• Jim Justice ran for governor as a Democrat in 2016.
• In 2017, Democrat Jim Justice proposed the LARGEST tax hike in West Virginia
• Vetoed the budget because he wanted a tax increase
• Justice proposed tax increases on cigarettes and sugary soft drinks

Source: The Parkersburg News and Sentinel 02/19/2017

"We need to go big and if we waste some money now, well, we waste some money" - Gov. Jim Justice on COVID-19 Relief Plan

Source: MSNBC 2/1/21

• Gov. Jim Justice said recently that congressional Republican leaders’ plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act “would cripple us beyond belief.”

Source: WV Gazette Mail 06/29/17

Charleston Gazette-Mail | March 9, 2024

While Pinkey Mullens was in chemotherapy, Gov. Jim Justice’s business empire kept him from medication he needed to live.

“That really makes you feel bad,” said Mullens, 70, of Wyoming County.

Mullens endured years of interruptions in his prescription drug coverage that Justice’s business empire was responsible for after he retired from Justice’s Double-Bonus Coal Co. in 2007.

“I worked for him like a dog,” Mullens said, recalling two-week periods where he put in 30 hours of overtime.

Mullens is among the 250 to 300 recipients of prescription drug coverage for whom the United Mine Workers of America says Justice’s coal companies have failed to provide contractually promised coverage intermittently in recent years. Four retirees of Justice coal companies and the UMWA sued those companies in 2019 to enforce an agreement covering prescription drug coverage in an unresolved lawsuit.

For Mullens and his wife Cathy, that has meant going without coverage for up to three weeks. The Glen Fork couple has gone up to a week without some medications. They say Renegade Pharmacy in nearby Oceana has given them four to five days’ worth of the most critical medications to sustain them until their coverage is restored.

On top of chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, bouts with diarrhea and the onset of diabetes, Mullens had to worry about the availability of drugs keeping him alive. Mullens has tried to pick up antibiotic medicine used to control diarrhea stemming from his bone marrow transplant only to find his coverage has been dropped.

Prescription payments through a third-party administrator sometimes have been unavailable, Steven Ruby, a lawyer for the companies, has claimed. In those cases, Ruby said, the companies have paid the cost.

Ruby has said he could not explain the cause of repeated critical prescription health coverage lapses.

United Mine Workers of America International spokesperson Erin Bates said coverage lapses haven’t been an issue since last year.

But for Mullens, who is now in remission from leukemia, Justice’s yearslong failure to ensure his company retirees had prescription drug coverage when they needed it already took its toll.

And now that the U.S. Senate candidate’s business empire is crumbling with key assets in peril to satisfy hundreds of millions of dollars of unpaid personal and company debts, Mullens has no sympathy for his former boss.

“I do not feel sorry for him,” Mullens said. “I hope he has to pay every penny, plus penalties. That’s what I hope.“

. . .

But while Justice and his businesses face losing assets to banks and foreign companies elsewhere, from a helicopter to dozers, Pinkey Mullens is stuck at home more than he’d like to be.

His health won’t allow him to hunt, fish or even cut the weeds at his Glen Fork home.

His memory won’t allow him to feel sorry for the man for which he used to do so much more.“He deserves everything he gets,” Mullens said.

Source: WV Gazette Mail 2/1/21

"I think we can live with this pandemic but the more people we can get across the finish line and get vaccinated the better we'll be able to live with this pandemic. It's not over. It's absolutely not over."
- Gov. Jim Justice

Source: WCHS/CBS

Source: Register-Herald 5/31/22

Source: WCHS TV 3/29/17

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