How I survived year one of the Cheeto Apocalypse (although there are a few days left)

(2017 would have gone much better if Arpad the Magnificent, pictured above, was still around)

Well, year one of America's latest dark journey is about to end. I can't say I'll miss it much.

Greed and hatred triumphant. Fascism and white supremacy's moment in the sun. Sealing the deal on oligarchy. Still there were moments.

In this post, I want to write a bit about how I got through it. I'm interested in your ideas as well. After all, the dark journey isn't anywhere near over yet. So, in no particular order, here goes:

1. Obviously, certain people and animals helped, starting with La Cabrera my partner.
Without her there wouldn't even be goats to name and exploit in this blog. Then there are friends, family (literal and metaphorical) and comrades, with some overlap there. I've been blessed to have a great group of people to work and talk **** with. It's also been a pretty good year for gallows humor.

2. Spy novels. A while back I listened to a lecture series on the history of espionage. The lecturer mentioned some notable fiction on this subject, including the novels of Alan Furst, which are all set in the 1930s and 40s and deal with resistance to the Nazis, which for some unknown reason seemed to fit my mood. I devoured all 14 one after another. He needs to get busy again. (Now I'm on John LeCarre, although I read him more for nostalgia about the good old days of the Cold War, which may not have been what the author was going for.)

3. Hoopla. My local public library, which hasn't been privatized and auctioned off just yet, has this feature by which you can download books (audio and electronic), music, and videos to smartphones and other devices. I go through tons of audiobooks while driving, running and doing tasks that don't take a lot of thought (my favorite kind). With CD books, I was always at risk of misplacing and losing discs, which was a pain. Hoopla changed all that. Hoopla also helped me take a...

4. Wisdom bath. With Hoopla's help I was able to listen to unabridged recordings of Herodotus' The Histories, Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, and Plutarch's Lives. I'd read them all before at least once, but it was nice to pound them down in order. Herodotus's story of the Greco-Persian War, heavy on wonders and tall tales, is a moral study of the dangers of hubris. Plutarch has been mined for 2000 years for lessons and inspiration. His Lives were also the source of several of Shakespeare's plays. Thucydides' no-nonsense account of how a great democracy went off the rails was like a warning.

5. The Resistance. I couldn't believe the size of the Women's March in Washington, in Charleston and around the country--or the many groups springing up around WV and elsewhere which are determined to fight back.

I had the privilege to travel around the state to meet and work with "new" and "old" groups of people committed to social justice from Huntington to Concord to Lewisburg to Parkersburg to Wheeling to Buckhannon to Morgantown to  Berkeley Springs to Charles Town, with plenty of stops in between. To use the language of spy novels (see #1) this meant many more assets to work with.

7. The fights. There were several in the legislature, a few of which were successful. Much of the year was devoted to trying to preserve recent gains in health coverage, particularly Medicaid expansion, which brought coverage to around 175,000 working West Virginians. At first it looked like flat-out ACA repeal was a slam dunk but that didn't happen, thanks to the hard work of people all over WV and the nation. Then there was the #taxscam tax reform fight, which didn't go as well. More fights, starting with CHIP reauthorization, are on their way. It may not have done any good, but I was also lucky enough to have some soapboxes to rant from in the form of newspapers, radio and such.

8. Physical activity. No marathon this year (but watch out, 2018!) but there were plenty of foot miles slogged, not to mention martial arts, yoga and such. I'm especially grateful to my Okinawan karate lineage, which includes legends like Funakoshi, Itosu, Kyan, Matsumura and Sakugawa.

9. Coffee and box wine, for obvious reasons and at different times of day. Oh yeah, and some attendance of Episcopal church services.

10. Myths, stories and ancient teachings. The Buddha on impermanence, insubstantiality and suffering. The Bhagavad Gita on following one's path or dharma: "It is better to fail at your own dharma than to succeed at someone else's." The Norse idea of Ragnarok, a final battle doomed to fail but still worth fighting. Dante's allegory of the need for both human effort and divine grace.

Then there's Tolkien's idea of "eucatastrophe," an unexpected turn of events that brings good news when all seems hopeless. One of those would be nice right about now. Who knows--we might even get one in the new year.

Speaking of Christmas

That's right, it's that time of year again, which means it's time to for the annual Christmas Shakespeare quote as spoken by the sentry Marcellus as he stands on the battlements of the castle of Elsinore in Act 1 Scene 1 of Hamlet.

The tone of the scene is pretty ominous. The legitimate ruler is no more. A usurper is on the throne. There are wars and rumors of war and evil portents in the land.

I feel sorry for those guys...

Marcellus and Bernardo have invited the student Horatio to join them in their lonely night vigil where for some nights past a ghost has appeared resembling the late King Hamlet, father of the prince who is the main character of the story.

Horatio represents a prototype of modernity, an intellectual familiar with the tradition but skeptical of it. Yet even he must concede the power of the unknown after witnessing the phantom, which he takes as a portent of bad things to come.


Marcellus then points out that there are also sometimes portents of good, particularly at this season of the year:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

At this point, all I can do is say with Horatio, "So have I heard and do in part believe it."

Would that it were so this holiday season and beyond.

(Note: this post was reprinted from this this blog at time last year. In one form or other it shows up here most years at Christmas. So have I heard and do in  part believe it. Meanwhile, I wish I'd written this Christmas commentary by Chris Reagan.)

Three ways bad

For a quick look at what's bad in the #taxscam bogus tax reform that seems ready to slide through Congress, all you have to do is take a look at three charts here that show how it will:

*increase pre-tax inequality;

*make the tax system more regressive, meaning that people with lower incomes will pay a higher percentage of their income; and

*raise after-tax income for the top 10 percent of income at the expense of the bottom 90. Most of the benefits will go to the wealthiest 0.1 percent.

I guess this is what happens when money trumps democracy.

At least there's this

OK, so the world may be going to hell in a hand-basket but it's not all bad. Researchers in Australia have recently discovered a new species of marsupial lion. Apparently it was about the size of a dog and weighed in at 23 kilograms, which for metric system hating freedom lovers is around 51 pounds.

I've often wondered how big our cat Wu would have to be for us to be in danger here at Goat Rope Farm. I think I'd start getting nervous at around 40 pounds.

Out of touch

One thing that most people would agree on across the political spectrum is that West Virginia would be better off if more of us were working and earning a living wage. I know I’m down with that.

Unfortunately, some of the ways that have been proposed for working towards that goal are counterproductive and just mean. Possibly cynical, too.

For example, Seema Verma, head of the federal Medicare and Medicaid program under the current regime, recently proposed to solve that problem by clamping down on Medicaid, specifically on those millions of people who gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Most of whom work. Go figure.

In a speech to state Medicaid directors, she said things that have at best a tenuous connection with reality. She seemed indignant that some of those who have gained health coverage in recent years are people who “are physically capable of being actively engaged in their communities.”

Let’s start with the basics. They already are. People who gained coverage due to Medicaid expansion had to come from families that had income, although it was under 138 percent of the federal poverty level. That means they weren’t receiving TANF (welfare) or disability payments, in which case they would have qualified for traditional Medicaid.

Generally speaking, that means they work.

Let’s be more specific. These are the people who do the grunt work of society. They wait on us in stores and restaurants. They change our oil. They clean our motel rooms. They wash our dogs. They clean up our messes. And, most importantly, they take care of our children and elders.

It would take a lot to persuade me that Verma didn’t know better when she said that. But if she, and the regime she serves, didn’t, it only shows how out of touch they are with the reality of millions of working people.

According to the Center on Law and Social Policy, around 60 percent of working-age adults on Medicaid have jobs. And around 80 percent are in families with at least one worker. The few that aren’t are usually seeking work, dealing with illness or disability, or caring for other family members.

In her speech, Verma seemed to imply that people like this who get Medicaid coverage enjoy wallowing in poverty and “government dependence.”

(Ever notice that many of the people who complain about this receive some form of health care from the federal government?)

I guess one of the innumerable advantages of being well-off is being spared the knowledge that less than half of all Americans are covered by work-based insurance. According to the Census Bureau, in 2016 only 58.3 percent of West Virginians of prime working age (19-64) get coverage from their jobs.

Here’s the reality in West Virginia. Since 2001, the percentage of low-wage jobs (earning under 150 percent of the poverty level for a family of two) has grown by 14.5 percent, even as jobs in high-wage industries have declined. These jobs typically don’t offer health coverage.

Nearly one in four West Virginians works in such a job. Around 55 percent of West Virginia’s children live in a family with at least one low-wage worker. For many, low-wage jobs are no longer a temporary steppingstone to a better gig but are rather a lifetime path.

Most low-wage workers are white, although blacks make up a disproportionate share. Fifty-six percent are women. Younger workers are more likely to earn low wages, but nearly half of workers above age 35 work in low-wage jobs.

Behold the face of “the enemy.” It may look a lot like our friends, neighbors, relatives and even ourselves.

I think what’s really driving this push at the federal level to cut back on things like health care is the desire of the administration and its allies in Congress to pass a massive “tax reform” package that would give huge breaks to the very wealthy — who don’t need them — at the expense of everyone else. That $1.5 trillion giveaway to the rich has to come from somewhere.

And, under what must be huge pressure from the federal administration, there are officials in West Virginia who seem eager to push for bogus “reforms” that will ultimately reduce the number of people with health care. Cutting Medicaid rolls may seem attractive to some people, even if it means taking away coverage and increasing the costs of uncompensated care for everyone else.

Some options now under consideration include unnecessary and redundant “work requirements” for Medicaid that would wind up taking millions of dollars out of the state’s economy and harming those sectors that are actually providing and increasing jobs.

In the past, Gov. Jim Justice has eloquently defended vulnerable West Virginians. I hope he continues to hold the line.

At this point, no one can say how far these proposed changes will go. But we’d be better off if they didn’t go anywhere.

(This ran as an op-ed in yesterday's Gazette-Mail.)

That fuzzy line again

There has been story after story lately of politicians pretending to care about West Virginia's--and the nation's--opioid crisis.

Unfortunately, these are the same politicians who have been working night and day to reduce or eliminate the kind of treatment recovering addicts need by repealing the ACA and/or pushing through a #taxscam bogus tax reform bill that gives massive cuts to the rich while crowding out other kinds of federal funding. Like addiction treatment and Medicaid expansion.

Once again, I have trouble distinguishing irony and hypocrisy. But I'm leaning toward the latter.

Anyhow, here's an op-ed by a friend of mine explaining why you can't have it both ways.

#TaxScam revisited

It looks like America’s ruling elite has decided to give itself a huge raise and the rest of us are going to pay for it in one way or another. The U.S. Senate’s “tax reform” bill is one that is likely to affect Americans for years. Even decades. Not in a good way.

Here are 10 things we need to know about the highly partisan version of the bill that’s been pushed through the Senate.

1. President George W. Bush passed massive tax cuts and what we got was ... permanent prosperity? Oh, wait, it was the biggest crash since the Great Depression. I’m not saying the tax cuts were the main cause of the crash, although they did contribute to the financial bubbles that led to it. But it’s obvious that tax cuts don’t guarantee growth or prosperity or economic stability.

2. This is a Trojan horse. The massive transfer of wealth to those who already have it will eventually crowd out funding for things like Medicare, Medicaid, student aid, food security, housing, etc.

3. There are plenty of “starve the beast” ideologues who want that to happen. They hope a crisis will force cuts to domestic programs.

4. If that sounds paranoid, consider that President Donald Trump has promised to pursue welfare “reform” next, despite the fact that it was already drastically reformed over 20 years ago. This time around, the definition of welfare is going to be broadened to include any form of federal spending that goes to working people, seniors, kids or the poor.

5. Then there’s the whole thing about adding $1.5 trillion-plus to the deficit for no good reason.

6. Whatever cuts some middle class people will get is a sugar high. Those cuts are temporary, while cuts to corporations and the wealthy are permanent.


7. Due to the tilt of the programs towards the wealthy, people in 19 states, including West Virginia, will eventually pay more in 2027 than they do under current law.

8. Then there’s the consequences of repealing the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which will greatly increase the number of uninsured Americans and drive up costs for everyone else. Trump has also pledged to pursue the further dismantling of recent health care gains.

9. The whole thing is based on flaky economics. A University of Chicago poll of economists found that only 2 percent of those polled thought the “reform” package would boost the economy; 36 percent were uncertain, 33 percent disagreed and another 19 percent strongly disagreed. There was, however, pretty universal agreement that it would blow up the national debt.

10. Over the last few decades, the U.S. has moved dramatically away from democracy and towards oligarchy and plutocracy, defined as effective rule by a wealthy few. This is likely to seal the deal.

Given all that, golly, what could possibly go wrong?

(This item appeared in the Gazette-Mail this week. It may resemble an earlier blog post.)

Yes, it's that bad

If you want to learn more about how bad the #taxscam aka "tax reform" bill that just passed the US Senate is, you can check this news story, this Gazette-Mail op-ed and this statement from Families USA. Short version: pretty damn.

TaxScam in a nutshell

Here's what I think we need to know about the highly partisan version of tax "reform" now being pushed through the senate:

1. George W. Bush passed massive tax cuts and what we got was....permanent prosperity? Oh, wait, it was the biggest crash since the Great Depression. I'm not saying the tax cuts were the sole cause, although they did contribute to the financial bubbles that led to it. But it's obvious that tax cuts don't guarantee growth or prosperity or economic stability.

2. This is a Trojan horse. The massive transfer of wealth to those who already have it will eventually crowd out funding for things like Medicare, Medicaid, student aid, food security, housing etc.

3. There are plenty of "starve the beast" Republicans who want that to happen. They hope a crisis will force cuts to domestic programs.

4. Then there's the whole thing about adding $1.5 trillion+ to the deficit for no good reason.

5. Whatever cuts some middle class people will get is a sugar high. Those cuts are temporary, while cuts to corporations and the wealthy are permanent.

6. Due to the tilt of the programs towards the wealthy, people in 19 states, including West Virginia, will eventually pay more in 2027 than they do under current law.

7. Then there's the consequences of repealing the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, which will greatly increase the number of uninsured Americans and drive up costs for everyone else.

I mean, golly, what could possibly go wrong?

Thoughts on seeing bears

My daughter, sometimes referred to here as La Cabrita, is a seriously educated woman. As in doctorate. Most of her views on the world are fairly conventional, with a few exceptions.

One such exception is her oft stated conviction that a zombie apocalypse on the order of The Walking Dead could actually occur.

In her words, "that **** could really happen!"

( Another, sad to say, is her belief that living in trees would be a solution to that problem. But that's a digression...)

Her other main odd belief is that bears are intelligent, consciously malevolent evil creatures which exist only to do humanity harm.

I disagree with this assessment, thinking of them more as wild, large and somewhat dangerous dog cousins with strange sleeping habits which should be left alone but which are otherwise cool.

Although the black bear is the state animal of West Virginia, I haven't seen a whole lot of them here. My closest views were had in Washington state, Vermont, and Florida.

Now there's a triangle. Talk about going to extremes...

My closest encounter happened while walking with the Spousal Unit and dogs in the Vermont woods, when we saw one coming down from a tree.

This happened at the same time as Pope Francis' visit to the US. My mind naturally ran to two common rhetorical questions: "Is the pope Catholic?" and "Does a bear relief itself in the woods?"

I took that as a sign from above and made it a point to try to answer every question in the affirmative for the next month or so.

Most recently, I was jogging on a trail in Florida that ran by the edge of the woods. The trail ran for about .75 miles long and I was on lap two or three when I saw something in the distance. I asked myself whether that bush or tree was there on the last lap. When I got closer, I saw it standing on all fours, kind of like pictures I've seen or gorillas. Then it got up and walked away.

Florida bears have a reputation, justified in my opinion, of being pretty chill. I kept running the loop but reversed course in order to give it time to get away--and not to push my luck. 

Still, there was a feeling of awe, fascination and a bit of an instinctive spine chill at seeing such a magnificent creature.

I hope I get the chance to feel that again. From a suitable distance.

Annual Thanksgiving Possum Recipe

It's Thanksgiving once again and that means one thing here at Goat Rope: it's time for the Annual Thanksgiving Possum Recipe.

I found one on the web that seems particularly interesting, to wit, Cajun possum chili, which is said to be NUCLEAR HOT!!

(I couldn't vouch for the truth of this since I don't eat possum, but that does sound plausible. Here's the recipe (and if you click here you can find two others at the same site). Enjoy!

Cajun Possum Chili - NUCLEAR HOT !!!

Ingredients:
Tomatoe Sauce (depends on possum)
1 tsp.-1 cup Chili Powder (Depends on Taste and possum)
1 Large possum or 3 small (If you ran over the possum better make it 4)
1 large pot or two large ones if the first isn't enough.
5-10 chili peppers (depends on taste and possum)
5-10 red peppers (depends on taste and possum)
5-10 jalapenio peppers (depends on taste and possum)
How ever much Cayenne Pepper you like, it depends on your taste and possum.
1 tsp. Black Pepper
a pinch of salt
Chili Beans for extra flavor
And whatever other ingredients that are hot and spicy you would like to add.

Directions:
1. Skin possum(s)
2. Remove internal organs, head, claws, and bones. There is no flavor or use for these. But if you want to add them, Go ahead.
3. Put some tomatoe sauce in the pot(s). Then add the possum.
4. Chop peppers
5. Skip step four if you don't want chopped peppers; it doesn't matter.
6. Put the rest in and let set for a long dang while.
7. Before serving make sure you have enough bread, Milk, and Toliet paper for after dinner.
8. Serve. Enjoy
9. Race for bathroom. Whoever is first will make a large stench. Have enough air freshner.
Serving size of Meal-depends on how much you put in and on the possum.

Warning-You're a redneck if you try this. (Either that or you like really hot chili.) May cause sudden urges to go to the bathroom. May cause burned tongues and mouths. May cause severe indigestion!! ---Anonymous

  

Raising the floor

Recently, I worked on a report about the state of West Virginia's low-wage workers with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. Some results weren't surprising. The number of low-wage jobs, defined in this case as 150 percent of the federal poverty level for a family of two ($11.59 per hour or under $24,108 per year) has grown by 14.5 percent since 2001, while employment in high wage industries has declined by 2.8 percent.

Key industries employing low-wage workers include grocery stores, retail, food services and personal care for children or the elderly. Nearly one in four West Virginians works at such a job. For many, these jobs are no longer a stepping stone to a better gig but rather a lifelong path. Fifty-five percent of the state's children (200,900 in all) live in a household with at least one low-wage worker.

While most such workers in West Virginia are white, African-Americans are more likely to earn low wages. The rates are 23 and 31 percent, respectively. Fifty-six percent of low-wage workers are women. Younger workers are more likely to earn low wages than those in their prime. Rates shoot up again for workers 65 and older. Still, nearly half of all workers over 35 have low-wage jobs.

One major factor affecting wage levels is, unsurprisingly, educational attainment. Fully 44 percent of those without high school diplomas earned low wages. For high school graduates and those with some college, the rate dropped to 28 percent. Rates of low earners dropped to 12 percent for people with associate's degrees and less than 10 percent for those with a bachelor's degree or more.

One obvious policy change to raise earnings and our state's abysmal statistics would be to put more resources into affordable post-secondary education rather than unproductive tax cuts. Indeed, cuts enacted over the last 10 years were more than enough to pay tuition and fees for a public college education for every student in the state.

It's pretty clear that anything that helps people move from low to living wages - or keeps people from sinking lower -would strengthen West Virginia's economy, boost demand for goods and services provided by local businesses, and help increase the state's chronically low workforce participation rate.

Some other steps in that direction include:

*Protecting West Virginia's Medicaid program. This federal-state partnership provides care to nearly one out of three West Virginians, including 170,000 people from working families earning under 138 percent of the federal poverty level. It also supports thousands of jobs in health care and other sectors. Losing that would be a huge hit to the state's economy and drive thousands of West Virginians into deeper levels of poverty and misery.

*Enacting a refundable state earned income tax credit (EITC). So far 29 states and the District of Columbia have enacted such credits to help people build assets, pay off debts and offset the impact of regressive taxes. The EITC is a proven tool to fight poverty, increase labor-force participation and help workers in low-wage jobs afford necessities. This is no radical idea - recently, the WestVirginia Bankers Association came out in support of a state EITC.

*Protecting and enhancing child care assistance. Child-care assistance is crucial to helping low-income families maintain employment, stay off public assistance and have higher earnings. Without assistance, it is simply unaffordable, forcing workers to choose between child care and a job. Increasing the eligibility level for families from 150 percent to 200 percent of the poverty line could reduce the "cliff effect," which discourages parents from advancing in their jobs and careers.

*Raising and indexing the minimum wage. In 2014 West Virginia passed legislation to increase its minimum wage to $8.75 per hour, $1.50 more than the $7.25 federal rate. That was a step forward but is still not a living wage. It's high time for another hike, which could be phased in over several years and indexed to the rate of inflation.

*Preserving and expanding early childhood education and voluntary home visiting programs. Evidence suggests there is a critical period in early childhood, roughly equivalent to the first 1,000 days of life, which can make a huge difference in cognitive, emotional, social and physical development. These in turn can impact health and economic well-being across the lifespan.

Bottom line: Workers in low-wage jobs constitute a large and important segment of West Virginia's population. These are the people who do some of the most important work in our communities, such as caring for children and the elderly. The steps we take to help them improve their economic status is critical to ensuring a better future for all West Virginians.

(This appeared as an op-ed in Sunday's Huntington Herald-Dispatch.)

Miasma

Recent acts of senseless violence and other forms of trauma reminded me of the ancient Greek idea of miasma, which means something like pollution. The religion writer Karen Armstrong talks about it as a contagious power that “has an independent life of its own.”

Think of it as hazmat.

The Greeks seemed to believe that every act of violence, hubris, cruelty or excess unleashes a bit of miasma on the world. Often the people who unleash it minimize it or think they can control it. They can’t. Miasma isn’t loyal. It bounces. And like a toxic chemical or an infectious disease, it can leak into the atmosphere and water and have effects far beyond the initial point of infection.

Miasma also doesn’t seem to respect borders — even those with walls — or to have an expiration date. The effects of the spiral of violence and trauma (miasma) can continue across continents and generations.

The child who is abused or witnesses abuse may one day abuse. The victim may one day become a perpetrator. The trauma done to a group or individual can have effects across time and space. The eventual target of all this may be random and innocent. It may be us.

One strand of Greek mythology follows the thread of miasma across generations in one family. It started with Tantalus, who for a time enjoyed the favor of the gods. He tried to trick them at a feast by feeding them the flesh of the shoulder of his son Pelops. For this he was punished in the underworld by eternal hunger and thirst. Hence the word “tantalize.”

Pelops, who was restored by Zeus, would later murder his would-be father in law by cheating in a chariot race. He also murdered the person who helped him do the deed. Not surprisingly, the victim cursed him with his dying breath. The curse would play out in the future.

Pelops’ sons were Atreus and Thyestes. They murdered their own half-brother but later had a deadly quarrel, which ended in a horrific act of child murder and cannibalism. Each brother had a son who continued the curse and the conflict in the next generation.

Agamemnon, son of Atreus, led the Greek forces to invade Troy. He sacrificed his own daughter Iphigenia to gain favorable winds for the fleet. While he was gone, his wife Clytemnestra became the lover of Aegisthus, the son of Thyestes, who was born of an incestuous union.

Yeah, it was a mess of extra-biblical proportions.

Agamemnon was murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus when he returned from the destruction of Troy. His son Orestes murdered his mother and her lover and was pursued by the Furies, dark underworld deities who punished crimes against blood kin.

On and on, one thing after another. Kind of like world history.

In the end, as the Greek tragedian Aeschylus tells it, it took divine intervention, rational deliberation and democracy to bring the awful cycle to an end.

The way things are going, we may need all that as well.

The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum finds some lessons for us in all this:

“Greek tragedy shows good people being ruined because of things that just happen to them, things that they do not control. This is certainly sad; but it is an ordinary fact of human life, and no one would deny that it happens ... . Tragedy also shows something more deeply disturbing: it shows good people doing bad things, things otherwise repugnant to their ethical character and commitments, because of circumstances whose origin does not lie with them.”

Things happen to us and to others. We react, not always in the best ways. We get caught up in situations beyond our direct control. The chain of events gets longer. Dominoes fall. Which means more miasma.

Recent research in the field of public health shows that the long-lasting effects of the trauma of things that happened to us or that we get caught up in aren’t confined to mythology. They can occur in much more ordinary ways — often in childhood — but still have long lasting effects.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that trauma isn’t destiny and that there are ways we can help those who’ve suffered from it and reduce the damage that it can do now and in the future. Often these are as simple as a positive relationship with a responsible adult.

I think it would be a huge step forward for us all if we became more conscious of the ways that the effects of trauma can spiral out over time and space — and if institutions such as schools, health care providers, public services, law enforcement, courts and corrections institutions became more trauma informed and adjusted their practice accordingly.

As Albert Camus put it, “We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.”

(This appeared as an op-ed in yesterday's Gazette.)

Game changer?

The big news in WV these days is a "game changing" deal with China Energy that could mean $83 billion in investment around shale gas and related developments. I found two different but interesting takes on this news from different parts of the state.

This Gazette piece warns that the deal could doom WV to another century as a mineral colony and could have negative environmental impacts. Closer to the likely point of impact, I found this piece from the Wheeling Intelligencer, which is generally pretty conservative, to be interesting. While not criticizing the deal as such, it warns about the dangers of continuing to rely on one major industry, even a relatively new one.

It even calls for making the Future Fund, which is only on the books at this point, a reality. The idea behind a Future Fund is to set aside a portion of severance taxes to create a permanent source of wealth for WV.

I especially like the idea of investing more in education, or "preparing our children for careers in which they, not anything pulled from the earth, were viewed as the valuable resource."

In any case, I hope WV doesn't make the same mistake in the century to come that it did in the last one.

In the forest of the night

Spider, spider burning bright...

Last night, I took the dog on a walk in the woods while wearing a headlamp. It had been raining, so there was water on the grass. As we trudged up and down the hill, I saw what looked like a skyfil  of little diamonds moving on the ground. A closer look revealed, a closer look revealed a multitude of spiders busy going about their nocturnal business. There had to be thousands of them.

I guess I knew that there were spiders on the hill. And I guess I didn't expect them to go to be at sundown. Still, there was all this activity going on all around me that I'd never been aware of before.

I think that's a pretty good metaphor for life. There's stuff we don't have a hint about going on all around us all the time. Thoreau said "Only that day dawns to which we are awake" I guess something like that is true of the night as well.

Miasma

The tragic shooting in Texas and other recent acts of violence made me think of an ancient Greek idea about miasma, which means something like pollution.  In one of her books, the religion writer Karen Armstrong talks about it as a contagious power that “has an independent life of its own.” Think of it as hazmat.

I think that every act of violence, excess, hubris, moral blindness and such unleashes a bit of miasma on the world. The people who unleash it think they can control it, but they can’t. Miasma isn’t loyal. Like a toxic chemical or infectious disease, it leaks into the air and water and can have effects far beyond the initial point of infection.

It also doesn't seem to have an expiration date. The child who sees abuse may one day abuse. The victim may one day become the perpetrator. The trauma to an individual or group can have effects far across time and space. The target may be random. It may be us.The less we use it, the less pollution we release into the world, the better off we all are.

Unfortunately there's a lot of miasma out there. More every day.

A holiday we could use

A Mexican custom of which El Cabrero is a big fan of is the Day of the Dead, which corresponds with All Saints Day in the Church calendar. Halloween, you recall, is All-Hallows-Eve or the day before. Similar customs are observed elsewhere, but it is the official Goat Rope verdict that this is the coolest.

The celebration likely has pre-Christian roots. During the Aztec month of Miccailhuitonli (say that 10 times while spinning around), there was a festival presided over by the "Lady of the Dead" which was dedicated both to children and the dead. Originally, this was celebrated in the summer, but there was an understandable post-colonial shift.

Now the festivities usually continue for the first two days of November and include acts that symbolically welcome the dead back into their homes and visiting family graves. There's special food including "pan de muerto" or bread of the dead. Family altars and gravesides are decorated with religious objects and symbolic offerings of food flowers and even alcohol and cigarettes.

I think the basic idea is right on, i.e. that the living and the dead are connected. That idea is enshrined in the ancient creeds of Christianity, which speak of "the communion of saints."

Maybe that's because the dead aren't quite as dead as we tend to think or the living aren't as alive as we tend to think. I'll leave that to the reader's discretion...

(This came from a blog post here from 10 years ago. Recycling.)

RIP Turk Lurk

It is with sadness that I report the passing of Turklurk, the one remaining turkey on Goat Rope Farm due to natural causes...as in a predator. I found him this afternoon on returning from a long day. Not sure when the crime took place or who the culprit was. Whether coyote or raccoon or whatever it didn't eat much, which is to say a lot went to waste.

This never would have happened when Arpad the Magnificent, protector of poultry, was alive.

The life lesson here, apropos of nothing is that when the good guys go away the predators move in.

Having it both ways

So this past week we heard that the president declared America's opioid crisis to be a public health emergency. We can at least agree on that. 

Too bad he didn't mention anything about the funding needed to deal with it.

In 2015, there were more than 2.5 million Americans with opioid use disorder according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. That year, more than 33,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses, which is triple the death rate for 2000. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports that the US, with less than 5 percent of the world's population, accounts for about a quarter of drug related deaths.

Unfortunately, the same person who declared the emergency also wants to destroy the Affordable Care Act, which has brought drug treatment to many Americans.

According to the American Journal of Public Health, the ACA has expanded treatment options through four main mechanisms: expanded coverage, insurance rules requiring substance abuse treatment, enhanced mental health parity, and opportunities for integrating substance abuse treatment with mainstream health care. An estimated 1.6 million Americans received coverage through Medicaid expansion alone.

So it seems that what we have here is the declaration of an emergency along with a declaration of war on one of the few things that is actually working to deal with it.

Curiouser and curiouser

Earlier this year a friendly librarian changed my life. Again. She told me about this cool online service, Hoopla, which among other things allows you to download audiobooks to your smartphone or other devise.

I've always been a big fan of audio books, but used to listen to them in the Paleolithic era on cassettes and in the Neolithic era on compact discs... all of which had an irritating tendency to disappear or get damaged. Thanks to Hoopla I've been able to burn through dozens of books while driving, mowing or other tasks.

I took a classic wisdom bath and listened to unabridged recordings of Herodotus, Thucydides and Plutarch. I binged on my beloved (and admittedly crazy Nietzsche). I caught up a bit with my old friend Freud.

Just lately, to clear the palate, I listened to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I've been a fan of the Disney movie forever, the more recent version not so much though I like the actors, but it had been a while since I read the book.

Think Kafka for kids.

It was even more delightfully trippy than I remembered it, dreamlike and full of playing with language and logic.

Since we've gone down the rabbit hole lately, with and Orange King instead of a Red Queen screaming "off with their heads," it's even kind of timely. Electronically or otherwise, I highly recommend giving it another look.

All that matters

Christian charity keeps me from referring to the big business friendly Tax Foundation as a racket for the rich. So I won't. But it kind of is. The group rates states on their "tax climate" (translation: good for a few) as if that was a measure of well-being.

Today, conservative commentator Hoppy Kercheval celebrated West Virginia's improved ranking of 19, ahead of our surrounding states. Most of the "improvement" in ranking comes from tax cuts initiated 10 years ago and phased in over time.

My friend Sean O'Leary at the WV Center on Budget and Policy summed it all up in a great tweet:

And all it cost us was an ongoing budget crisis, credit downgrades, a depleted rainy day fund, and major cuts to higher education.

Oh yeah, and we have fewer jobs now than then. And we've lost population. And things have gone so dark that we lead the nation in drug overdose deaths. And schools are laying off teachers and support staff. And we cut taxes by more than enough to pay free in-state tuition and fees to all WV students in a state that desperately needs to raise its educational attainment rates.

But, hey, the Tax Foundation is happy. That's all that matters, right?

The two step budget shuffle

Congress just voted to engage in a grossly irresponsible two step maneuver which will cut taxes mostly for the rich in the short term and make everyone else pay for it long term. For a quick look at just how the tax cuts will hurt people who need housing, health care, food, and education, check out these posts by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

For a look at what the two step will do to people in West Virginia--and what would make much more sense--check out this report from the Coalition on Human Needs and the WV Center on Budget and Policy.

More work to do

In recent years, WV has made progress in juvenile justice reform. We've take a few steps away from locking up kids at $100,000 or more per year for truancy...but there's still more to go. The missing piece is the mental health angle.

We as in AFSC  and the WV Center on Budget and Policy recently released a report on where things are and where we need to go. Here's a link to the full report.

And here's a summary of the key findings. We hope to work with folks in the coming year to move things along:



Every year in West Virginia, around 4,000 juveniles will appear before a judge. Pending the judge’s decision, a juvenile may be given an improvement period to address the behavior, put on probation, referred to a special court, or committed to some form of out-of-home placement. However, the state’s juvenile justice system can be confusing and data is often difficult or impossible to obtain.

This report provides an overview of West Virginia’s juvenile justice system, including historical background, recent reforms, and recommendations for improvements. It also suggests looking at the system through a mental health lens could lead to more constructive solutions and positive outcomes for the state’s youth offenders.

“When West Virginia confines a young person for a minor, non-violent offense, too often it puts him or her at risk of being drawn more deeply into the criminal justice system,” said Sean O’Leary, West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy Interim Executive Director. “While the state has recently embarked on the path of juvenile justice reform, there is still more work to be done. A greater focus on juvenile mental health would help West Virginia build on its recent progress.”

Key Findings

*West Virginia bucks the national trend with its high confinement rates. It was one of only five states where the rate of detention increased, despite a drop in both crime and population.

*In 2013, West Virginia confined juveniles at a rate of 510 per 10,000. By contrast, Massachusetts, with nearly four times the population of West Virginia, had just 393 youth in confinement.

*African American youth were nearly three times as likely to be confined as their white counterparts. West Virginia’s youth confinement rate for African Americans was 1.5 times higher than the national average.

*West Virginia was second only to Wyoming to confining young females. With a rate of 175 per 100,000, the Mountain State far exceeded the national rate of 47.

*Incarceration or other forms of detainment early in life are a major life disruption in the ordinary life course, which can have ripple effects into the future. Prior incarceration was a greater predictor of recidivism than carrying a weapon, gang membership, or poor parental relationships.

*In 2013, only one out of every eight committed youth in West Virginia was locked up based on a violent crime, such as homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, or sexual assault.

*Community-based programs were more cost-efficient and effective with recidivism rates than DJS facilities.

*In 2014, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin convened the West Virginia Intergovernmental Task Force on Juvenile Justice, which brought together legislative and judicial leaders as well as system experts to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the state’s system and to produce policy recommendations.
West Virginia’s juvenile justice system has made real progress, however, it continues to face significant problems, particularly in the area of juvenile mental health.

*Looking at the system through a mental health lens could lead to more constructive solutions and positive outcomes for youth offenders. Some next steps include: creating a task force to address juvenile mental health; build the infrastructure to help public schools address mental health issues before a student is suspended or sent to court; and a long-term goal should to build an infrastructure which would ensure that students in danger of entering the system are assessed and referred to appropriate community-based programs whenever possible and appropriate.

West Virginia’s communities, families, and youth will benefit if the only young people who are confined or detained in out-of-home facilities are those who constitute a threat to the public or themselves.

Sometimes screwing up the world just isn't enough

Apparently screwing up climate, health care and the international situation just isn't enough for some people. Now they want to go after meals for school kids in order to make things just a bit cushier for the very rich.

A federal program, the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), passed in 2010 by Congress as part of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, made it an option for school boards to offer free breakfasts and lunches to all students in schools where 40 percent or more of children are low income.

The idea is to improve child nutrition and academic performance, save schools paperwork and money, and give a break to working parents. And it's worked really well around the country and especially in West Virginia, where 49 counties participate, including 510 schools and over 190,000 students.

I recently spoke to a school board member in Pocahontas County, which recently implemented CEP countywide. She said more kids were eating, the county was saving money AND test scores were going up.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the majority of House Republicans, including Congressmen Evan Jenkins and Maryland Alex Mooney, voted to drastically cut the program, which would end free meals for hundreds of schools and thousands of kids in the Mountain State. 

The Senate is expected to take up the budget next week. So far the cuts aren't part of the Senate plan but these days all threats are best regarded as credible. Senator Manchin has come out against the cuts, while Senator Capito's office has said something like they'll be watching it or whatever.

Condemned to be free

When I was quite a bit younger, I went through an existentialist phase. It wasn't all that uncommon at the time. I'm not sure I ever entirely emerged from it.

Despite all the weight of apparent evidence for scientific determinism, I still have a core belief that however much our lives are conditioned by external and internal forces there is some small residue of choice if not in outcomes then at least in our reaction to them. And whatever decision I make or allow to be made, I can't help but feel it could have been done just a little bit differently. Or maybe a lot. And that the future is at least in part unwritten. Or maybe a lot.

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who to be fair was not all that admirable a guy, famously stated that we are condemned to be free.

Apropos of nothing, some words of Sartre's have been on my mind lately. In essay he wrote for The Atlantic in 1944, shortly after the liberation of Paris by the allies, he wrote that:

 "Never were we freer than under the German occupation. We had lost all our rights, and first of all our right to speak. They insulted us to our faces. ... They deported us en masse. ... And because of all this we were free."

Obviously, he didn't mean the good guys then could do or get whatever they wanted. But extreme times made the weight of free decisions--to resist or to collaborate, to hold out a little longer under despair or interrogation or torture-- a little more stark.

That kind of freedom can be terrible and terrifying.

These are pretty dark times. While a lot is beyond our immediate control, the weight of our decisions is getting heavier.

In that sense, we're pretty free right now too.

Leaving kids behind?

While congress has been busy doing whatever it is it does lately, one thing it didn't do is reauthorize the Children's' Health Insurance Program, which provides coverage to millions of children in working families nationwide and to around 38,000 children in West Virginia. The deadline to reauthorize the program was Sept. 30.

To their credit, both of WV's senators support the program and were disappointed by the failure to reauthorize the program. Senator Manchin had this to say:

“It is shameful that Congress is so dysfunctional that we cannot even manage to reauthorize funding for a program that ensures 9 million children across America have access to health insurance. More than 21,000 West Virginia children are enrolled in CHIP and to let this funding expire is nothing short of negligent. The least we can do is put partisanship aside to protect our children, the most vulnerable among us. In the coming days, I will continue working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure no child in West Virginia loses access to healthcare.” 

And Senator Capito said this:

“I understand the benefits the Children’s Health Insurance Program offers to many students in West Virginia. This is why for two decades, dating back to my time in the West Virginia State Legislature, I have championed this important program and support ongoing efforts to reauthorize it. The legislation to reauthorize CHIP that is advancing in the Senate has strong, bipartisan support."

Despite the missed deadline, the bill has recently made some progress in the senate, although it's a long way from being a done deal. 

Here's hoping this gets fixed before millions of kids get thrown under the  metaphorical bus. This might be the time to make some more noise.

The art of watching bad news...or not

The cascade of bad news, human-generated and otherwise, has been pretty overwhelming lately. The two main Dylan songs going through my head lately are "Everything is Broken" and "World Gone Wrong."

Today I ran across some useful information that might help in dealing with bad news in the media. For one thing, being glued to the set while ill **** is going down can cause serious and acute stress. One study conducted in the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing found that the stress reactions of news junkies glued to the TV were as bad or worse than those of people actually much closer to the real event.

A good guide to dealing with breaking bad news can be found in the On The Media blog's resource, The Breaking News Consumer's Handbook, which starts with the reminder that early news reports are likely to get things wrong. Among other points is a warning to be skeptical of anonymous sources and hoaxes. There's also good advice about not uncritically retweeting or otherwise posting information that may be unreliable.

Finally, here are some suggestions from the American Friends Service Committee's Media Uncovered project.. Here's one suggestion: "Turn off the TV, put down your phone, and do something else."  The bad news will still be there. But rather than being glued to the set (or phone) it might be good to take some time to reflect, to spend time with those you care about, consider taking positive action, and send your best to those suffering from the crisis at hand.

Gazing into the abyss

It’s comforting to think that good and evil people are completely different, and that “our” side, whatever that is, is all good, while evil belongs exclusively to the other.

Too bad this is a dangerous illusion.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it in “The Gulag Archipelago,” his study of Soviet punishment camps:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. ... During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish.

“One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.”

He quotes a Russian proverb that, “From good to evil is one quaver,” noting it works the other way, too.

That’s a good summary of social science on how ordinarily good people sometimes do terrible things.

Someone who explored this field for decades is Philip Zimbardo, creator of the infamous Stanford Prison experiment and author of “The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil.”

He argues that we tend to attribute evil actions to the individual dispositions of people who do them but ignore the powerful forces situations exert on individuals. Further, powerful people create systems that put decent people in situations in which they do things they otherwise never would have.

He warns that we often have a dangerously inflated notion of our ability to resist evil influences.

“For many, that belief of personal power to resist powerful situational and systemic forces is little more than a reassuring illusion of invulnerability,” he wroted. “Paradoxically, maintaining that illusion only serves to make one more vulnerable to manipulation by failing to be sufficiently vigilant against attempts of undesired influence subtly practiced on them.”

Two powerful toxins that can unleash the beast in any of us are dehumanization and deindividuation.

Zimbardo: “Dehumanization is one of the central processes in the transformation of ordinary, normal people into indifferent or even wanton perpetrators of evil. Dehumanization is like a cortical cataract that clouds one’s thinking and fosters the perception that other people are less than human. It makes some people come to see those others as enemies deserving of torment, torture, and annihilation.”

Dehumanization happens at an individual level, but it is most dangerous when the powerful create systems that label and target some groups as being less than human.

When we dehumanize others, another process that kicks in is what social psychologist Albert Bandura called “moral disengagement,” when we convince ourselves that some people are unworthy of empathy and compassion.

Then it’s on.

Deindividuation happens when we identify so closely with a group that we lose our sense of individual responsibility. This happens in organized or informal ways. When countries send people off to war, the warriors are often deindividualized with shaved heads, uniforms and drills that emphasize following orders and acting as a unit. It can also happen in informal groups like mobs and gangs. Things like masks and hoods can add to the effect.

This is most dangerous at the systemic level, particularly when it goes hand in hand with dehumanizing some vulnerable group via ideology and propaganda. Throw in our tendency to conform and obey authority, and you have a pretty lethal brew. Signals from above give permission to abuse those below.

The scary side to group behavior has long been recognized. Sigmund Freud noted that, in groups, emotionalism rises while rationality falls (think political rallies, rock concerts, some sporting events).

He believed that when groups fall under the spell of a charismatic authority, the people in it regress to a more primitive mental state. He wrote, “It is not so remarkable that we should see an individual in a group doing or approving things which he would have avoided in the normal conditions of life.”

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr even titled one of his books “Moral Man and Immoral Society.” He didn’t have any delusions about the flaws of individuals, but rather noted that, “In every human group there is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships.”

After all, most individuals have consciences. But often the conscience of a group is a dissenting minority accused of disloyalty.

We live in are dangerous times. Polarization runs high. There are calls for dehumanization coming from high places around the world. America may be on its own dark journey, although it’s unclear how far it will go. I’m consoled by the thought that many other nations have gone through dark times and come out on the other side.

I hope we step back from the edge of the cliff and resist the temptation to see the other, whoever it may be, as some kind of monster.

As the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

(This ran as an op-ed in the Gazette-Mail a day or so ago.)

More of a tweet

Well, a Republican senator had the courage to break with the leadership in order to save health care coverage for over 200,000 West Virginians. Too bad the senator in question was from Arizona.

What if?

The descendants of the Vikings figured out a thing or two.

Not so long ago, I, along with lots of good folks and a very impressive coalition,  spent a good bit of time and effort trying to get the state of West Virginia to pass legislation creating a Future Fund. This would have involved setting aside a portion of state severance tax revenue, allowing it to build, and using the interest as a permanent source of wealth for the state.

The bill passed in 2014. Ish. Unfortunately, it was sabotaged in the House of Delegates (at a time when Democrats held the majority in both houses) and basically made unworkable for the foreseeable future. Since there, there's been a political earthquake or three and a big dip in coal production and gas prices.

I'm still hopeful that the Future Fund can be made workable at some point. And I can't help thinking about how different West Virginia would have been today if one had been set up years ago.

Case in point: Norway. When that country experienced an oil boom, those socialistic Vikings were smart enough to set aside a portion of their revenue for pensions and public expenses. Apparently they were smart enough to figure out that this stuff you take out of the ground doesn't grow back (at least for several million years).

Today, that fund is worth $1 trillion. Yes, that would be the number with 12 zeros. It's worth about $190,000 for each resident of Norway.

I know there's no way WV's version would  have been anywhere near that even if we started decades ago. But we would have been in better shape than we are now.

The Walking Dead, health care version: action needed

As recently as last week, it looked like efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act--and take away health care for millions of Americans--was dead. But this is the era of zombies or walkers, when things that should long ago have been dead and decently buried shuffle around to devour the living.

The latest walker to show signs of being dangerously undead is the Graham-Cassidy bill, which is rapidly gaining momentum. It's not clear whether senators who opposed earlier repeal efforts will hold the line. And here's an added wrinkle: the window to pass this zombie bill closes Sept. 30. After that, changing the health care law will require bipartisan support, which some senators have actually been working on.

According to the WV Center on Budget and Policy, Graham Cassidy will cut West Virginia's Medicaid funding by $2 billion by 2027. It would convert funding for expanded Medicaid to a temporary block grant while also undermining traditional Medicaid. On top of that, it would further disrupt the individual market. Read more about all that here.

You probably saw this coming, but it's time once again to contact WV Senator Shelley Moore Capito and remind her of her statement that "I did not go to Washington to hurt people."

Here's how:

OFFICE LOCATIONS

• BECKLEY, WV

  220 North Kanawha Street
  Suite 1
  Beckley, WV 25801
  Phone: 304-347-5372
  Directions
 

• CHARLESTON, WV

  500 Virginia Street East
  Suite 950
  Charleston, WV 25301
  Phone: 304-347-5372
  Directions
 

• MARTINSBURG, WV

  300 Foxcroft Avenue
  Suite 202A
  Martinsburg, WV 25401
  Phone: 304-262-9285
  Directions
 

• MORGANTOWN, WV

  48 Donley Street
  Suite 504
  Morgantown, WV 26501
  Phone: 304-292-2310
  Directions
 

• WASHINGTON, DC

  172 Russell Senate Office Building
  Washington, DC 20510
  Phone: 202-224-6472
  Directions

Annals of hypocrisy

You really can't make this stuff up. As my friend Ken Ward reported in yesterday's Gazette-Mail, WV's Republican representatives in the US House, who rode to power in part by pretending to give a ____ (fill in the blank) about coal miners, voted to cut funding on the federal Mine Health and Safety Administration.  Fortunately, the measure failed to pass the entire House.

UMWA president Cecil Roberts had this to say about that: "I am gratified that a majority of the House agreed with our position that we should not be cutting coal mine safety at a time when we are experiencing rising fatalities and serious injuries in America’s mines."

I guess you get what you vote for.

Speaking of abominations, then there's this.

Shiny happy people somewhere else

Well, if you're Jonesing for another story about how West Virginia ranks at the bottom of all things good and at the top of all things bad, you can check out this item from the website WalletHub, which ranks states according to their presumed level of happiness.

Yeah, 50 again.

In terms of method, the group evaluated the broad categories of emotional and physical well-being, work environment, and community and environment using 28 metrics. Whatever you think, the list of factors considered was pretty thorough, as you can see here.

Interestingly, the state that came out on top was Minnesota. Maybe this is because of the way they pronounce the letter O.

A spoke in the wheel

Recently, apropos of nothing of course, my friend the Rev. Jeff Allen, executive director of the WV Council of Churches, sent me the following quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a German Protestant minister and leader of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church who was executed by the regime in 1945.

The quote is from an essay titled "The Church and the Jewish Question." It was published in April 1933, shortly after the Nazis gained state power.

"All this means that there are three possible ways in which the church can act toward the state:  in the first place, as has been said, it can ask the state whether it's actions are legitimate and in accordance with its character as state, i.e. it can throw the state back on its responsibilities.  Second, it can aid the victims of state action.  The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian Community.  'Do good to all people" . . .  The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself."

Whatever happened to gratitude?

You might think that President Trump, after receiving overwhelming support from West Virginia and much of Appalachia, would show the region a little love in his proposed federal budget.

That didn't happen. Instead, the president proposed massive cuts that would hit West Virginia and the Appalachian region harder than the rest of the country.

Among the programs on the chopping block are SNAP, which provides basic food security to over 340,000 West Virginians, about one in five. Many of those who receive these benefits are working people in low wage jobs - and these SNAP dollars are spent in local businesses, supporting thousands of jobs.

Then there's WIC, a nutrition assistance program that helps pregnant and nursing women as well as young children and over half of the nation's infants.

The highly successful Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers almost 35,000 West Virginia children, is also targeted. Thanks to CHIP, West Virginia has become a national leader in insuring children, with a coverage rate of around 97 percent. That could be undone.

There are also threats to low income energy assistance, disability benefits, Meals on Wheels for seniors, and temporary assistance to needy families.

One cut that seems particularly unsportsmanlike is the proposed elimination of the Appalachian Regional Commission, which has supported infrastructure and economic development projects in the region since its establishment in 1965.

You could almost view the other cuts as generic indifference to or contempt of disadvantaged people all over the nation, but the ARC hit seems like a deliberate and targeted slap in the face.

To his credit, Republican U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins came out strong against the Trump budget in May. In his statement he said:

"While I appreciate the president's aim to cut wasteful spending, this budget goes too far in critical areas for West Virginia. The proposed cuts to our safety net programs, including Medicaid and SNAP, would hurt too many of our state's most vulnerable citizens, and I cannot support this budget proposal.

"The budget also proposes eliminating programs crucial to West Virginia's economic development and diversification - the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Economic Development Administration. We need to do more to attract new industries to our coalfields and invest in our infrastructure, and these two programs have a track record of success in West Virginia."

That's the good news.

The bad news is that the budget resolution passed by House Republicans does much of the same thing. The end result would be increasing hardship and poverty, growing inequality, weakened investments in our nation's future and a shift of costs to already hard-pressed states.

And the hidden agenda behind this kind of slash-and-burn approach to the federal budget is to provide yet more tax cuts for the rich, a zombie-like failed policy that keeps coming back from the dead.

The dangers of these disastrous cuts being fast-tracked through Congress are real. We need Congressman Jenkins and his colleagues to stay the course and continue to fight for a budget that reflects our needs and values.

(Note: this appeared as an op-ed in the Huntington Herald Dispatch on Sunday.)

Bad call

This pretty much says it all.

Ten thousand times

Here's a fiery labor day quote:

"Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun."-Eugene V. Debs, 1904

I wish I was as confident of emancipation today as he was then. And more correct about it.

Subsidize this

The latest WV Public Radio Front Porch podcast/program is about Gov. Jim Justice's proposal to get the federal government to subsidize eastern coal as a matter of rent seeking national security and also about disasters like Hurricane Harvey.

More important, however, is the pressing question of what food item would be your nickname if sandwiched (no pun intended) between your first and last name? You may have to listen to make sense of that one.

Reading the signs

In ancient Rome, augurs tried to read the future by looking at the entrails of sacrificial animals or the flights of birds. These days we tend to rely on things like polls, which is probably just as well. The results of the latest WV MetroNews poll are pretty interesting. Respondents were asked about their approval of President Trump, Governor Justice, Senator Capito and Senator Manchin.

In it, Trump's approval isn't as high as you might think it is (or as low as you might think it should be, depending on your viewpoint). It looks like Gov. Justice didn't do himself a whole lot of favors even among Republicans with his switch to that party during Trump's WV visit.

Senator Capito's approval rating is the lowest on record, which may or may not have something to do with fears related to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which, for all its flaws, has brought health coverage to around 225,000 West Virginians. At this moment, it looks like Senator Manchin is riding high, with more Republicans, Democrats and Independents holding favorable rather than unfavorable views. Of course, it's way too soon to tell how all this will play out in 2018 and beyond.

You can read more here.

Digression: when the ancient Greeks didn't like the results of auguries from entrails, they sometimes kept sacrificing animals until they got some guts that promised good news, which is kind of like commissioning more polls until you get one you like.

The Romans weren't much of a sea power at first. They would sometimes seek to read the future by seeing is the sacred chickens would eat before a fight. When the chickens wouldn't eat before the battle of Drepana with the Carthaginians, one commander got into trouble by throwing them into the sea and saying "Let's see if they'll drink." The Romans lost that one. Take home message: don't mess with chickens.

I'm not big on omens, but things would have to get pretty bad at the farm for chickens not to eat.