This pod's for you

Here's the  latest installment of WV Public Broadcasting's newish program The Front Porch, in which executive director Scott Finn moderates discussions on live issues between Charleston Daily Mail columnist Laurie Lin and yours truly. This one jumps all over the issue of race and racism. This program is now available on iTunes.

Curiouser and curiouser

The latest developments in the federal prosecution of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship just got more interesting with the release of the contents of recorded conversations. Ken Ward, as usual, is all over it.

Doing well by doing good

Sometimes it really works out that way. A case in point is the decision made by a majority of states to expand Medicaid coverage to low income working adults via the Affordable Care Act. This item from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in DC lays it out.

I couldn't help but notice that there is a strong correlation between NOT expanding Medicaid and being a slave state that attempted to destroy the United States during the Civil War (check the map on the link). Reckon wonder if racism might have anything to do with that?

Views from Baltimore

Lots of people today are thinking about Baltimore given the recent news reports. I developed a fondness for that city during the years that the regional office of my employer, the American Friends Service Committee, was located there. Not to mention The Wire...

Anyhow, today I want to give a shout out to my colleagues in Baltimore who are doing their best to make real peace and struggle for justice there. They are living pretty close to the bone these days. I wish them and that city all the best.

Thinking of friends

My thoughts go out tonight to the city of Baltimore and my friends and co-workers there who are and have been putting their bodies on the line trying to keep the peace while at the same time asserting in an unmistakable way that black lives matter.

ON THAT NOTE, here is a link to one story about a colleague and one interesting statement to come out of the tumult.

A day to remember

This post is being written two hours before  April 28, Workers Memorial Day, which honors all those who died on the job. This time around, it's impossible not to remember the fact that West Virginia has led the nation in mining deaths since 2004. In particular, it is, or should be, impossible to forget those 29 miners who died just a little over five years ago at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine.

As regular readers of this blog know, El Cabrero is something of a hard core if not entirely orthodox Episcopalian. In the words of our Book of Common Prayer, "May light perpetual shine upon them."

And may such things never be again.