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The Hidden Cost of State Income Tax Repeal: A Case Study of the West Virginia Neighborhood Investment Program Credit
Full text linkIn March 2023, West Virginia significantly cut its personal income tax rates and paved a path toward the full repeal of the personal income tax. This repeal would directly impact West Virginia’s nonprofit sector and reduce charitable giving because it would render West Virginia’s Neighborhood Investment Program (“NIP”) tax credit ineffective. NIP tax credits have been the primary charitable tax incentive in the state’s income tax code and have been widely supported by nonprofits. This Article argues that if the NIP credit program incentivizes charitable giving, then state income tax repeal comes with a hidden cost—the cost of lost revenues to private charities increasingly tasked with providing vital social services. Following the introduction in Part I, Part II looks at West Virginia’s state personal income tax repeal and similar repeal proposals under consideration in other states. Part III reviews state level charitable giving incentives and their interplay with the Federal charitable deduction, using the NIP credit in West Virginia as a case study. Part IV introduces Professor Paul McDaniel’s federal charitable matching grant proposal, first introduced in 1972, which was developed in response to changes in the federal charitable income tax deduction and a growing concern about the role of tax expenditures. The Article proposes that Professor McDaniel’s federal matching grant program could be adapted by those states that have repealed (or are considering repealing) their personal income tax but still wish to incentivize charitable giving on the state level. Part V specifically demonstrates how Professor McDaniel’s grant program overlaps considerably with the structure of West Virginia’s NIP tax credit and could be easily amended to replace the credit in the event of full personal income tax repeal. The Article concludes by urging West Virginia to be a leader among the states considering income tax repeal by demonstrating the manner in which a matching grants program could replace charitable tax incentives
Run Runaway
No full texthttps://researchrepository.wvu.edu/fixation-db-music-videos/8506/thumbnail.jp
Detana! TwinBee Yahoo! Deluxe Pack
No full texthttps://researchrepository.wvu.edu/fixation-db-video-games/4212/thumbnail.jp
“Everybody Else Seems to be Able to Get Help”: Rural Regulation, Access Loss, and Antigovernment Sentiment
Full text linkThis Essay draws upon two decades of the author’s research on rural United States communities to explicate ways in which the regulatory state has intervened in rural areas and economies, often with the claim of protecting land, natural resources, and/or wildlife. The outcomes are frequently disastrous for the human populations of those communities and generally are not planned for or mitigated by policy. The Essay argues that rural distrust of and aversion to government oversight is not caused primarily by ideological or cultural stances, but rather is an outcome of experiences of abandonment by the agencies that are meant to protect United States land and communities from harm. Drawing primarily from two rural Northwestern case studies, the Essay documents the impacts of changing regulations in rural communities on those populations and explores their reactions. Regulatory attacks are contrasted with state failures to protect and provide for the same citizens. The Essay argues that antigovernment sentiment is a rational reaction from people who have experienced the persistent abandonment and exploitation of their labor, their communities, their economies, and their land
Labor and Environment Entwined: A Radical Green New Deal and Just Transition in Appalachia
Full text linkIn this Article, Professor Lofaso and Professor Stump propose a genuinely transformative Green New Deal and Just Transition in Appalachia. The Article opens by tracing the long history of the Appalachian labor and environmental movements. Next, the Article interrogates the common contention that the Appalachian environmental and labor movements are opposed. While this contention has substantial truth, more complex forces have been at work in the region. Fossil fuel industry elites, for instance, have wielded exaggerated “jobs versus environment” rhetoric to maximize profits and quash emergent solidarities among local workers, residents, and activists. This Article contends that a key solution is pursuing a jobs-and-environment strategy, as exemplified by leading proposals, such as the Green New Deal and Just Transition. However, such proposals should be informed by bottom-up approaches that require radical transformations of our ecological political economy and not mere “policy interventions” from within the system. Such proposals also should reach beyond the United States, grounded in an emancipatory green transition that requires ending imperialism and neocolonialism. Ultimately, such an approach would constitute a radical Green New Deal and Just Transition democratically coordinated from regional to global scales
Romantic Materialities and the Politics of Care: Negotiating Movement in a More-Than-Human World
No full textThis dissertation explores the ecological politics of movement in Romantic literature. It contributes to a growing body of scholarship that investigates the important role that walking played in nineteenth-century literary culture. Many authors from this period cast walking as a practice that frees up not only the body but the mind as well, as the steady rhythm of the feet lulls the walker into a state of self-absorbed introspection and heightened creativity. Because of this, walking was a celebrated part of the creative process for many writers. The freedom they celebrate is possible, however, only in spaces that are level, clear, and accommodating to the human gait. This understanding of walking, though valid and consequential, cannot account for movement in more complex environments. Such environments disrupt the easy rhythms of walking and demand different kinds of movement (e.g., creeping, plodding, crawling, and scrambling) as well as focused outward attention. In work by Henry David Thoreau, Dorothy Wordsworth, John Clare, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, I find that these environments disrupt not only the travelers’ movement but also their intentions: plan ahead as they may, their journeys are altered and guided by the contingencies of the environments through which they move. In these travel accounts, individual travelers must negotiate their own goals and interests (be they aesthetic, pragmatic, or otherwise) with the sometimes conflicting interests of a varied and complex material world. I read these texts through the lens of Jane Bennet’s vibrant materialism to demonstrate the ways in which these variations of walking evoke, on the one hand, an acknowledgment of the travelers’ own materiality (thus resituating them within the physical world from which mental wandering might abstract them) and, on the other hand, a heightened sense of the presence and liveliness of the material world around them. The result is a toppling of the ontological hierarchy that places the human apart from and above all else. This shift in understanding motivates in the traveler (and, perhaps, in the reader as well) a disposition of ecological care—that is, an ethical imperative to move and act more conscientiously, with a goal of honoring the vitality of all
The Barbosa Model: Supporting Faculty in Online Course Development through a Structured Instructional Design Approach
No full textThe expansion of online education has amplified the need for structured, pedagogically informed faculty development. This study explored the implementation of the Barbosa Model—an instructional design framework developed to support faculty in creating effective, engaging, and well-aligned online courses. Grounded in established instructional theories and tailored to institutional needs, the model guides faculty through five phases: Existing Course, Mapping Structure, Review, Design, and Evaluation.
The study conducted at West Liberty University used pre- and post-interviews, faculty reflections, and thematic analysis to evaluate the model’s influence on faculty perceptions, instructional strategies, and professional growth. Findings revealed that while faculty perceptions of online teaching were initially high, the Barbosa Model prompted deeper reflection, enhanced instructional alignment, and reinforced best practices in engagement and assessment. The faculty reported improved clarity in course design and assessment strategies and increased intentionality in design decisions.
This research contributes to the growing literature on faculty development and instructional design in higher education by demonstrating how a systematic, reflective model can foster sustainable instructional improvement. The Barbosa Model offers a flexible, scalable approach for institutions seeking to enhance the quality of online instruction while supporting faculty autonomy and professional learning. Ultimately, this approach ensures that online education remains effective, engaging, and adaptable to the evolving needs of educators and learners, supporting a sustainable model of high-quality instruction