A holiday tradition

(It's been a while since posting here. With all the awful things going on in the world it's hard to find the right words sometimes. But in this season, I think it might be time to repost an old favorite from Hamlet. I wish it was to be so.)

That's right, it's that time of year again, which means it's time to quote 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. 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."

Inshallah.

The thing with feathers

 A few weeks back, there were plenty of things I wanted to post about. The (now successful) UAW strike. A major win on child nutrition.  But after the terrible events of the last month, they seemed out of place and tone deaf and I couldn't think of any appropriate thing to say. 

A saying of the Buddha's kept running through my mind: "Better than a thousand empty words is one word that brings peace." Since the market seemed pretty saturated with empty words I paused.

Then I had a dream. 

Although the latest scientific research seems to suggest that dreams are the brain's way of processing memory and recent events, and some are clearly just plain static, I still think they can often bring deep insights from the unconscious. There's a reason that meaningful dreams occur throughout the Bible and many other sources, myths, and legends.

I don't go all the way with Freud or Jung...but I do go a good bit with both. This dream seemed to have something to say about the state of the world and I've shared it with several people.

It went like this:

I was in a city at war with a real life friend and comrade. No other context given. In the waking world, several years previously we were part of a delegation to the West Bank and Gaza that left a huge impression on us both. In the dream, we were part of the underground resistance to an unnamed invader.

In the beginning, we were running through battered streets, trying to avoid being killed or captured, we passed a beautiful bird that appeared to have been damaged by a vehicle crash or explosion. It seemed to be dead or dying. Since we were being pursued, we didn't have time to stop. Besides, we didn't know what else to do aside from making sure it was out of its misery.

After a number of encounters, we ran back the way we had come. To our surprise, the bird was on its feet and starting to flap it's wings. We looked at each other and said something like, "Holy ****, the bird might actually recover!"

I woke up and immediately this well knwon poem by Emily Dickinson came to mind: 

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

My takeaway: the thing with feathers really might recover. 

 

A time for solidarity

 It’s been over five years since the historic teachers strike in West Virginia. To this day, it’s one of my proudest moments as a West Virginian. Teachers, cooks, bus drivers, students and parents like me filled the state House of Delegates and Senate galleries, the upper and lower rotundas and spilled out into the hallways of the state capitol. The frustration, and also the joy of being together in the fight for working people, were palpable.

Of course, union organizing in West Virginia is nearly as old and storied as our mountains, but the 2018 teachers strike was the first time I got to witness its power first-hand.

Today, even though we’re a few states away from the action, the strike of the United Auto Workers in Michigan is pretty darn exciting. Of course, another reason West Virginians can feel close to the UAW strike is that our own Walter Reuther, a native of Wheeling, was the longest-serving president of the UAW. Reuther, having survived two attempted assassinations, served as UAW president until he died in a plane crash in 1970.

During his time as UAW President, Reuther used (with a lot of success) a strategy called “pattern bargaining” against what were “the big three” auto companies – then General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Chrysler. Pattern bargaining was essentially a tactic to leverage the competition amongst the big three in order to advance the wages or improve the working conditions of all autoworkers.

Martin Luther King Jr., on the 25th anniversary of the UAW’s founding, wrote in a letter to Reuther, “Through trials, efforts and your unswerving devotion to humanitarian causes, you have made life more meaningful for millions of working people. Through moments of difficulty and strong obstacles, you have stood firm for what you believe, knowing that in the long run ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ As I have heard you say, the true measure of a man is where he stands in moments of challenge and controversy.”

The UAW is in a great moment of challenge because up until now, the union has never carried out a simultaneous work stoppage at “the big three” auto companies – now General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

As with any historic moment, there is always important context. During the great recession around 2007 through 2009, the auto industry got a bailout of billions of dollars from the federal government, and at the same time autoworkers took massive cuts to their wages and benefits. Pensions all but disappeared. The companies introduced “tiers” which basically meant worse pay for the same work.

Since then, the labor of the autoworkers has generated $250,000,000,000 – yes that many zeroes — a quarter of a trillion dollars for the shareholders of the three companies. CEO pay is up 40% while autoworker wages went up 6%. Try to square that 6% with inflation having gone up 18%.

Now with major federal investments in a shift toward electric vehicles, the companies are forming “joint venture” battery plants, while closing profitable ones in Ohio, Illinois and Michigan. All of these maneuvers are “profit above all” attempts to pay lower wages and weaken worker safety standards at battery plants.

So, there’s a lot on the line, and what happens in Michigan will set the stage for whether electric vehicle manufacturing will be gateway to the middle class for hundreds of thousands of families, or deepen the already gaping chasm between the CEO class and the working class of this country.

The striking autoworkers are asking for fair pay, equal pay for equal work, and ensuring that EV jobs pay a good wage and are safe for workers. What’s not to like about that?

In the same letter King wrote to Reuther, he said something that hits home today. It’s a sentiment I hope we can echo to both the teachers and school employees who went on strike in 2018, and to the autoworkers in Michigan who are on strike today: “One day all of America will be proud of your achievements, and will record your work as one of the glowing epics of our heritage.”

The legacy of the UMWA

 In happier times, my home state of West Virginia was known as a union stronghold. This tradition of labor action and struggle goes back to at least 1877, when railroad workers in Martinsburg set off something close to a nationwide general strike. 

It continued as coal miners faced company and government repression, including brutal private mine guards, military intervention, airstrikes, legal injunctions, arrests, and imprisonments.  

On my watch with AFSC, I’ve tried to support the struggles of unions on picket lines and at the policy level, ranging from metal workers to building trades to retail workers to teachers and school service workers. Sometimes things got a little wild.  

I’ve made it an informal but unbreakable rule that whenever a good labor dustup happens within my range to drop everything and show up. I’m probably at least as loyal to unions as to the church I belong to … but if I had to choose between them, all bets are off. 

For people unfamiliar with the labor movement, there are three main kinds of unions: craft unions representing primarily skilled trades; industrial unions representing workers at all skill levels in a sector; and public employee unions such as those representing education workers or government employees. The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. federation of unions, comprises around 60 unions of different types and industries. 

Where I come from, you’ll hear people talk about this or that union, but when they say the union, there’s one they have in mind: the United Mine Workers of America. Coincidentally or not, AFSC has a long history of supporting this union and the workers and communities it represents. Over a century ago, AFSC began providing food assistance and supporting economic alternatives for unemployed miners and their families. More recently, it has supported UMWA members in strikes, legislative struggles, mine safety, and corporate bankruptcies that threaten retirees and surviving family members. 

People outside Appalachia may think of the UMWA, if at all, as a relic of an earlier age and a dying and dirty industry. In fact, even though its membership has dramatically declined over the last decades, it has arguably had the greatest impact on economic justice of any single organization. To the extent there’s still a middle class in this country, much of that is due to its direct and indirect influence.  

The UMWA was founded in 1890 by the merger of the Knights of Labor Trade Assembly No. 135 and the National Progressive Miners Union. At a time when most unions represented skilled craft workers—mostly white, U.S. born, and male—the new union’s first goal was “to unite in one organization, regardless of creed, color or nationality, all workmen eligible for membership, employed in and around coal mines, coal washers, and coke ovens on the American Continent.” It was thus an early example of an industrial union, one that tried to represent all workers in a sector. 

The union’s progress in West Virginia was slow and sometimes bloody. It was long known that the state was rich in coal and other minerals, but it required the coming of the railroads to make large-scale extraction economically feasible. Outside investors began gobbling up land and mineral rights and displacing mountain families, generally with the support of state politicians.  

Let’s just say the good guys lost that one.  

After wiping out most of the state’s old-growth forests, corporations began building coal camps in isolated mountain communities and instituting a system of total control, including company towns, company stores, company doctors, armed company mine “guards” to enforce obedience up to and including the use of violence, and company-controlled schools and churches. In many cases, workers were paid with company scrip or currency. Those with the temerity to organize or strike faced eviction from company housing, at the very least. 

Companies actively recruited African Americans from the deep South, mostly white locals, and recent European immigrants to the camps. They hoped a “judicious mix” of different ethnicities would prevent union organization. 

They were wrong. 

From Colorado to West Virginia miners struggled, sometimes physically, for the right to organize, with something like guerilla warfare breaking out in my state during the Paint and Cabin Creek areas in 1912-1913. The struggle inspired writer Ralph Chaplin to pen the song “Solidarity Forever,” an international anthem of the working class. More militant struggles followed, including the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest workers’ uprising in American history. So far. 

It wasn’t until the New Deal era that the right of miners to organize was firmly established. For a generation or two… 

And in the 1930s, the UMWA, under the leadership of the theatrical and sometimes confrontational John L. Lewis, launched the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which initiated vast organizing drives in steel, auto, rubber, and other industries. Unafraid to confront the highest levels of authority, he once said “you can’t mine coal with bayonets.” 

During the CIO organizing drive, he proclaimed with characteristic flourish, “Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.” 

These organizing drives eventually won union recognition along with higher wages, better benefits, and improved working conditions for millions of American men and women. These new industrial unions, such as the United Auto Workers (UAW), would become strong financial and political supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. 

This was not lost on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an ardent supporter of the labor movement. In his words, “During the ’30s, wages were a secondary issue; to have a job at all was the difference between the agony of starvation and a flicker of life. The nation, now so vigorous, reeled and tottered almost to total collapse. The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress.  

“Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival, but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the ’30s the wave of union organization crested over our nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.” 

The wave that Dr. King spoke of has unfortunately receded over the last 40 years, with devastating consequences. But it remains an example of what can be done when working people act in solidarity. 

So year-round, but especially on May Day and Labor Day, I celebrate the victories and mourn the defeats of the world’s diverse labor unions. However, one union has pride of place. In more ways than one, it lit the way in many dark places. 

(I wrote this piece for Labor Day on AFSC's website.)

Some shameless punning on the Farm Bill

 

(You've goat to read this)

As someone who has dabbled in farming, I find it difficult to write about an important topic like the federal Farm Bill without indulging in at least a few agricultural puns—even though punning has a baad reputation.

The 17^th century English poet John Dryden, for example, referred to punning as “the lowest and most groveling kind of wit.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Senior, 19^th century American physician and poet, said “A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.”

Mark Twain, whose pen name was itself a pun (the pen pun was unintentional by the way), wrote that “no circumstances, however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for the admission of that last and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, the Pun.”

 I have no beef with such writers or their sage advice, but at the risk of being corny it’s still chard not to.

The Farm Bill is a huge piece of legislation that comes up every hive years and Congress has goat to pass this year. It’s an omnibus bill, meaning that it combines several distinct acts that clover everything from hunger to flood control. But it helps to take it one bite at a time.

Here are some things that ordinary people all over the US and especially in West Virginia need to bee in the bill and that we need to count on Senators Capito and Manchin and Congresswoman Miller to support:

*Food assistance. Let’s face it. Millions of Americans barley get enough to eat--as in 33 million nationwide and over 200,000 here. That situation has gotten worse with the ex-pear-ation of COVID-era safety net provisions and recently passed federal legislation. Last time around, in 2018, our senators carroted enough to support a clean Farm Bill without more restrictions for food insecure people even though they were going against the grain. Let’s hope they do that again.

*Flood control. Irrigation is berry important to farming, but I think most of us would prefer that it not happen to our roads, homes, businesses, and towns. And that it should water our fields without washing them away. A good Farm Bill would help farmers recover from disasters, pre-pear for future ones, and support conservation practices that can reduce flooding.

*Support small farms and farmers. Millions of taxpayer dollars go to subsidize large scale corporate and industrial operations that are inhumane to animals, farmworkers and unsustainable for the environment. You don’t need a fertile imagination to realize that the money would be beet-er spent supporting smaller family farms and local food systems.

*Address climate change. You don’t have to be a farmer to realize that the weather is getting weirder and weirder, but you cane’t help but notice it if you are. A good Farm Bill should provide encourage-mint for regenerative agricultural measures that would conserve soil, prevent erosion, regrow forests, encourage cover crops, store carbon, and reduce emissions.

*Support creative approaches. It wood be win all around if the Farm Bill put more resources into school and community garden projects, urban agriculture, and small scale local projects that fight hunger and keep resources in the local economy. Also, it would be good to take steps to open farming opportunities to people who have been discriminated against in the past.

*Be kinder to our four-legged and feathered friends. Industrial livestock production crowds cattle, hogs, chickens, and other critters into Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations known as CAFOs. Aside from causing unnecessary misery, these create a-maize-ing amounts of animal waste and pollution and encourage the overuse of antibiotics that weaken their effect. They’re nothing to crow about and taxpayers shouldn’t relish the chance to subsidize them.

*Local processing. If the Strengthening Local Processing Act was part of the package, this would be an alternative to CAFOs by supporting local processing of animal products. Surely a meating of the minds is possible here.

*A missing piece. One thing that’s been lacking from previous Farm Bills is protections for the people who dew the work. Lettuce not forget that farm work is difficult and hazardous and much of it is done by children. Nothing against emergency responders, but risks are even higher in this field. Farming is routinely considered to be among the most dangerous occupations. Also, some farmworkers experience wage theft but are too intimidated to pursue redress, which drives down wages for everyone.

*Child care. And how can we forget the kids? Senator Brown from Ohio has rounded up bipartisan support for including the Expanding Childcare in Rural America Act, which would provide more child care in rural communities. Farm work can eat up some long hours in places where there often aren’t good child care providers. It would be great if every child barn in a farming community could enjoy good care when the adults are fending off possums and such.

I realize that this is quite a grocery list, but this is a REALLY big bill and there’s no time for stalling. If we want a decent bill for everyone, we need to turnip the noise and kale our representatives this summer. It’s time to broc and roll.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Pipeline blues

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 prevented a U.S. default which would have sent shockwaves across the global economy. Radical proposals that would have imperiled low- income people’s access to health care were thankfully not included.  In short, it could have been a lot worse.  Yet still there were casualties. 

Flat budgets for domestic discretionary spending essentially are funding cuts in programs for everything except military spending. The bill will take away food assistance from more adults without dependents by way of time limits linked to so-called work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  Although thankfully there were carveouts for veterans, kids aging out of foster care, and people experiencing homelessness. 

One particularly unpleasant surprise was the free pass for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility much less a federal spending issue. 

The language for MVP included in the bill legislatively approves all permits necessary to complete the construction of the pipeline extending from West Virginia to Virginia.  The other mandate in the bill is that all judicial reviews of permit approvals are blocked. 

The greenlight for the MVP flies in the face of over 500 water quality and permit violations the project has accrued, the multiple delays by successful legal challenges, and significant pushback from West Virginians for nearly a decade since the pipeline was first proposed in 2014.   

Lobbied for by those who stand to profit from its completion (of course), including MVP in the debt-ceiling deal is a sneaky way to circumvent permitting requirements and prevent the public from contesting decisions in court.

One of the flimsy rationales for the MVP is based on the premise that we need a natural gas pipeline for energy independence and to meet market demands.  Suzanne Mattei with Institute for Energy Economic and Financial Analysis wrote recently, “the international export of gas is trending toward a glut rather than a shortage.” 

Furthermore Mattei points out, “Market conditions do not justify forcing decisions on both state and federal agencies under federal law or revoking the public’s right to judicial review of agency action.”

Last but not least, anyone notice changes in the weather these days?  The sun shines a bit hotter.  Flowers bloom a bit earlier.  The rain pours a bit harder.  Creeks rise a lot faster.  And just this week millions of people are breathing hazardous air from wildfires burning in Canada.  

To be sure, while the MVP is controversial, the facts and consequences of climate change are not.  Fossil fuel projects like the MVP is pouring proverbial gasoline on the fire of the climate crisis. 

In contrast to the MVP maneuver, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which passed last year could be a real game changer for West Virginia.  The IRA means massive tax incentives and federal dollars for West Virginia to invest in a clean energy economy, new jobs, and lower energy costs, all while mitigating the harms of climate change.   

The IRA is the kind of bold investments that will help keep West Virginia wild and wonderful, but the MVP and the continued reliance on fossil fuels will have detrimental impacts both in West Virginia and around the globe.  

That’s why people aren’t giving up the fight. Because future generations are depending on us to not keep making the same mistakes.  

(This appeared as an op-ed by Lida Shepherd in the Charleston Gazette-Mail a while back. Sorry for hiatus lately.)

Two easy actions to protect food assistance

 There are a lot of scary things about the debt ceiling/hostage crisis in Washington, but the scariest to me at the moment is the prospect of millions of people being kicked off SNAP food assistance in order to pay for tax cuts for rich people. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that if work reporting requirements (that don't promote work) are implemented along the lines of the Retch, Croak and Die Act  Limit, Save, and Grow Act, 275,000 people per month could lose benefits. That would be devastating not only to those directly impacted but also to local charities, businesses and communities.

There are two easy actions you can take to try to ward this off. First, the American Friends Service Committee has prepared this easy to use action alert targeting both houses of congress that can be used by anyone in the US. If you're in West Virginia and want to just message Senators Manchin and Capito, here's a link provided by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. 

Why not shoot the moon and do both? I cannot guarantee that doing this will guarantee a fortunate rebirth in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha, but it's couldn't hurt.

Why work requirements don't work

The recent proposal to increase work reporting requirements for people receiving SNAP food assistance under the Limit, Save, and Grow Act is redundant and harmful for several reasons:

*work requirements already exist for SNAP. According to the USDA, these “include registering for work, participating in SNAP Employment and Training (E&T) or workfare if assigned by your state SNAP agency, taking a suitable job if offered, and not voluntarily quitting a job or reducing your work hours below 30 a week without a good reason.” States also have the option to impose additional requirements on able-bodies adults without dependents aged 18-49, although evidence suggests that these have failed to increase workforce participation.

*the term “work requirements” in the context of changing eligibility programs such as SNAP and Medicaid is misleading. A more accurate term would be reporting requirements which involve more layers of paperwork, bureaucracy, and surveillance in exchange for often meager benefits. These reporting requirements impose burdens people receiving food assistance and the businesses, organizations, and/or agencies for which they work and simply result in few people receiving needed assistance.

*work reporting requirements don’t promote work. For example, the New York Times reported that when West Virginia piloted the program in counties with the most favorable labor market conditions, the state Department of Health and Human Resources found that “Our best data does not indicate that the program has had a significant impact on employment figures.” Rather, people lost food aid and local businesses lost out. Similarly, when Arkansas added similar reporting requirements for Medicaid, workforce participation didn’t increase—but the number of uninsured people did.

*work reporting requirements for food assistance hit the most vulnerable people hardest, including homeless people or those with unstable housing—a population that includes many veterans, domestic violence survivors, rural residents, people with disabilities, noncustodial adults supporting children, people in recovery from Substance Use Disorder, and others.

*the “Limit, Save, and Grow Act” would double down on vulnerable populations by imposing reporting requirements on older adults up to age 55. According to AARP, over 9.5 million Americans over age 50 rely on SNAP, a group that faces age discrimination in hiring and employment practices.

*SNAP benefits help local businesses and economies—and loss of benefits costs both. The Food Research and Action Council reports that each dollar in federal SNAP benefits generates $1.79 in economic activity.

*reducing SNAP benefits for millions of Americans would only place greater demands on already stretched food pantries, soup kitchens, and charities which are often staffed by volunteers and seniors.

All of which is to say this is not cool.

Political blackmail

 The U.S. House of Representatives recently voted on a bill that will, if enacted, will bring nothing but misery to thousands of West Virginians and millions of people across the country. It passed by a two vote majority. 

To quote a former occupant of the White House, “SAD.” 

The so-called Limit, Save, and Grow Act, which I like to think of as the Retch, Croak, and Die Act, will force automatic and devastating cuts in discretionary federal spending that would overwhelmingly hit working class and low-income people. And it will probably hit West Virginia harder than any other state. 

It’s a classic example of political hostage taking by either forcing massive across the board cuts to programs that help families, seniors, kids, and just about everyone else OR creating a global financial crisis if the U.S. defaults on debt payments. Either way, everyday people will be hurting. 

Rather than proposing an unpopular specific budget that its supporters would have to own, the bill would set spending limits that would make the cuts automatic. 

According to the DC based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “The agenda represents failed trickle-down economics at its worst and would narrow opportunity, deepen inequality, and increase hardship.” Specifically, they report that “The bill would make severe cuts – $3.6 trillion over the next decade – to the part of the budget that funds child care and preschool, schools, college aid, housing, medical research, transportation, many other national priorities.” 

For starters, cuts for the next year would mean that more than 900,000 low-income people lose housing assistance and 200,000 children would lose access to Head Start, along with a reduction by $1,000 to the maximum Pell grant that makes higher education more affordable. The only real trickle down that will happen will be a loss of up to $1.3 trillion to state and local governments in federal grants to fund services. 

Pentagon spending would be left untouched, and the bill would also make it easier for wealthy people and corporations avoid paying their fair share of taxes. 

Among the bill’s poisoned pills are the kind of failed bureaucratic reporting and paperwork requirements for SNAP food assistance and Medicaid that West Virginia’s Republican supermajority wisely rejected in the regular 2023 session, but on a massive scale. Such provisions do nothing to promote work but have the effect of increasing hunger and decreasing health coverage due to paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources has estimated that the proposed requirements would jeopardize coverage for 21 million people on Medicaid, the majority of whom are either already, working, dealing with disabilities and serious health conditions, caring for family members, or are in school.  

The SNAP changes would fall hardest on older Americans by raising more hurdles for those between age 50 and 55, a group more likely to be subject to age discrimination and/or health issues that affect employment. 

Those changes come in the wake of a decrease in funding for Medicaid and SNAP as the official COVID-era public health emergency ended. It’s probably no accident that the cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF over the next decade are almost identical to the amount of unpaid taxes rich people and corporations would save due to cuts in IRS enforcement.  

For West Virginia, this would also mean cuts to things like rail safety inspections (what could possibly go wrong there?), mine safety, opioid treatment, air traffic control, preschool and child care enrollments, WIC food aid for mothers and young children, and more. 

Fortunately, that’s not the end of the story. The bill has pretty much zero chance of passing the senate in its present form. Once again, in a closely divided senate the votes of our Senators Capito and Manchin will be crucial. 

I’m hoping they will weigh the house bill’s impact on West Virginians and just say no. West Virginians deserve better. 

(This ran as a column in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Short window to speak up for child nutrition

 Most of us probably have a specific memory from childhood of nervously walking into the school cafeteria for lunch. The experience can be a nerve-wracking gauntlet of social pressures and self-consciousness.

On top of navigating those familiar anxieties, a lot of kids today also are dealing with food insecurity at home, literally coming to school hungry, or leaving school unsure of when they’re going to eat again.

Earlier this year, when COVID-era relief ended, thousands of families in West Virginia stopped receiving emergency allotments of $100-or-so a month in food money through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At the same time, the cost of nutritional staples, like eggs, has doubled.

To put it simply, skyrocketing food prices, alongside cuts to food assistance, have put families teetering on what is being called a “hunger cliff.”

There are many policy solutions on the table, so to speak, but one solution that would increase access to free and reduced school meals is up for public comment. And all of us have a chance to speak up for feeding millions of kids in our state and around the country.

Here’s how: The U.S. Department of Agriculture is accepting comments until Monday on a proposed rule that would increase the ability of schools to participate in Community Eligibility Program, or CEP (read: free meals), by lowering the minimum percentage threshold of identified student participation from 40% to 25%.

Anyone can go to the USDA’s website and make a comment in support of this rule change. If adopted, schools would have more flexibility to invest nonfederal funds to offer no-cost meals to all enrolled students. As a result, more students would have an opportunity to access meals at no cost and with no stigma (reducing the aforementioned anxiety in the cafeteria), families would have school meal debt eliminated and school staff would have less-burdensome paperwork.

Many anti-poverty groups in the state began advocacy for CEP in 2013, the year West Virginia became eligible to participate under the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act.

The Legislature at that time passed the Feed to Achieve Act, which sought to offer free school meals to all students in the state. One component of the legislation required that schools provide nontraditional ways of serving breakfast by 2015, a move that spurred more participation in the CEP program.

Ten years later, most of the counties that implemented CEP in schools where enough kids met eligibility requirements chose to expand CEP countywide. What was heard, at least anecdotally, was that schools that opted in saw benefits like improved nutrition, reduced discipline problems and improved focus among the students.

Imagine having to navigate the social anxieties and pressures of school on an empty stomach. Now, imagine that you can take an easy action to help the millions of kids who navigate this reality every day. All you have to do is go to regulations.gov, where you can make a unique comment, and, if enough of us do so, we will create a chorus speaking up for feeding kids.

A little anxiety in the cafeteria is an inevitable part of growing up, but hunger should never be.

(This op-ed by Lida Shepherd, director of the AFSC WV Economic Justice Project, appeared in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

How to do a good deed without really trying

 Believe it or not, El Cabrero was once a boy scout. Not for too long, of course. I can still remember the Scout Law and Promise, not to mention some crude jokes picked up along the way. As I recall, we were also encouraged to do a good deed or turn for the day every day, although my record is pretty spotty in that department.

However, there's an easy way you can do your good deed for the day. Here's the deal: the USDA is considering a policy that would expand access to free school breakfasts and lunches for kids. It would do this by lowering the threshold for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from 40 to 25 percent. This could help millions of kids, eliminate stigma, give parents a break, improve learning and child nutrition, and more.

The USDA is accepting public comments on this proposed policy until May 8. All the info you need to make a public comment is here, but please put it in your own words. They disregard comments that seem copied and pasted.

I cannot promise this will purify evil karma accumulated over the eons in previous lives beyond number. But it can't hurt.

A little good news on child care

For the last couple years, child care in West Virginia has been in a tough spot, as noted in this post during the 2023 legislative session. Not surprisingly, this situation was made worse by the pandemic. Until very recently, child care providers were reimbursed based on attendance rather than enrollment. And that's a problem. Or was.

To quote from that earlier post,

 

In an era of pandemics, new variations on old illnesses, extreme weather events and the general weirdness of our time, attendance at school or child care varies widely.

Anyone with kids in school or child care knows that classrooms can empty out quickly when a new bug makes the rounds. Basing child care reimbursement on who happens to be there on any given day is no way to run this proverbial railroad. It provides no stability of care for parents who need to work and no stability of income for those who make that possible.

Enrollment-based reimbursement will help keep existing providers open, encourage new ones and help retain employees by providing a measure of stability and predictability of funding.

Child advocates, child care providers and parents tried hard in the last two legislative sessions to make this change in what has been called "the industry that makes other industries possible." Although the idea gained some traction, the legislation didn't make it across the line.

The good news is that it looks like that advocacy wasn't wasted. The WV Department of Health and Human Resources recently made this announcement:

The WV Department of Health & Human Resources (DHHR), Bureau for Family Assistance today announced additional funding to allow child care providers to be reimbursed based on enrollment through August 2024. 

The pay-by-enrollment methodology was instituted during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency using federally allocated funds to provide financial stability and continued assurance of available child care, and was projected to be exhausted by September 2023.

“By reprioritizing use of available funds, DHHR can help child care providers continue to keep their doors open and help working families get the care they need as the child care operational budgets continue to stabilize post-pandemic,” said Janie Cole, Commissioner of DHHR’s Bureau for Family Assistance. “High quality child care supports both parents and children and is a critical investment in our state’s future.”

That's a huge win for workers, employers, kids and families. 

 

Some good news

 North Carolina took a giant step today in the right direction. Their state legislature finalized a bill to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to otherwise ineligible people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. It is estimated that this will benefit around 600,000 people.

But it's not just about health coverage. The expansion will bring in millions of federal dollars, create jobs, keep rural hospitals open, help people recover from Substance Use Disorder and all kinds of other good stuff.

By my count--and counting has never been my strong suit--North Carolina is the 41st state, including DC, to take this step. It's especially important that this happened in a southern state. Let's just say that if one was drawing a Venn diagram of states that resisted expansion with states that belonged to the Confederacy there is considerable overlap. At the risk of extreme understatement, this might not be entirely coincidental. But every time this happens, it puts more pressure on the holdouts to do the right thing.

A little review: Medicaid expansion was intended for all states and DC when the ACA was passed in 2010. A 2012 US Supreme Court decision upheld the constitutionality of it, but made expansion a state decision. Depending on the state, the decision could be made by ballot measure, executive decision, or legislation, which is always more complicated.

We were lucky that West Virginia's decision was made before the state turned into a ________ (you can fill in the blank) by my favorite all time governor, Earl Ray Tomblin. The state agency in charge did a fantastic job of signing people up. Lots of people I know worked really hard to make sure that happened. I'm not sure of the current enrollment numbers, but at times it has come close to 200,000 adults in a state with a population of 1.8 million, more or less.

However, we had to spend a lot of years defending it, especially during the Orange Epoch, when the late Senator John McCain, to his great credit, stopped efforts to repeal it in the senate. West Virginia was in the hot seat then too, with a conservative Democrat and a fairly moderate Republican in the persons of Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito. Manchin took a "fix not nix" approach and Capito said that she "didn't go to Washington to hurt people."

Then there were state legislative efforts by out of state groups like ALEC and the Foundation for Government Accountability to impose bureaucratic hoops and reporting requirements designed to cut people off as recent as this year, which were fortunately defeated. It also was a huge relief when the US Supreme Court (!) effectively squelched efforts to undo the law in 2021.

I imagine folks in North Carolina will have to be vigilant on the enrollment process and ready to defend the expansion when efforts are made to weaken it. But it's still a great day.

Next stop...maybe Alabama? Sometimes the domino theory has its moments.

Punching down

 Things are about to get rough for West Virginia families facing food insecurity, defined by the USDA as “the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.”

Some hits are coming from federal changes in COVID programs and some from state legislation. But the unkindest cut of all could come from a mean-spirited bill recently introduced in the legislature if it crosses the finish line.

All of these involve the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, which provides basic food aid to around 167,000 households here.

As of March 1, pandemic-related emergency allotment increases for SNAP will cease. The average household here will receive a monthly reduction of $195 in benefits. The individual will see a reduction of $102, a net loss of $33 million in income to state businesses.

Then there’s this: when the federal Public Health Emergency ends in May, the suspension of work reporting requirements will end for able-bodied adults without dependents will end.

This means that a law passed in 2018 will go back into effect on July 1, imposing reporting requirements and hurdles for non-custodial low-income adults. As many as 24,000 could be pushed off if they can’t satisfy reporting requirements for work activities.

The 2018 bill was touted to promote workforce participation. In fact, it doubled down on a failed 2016 policy piloted in nine counties. A later DHHR report found that “Our best data does not indicate that [limiting benefits] has had a significant impact on employment figures.” People were just cut off and local businesses lost out.

Those are bad enough, but potentially much worse is House Bill 3484. It would add so many reporting, documenting and other bureaucratic restrictions for so many people as to make it unworkable both for people receiving help with food and for the beleaguered state agency that would have to administer the bill if it passes.

At a recent legislative committee meeting, a state agency representative testified that implementing the proposed legislation would actually cost state taxpayers millions of dollars while the additional requirements would reduce number of low-income people receiving food assistance. And that research has indicated that additional requirements reduce food assistance without increasing employment.

A representative of retail businesses testified that the loss of federal SNAP dollars would hurt local business and jobs, especially in rural counties.

Caitlin Cook, director of advocacy and public policy at Mountaineer Food Bank, which serves 48 of 55 counties, pointed out that the state food charity system is already overstretched and couldn’t make up for the loss of federal food aid. According to Cook, “For every one meal the food bank provides, SNAP provides nine, while simultaneously putting additional money into our local communities.”

Despite all the expert testimony, the bill passed out of committee and was reported to the floor of the House. At this writing its fate is unclear.

Aside from hungry people and local businesses, HB 3484 would also mean a loss for West Virginia farmers and farmers’ markets, which now offer SNAP Stretch, a program that allows people to double their purchasing power for fresh and locally grown food.

The bill goes against the grain of actions taken by political leaders in recent times. In 2021, for example, House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, announced the creation of a Food Insecurity Workgroup “dedicated to utilizing every tool at West Virginia’s disposal to help reduce hunger throughout the state.”

The group met regularly to hear from experts in the field and made positive recommendations about increasing CARES Act funding to combat hunger. In December 2021, Governor Justice agreed, providing $7.25 million for food insecurity partners across the state. Reportedly, Speaker Hanshaw may reactivate the group.

Meanwhile, Gov. Jim Justice in his 2023 state of the state speech said that “We need to try with all in us to say, by God we’re not going to have hungry people in West Virginia today.”

The governor released a proclamation declaring Jan. 26 to be Hunger Free West Virginia Day, acknowledging that 217,690 people here, including 63,070 children are food insecure; one in six children experiences hunger regularly; and that many seniors have to chose between lifesaving medications and a healthy diet.

It had strong language, such as “it is essential to provide appropriate, healthy nutrition to all residents of West Virginia suffering from food insecurity;” “Charitable programs are unable to fully support those facing hunger. A combination of charity and government assistance programs is necessary to help bridge the meal gap;” and “food is a human right.”

The senate also weighed in last month with a resolution that stated “The West Virginia Senate recognizes food insecurity is prevalent in our communities, with 1-in-7 West Virginians not knowing where their next meal will come from…”

Things are challenging enough in West Virginia already, whether we’re talking low-income adults, kids, and seniors or people in local businesses, farmers, agencies, and charities. We don’t need a bad law to make a tough situation worse.

It’s sad but some people seem to derive gratification from harming people with less power than themselves, especially if they don’t think their targets can retaliate. Poor people are a convenient target for those who enjoy this kind of thing.

That’s what this is. That’s all this is.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Time to step up for child care

 Politicians in West Virginia talk a lot about the state’s low workforce participation rate and the need to increase it. There’s one easy and proven thing that can make that happen: support for child care for working families. 

The numbers tell the story.

First there’s the issue of unmet need. According to Mountain State Spotlight, there are around 68,000 West Virginia children under age 6 with two working parents, not to mention plenty over that age who still need a safe place to be while parents work. But there are only around 40,000 child care slots.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12.5% of West Virginia workers missed work in 2021 for reasons related to child care. 

Then there’s the question of availability. More than 60% of West Virginians live in child care “deserts,” where the nearest provider is over 50 miles away.

There’s also the problem of costs. Numbers vary, but according to one recent estimate, the average cost of child care in West Virginia is $845 per month or $10,140 per year. That’s more than twice the cost for full time undergraduate tuition and fees from my alma mater of Marshall University. That contrast is telling because families often have more economic stability as children approach adulthood than when they’re just getting started.

Federal COVID relief funding helped many families cope with child care costs, to the tune of $330 million over the last few years, but that funding is winding down. In November, 7,288 children from 4,596 families with essential workers earning more than 85% of state median income lost this support. No doubt some of these parents will have little choice but to leave the workforce.

The situation is likely to get a lot worse when federal child care stabilization payments to qualified providers dry up at the end of September.

All of these challenges make it hard for quality child care providers stay open. We shouldn’t forget that in addition to helping parents go to work, these centers also provide jobs themselves, although they may not pay enough for their own workers to afford, you guessed it, child care.

Obviously, there are a lot of issues at work here, ranging from changes in the economy and family life to stagnant wages to inadequate investment in early childhood.

However, there is one relatively simple measure that would help to keep child care providers open and families going to work. It involves paying child care providers based on enrollment rather than attendance. In an era of pandemics, new variations on old illnesses, extreme weather events and the general weirdness of our time, attendance at school or child care varies widely.

Anyone with kids in school or child care knows that classrooms can empty out quickly when a new bug makes the rounds. Basing child care reimbursement on who happens to be there on any given day is no way to run this proverbial railroad. It provides no stability of care for parents who need to work and no stability of income for those who make that possible.

Enrollment-based reimbursement will help keep existing providers open, encourage new ones and help retain employees by providing a measure of stability and predictability of funding.

Child care has been called “the industry that supports all other industries,” but it’s more than that. We know from studies of human development that the period from birth to age 5 is the time of the brain’s most rapid development and that positive or adverse experience in early childhood can have lifelong implications.

West Virginia’s children and working parents deserve affordable and high-quality child care and those who provide that care themselves deserve a living wage.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Here we go again

 It’s been interesting to watch the debate between Gov. Jim Justice and West Virginia Senate leaders about tax policy for the past few months.

Before the 2022 election, they were at odds over Amendment 2, which went down by a huge margin. It would have given the Legislature the authority to eliminate business equipment taxes, which fund local services. This could have meant a hit of over $500 million to local governments, schools, fire departments, libraries, etc. The main beneficiaries would be out-of-state corporations.

At the time, Justice was quoted as saying, “We’re taking away an income stream and betting on good times forever and putting at risk our schools, our EMS, our firemen, our police and whatever it may be. We have to step back and think about what we are doing.”

He was right.

On the other hand, when Justice proposed a “tsunami” plan to cut state income taxes by over 50% in three years — to the tune of a $1.5 billion cut to the state budget — Senate leaders were skeptical. One called it “phony math.”

(A friend of mine pointed out at the time the plan was unveiled that tsunamis aren’t particularly popular with people who have lived through them.)

According to MetroNews, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, said of the governor’s plan, “It’s kind of surprising — surprising and not surprising, because he’s not given a six-year plan. So, either he doesn’t know what the expenditures are on the out years or he doesn’t care — and, apparently, the House doesn’t either, because, before they went through any of their budget hearings to figure out what the needs are in the state going forward, they went and and passed a billion-dollar reduction.”

Tarr’s right, too.

One thing both plans have in common is that they would sacrifice public goods primarily for the benefit of the wealthy. The big winners of Amendment 2 would have been out-of-state corporations. The biggest winners of the “tsunami” would be the richest 20% of West Virginians, who would get around 65% of the income tax cut.

Maybe the real problem isn’t finding the best way give tax breaks to wealthy people or corporations by either method. Maybe the real problem is how to make West Virginia a welcoming place with great schools, vocational and post-secondary education, excellent health care, good infrastructure, beautiful parks and libraries, and adequate funding for natural disasters and other emergencies.

If the goal is to encourage people to move here, a failed state where everything is crumbling to the ground isn’t going to get it.

Supporters of both tax cuts argue that the state is enjoying a huge surplus and can afford to slice away at revenue without negative consequences. However, the surplus, such as it is, is part sugar high and part illusion.

First, the sugar high.

As you might have noticed, the past few years haven’t been exactly normal, between pandemics, political polarization, economic dislocations and international wars and tension.

We’ve been awash with COVID money from the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan. These are one-time sources of funding. They should be spent for their intended purpose of addressing the hardships caused by the pandemic and its aftershocks.

It’s kind of like winning $1,000 in the lottery and quitting your day job in favor of scratching tickets. Lightning doesn’t strike often in the same place.

Another factor driving the sugar high is a spike in severance taxes. These are notoriously volatile, and fluctuate widely in spirals of boom and bust. The main reason for the spike can be summed up in two words: Russia and Ukraine. Again, not an everyday occurrence.

As Tarr pointed out, there are no realistic and rigorous long-term revenue estimates taking these things into account.

So much for the sugar high. Now, for the illusion.

For the past several years, state revenue estimates have been deliberately low, which makes it seem like a surplus when it turns out higher. It’s kind of like setting a goal of jogging a mile in half an hour and crowing when you shuffle off the finish line in 15 minutes.

Then there is the fact that the state budget has been flat for several years, meaning it has changed very little despite many unmet needs and inflation rates of 7% in 2021 and 6.5% in 2022. This has been a quiet but deep cut before the games have even started.

It also might be good to remember that West Virginia’s last corporate tax cuts promised much but delivered nothing.

Betting our future on one-time unique events and questionable estimates reminds me of Jesus’ parable about the person who built his house upon sand. Let’s just say that didn’t end well either.

There are better ways of spending one-time federal COVID money than corporate welfare or permanent tax cuts for the wealthy.

For example, the Tuesday Morning Group, the West Virginia NAACP and others have proposed spending $300 million — a mere fraction of federal ARPA money — to be invested in West Virginia’s neediest communities in projects that improve workforce participation, housing, health, education outcomes and social services.

As for the spike in severance tax revenue, that money might best be spent on the unmet needs of the coal- and gas-producing communities from which it came.

Again, it’s a question of priorities.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

The Walking Dead: WV legislature version

 I had to stop watching “The Walking Dead” television show a few years ago. It reminded me too much of real life.

I’m not saying that dead and decomposing people are literally shuffling around eating the living and turning those who get bitten by them into fellow flesh-eating walkers. Not yet anyway, although not much surprises me lately.

But it is the case that harmful policies and ideas that should long ago have been decently buried are shuffling around with considerable alacrity in the Legislature. And they do bite.

One such walker is Senate Bill 59, which would cut down on unemployment insurance for workers who lose their jobs from no fault of their own. A similar bill was defeated and buried last year, but it’s returned from the crypt. As was the case last year, the bill passed the Senate. Last year, fortunately, it died in the House of Delegates. This year, its fate is up for grabs.

The short version is that the bill would increase the number of hoops that people who have lost their jobs or been laid off need to jump through to get a fraction of their usual earnings, possibly threatening their ability to access this lifeline for their families.

If that weren’t bad enough, it also reduces the eligibility period for receiving unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to as little as 12, depending on the state unemployment average.

That’s another problem. West Virginia is a very economically diverse state, with unemployment, poverty and other measures of economic well-being (or the lack of it) varying widely from county to county. A statewide index would basically shackle the majority of rural counties to employment conditions that prevail in more urban and prosperous areas.

Not to pick on Monongalia County, but it’s in a different economic universe than counties like McDowell, Mingo, Logan, Wyoming, Calhoun, Clay, Wirt, etc. Mon and other counties with more economic options shouldn’t set the pace for the entire state.

Further, people laid off from well-paying jobs, such as mining or manufacturing, often take longer to find comparable work with their skill set because of local market conditions.

Let’s play it out a little further. Imagine a machinist or electrician laid off with a reduced term of eligibility. They might well take a job paying much less than a living wage that doesn’t take advantage of their knowledge or skills, while knocking someone else out of a job at the lower end of the market. When employment conditions improve, they’ll drop the old job like a hot potato, simply creating more churning and turnover for their new employer.

The ultimate effect would be to drive down wages for all workers, not to mention cause an economic loss to local economies. Unemployment benefits get spent really quickly on the basics.

These benefits also help ward off other social problems. Research on child well-being shows that economic supports in hard times increase the “protective factors” for kids and families. Every additional $1,000 spent by states on benefits is associated with a reduction in child maltreatment reports, less substantiated child maltreatment and fewer kids in foster care.

A recent study published in Demography, Duke University’s research journal, even found that “the harmful effects of job loss on opioid overdose mortality decline with increasing state unemployment insurance benefit levels. These findings suggest that social policy in the form of income transfers played a crucial role in disrupting the link between job loss and opioid overdose mortality.”

According to the authors, there is “a growing body of evidence that [unemployment insurance] may mitigate the harmful effects of job loss on physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes. They concluded that “cuts to social welfare benefits such as [unemployment insurance] have second-order effects on outcomes such as health that extend well beyond basic financial needs.”

All of which is to say that being poor and unemployed isn’t nearly as much fun as some rich people seem to think.

To be fair, sometimes well-meaning people confuse unemployed workers with those not in the labor force and think cutting unemployment insurance will boost labor force participation. They are actually two different populations. The labor force consists of all workers, including those who recently lost jobs through no fault of their own.

If the intent is to boost labor market participation, rather than just stick it to families that hit a rough spot, there are better ways to do that, some of which have been proposed as bills in this session. One obvious step in the right direction would be increasing state investments in child care, which can cost more than a college education and typically hit at a time when a family’s earning capacity hasn’t reached full bloom.

Another would be to support policies such as a Medicaid buy-in that would help lower wage workers keep health benefits if they have a chance to get a raise. Or West Virginia could join the number of states that offer refundable child tax credits or earned income tax credits.

Incredibly, while some state lawmakers support cutting assistance for the jobless, others have called for setting aside $500 million in American Rescue Plan money intended to help families and communities with the damage done by COVID to give away as corporate handouts to mostly out-of-state corporations.

It’s a question of priorities. Are we going to stand beside a coal miner’s daughter whose dad gets a layoff notice from the mine, or are we going to turn our back on them?

(This ran as a column/op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

The secret of my success (that was irony)

 West Virginia's legislative session began this week and I already wish it was over. My annual prayer has been for the state to finally hit bottom politically, but were heading down like the family in the late great John Prine's song The Bottomless Lake.

The session officially kicked off with Governor Jim Justice's state of the state address. Justice was once the state's only billionaire, but recent news reports have placed him a bit below that level but still way ahead of the rest of us. He was elected as a Democrat in 2016 but switched parties the following year. He was reelected in 2020 and seems set on running against Senator Joe Manchin if the latter runs again in 2024. 

He is perhaps best known for the prominent display of his English bull dog universally known here as Babydog. Usually these displays are of her frontal regions, although there has been at least one major exception to that.

If I had to describe him politically, I'd say he's kind of random. Compared to many state legislative leaders today, he looks pretty moderate. His address blended some good proposals, such as raises for teachers and public employees, investing money in the state's tottering Public Employees Insurance Agency, help to food banks and such with some in the not so much category. One of the worst is cutting the state income tax, WV's only progressive tax, by 50 percent over three years.

The rationale is that WV is running a budget surplus and doesn't need the money, but that's due to low budget estimates, years of flat budgets, federal COVID money and a spike in severance tax revenues that are extremely volatile. In other words, it's a sugar high, although most people here don't feel it.

That would mean an annual loss of revenue of around $1.2 billion per year when fully implemented, coming after several years of a state budget that didn't keep up with inflation. This would mean cuts to all kinds of programs from child care to K-12 to early childhood to higher ed to human services at a time of great and unmet needs. I was please to work on a press conference about this and other issues (see here and here) yesterday.

But the event made me think of a self-esteem saving way of always declaring victory when you try to pull something like that together that I cooked up with a friend years ago. It goes like this:

*if you plan to rally the masses and generate media coverage and the masses don't show up but the media does, pretend you just planned a press conference all along;

*if you plan to rally the masses and generate media coverage and the only people who show up are your cronies, pretend you just planned a meeting all along;

*if you plan to rally the masses and generate media coverage and not even your cronies show up, pretend you're just looking around and that was what you meant to do all along.

The main thing is to declare victory, even if it has to be drastically redefined.

So there.