Memorial Day and troubled homecomings

As Memorial Day weekend runs down, I've been thinking about the troubles that await those who do make it home safely. For one thing, it has been reported for some time that around 18 veterans a day commit suicide.

For another, an unprecedented number of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are filing for disability benefits. The Associate Press reports that around 45 percent of recent veterans are filing for some time of benefit due to service related injuries, including PTSD and concussive injuries and a host of other wounds and traumas.

For another, a story on NPR which I can't yet find online also reported that one of the most immediate struggles for returning veterans is finding a job in a weak economy.

The people who served in these wars and those who love and care for them have been through a lot. And many of them who survived it are still a long way from really being home.

Frack-a-delic

"Externalities" is an economics term that is often forgotten by worshipers of the market god. An externality is a kind of market failure, an example of a situation in which markets aren't efficient. The most troubling kind is a negative externality, which occurs when the costs of a particular kind of business aren't borne by either the buyer or seller and don't show up on the bottom line. Instead, they are passed on to someone else, often the public, which typically has to clean up the mess if it is going to be cleaned up at all.

I kept thinking about negative externalities while driving around Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling in northern WV. One example are the roads that are chewed up by heaving trucks hauling equipment in and out. Then there is the carbon emitted from the wells and drilling and transport process. Then there are all the nasty chemicals that show up in air, water, and solid waste. Then there is the noise pollution and diminished quality of life for people who live near the operations. Then, what kind of health effects are going to show up down the road? Etc.

People--lots of people--who didn't benefit from the market transaction are going to be paying for this for a long time to come. I know this drilling is going to be done, but I don't think we've gone far enough in regulating it and I don't think anyone yet has any idea what the long term consequences are going to be.


WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? Support for the war in Afghanistan is at an all time low.


A PARADIGM SHIFT in global economic thinking? Maybe, but it hasn't hit here yet.

IN POLITICS, who needs facts?

WHAT ABOUT GOLIATH? An archaeological dig in Israel may shed like on biblical King David's time.

I WANT ONE. Scientists have discovered fossils of a "mini-mammoth" that stood about three feet high.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

This and that

It's disappointing but not surprising that the WV legislature passed a gutted version of its Marcellus Shale bill aimed a regulating the new natural gas boom at the behest of Governor Earl Ray Tomblin.

Holy "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," Batman!

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, the WV Board of Education passed an anti-bullying policy that explicitly protects gay and lesbian students. That ought to give a couple religious right groups something to howl at the moon about.

WINDOWS AND MIRRORS. If you are in the Charleston area today and tomorrow (that would be Thursday Dec. 15 and Friday Dec. 16) come check out "Windows and Mirrors," a traveling art exhibit about the war in Afghanistan. It will be shown at Mountaineer Good News Garage, 221 Hale Street, from 5-8 tonight and from 10-2 on Friday. Here's coverage about it from the Gazette and the West Virginia News Service. Or you can read all about it here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Occupied territory

The Occupy Wall Street solidarity movement officially hit West Virginia this weekend in Huntington. Organizers, many of whom were connected in some way with Marshall University, planned to begin rallying outside Chase Bank on Friday evening, stay there until Sunday, and finish with a march.

I stopped by for a couple of hours on Friday and there might have been as many as 100 people, if you count comings and goings, which in my experience is a good number for Huntington. I'm sure the number of hardy souls who camped out on the street was smaller, but it seems like they had a good support system organized and I'm not aware of any conflicts with the police.


There seemed to be a wide variety of people with many viewpoints, united by a concern for growing inequality. The event also seemed to provide an opportunity for people who have never engaged in this kind of activity before. I'd never seen most of the people who participated before and I've done a thing or two in Huntington over the years. It's hard to say how many more events will happen in WV or around the country but this is something I didn't see coming.

I think the movement will be stronger if it sticks more closely with the 99 percent message rather than covering the map of issues. A populist economic message could really resonate in southern West Virginia--if people can avoid getting sidetracked with coal controversies. Those issues need to be dealt with, but this probably isn't the best venue. Just saying.

LOOKING AHEAD. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on economic policy options for WV.

AFGHANISTAN. Here's a statement from WV Senator Joe Manchin on the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. Sample quote:

"As I have said before, we must choose between rebuilding Afghanistan and rebuilding America because we can’t afford to do both. And I choose to rebuild America.”

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Occupations

Since my last post here on the Occupy Wall Street movement, which isn't just for Wall Street any more, momentum seems to be building. I've gotten several emails from different groups announcing their solidarity with these efforts.

According to this CNN story, Big Apple unions are joining in the action. More on that from NPR here. It's still too soon to tell how long this will last, but this item, also from CNN, suggests it's far from over.

So far, I know of several events planned for WV cities and towns. One is set for Huntington tomorrow. Others will be held on Oct. 15 in Charleston, Wheeling, Morgantown and Martinsburg.

10 YEARS OUT. As the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan approaches, a new survey finds that many veterans of the post-9/11 era don't think the wars were worth the sacrifices involved.

LIVING FOSSILS (AND COOL PICTURES) here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Out-classed

I used to think I was a pretty good BS artist. It kind of comes with being a hillbilly. But this weekend, I was dealt a lesson in humility and now realize I am just a piker.

It went like this...a week or so ago, the Spousal Unit and I went on a hike in the hills surrounding Goat Rope Farm. As usual, we took a camera and got a cool picture of a black snake.

Now, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a blogger in possession of a snake picture must do something with it. I scanned the web in search of a good snake poem for the weekend post. In doing so I discovered that there is something of a shortage of good snake poems.

I did, however, find a fragment of one by Percy Bysshe Shelley that appeared to have been written after said poet hit the laudanum a bit too hard. In case you missed the weekend post, here it is:

Wake the serpent not -- lest he
Should not know the way to go, --
Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping
Through the deep grass of the meadow!
Not a bee shall hear him creeping,
Not a may-fly shall awaken
From its cradling blue-bell shaken,
Not the starlight as he's sliding
Through the grass with silent gliding.

I then asked whether any reader had any idea what Shelley was talking about. Who should step up to the plate by my father-in-law who sent me an email that read in part:

Shelley's poem, is a romantic affirmation of the dreaming state, which to the snake--and to the poet--is often more colorful and meaningful than waking reality. But if you were to ask Shelley to explain the meaning of the poem, he would probably read it, then read it again, pause a while, and read it again. Then he would say, "I don't know what the hell I meant by that poem!"

So I guess we can interpret it in any way we want, and all of us would be right. But let's make another attempt at understanding it: the snake is evidently asleep through the entire segment of the poem. His dreaming journey is not yet finished. So we should not wake him to interrupt that dream.

"Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping...." includes what follows of his dream. If he were awake, and taking this same journey through the grass, would he devour those things he would come across? Perhaps that is why we should not wake the sleeping serpent. As long as he is asleep, he is harmless.

Another interpretation, far more esoteric: can the serpent represent evil? If so, then we should let evil sleep. Once we arouse evil, it can destroy us. It's like that old West Virginia mountain saying: "Let sleeping dogs lie."

Holy hermeneutics, Batman! I know when I've been out-gunned. Now that he primed the pump, I can see a whole range of interpretations. Aside from the obvious Freudian one, it occurs to me that the snake, like most creatures including humans, runs on automatic pilot most of the time, which is analogous to being asleep.

Hats off to you, Pops!

OUT OF AFGHANISTAN. Here's WV's Senator Joe Manchin calling for a stepped up troop withdrawal.

IT'S HAPPENING, BUT WILL WE GET OUR ACT TOGETHER? Here's a fairly optimistic view of how we might finally respond to climate change.

SUGGESTIONS ON FOCUSING YOUR MIND here.

WEIRD BUT COOL SCIENCE PICTURES here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

In the spirit of fair play

I don't always agree with WV Senator Joe Manchin on issues regarding Medicaid, the federal budget and such, but in the spirit of fair play, I think he is right on directing priorities away from war spending in Afghanistan.

Manchin was quoted in the New York Times as saying

We can no longer, in good conscience, cut services and programs at home, raise taxes or — and this is very important — lift the debt ceiling in order to fund nation-building in Afghanistan. The question the president faces — we all face — is quite simple: Will we choose to rebuild America or Afghanistan? In light of our nation’s fiscal peril, we cannot do both.

And this is from the Charleston Gazette:

"We cannot afford to pursue our current costly strategy in Afghanistan when we face devastating cuts and a death spiral of debt here at home," Manchin said.

KOCHED UP. Here's an item with a video on the right wing noise machine.

UNEMPLOYMENT. Here's Jared Bernstein on trends over time.

CUTTING MEDICAID means cutting jobs.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING HOW SPIDERS SPIN WEBS IN ZERO GRAVITY, click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

It's hard not to cuss these days

From the AFLCIO:

While 25 million unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers are drowning, CEO pay skyrocketed by 23 percent, for an average salary of $11.4 million in 2010, according to the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch. Released today, data compiled at PayWatch also show CEOs have done little to create badly-needed jobs, instead sitting on a record $1.93 trillion in cash on their balance sheets.

The 2011 Executive PayWatch features the compensation of 299 S&P 500 company CEOs and provides direct comparisons between those CEOs and the median pay of nurses, teachers, firefighters and others. For instance, while a secretary makes a median annual salary of $29,980, someone like Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf rakes in $18,973,722 million—632 times the secretary’s salary. The pay gap between Wall Street and Main Street has widened egregiously—as recently as 1980, CEOs made 42 times that of blue-collar workers.

There's more here and the full report is here.

And let's not forget the fact that the very wealthy are paying less in taxes. And there's a bit more here and especially here on the same subject.While we're at it, this article provides a good account of how things got to be this way.

El Cabrero grew up in a cussing family and I know a thing or two about obscenity. Trust me, it's obscene to talk about gutting Medicare and Medicaid and other programs that help low income and working people in the name of deficit reduction while continuing to cut taxes on the wealthy in a time of growing inequality.

OFF TOPIC BUT INTERESTING. I missed this Washington Post item when it first came out. It's an interesting take on how Glenn Beck kind of lost it.

TALKING SENSE. WV Senator Jay Rockefeller suggest that the US needs to get out of the current wars.

INTERESTING QUESTION. Ken Ward asks in Coal Tattoo whether WV's political leaders believe in science.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Makes me think

Somebody throw this guy a bone. This is Poseidon, the Greek god in charge of earthquakes and things like tsunamis.

A few years ago, I listened to an unabridged recording of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. It was a "Holy ****!" moment for me. I had been focused for a long time on basic economic justice issues to the extent that I hadn't really paid enough attention to environmental and ecological issues and how they can impact human life.

Recently, I went back and read the book in print form, something which made even my pal Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo raise his eyebrows. I particularly enjoyed the parts about the Vikings this time around, if "enjoyed" is the right word to use in reading about societies that fall apart (this may or may not have anything to do with the ongoing series here on Beowulf). I was really struck, again, by so many examples of societies that seemed to thrive for a time only to decline.

The recent disasters in Japan are a reminder to me of just how vulnerable complex societies are from unexpected (not to mention expected but ignored) threats. If anything, Japan is much more prepared, both technically and socially, to deal with disasters than the US, and the dangers there are huge.

It makes me think.

THIS on that.

THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING. Glenn Beck has suggested that God may have sent the disaster to Japan and that this could have something to do with the Ten Commandments. It occurs to me, however, that crime statistics and cultural factors suggest that the Japanese are doing better than the US these days in terms of not killing, not stealing, and honoring thy father and mother.

AFGHANISTAN. According to a new poll, nearly two thirds of Americans think the war there isn't worth the cost.

LIBYA is the theme of the latest edition of Notes from Under the Fig Tree from the Rev. Jim Lewis.

GET THE TO A DOGGERY. Here's yet another article on the health benefits of having a dog. If you walk them, that is.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

This could happen to anybody

Goats could drive anybody to drink.

Okay. Every so often a news story will catch the eye. This week I ran across one from Poland about a farmer who was arrested for drunk driving while taking his lonely goat out on a date.

Lest there be any confusion, he was not dating the goat himself, but rather escorting it on a visit to a female companion. Apparently the goat was riding in the back seat. It is a truth universally acknowledged that goats dislike riding shotgun.

Apparently, when he got to the farm of his friend, whereat the female goat resided, the humans pounded back some vodka while the goats engaged in that delicate form of courtship for which they are so famed.

Actually, I've been in similar situations, minus the vodka. We don't have a buck (an un-neutered male for you goat civilians) so whenever our lady goats are in the mood to enjoy the converse of a caprine gentleman we put them in the back of the Spousal Unit's Matrix and haul them off.

Perhaps one reason we haven't indulged in vodka on these quadrupedal booty calls is because they don't take that long...

(For some reason, our lady goats tend to crave male companionship at awkward times and are often particularly demanding about such visits on or about Christmas Day, which kind of puts a damper on the whole manger story for me.)
While El Cabrero is officially opposed to drunk driving, the thing that really stuck in my mind is the idea of putting a randy male goat in one's car. They are odoriferous beasts and the odor clings to anything they come into contact with for a long time to come. Whatever happens to the driver, I hope there's a good stockpile of car air fresheners in the European Union. And, it goes without saying, I hope that the date was a felicitous one.

THE GREAT DIVIDE. Here's another call for debate without destruction.

THE LEGACY OF NONVIOLENCE. From the WV News Service, here's a story featuring a friend of mine and an associate of the Revs. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sr. on violent and nonviolent communication.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS. Conservative activist Grover Norquist wants public debate on the costs of the war in Afghanistan.

DENIED. In a move sure to generate coalfield controversy, the EPA vetoed Arch Coal's Spruce Mine permit, which would have been the largest mountaintop removal mine in WV history.

CUTE LITTLE DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The not so mighty hunter

Another deer season has come and gone. I made several efforts this time, but things didn't break my way.

I think part of the blame for this lies with the deer themselves. At one point, I might have had a shot at a group of them. Looking through the scope, I saw one deer licking another one.

It would have been so much easier if the deer in question would have been giving the other one the finger (although I know there are logistical problems for deer associated with performing that gesture).

Deer should be meaner. And uglier. Then everything would be perfect.

DEAL OR NO DEAL, REVISITED. Here's economist Dean Baker's take on the unemployment/tax cut deal.

FEAR OF SUCCESS. Here's a take on the right wing's fear of successful public programs.

PLUTOCRACY REVISITED. A former neo-con fesses up.

GAME CHANGER. The WV Senate will be under new management.

BLASTED MOUNTAINS AND BLOWN UP BUDDHAS. All the way from the state of Maine, this article compares the coming destruction of Blair Mountain with the blown up Buddhas of Afghanistan.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Whatever happened to supporting the troops?

OK. I am not the biggest fan of the current US war in Afghanistan. Politics and the morality of war aside, my understanding of history as far back as Alexander the Great suggests that the country is the Mother Of All Bad Places to Wage a Counter-Insurgency.

Still and all, it boggles my mind that right wingers in American these days are pushing all the wrong buttons and making a bad situation even worse for people serving and living over there. The Manhattan mosque controversy sends a bad enough message to Muslims and puts the whole hearts and minds thing in jeopardy.

But even that is pretty mild compared with the international reaction to the plans of a "church" in Florida to mark the anniversary of 9/11 by burning copies of the Quran.

Here's how it played in Afghanistan, according to a weekend AP report:

Hundreds of Afghans railed against the United States and called for President Barack Obama's death at a rally in the capital Monday to denounce an American church's plans to burn the Islamic holy book on Sept. 11.

The crowd in Kabul, numbering as many as 500, chanted "Long live Islam" and "Death to America" as they listened to fiery speeches from members of parliament, provincial council deputies, and Islamic clerics who criticized the U.S. and demanded the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country. Some threw rocks when a U.S. military convoy passed, but speakers shouted at them to stop and told police to arrest anyone who disobeyed.

These kinds of deliberate and gratuitous provocations are likely to get a lot of Americans and Afghan civilians killed. It's little surprise that General Petraeus was not amused:

"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort," Gen. Petraeus said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community."

As the saying goes, with friends like these, who needs enemies?

THE CLOCK IS TICKING on a program that has created 240,000 jobs unless the Senate extends the Emergency TANF provisions of the Recovery Act.

THIS COULD BE INTERESTING. A new rule by the Securities and Exchange Commission could shake up things at companies like Massey Energy.

MONEY AND HAPPINESS. Here's more on the link between the two.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Softening up the target

The theme at Goat Rope these days is public policy and how it happens (or doesn't). If you're interested in this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

Political scientist John Kingdon's Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies looks at the political ecosystem from major players like presidents and senators down to humble policy wonks. We're on the wonk part now.

One pleasant surprise for me in reading Kingdon's analysis is his assertion that ideas actually matter (to a degree anyway). This is especially true in what he calls the policy community, which consists of interest groups, think tanks, academics and others interested in this kind of thing.

You might think that policy ideas are developed as solutions to particular problems. Kingdon agrees that this happens, but also maintains that "people in and around government sometimes do not solve problems. Instead, they become advocates for solutions and look for current problems to which to attach their pet solution."

Just because one has a viable idea that holds up well to arguments and critiques, it doesn't follow that it will become a reality--but it might. The next phase involves what he calls "softening up:"

To some degree ideas float freely through the policy primeval soup. But their advocates do not allow the process to be completely free-floating. In addition to starting discussion of their proposals, they push their ideas in many different forums. These entrepreneurs attempt to "soften up" both policy communities, which tend to be inertia-bound and resistant to major changes, and larger publics, getting them used to new ideas and building acceptance for their proposals. Without this preliminary work, a proposal sprung even at a propitious time is likely to fall on deaf ears.

That rings true in my experience of working at the state level. Once you've developed an idea, you need to get it out there to all kinds of people in all kinds of ways for it to stand a change of going anywhere. This involves both public education and coalition building. Sometimes this can take years.

IT'S TOUGH OUT THERE. A new poll of unemployed workers shows the damage done by the recession.

AFGHANISTAN. Economist Jeffrey Sachs suggests a different approach in that country.

ANOTHER TOOL USING ANIMAL. Would you believe the octopus?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Red light, green light

Victor Hugo in days before Disney and Broadway.

Victor Hugo once said, "Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come."

John Kingdon, author of Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, wrote that Hugo's phrase "captures a fundamental reality about an irresistible movement that sweeps over our politics and our society, pushing aside everything that might stand in its path." His 1984 book examines just how this happens in the context of American politics and it seems to me to hold up pretty well today. And while he focused on changes at the federal level, his theories hold up pretty well at the state level as well.

Anyone who has ever tried to influence policy at either level knows that sometimes you get a green light and sometimes (usually more often in my case) the light is red and can stay that way for a long time. In his analysis, which I'm going to be looking at over the next few days, there are three streams that flow their merry way but sometimes can link up. When that happens, major changes can occur.

The big three are the political, policy and problem streams. The political is the most visible and is mostly influenced by elections, the perceived national mood, and the ambitions of major elected officials. The policy stream is less visible and is inhabited by staffers, advocacy and interest groups, and policy wonks such as myself. The problem stream consists of events and opportunities that rise to national attention and seem to demand action.

In his view, when the major political players become aware of a a major problem or opportunity for which an already worked out policy solution might apply, things can happen. The first stream sets the agenda while the second works out possible alternatives that might address the problem.

More on this to come.

SPEAKING OF PROBLEMS AND ALTERNATIVES, President Obama's jobs summit starts today. One solution used with success in Minnesota might be worth a look.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, the Economic Policy Institute has proposed its solution to unemployment crisis here.

ETHICAL CAPITALISM. Here's how one economist's vision of policy alternatives found an audience.

HEALTH CARE. Versions of health care reform in both the US House and Senate contain major expansions of Medicaid eligibility, which would extend coverage to millions of Americans. Here's a look at how this would benefit West Virginia.

ACTION ITEM. If you are in the Charleston area this evening and want to publicly oppose military escalation in Afghanistan, WV Patriots for Peace is sponsoring a vigil from 5:15pm - 6:15pm at Brawley Walkway (across from Chili's on Court St).

CHANGING THEIR TUNE. Blue whales are singing differently than they used to.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Hanging day

John Brown keeps showing up on this blog from time to time, but today he's here for a reason. This date marks the 150th anniversary of his execution in Charles Town, back when it was still part of Virginia.

Brown was a real Captain Ahab whose white whale was slavery. His monomania, to use a favorite 19th century term for an abnormal fixity of purpose, matched that of Melville's character. And unlike the captain of the Pequod whose quarry escaped, Brown was ultimately if posthumously successful.

As he was leaving the jail for his execution, he handed this message on a to an attendant:

I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty, land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.

It is also said that as he sat on what would be his coffin on the wagon ride to the gallows he looked around at the scenery, saying "This is a beautiful country. I never had the pleasure of seeing it before."

NOT GOOD. This item from The New England Journal of Medicine looks at the consequences of failure to pass health care reform.

CHAMBER OF WHATEVER. WVU-Tech professor and Gazette columnist John David takes the WV Chamber of Commerce to task for urging senators to hold health care legislation hostage over coal mining regulation.

GETTING WARMER. This Reuters article looks at WV's role in making or breaking climate change legislation in the US Senate.

LONELINESS CAN BE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH and it might be contagious.

HOW'S YOUR INNER CHIMP? Bill Moyers talks with primate researcher Jane Goodall here.

OLD EUROPE. Here's a look at a lost civilization that thrived in the Balkans around 5,000 years ago.

ACTION ITEM. If you are in the Charleston area Thursday and want to publicly oppose military escalation in Afghanistan, WV Patriots for Peace is sponsoring a vigil from 5:15pm - 6:15pm at Brawley Walkway (across from Chili's on Court St).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Noble savages

People seem to be genetically wired to make, tell and see stories and we often tend to endlessly recycle a few basic kinds of story types.

One that's particularly popular in America today is the action movie, with clear good guys and bad guys and a happy ending. That can be entertaining, but it's not always the best lens to look at social problems. As I've argued earlier this week, a lot of life is more like a tragedy of conflicting rights and wrongs.

The coal industry version of the action movie is that coal mining, including mountaintop removal, is the best thing that ever happened to West Virginia and that environmentalists or people serious about regulation are the serpent in this Garden of Eden. (Coal is also clean and carbon neutral, which is kind of like booze without alcohol.) Which is, of course, a product of bovine digestion.

I dislike mountaintop removal, support stronger regulation of the industry, and would like to see it phased out. But I've noticed that some articles on the subject by out of state environmental writers have an action movie of their own going on. According to this one, the good guys are a bunch of Appalachian Noble Savages standing as one against the evil coal companies. The assumption is that if the practice just ended today, everything would be great.

I'm not that worried about the evil coal company part of this action movie frame (which kind of works in some cases) but the rest is over-simplified. While probably a majority of West Virginians oppose the practice according to the public opinion research I've seen, this is a contested issue all the way down. There are noble and ignoble savages and non-savages on different sides of the issue.

There are no doubt people who work on mountaintop removal jobs who don't like it deep down inside. And there are people who personally oppose it but accept it for economic or political reasons. Lots of people are conflicted to one degree or another for various reasons.

The happy ending part is also over-simplified. I think the results for southern West Virginia are going to be tragic no matter what happens. If it goes on as it has in the past, there will be huge environmental devastation, water contamination, floods, coal-related health problems, etc., not to mention more climate change impacts. And if it stops, there will be some job losses and a loss of revenue for public services from coal severance taxes.

According to the US Energy Information Agency, in 2007 there were 6,608 surface mining jobs in West Virginia.

While I don't think coal companies have historically paid enough in taxes in light of the damage they've done and the wealth they've extracted, revenues generated from severance taxes make up an important part of West Virginia's budget, lately bringing over $300 million per year to the state's general revenue fund. According to a state tax official, around 85 percent of that is from coal.

Severance taxes are part of the reason why the state was slower to experience the fiscal impact of the current recession. And around 80 percent of state general revenue funds go to public and higher education and human services. And even if nothing changes as far as coal regulation goes, when it's gone it's gone.

El Cabrero is not seeing a whole lot of happy endings. Whatever happens, I'm seeing more of a tragedy than an action movie.

I'm reminded of a quote attributed to Woody Allen:

“Today we are at a crossroads. One road leads to hopelessness and despair; the other, to total extinction. Let us pray we choose wisely.”

I'll try to find a silver lining tomorrow....

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's Ken Wards latest blog post on the Obama administration's approach to the issue.

AND THEN THERE'S THIS. This article looks at research on carbon capture.

THE PATH TO WAR (BUT WHERE'S THE EXIT?). The latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes From Under the Fig Tree looks at the war in Iraq and especially Afghanistan.

SIGN OF THE TIMES. The recession is filling and stressing libraries.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A little British snark

D.H. Lawrence was not a big Franklin fan. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero has been amusing himself, and, he devoutly hopes, the Gentle Reader, lately by thumbing through the pages of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. This week I've been looking at his quest for moral perfection.

It's hard not to like Franklin, even when he's taking the whole Protestant Ethic/Spirit of capitalism thing too far. But there are those who manage to dislike him. One such person was the British writer D.H. Lawrence.

When he was able to tear himself away from writing about sex, Lawrence put together an amusing but venomous look at American literature in which he singles "sturdy, snuff-coloured Doctor Franklin" out for singular abuse.

In his discussion of Franklin's list of virtues and his practice of them, Lawrence accused him of attempting to fence in the human soul:

Who knows what will come out of the soul of man? The soul of man is a dark vast forest, with wild life in it. Think of Benjamin fencing it off!

Oh, but Benjamin fenced a little tract that he called the soul of man and proceeded to get it into cultivation. Providence, forsooth! And they think that bit of barbed wire is going to keep us in pound forever? More fools them...

And now I, at least, know why I can't stand Benjamin. He tries to take away my wholeness and my dark forest, my freedom. For how can any man be free, without an illimitable back-ground? And Benjamin tries to shove me into a barbed-wire paddock and make me grow potatoes or Chicagoes.

Chicagoes?

Rave on, D.H. For all his quirks, old Ben lived a full and generally useful life. I'm not sure it would have been better spent writing highbrow erotica.

VOLUNTEERING AGAIN. Here's an interesting news story about the growing number of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteering to help civilians displaced and harmed by the war.

TAKING IT PERSONALLY. Here's an interesting article about how AIG executives who received post-bailout bonuses are feeling the scorn and ire of many people.

EAT IT. Are big changes coming to America's industrial food system? When an organic garden is about to be planted at the White House, anything is possible.

URGENT WHALE GENEALOGY UPDATE. Hippos may be their closest living relative. I was thinking maybe wolverines...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Well...

Note: I'm not sure what this picture is doing here.

I've said this before and will say it again: if I was the president-elect of the United States (God forbid!), my first act would be to demand a recount. The actual person in question, however, seems to be of a different mind, so here's wishing him and us all the best.

It is the policy of this blog to stay out of the election business and instead focus on issues. Having said that, the changed political landscape means that some things may be possible that haven't been before.

Here are some things from my wish list (they've been frequent topics here for the last two years):

*The Employee Free Choice Act, which makes it easier and safer for workers to join unions, could be the most significant piece of social legislation in decades. Once the freedom to organize without fear of retaliation is restored, a lot of other problems facing working families would take care of themselves.

*Expanding access to health care. Need I say more?

*Enacting a meaningful and targeted economic stimulus package that includes aid to states and help for those hardest hit by the recession.

*Investing in infrastructure, education, green jobs and clean energy.

*Getting serious about dealing with climate change.

*Making access to higher education more affordable.

*Acting to reduce and ultimately eliminate extreme poverty.

While we're at it, ending the war in Iraq and a saner approach to international affairs and conflicts might not hurt either.

In general, the more I learn about the current state of the nation and the world, the more I'm convinced that we have a relatively small window of opportunity to get our act together if the future is going to be even marginally tolerable.

SNARKY WEST VIRGINIA COMMENTS. Every so often, some extremely wealthy groups or individuals attempt to purchase certain state products. I'm referring to things like the supreme court, the attorney general's office, the legislature and other such commodities.

El Cabrero is utterly heartbroken to find that the state and national Chamber Pot of Commerce was not able to close the deal despite have spent lots of out of state money. I need to pause to compose myself...

OK, I'm back.

MASSEY TRIAL TO BEGIN. Widows of miners who died in the Aracoma mine fire in 2006 could get their day in court soon.

MUSHROOMS AND CLIMATE CHANGE. Who would have thought there would be a connection?

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES in Afghanistan are mounting.

WHERE THE RUNNER HITS THE ROAD. Do joggers have road rage issues? (That's a new one for this long timer.)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: INDETERMINATE

ALMOST A "SUCCESS"

Debs with attorney and socialist William A. Cunnea. Credit: Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-0003451. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society, by way of the Library of Congress.

Welcome to Eugene Debs week at Goat Rope. A few years back I had the chance to portray the union and Socialist leader for a WV Humanities Council program and found him to be a fascinating person.

One challenge of portraying a historical character is just getting the outline of their life in mind. Then comes familiarizing yourself with the person’s speeches or writings and trying to use as many of them as possible in the presentations.

Then comes the challenge of trying to get inside their head.

In the case of Eugene, it wasn’t that hard. He was no Hamlet—what you saw was what you got: sentimental, gregarious, idealistic. Pretty much the polar opposite of El Cabrero.

The son of immigrant parents who established a small grocery, Debs grew up in a close knit, loving family. Reading was a central activity. The works of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Goethe were favorites. Debs was named for two of his father’s favorite authors, Eugene Sue and Victor Hugo.

Hugo’s Les Miserables was probably Debs’ favorite book. He read it over and over—whereas I’d bet serious money he never made it all the way through volume I of Marx’s Das Kapital. He probably cried like a baby at each Les Mis re-reading. One can only imagine him at the musical. (He WOULD hear the people sing.)

Debs dropped out of school at age 14 to work for the railroads. His first job consisted of scraping rust and grease of rail cars, for which he was paid around $.50 per day. After a while, he worked his way up to painting. His “big break” came when he got a chance to work as a locomotive fireman, a dangerous and exhausting job that he enjoyed.

Trains have always been pretty cool, but they were the bomb in the late 1800s, an equivalent of fast cars, jets, rockets and the internet today. It was his first contact with the life of the working class and it made a huge impression.

When depression hit in the early 1870s, he returned to Terra Haute and worked as a clerk for a grocery firm, which was quite a step down. But like many Americans of that century, and like the young Lincoln, he set upon the task of self improvement. He took night classes and joined the Occidental Literary Society, where he made his first efforts at public speaking.

In the mid-1870s, Debs became a charter member and recording secretary of the Terra Haute local of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, which at the time was more of a fraternal and insurance society than a union. Its motto was Benevolence, Sobriety, Industry.

A key belief seemed to be that if working people conducted themselves with dignity and diligence, their employers would recognize this and reward them accordingly--a theory that would prove naive in the age of trusts and robber barons.

Still, Debs would stay with the BLF for nearly 20 years, eventually rising to prominence within its ranks.

There was nothing in his early life that would indicate the making of a radical. If anything, here was another prairie success story in the making. But life had other plans, about which more tomorrow.

HEALTH CARE MESS. Yesterday's USA Today had an interesting item on the decline of employer-provided health insurance.

OUCH. Here's an item from the UK Guardian about the pain of globalization (they spelled it with an s).

HEADING SOUTH. More than one third of Americans are downwardly mobile these days.

HEADING NORTH. On the other hand, AP estimates the costs of current wars at $1.6 trillion.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

HOODOO

Caption: Hills have hoodoo.

Welcome to Haint Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit please click on yesterday's post.

For flatlanders, haint is Appalachian for things that haunt.

El Cabrero takes no position on the existence or nonexistence of haints. However, I am prepared to assert that some places have hoodoo, which is just as good.

They say that Appalachians have a strong sense of place, although we obviously don't have a corner on the market. But when I think of hauntedness, I think less about spectral beings than about places.

It seems to me that some places just seem to have hoodoo and others don't. Hoodoo, like the Oceanic term "mana" means some kind of weird immaterial force or quality that has been called "the stuff of which magic is formed."

Some places seem to have hoodoo because of things that happened there. Harpers Ferry is a prime example, almost as if events have left some kind of scar or imprint. So do the nearby battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg.

Other places, like the sacred New River, seem to have it naturally, although the history probably helps. I tend to doubt whether flatland has any hoodoo, but I'll try to keep my mind open on that point. Maybe if there's water around...

Hoodoo is hard to define but who feels it knows it.

BLOWING UP THE BUDDHAS. Here's an op-ed from yesterday's NY Times about the destruction of the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban. This is pretty un-Buddhist, but El Cabrero is still mad about that.

DEATH PENALTY NEWS. This Reuters story is interesting:

The American Bar Association said on Monday it was renewing its call for a nationwide moratorium on executions, based on a three-year study of death penalty systems in eight states that found unfairness and other flaws.

The lawyers' group said its study identified key problems, such as major racial disparities, incompetent defense services for poor defendants and irregular clemency review processes, making those death penalty systems operate unfairly.

UPDATE ON MEGAN WILLIAMS MARCH. Here's the Daily Mail on the controversy caused by a march planned by outside groups. And here's the latest from the Gazette.

POVERTY AND CLIMATE CHANGE. Low income Americans are likely to suffer most from the effects of climate change and from higher energy costs. Here are suggestions about dealing with this from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, the world's oldest living animal as far as anyone can tell is a 400 year old clam.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: SUPERMUNDANE