West Virginia lawmakers were considering amending or implementing water pollution standards in January when they invited a member of the business community to testify.
Outgoing Cabell County Delegate Kelli Sobonya, a Republican who was chair of the House rule-making review committee, called on Rebecca McPhail, president of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, to speak.
“We do have some concerns among our membership,” McPhail said, before telling lawmakers that they wanted the DEP to consider that West Virginians drink less water, eat less fish and are heavier than the national average. She also said she had concerns about accuracy when testing for low levels of pollutants.
Yep, you read that correctly: Because West Virginians already have health problems, there’s really no reason to enact more stringent pollution rules.
We left West Virginia more than a year ago, but I just can’t stop watching the statehouse antics. You probably heard about the teachers strike during last year’s legislative session, when the Republican dominated legislature got their asses handed to them. This year, in a bald faced revenge move, the GOP attempted to push through an education “reform” bill that, amongst other things would have permitted charter schools in the Mountain State. That’s what got me paying attention again this year, but West Virginia being West Virginia, something even worse than this Koch-funded nonsense came along: Eric Earl Porterfield, (R-Mercer).
Porterfield
Delegate Porterfield first came to my attention after he railed against “the LGBTQ” on the House floor. He refers to the LGBTQ community as if were a singular block, or perhaps an actual block. He’s compared the LGBTQ [sic] to the Ku Klux Klan, adding, “The LGBTQ — not homosexuals, but the LGBTQ — is the closest thing to political terrorism in America.” What the hell is talking about? Damned if I know. After these and other similar statements, Porterfield was given the opportunity to explain, or at least reframe his assertions on a local television interview. Instead, he threw fuel on the fire by saying that if his children (both quite young) told him they were gay, he would take them to a creek and “see if they could swim.” What a guy, right? But wait, there’s more.
If you’ll notice in the above photo, Delegate Porterfield has, what the late Frank McCourt would have called “two eyes that look like pissholes in the snow.” You see, Porterfield is blind. Before you start feeling too sorry for him, let’s look into how he lost his eyesight. When he first came to great attention, the rumor was that he’d lost his sight in a bar fight after dropping a racist slur, but no one had the complete story. Then along came Jake. Jake Zuckerman, of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, that is. Zuckerman learned that Porterfield actually had his eyes gouged out, Three Stooges-style, in a brawl in the parking lot of a strip club in Indiana while he was . . . wait for it . . . in divinity school. I suppose when I introduced him, I should have said that his day job is as the founder and minister at Blind Faith Ministries (get it?). I’ll let Zuckerman’s reporting take the story from here:
“According to his own deposition, Porterfield and a friend, Steven McPherson, left Sky Box, a strip club in Harvey, Illinois, around 10:30 p.m. on the night of Saturday, Dec. 10, 2006. They headed across the Indiana state line to Cavanaugh’s, where they remained until closing time around 3 a.m.
According to her statement to police, Andrea Acevedo, a patron at Cavanaugh’s, was walking to her car with her cousin and two friends nearby, after the bar closed. McPherson approached her and touched her arm without permission. She told police McPherson told her to “shut the f–k up”; in her deposition in the lawsuit, she told attorneys he said “f–k you bitch.”
She said she told him it was late and he was drunk. He apologized. McPherson told police he knows he said something derogatory to Acevedo, and he might have told her to “shut the f–k up.”
Then, according to Acevedo, Porterfield approached.
“What are you apologizing to this bitch for?” Porterfield said, according to Acevedo’s deposition. “You don’t have to apologize.”
As two of her cousin’s friends, Jesus Venegas and Jason Dorado, approached, Porterfield addressed the bunch. “What are you bitches gonna do about it?” he said, according to Acevedo’s deposition.
According to Acevedo and her friends, Porterfield threw the first punch. Dorado said he’s 100 percent sure Porterfield took the first shot. Venegas said Porterfield threw the first punch, knocking him out cold.
Anthony Acevedo, Andrea Acevedo’s cousin, said he heard yelling before the fight.
“I just noticed like people were yelling and it kind of caught my attention, and then like I turned around and looked over, and I see this guy hit Jesus,” he said in his deposition.
McPherson told police the fight began among Porterfield and the others, not himself. He also told police that Porterfield told him not to talk to police.”
Nice guy, huh? But wait, there’s more. What led to the eye gouge?
“In the police report, an officer details information from a doctor, who said Dorado told a nurse that Porterfield bit his ear when Dorado had him in a headlock.
Dorado then “poked his eyes out,” during the fight.
“What the f–k do you want, he bit me?” Dorado said to the nurse, according to the report.”
Ah, ya gotta love the colorful candor of a police field report.
Everyone involved in the melee seems to have declined prosecution, but the depositions quoted come from Porterfield’s civil suit against the strip club for failing to provide adequate security.
This would all be fairly comical, if Porterfield weren’t now in a leadership position in state government. But he is. And I cannot take my eyes off the mess.
