John Douglas

Speaking of the State Tax Department, a caller last week was pretty irate because she found it impossible to get through to tax offices in Charleston or Martinsburg via telephone. She said she began calling the State Tax Department before income taxes were due and has called with other questions since, but has never talked to a real, live person. When we mentioned this to other people, we found that they, too, have had the same experience.

With the aid of the Morgan County Assessor's Office, we managed to talk to a Tax Department spokeswoman who agreed that their lines are always busy. Seems there are about 18 people answering their lines in Charleston and each usually deals with 100 calls a day. At tax deadlines and at busy times, such as when the business license renewal letters went out

CNB Bank is celebrating its 75th birthday this week. While CNB isn't the oldest business in Morgan County – actually The Morgan Messenger and Hunter's Hardware are – three-quarters of a century is a milestone for anyone.

That's especially true in the financial world where mergers and acquisitions have reduced the number of independent community banks. CNB is still locally run, with most of its shares owned by local people. Two of the original shareholders are still alive, while other families have passed their shares down from generation to generation.

There's no end to scams. Two of the latest schemes involve calls to people who place classified ads in newspapers, Of course, that's of prime importance to us.

In one case, an elderly woman placed an ad in two area papers to sell a tractor riding mower. She received a call from an AT&T relay operator who said she was passing on a message from a hearing-impaired person. The woman was asked to email the man about the mower.

One of the earliest stories about Morgan County is the saga of an early frontiersman and Indian fighter whose name is variously given as Ede, Edes or Eades.

Harold A. Rice of Berkeley Springs mailed a handwritten copy of the legend to John Harrington Cox on October 2, 1916. Cox was an English professor at West Virginia University and an early collector of folksongs and folklore.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a good decision on Monday when justices voted 5-4 to require that the West Virginia Supreme Court reconsider a case involving Massey Energy.

At issue was whether State Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin should have recused himself from voting to overturn a $50 million verdict against Massey and in favor of a smaller coal company that claimed it was forced into bankruptcy by Massey's business practices.

The Morgan County Commissioners would do well to let state officials know they haven't changed their minds about a toll road between Berkeley Springs and Hancock.

Last year, the Division of Highways studied making the new U.S. 522 a toll road with one toll plaza near the sand mine north of Berkeley Springs. That meant most of the day-to-day traffic between Morgan County and Maryland would be subject to tolls of $1.50 for cars to $4.50 for trucks each way.

A group of 15 War Memorial Hospital employees have won a partial victory in their lawsuit against the hospital over $800,000 in a pension plan.

Circuit Judge John Yoder granted partial summary judgment to the employees and delayed the trial on the remaining issues so the hospital administration and Valley Health System had a chance to appeal.

Whenever "economic development" comes up, many people talk about bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs to our area and bringing them back to America in general. Unfortunately, those jobs have been in decline for decades and much of the talk about their comeback is just, well, talk. We need to find new industries and jobs, not dream about a return to the past.

Sadly, a Maryland study shows that only about 11% of the workforce in adjoining Washington County is employed in manufacturing. With an average weekly wage of $952 in 2007, the manufacturing sector is the best paid, but as we've seen with Prowler and Rayloc in recent years, it was on the downswing even before the recession.

Growing up in World War II

Dan Stiles, who does the popular "In The Wild" column for The Morgan Messenger, recently wrote his memories of growing up in the midst of World War II. Though he was living on a farm in New England, the types of things that happened to him and the life he led weren't so different from what it would have been like in our area.

At a time when health care is becoming a hot national issue, U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia is in a position to do some of the heavy lifting. Rockefeller chairs the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care. He's been a leader in extending health insurance coverage to more and more Americans, and in trying to improve medical care for veterans.

For instance, Rockefeller was one of the driving forces behind CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program. His current legislative agenda includes expanding coverage opportunities for both children and adults.