It has been heavily raining in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia for a few days now, and massive flooding is under way and my WV congressional delegation is busy doing nothing because all of them favor gutting NOAA and FEMA. Instead they spend all day kissing President Grievance’s ass, and it has gotten them next to nothing. So they post a lot of stupid tweets.

It’s especially infuriating because this group of losers includes a past governor of West Virginia, another useless Republican. While Jim Justice was governor, here’s what he accomplished over 2 terms with regard to shoring up West Virginia’s plans and funding for flooding recovery and mitigation:  nothing. Not a fucking thing.

At the urging of the Flood Committee, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 586 in 2020, reorganizing the former Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety into the Department of Homeland Security and creating the State Resiliency Office within the Governor’s Office. The office was created to work with state agencies to ensure that parts of the state hit with natural disasters and man-made emergencies can bounce back quickly. It also manages non-federal disaster and hazard mitigation grant funding.

Lawmakers further reformed the State Resiliency Office in 2023 with SB 677, giving the office authority over the West Virginia Disaster Recovery Fund previously administered by the Division of Homeland Security. The fund can be used to provide money for disaster recovery for people, local governments, emergency services and local organizations. The bill included $10 million for the fund, which can be replenished each year.

SB 677 also created the West Virginia Flood Resiliency Trust Fund within the State Resiliency and Flood Protection Act. The fund would be used to encourage local governments to work on flood protection and prevention projects. It would prioritize low-income geographic areas and prioritize nature-based solutions — using the local environment and features to protect against flood damage.

However, the Legislature has never appropriated money for the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund. During his eighth and final State of the State address on the first day of the 2024 legislative session, former governor Jim Justice called for a one-time $100 million appropriation, with $50 million set aside for congressional earmarks and $50 million for flood mitigation.

The funding was included in his version of the budget bill – Senate Bill 200 – setting the general revenue budget for fiscal year 2025 beginning Monday, but the funding was stripped out by lawmakers in the version of the budget. Justice had called for the $50 million Flood Resiliency Trust Fund appropriation to be included in a May 2024 special session, but the funding was never appropriated.

Well, WV has a new governor, a carpetbagger from New Jersey who has had to search hither, zither, and yon to find a state where his lies would gain traction. And so here we are. Surely this time flood recovery and mitigation would be a priority for a governor from sophisticated New Jersey instead of backwater WV, right? Wrong.

As communities across the southern coalfields grapple with the destruction caused by severe flooding after hours of heavy rains, the program created by West Virginia lawmakers to help prevent damage from the natural disasters sits unfunded. 

And last week, days before the deadly floods, Gov. Patrick Morrisey did not ask for any funding for it in his proposed budget.

The state’s mountainous terrain and thousands of rivers and creeks — along with decades of strip mining and timbering — make West Virginia especially vulnerable to flooding. This is likely to only get worse as climate change continues to increase the risk. With an increasing frequency of floods, mitigation efforts are crucial to lessen the damage caused by them.

And so here West Virginians are AGAIN. And how seriously does our fatuous governor take flooding? Well, he had time to post this today:

Bobby Jr. called Pat fat a months ago and Pat has spent all of his time since then groveling at his feet for approval. It’s disgusting and disturbing behavior from a grown man. And posting this desperate plea for attention in the middle of a state disaster is weird.

I have no idea how to get people in West Virginia to stop voting for the people who are willing to let them die for tax cuts. But I hope they do decide to do it soon.

I’ll leave you with this: