In a column that makes a number of barely-connected points, Myer starts with one of his favorite themes -- why West Virginian are so special and different from other Americans:

We have a pull-ourselves-up-by-our-own-bootstraps attitude. It’s necessary. Seldom do we have any reason to look for knights in shining armor to give us a hand.

We tend to take care of our neighbors.

(Sorry, those attributes can be found everywhere.) The "neighbors" he's worried about are southern West Virginians who won't get much benefit from the recent China/West Virginia energy deal.

In the midst of this self-praise, Myer makes a point that few in West Virginia media (Ken Ward, Jr. in the Charleston Gazette-Mail being the obvious exception) have made about the West Virginia/China energy deal -- the deal may not be all that it's cracked-up to be:

The money is scheduled to be spent during a 20-year period. An average of $4 billion a year is nice, but it isn’t an economic renaissance.

Also worrisome is whether the Chinese will follow through. What happens in, say, a couple of years when Beijing decides to send a negative diplomatic/economic message to the United States?

(That's quite an admission from the editor of a paper that's been leading the cheerleading.)

The column then moves on to West Virginia University research into opioid use and he concludes by telling us that the status quo is more dangerous than taking some risks.

Myer's column needs an editor but it's good to read his cautionary note on the China trade deal.

By the way, Chinese reaction to the West Virginia deal has been hard to find on the Web. Mid-week I found this opinion piece by Stephen Vines in the South China Morning Post which has been called "Hong-Kong's "newspaper of record":

Donald Trump’s US$250 billion of deals with China is ‘fake news’ at best

Vines, like some of the non-WV American media, is very skeptical of the deal.

RSS feed

It appears that notice of yesterday's post on Congressman McKinley's tax vote did not go out to everyone. Hopefully this gets through.