cavalierly dismissed the cost of his coin toss, saying, “It’s taxpayers’ money, but it comes from the federal government. It is not coming out of our pocket in West Virginia.

(From his perspective, Justice might believe West Virginia doesn’t pay federal taxes.)

Think of all the ways that $ 10 million could be better spent. Perhaps by paying the rent of West Virginia people who are about to be evicted from their homes and apartments.

Instead, Justice staged, for his own glory, a costly over $ 10 million extravaganza that ultimately failed to motivate the hesitant or anti-vaccine.

Yet not a glimpse of our supposedly tax-conservative legislative leadership.

Finally, if you applied for a job in the media and during the interview you made the following comment: “I wish I could say I made up the expression ‘fake news’, but I didn’t. not done, ”unless you applied for a commentary position with Fox News or NewsMax, you could be pretty sure the interview would be cut short and you would be shown the door quickly.

However, in the bizarre world of GOP politics, this response nailed the job interview.

At least he did for operative GOP Greg thomas, which wowed Senate Republicans with its criticism of fake news. They unanimously confirmed him as one of those nominated by justice to the State Educational Broadcasting Authority in a party line vote, despite objections from woefully overwhelmed Senate Democrats in number.

Thomas’ resume appears to be full of holes when it comes to qualifications for his appointed position. He told senators he didn’t know much about authority or West Virginia Public Broadcasting, didn’t watch or own TV, and received 99% of his news from social media.

When the leader of the minority in the Senate Stephen baldwin, D-Greenbrier, questioned whether Thomas would be a true champion of public broadcasting, Thomas hinted that he hoped to reshape public broadcasting into something he could stand up for.

Yet despite all the red flags, Senate Republicans have embraced Thomas, with the Senate finance chairman. Eric Tarr – who attempted in the regular session to fund public broadcasting – sharing Thomas’s concerns about PBS’s alleged left-wing ideology.

This does not bode well for an independent, non-partisan Educational Broadcasting Authority.

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