Medicaid cuts...people will die

Eight years ago, when the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was up for repeal, then-Governor Jim Justice and Senator Capito helped walk the nation back from the brink.

 Justice described the consequences of undoing Medicaid expansion, which covered around 175,000 West Virginians at the time, as “beyond catastrophic.” Capito said that “I have serious concerns about how we continue to provide affordable care to those who have benefitted from West Virginia’s decision to expand Medicaid, especially in light of the growing opioid crisis.”

They were right then and still are today.

Recently, public health experts from Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania calculated the butcher’s bill that would happen if the House version of the budget bill passes as is and it’s pretty awful. They estimate that proposed Medicaid cuts could cause 51,000 premature deaths per year, just to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

That’s more than the combined populations of Calhoun, Tucker, Gilmer, Pleasants, Doddridge, Pocahontas, and Clay counties. Or several thousand more than the populations of either Charleston or Huntington. 

According to the Yale School of Public Health, “The researchers estimate that 42,500 lives could be lost each year from disenrollments in Medicaid and Marketplace coverage and the rollback of nursing home staffing rules. An additional 8,811 deaths are projected from the expiration of the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) Premium Tax Credits, bringing the total to more than 51,000.

To be specific, 7.7 million people would lose Medicaid or ACA marketplace coverage, with a loss of an estimated 11,300 deaths per year. 

Eliminating the Medicare Savings Program would disenroll 1.38 million seniors, at a cost of 18,200 deaths per year. 

Ending nursing home staffing rules could cost 13,000 lives. 

Ending ACA premium tax credits is likely to push another 5 million off, at a cost of over 8,800 preventable deaths a year. 

In addition, the bill’s failure to extend the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits is expected to push another 5 million Americans into uninsurance, resulting in 8,811 more deaths each year.

This isn’t a matter of random number generation. According to Yale, researchers relied on peer-reviewed studies that “quantifying the relationship between insurance coverage, access to prescription drug subsidies, and nursing home staffing levels with all-cause mortality.” This data was then applied to projections released in May by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Recently, Iowa Representative Joni Ernst stirred up controversy by dismissing concerns like these, saying “we are all going to die.”

Maybe so. But working class people don’t have to die prematurely in the tens of thousands every year just to enrich the wealthiest. 

This is totally preventable.

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

Budget bill a disaster for West Virginia

 The US House of Representatives recently voted on a proposed budget that would cut $880 billion from Medicaid and $230 billion from SNAP food assistance while also slashing other programs, including meals for school children…to give $1.5 trillion in tax cuts aimed mostly to benefit the very wealthy.

The measure passed by just a two-vote margin. Both of West Virginia’s representatives voted for it. 

If this becomes law, the damage done to West Virginians across the board would be incalculable. 

Medicaid alone provides health coverage to over 72,000,000 people nationwide and to more than 500,000 West Virginians, including working adults, children, seniors, pregnant women, people with disabilities, and people getting treatment for substance use disorder. That’s close to one out of three of us. 

We’d be hit harder by this than most other states. Nationwide, one out of five people are covered. It’s almost double that in West Virginia.

According to the Kaiser Family Fund, as of August 2024, around half of all childbirths are paid for by Medicaid here, while nearly the same percentage of children are either covered by it or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. It’s the major source of people needing long-term care, including 7 out of 9 people in nursing homes. It provides benefits for 40 percent of people with disabilities.

And while it covers many people who are too young or no longer able to work, most adults receiving it are employed.

The funding, most of which comes from the federal government, supports local economies, keeps rural hospitals open, and keeps people alive. It’s no exaggeration to say that if this goes through, people will die as a direct result. And people would lose their jobs.

If that wasn’t enough, the budget would reduce SNAP food assistance to 42 million people. As with Medicaid, we’d take a disproportionate hit here as well. Our state ranks third highest in the percentage of SNAP households, just behind New Mexico and Louisiana. Nationally, around 12 percent of people receive SNAP, while it’s 16 percent here.

According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), SNAP helps 124,000 households here, or 279,000 individuals. It brings over $40 million a month to the state, helping 2,170 grocery stores and farmers markets and creating jobs. It’s estimated that each dollar’s worth of SNAP spending generates around $1.80 in economic activity.

Households receiving SNAP include children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and veterans. As with Medicaid, most SNAP households include at least one working member. And if you’re worried that these people are living high on the hog you can relax. The average daily benefit here is $4.54 per person.

On top of all that, the budget bill cuts $12 billion in funding for school breakfasts and lunches and makes sweeping restrictions to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which supports meals for all. FRAC estimates this will reduce access to food in 24,000 schools with 12 million students. 

In West Virginia, we’re talking about impacts in 468 schools with over 180,000 students. This would undo years of progress at the national and state level. CEP has proven very popular in every county in West Virginia since it cuts bureaucracy, improves child nutrition and educational outcomes, removes stigma, and gives working families a break.

The combined impact of these proposed cuts would hurt people across all political and demographic lines. Fortunately, it’s not a done deal. There will be more votes on this over the next few months.  This could give time for people to voice their concerns and for lawmakers to reconsider their actions. 

It’s important to also urge our senators to put the brakes on this. To her credit, Senator Capito said back in 2017 “I didn’t go to Washington to hurt people,” when huge health care cuts were on the agenda. As governor, Jim Justice expanded food aid to low-income children when school was not in session and established the Jobs and Hope program.

Before it’s over, I hope at least some of our representatives will put the people of West Virginia above all else.

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

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.

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.)

AFSC WV statement on Senator Manchin and Build Back Better

 CHARLESTON, WV (December 20, 2021) Over the weekend, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin announced on Fox News that he would not support the Build Back Better act. This comes after months of debate over the provisions in the bill, which would help families with childcare, improve the U.S. response to climate change, and strengthen the social safety net. The proposed legislation would also provide needed funding for Black Lung benefits.

The West Virginia program of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) – a Quaker organization active in the state for a century – issued the following statement calling on Manchin to change his position:

“A century ago, Quaker volunteers began working in solidarity with the people of West Virginia. There was severe economic hardship in the coalfields, with child poverty and hunger being key issues. Sadly, and perhaps incredibly, those issues are still very much alive in West Virginia, and we are still in the struggle to alleviate these challenging circumstances for people in our community.

During the 1920s and and1930s, AFSC administered direct relief to families in West Virginia and advocated for federal New Deal legislation to reduce unnecessary human misery, which transformed U.S. society. From the 1970s onward, AFSC accompanied and advocated for justice for coal miners and other workers, Black people, women, children, people in poverty, and other marginalized communities.

On many occasions, AFSC staff and volunteers collaborated with then legislator, later Governor, and now Senator Joe Manchin on state and federal issues ranging from the minimum wage and fair taxes to coal mine safety and preserving the gains of the Affordable Care Act.

We have also witnessed firsthand the better angels of our Senator’s nature in the compassion he has shown for victims of natural and human disasters. From the 1968 Farmington mine disaster, in which he lost an uncle, to the Aracoma, Sago and Upper Big Branch mine tragedies in the 2000s and beyond, Senator Manchin has shown himself to be compassionate and responsive.

Thus, we are deeply saddened to learn that Senator Manchin has withdrawn support from the proposed Build Back Better Act. Many in West Virginia have worked tirelessly to advocate for an opportunity to pass this life-changing piece of legislation. The Build Back Better Act would be as positively transformative as the New Deal in dramatically reducing child poverty and helping working families negotiate the duties of family and work. The Build Back Better Act would also address the existential threats of climate change and the need for a just economic transition for the people of West Virginia towards a more prosperous, sustainable, and less extractive and exploitive economic future.

We are still hopeful. AFSC is a diverse organization committed to the deeply held view that there is “that of God” in every person. It is not too late for Senator Manchin to return to his commitments, take a bold and needed step in this pivotal moment, and support prompt enactment of these measures.

We are holding out hope that our Senator still has some compassion for the hundreds of thousands of West Virginians and millions of people who would benefit from the Child Tax Credit, childcare support, improved health care, and immigration relief. As an organization with a global footprint, we also hope the Senator has compassion for the billions of people worldwide who might benefit from addressing climate change, an existential threat to us all.

We urge our Senator to recommit himself to negotiating the passage of genuinely transformative federal legislation that would dramatically reduce human suffering in West Virginia, the United States, and worldwide.”

###

The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that promotes lasting peace with justice, as a practical expression of faith in action. Drawing on continuing spiritual insights and working with people of many backgrounds, we nurture the seeds of change and respect for human life that transform social systems.

Long strange trip

 I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what to say about the events of the week and the years that went before it. For most of the fall, I've been very concerned about the possibility of a coup, quasi-legal or otherwise. I'm still wondering what kinds of violent stunts white nationalist groups may unroll and what other long term damage has been done to the democratic process, imperfect as it is. 

I'm hoping that the nation's flirtation with fascism or at least authoritarianism is at least waning.

Aside from issues of authoritarianism, the last four years have involved a lot of defensive fights, mostly revolving around health care (food security too, but that's another story). If there's been a central theme of my nearly 32 years at AFSC, health care would be it.

My first big fight was the Pittston strike, which was mostly about retiree health and pension benefits. These were also factors in the 1990 teachers' strike and the 1990-92 Ravenswood lockout. Ditto the fights about "reforming" workers compensation that lasted for a decade between the mid 1990s and 2000s. 

The coming of welfare "reform" in 1996 started another decade or so of sporadic fights related to Medicaid. These included issues like transitional coverage for people leaving cash assistance, the possibility of block grants, waivers and such. 

Then came efforts to get the state to implement the federal Children's Health Insurance Program in 1998 and then to expand eligibility for it, eventually up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level by 2011. My late co-worker Carol Sharlip was a major player in building support for this in the early years.

In 2009-2010 came the push to enact what eventually became the Affordable Care Act. I remember going to public hearings around the state and witnessing the WV version of the birth of the white backlash and the Tea Party. These included paranoid ravings about the World Health Organization taking over and someone heckling a priest during an opening prayer. And, yes, people who wanted to keep the government's tentacles off Medicare. There were street actions, press conversations, calls, emails, op-eds, bus trips to DC, and all that. Then lots of outreach and education when it passed.

(There were some serious debates within AFSC about whether to sign on in support of the bill. Some didn't think it was good enough. I may or may not have stopped talking with some people after that.)

The version we got was the Senate's rather than the more generous House version in March 2010. Here's a blog post I wrote about it at the time. Then the 2012 US Supreme Court decision which let it stand but made Medicaid expansion--the real public option--a state decision. The biggest social justice victory of my lifetime was then-Governor Tomblin's decision to expand it. Here's a report we published in an effort to nudge the governor in 2013. My retired colleague Beth Spence did the interviews and photography.

I would never have guessed the state would do such a great job at enrolling people. At it's peak around the time of the 2016 election, the expansion covered nearly 180,000 West Virginians (after four years of assaults by the Trump administration, I think enrollment is around 160,000 now). The new president, aided by WV's attorney general, promised to do away with the whole ACA as soon as he came into office.

It was an all-hands-on-deck moment. Health advocates scrambled to the defense. My co-worker Lida Shepherd and I worked with Cabin Creek Health Systems to interview people covered by the ACA and publish the results and generate other media, including a widely seen video report in the New York Times. Given that WV has been ground zero for the opioid epidemic, protecting the ACA, which opened up recovery to thousands, was critical.

We worked with allies to do all the usual stuff. Some friends of ours, nicknamed "the Capito six," were arrested for sitting in at the WV Republican senator's Charleston office. I remember protesting outside WV's giant Boy Scout center when the President spoke. People put lots of effort into bolstering Senator Manchin's support for the ACA. He eventually came around to a "fix, don't nix" position. In a closely divided Senate, WV was in a critical spot, with a conservative Democrat and fairly moderate Republican. People hit it with all they had.

The critical moment came in July 2017 when a dying John McCain cast a deciding vote after returning from hospital treatment for brain cancer, basically saving the day. Here's a post on that occasion that includes his eloquent statement.

After a pause to catch our breath, WV health care advocates turned next to fight off bad state legislation regarding work reporting requirements for Medicaid expansion that would have kicked tens of thousands of low income West Virginians off the program in 2019 and 2020. I'm hoping that COVID-19 has shown this to be a Really Bad Idea.

By the time of the 2020 election, the ACA was battered but still afloat, although it wasn't clear if it could survive another four years of federal assaults. Then there was the added wrinkle of the US Supreme Court taking up another repeal attempt with three Trump appointees. The decision is expected as soon as this spring, but early deliberations seem promising.

So I guess this is another catch the breath moment. We're still far from universal care, but it's been a long hard fight to get as far as we have. I'm grateful to the many friends who have been in the fight from the beginning. Like the ACA, we're battered but still around.

Latter day Neros

 The old story goes that the mad Roman emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned, a disaster that he blamed on the early Christians, who paid for it with some nasty persecution. 

In fairness to Nero, however, this didn't happen. At least the fiddle part, since these weren't made until the Renaissance era. If he played anything, and I'm not saying he did, it would have been a kithara, a harp-like stringed instrument whose name morphed into guitar.

But that's not important right now. The meaning of the saying is about how some people in power cheerfully ignore the sufferings of others.

A case in point of the latter is congress dithering around rather than passing another round of COVID relief in the face of massive unemployment, hunger and suffering. This post from the Center on Budget and Policy reminds us that as this Thanksgiving approaches, less than half of all American households are confident about their ability to afford food in the days ahead.

In West Virginia, that's 57 percent, with 12 percent reporting having trouble feeding kids now and 9 percent not at all confident about the future. All around West Virginia, people are making heroic efforts to ensure access to food, but that's no substitute for meaningful action related to food security, housing assistance, unemployment, and help with utilities.

It's way past time for action. 

(Meanwhile, speaking of Roman emperors, it seems like Caligula is alive and well in the USA.)

The greedy or the needy?

(Random dog picture. Sorry.)

In case you missed it, Kelly Allen of the WV Center on Budget and Policy had a great op-ed in the Huntington Herald-Dispatch this week about how federal policies are hurting ordinary West Virginians. Some of these have already been enacted, like the tax cut heist, but others could still be in play in the Farm Bill.

This would be a good thing about which to make noise.

(Did you notice the elegant way in which I avoided ending a sentence with a preposition? That's a habit I don't indulge in.)

Nothing like the real thing

During the worst crisis in American history, President Abraham Lincoln made time regularly to talk with and listen to all varieties of ordinary citizens. He understood that success in leading a democracy required an understanding of public opinion and the only way to get that was unfiltered contact with the public.

That meant spending time with uninvited visitors, singly or in groups and ranging from office seekers to petitioners to ordinary people to cranks. Lincoln called these occasions his "public-opinion baths" and viewed them as critical to his ability to govern.

As he told a Union officer, "I feel, though the tax on my time is heavy, no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again within the direct contact and atmosphere of our whole people. Men moving only in an official circle are apt to become merely official, not to say arbitrary, in their ideas, and are apter and apter, with each passing day, to forget that they only hold power in a representative capacity."

Lincoln admitted that many of the concerns brought to him were utterly frivolous and others were more or less important, but he believed that "all serve to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage, out of which I sprang, and to which I must return."

It was his way of keeping it real.

Unfortunately in today's political climate it's all too easy for political leaders to insulate themselves from their constituents, just as it's easy for us ordinary citizens to live in media bubbles where we stay in our political comfort zones.

For a democracy to work well, there's no substitute for direct contact. That's the only way that real connections can be made between citizens and their representatives. And it's the only way for representatives to understand the concerns of real people. And there's no more direct way for that to happen than by open and unscripted public meetings.

In this day and age, that may take a little political courage. But that's what leadership is all about.

There's no partisan monopoly on this. In March, after some occasionally tense pressure from citizens, Sen. Joe Manchin held four wide-open events from the eastern panhandle to Huntington. It wasn't always a love feast. He took heat from those who disagreed with some of his votes, but there was also a chance for honest give and take on the issues.

New Jersey Republican Congressman Tom MacArthur recently endured a mostly hostile five hour meeting with constituents, many of whom were angered by his vote to replace the Affordable Care Act with the Trump supported replacement.

Love him or not, at least he had the courage to show up and take it.

These days, you get points for showing up.

Whatever their political views, West Virginians deserve representatives and candidates who have the willingness and courage to show up for face-to-face meetings with those they represent.

Everybody needs a good bath every now and then.

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

A little good news from Congress (no, really)

It doesn't happen very often but the US Congress recently acted in a bipartisan way and did something that made sense. The US Senate overwhelming passed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, which among other things extends funding for the popular Children's Health Insurance Program through 2017. There were concerns that this program would have withered away.

CHIP was first enacted in the wake of welfare reform in the 90s to make sure that kids of working families didn't lose coverage if their parents moved from welfare to work. It has proved to be hugely popular and successful. In fact, West Virginia is one of the major CHIP success stories. The program here covers children in families earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

The bill also authorized funding for the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, which is also a big deal and a very good thing. A similar bill passed the House by a huge margin earlier. I'm pleased-and a little surprised-that all of WV's congressional delegation, which ain't what it used to be, voted for the measure.

So, yeah, it's not all bad.

Unsportsmanlike conduct...again

About one in five West Virginians are going to take a hit if Congress allows a temporary boost to the SNAP or food stamp program to expire this fall. You can read more in this issue brief and this news article.

I'm not sure how much hope to hold out for Congress. To use just one example, a representative scolded a nun for asserting that the government had a responsibility to help the poor. The nun in question, Sister Simone Campbell, responded by saying that  "Justice comes before charity."

(This is probably not the official position of the American Friends Service Committee, but I kinda wish she had a ruler like the one in the Blues Brothers movie.)

More on the whole zombie thing

I have mentioned more than once that my over-educated daughter has an inordinate fascination with zombies. Prompted by her repeated expressions of concern, I have undertaken extensive research and watched one episode of The Walking Dead.

 On the basis of this scientific research, I have developed what I call the Cabrero Theorem of Zombie Apocalypses, which should be worth a Nobel Prize. It goes like this: the survivability of a zombie outbreak is inversely proportional to their intelligence. Or, conversely, it is directly proportionate to their stupidity.

(In other words, if they are smart, communicative and can use tools, we're gonna get eaten.)

((But then if they were, would they really be zombies?))

 You can quote me on this, but please use a footnote.

NO DIRECT CONNECTION, but how about that US House of Representatives?

STIRRING UP A HORNET'S NEST. A local controversy with racial overtones is brewing in Charleston, where Kanawha County school officials are resisting a community-led effort to name the new West Side Elementary School after Mary Snow, a great African American educator.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MARRIAGE is discussed here.

  GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The perfect Christmas gift for 2011

I haven't travelled much with a GPS navigating system, but I have been along for the ride when others used them. It seemed kind of weird to me when they start talking to you.

But then it occurred to me how cool it would be to have a trash-talking GPS, one that, for example, might call you a dip**** when you took a wrong turn and otherwise unleash a stream of profanity when you didn't do what it told you.

For family travel, one could set it on mild putdowns, like "I can't believe I'm stuck in a car with you weenies," but you could pull out all the stops for adult travel. It would make getting lost more fun than ever and would encourage people to go to new and different places just to hear it cut loose, although this might contribute to oil consumption and extra carbon emissions.

I probably won't have time this year to take a correspondence course on GPS engineering, so somebody will probably steal this idea and make a mint.

WHO'S IN CHARGE? Republicans in Congress are polling business groups to ask what rules they want axed.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME. Here's a look at what else we might expect on the right wing agenda.

PASSING ON. Judy Bonds, a longtime opponent of mountaintop removal mining, died after a struggle with cancer.

SHAKEUP. Big changes are probably on the way for the WV state senate.

CATS don't like their routines messed with.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DO IT AGAIN

Gichin Funakoshi (1868-1957), widely regarded as the founder of modern karate.

The theme of this week's Goat Rope is endurance, physical and otherwise. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries. It is El Cabrero's thesis that making a practice of endurance activities can pay rich dividends in all aspects of life.

Although they might not be the first to come to mind, martial arts are another form of physical activity that stress endurance.

If you just watch the movies about it, you may get the idea that this kind of training involves having a wise teacher show you new and cool stuff. That may happen on rare occasions but the reality is much more prosaic. It's usually about doing the same basic things over and over and over again, often in the company of three old friends: boredom, fatigue, and pain.

Traditional martial arts training violates every rule of progressive pedagogy. The short version is "shut up and drill," at least most of the time. Old stories tell of students who spent years sweeping the training hall and cleaning toilets before anyone even spoke to them and then spending years more on one technique or kata (a prearranged series of techniques which can be performed solo but have practical applications).

Gichin Funakoshi, regarded as the founder of modern karate do and particularly the Shotokan style, describes the old days of training in Okinawa when karate was still an underground activity and he studied under master Yasutsune Azato:

Night after night, often in the backyard of the Azato house as the master looked on I would practice a kata ("formal exercise")time and again, week after week, sometimes month after month, until I had mastered it to my teacher's satisfaction. This constant repetition of a single kata was grueling, often exasperating and on occasion humiliating. More than once I had to lick the dust on the floor of the dojo or in the Azato backyard. But practice was strict, and I was never permitted to move on to another kata until Azato was convinced that I had satisfactorily understood the one I was working on...

Although considerably advanced in years, he always sat ramrod stiff on the balcony when we worked outside, wearing a hakama, with a dim lamp beside him. Quite often, through sheer exhaustion, I found myself unable to make out even the lamp.

After executing a kata, I would await his judgment. It was always terse. If he remained dissatisfied with my technique, he would murmur, "Do it again," or "A little more!" A little more, a little more, so often a little more, until the sweat poured and I was ready to drop: it was his way of telling me there was still something to be learned, to be mastered. Then, if he found my progress satisfactory, his verdict would be expressed in a single word, "Good!" That one word was his highest praise. Until I had heard it spoken several times, however, I would never dare ask him to begin teaching a new kata.

Funakoshi was a big believer in the value of tempering the body and spirit. In his master work, Karate Do Kyohan, he quoted the ancient Chinese sage Mencius (Mengzi, c. 4th cent. BC):

When Heaven is about to confer an important office upon a man, it first embitters his heart in its purpose; it causes him to exert his bones and sinews; it makes his body suffer hunger; it inflicts upon him want and poverty and confounds his undertakings. In this way it stimulates his will, steels his nature and thus makes him capable of accomplishing what he would otherwise be incapable of accomplishing.

So here's to the strenuous life. Within reason.

WV'S DELEGATION STANDS FOR CHILDREN. Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 225-204 to expand health insurance coverage for children with the CHAMP Act. I'm pleased to say that WV's entire delegation supported the measure. Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito was one of only five Republicans to support the bill. Here's more. Congratulations and thanks to all our representatives.

Yesterday, the Senate passed its version of the bill by a veto-proof 68-31. The Senate version increases funding by $35 B over several years, compared to $50 B in the House version. Reconciliation of the bills should be interesting.

A PAINFUL REMINDER. The Minneapolis bridge disaster is a reminder of the importance of investing in and maintaining infrastructure. This is from Joshua Holland via Alternet:

...skimping out on infrastructure investments in the name of a low tax burden is a triumph of ideology over commonsense, but it goes beyond that. Conservative philosophy stresses limited government, not bad government, and nothing can change the fact that the public sector remains the only way to organize collectively when there's no profit involved. So nobody seriously believes that the the hidden hand of capitalism is going to step in and inspect and repair bridges that are open to the public. When lawmakers don't fund that work, they know full well that it won't get done.

What's more, the evidence that infrastructure investments result in increased economic productivity is fairly conclusive; some studies have estimated that every dollar invested in public infrastructure yields 104 percent return through increases in productivity (PDF).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

BUSH BUDGET BAD NEWS FOR MOST AMERICANS

Caption: The Bush administration has its priorities backwards once again.

Here we go again! President Bush recently submitted his proposed federal budget to Congress.

Here's the non-surprise of the year...it contains more tax breaks for the wealthy and program cuts for just about everyone else.

Oh yeah, and lots of money for the unnecessary war in Iraq.

Here's a preliminary analysis from Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. A sample:

In a sign of the President’s misguided priorities, his budget puts extremely large tax cuts for the most affluent Americans ahead of the needs of low- and middle-income families as well as future generations. Low- and middle-income Americans would be hit by budget cuts in areas from education to protection of the environment and assistance to the poor. Future generations would foot the bill for the much larger long-term deficits that the President’s extravagant tax cuts would produce. The tax cuts in the budget far exceed proposed reductions in domestic programs.

Among programs targeted for cuts are the Children's Health Insurance Program, low income home energy assistance, child care assistance for low income working families, Head Start, food programs for low income elderly Americans. Cuts are also proposed for mandatory programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Tax cuts for the wealthy would be made permanent, adding between $2.3 to $3.5 trillion in costs over the next ten years. Needless to say, all this would increase the nation's growing inequality and the national debt.

As the Charleston Gazette noted about the war budget:

The White House plan would pump another $100 billion into the Iraq and Afghan wars this year, plus $145 billion more next year. The Pentagon budget would leap to $625 billion a year — perhaps exceeding the warmaking expenditures of all other nations on Earth, combined.

CONGRESSIONAL RESPONSE. The Bush budget won't be received with many cartwheels in Congress, where the new majority will face some difficult decisions. As the New York Times

put it yesterday,

...Democrats know that the only way they can find the revenue to restore the administration’s proposed spending cuts would be to cut back on military spending, delay their stated intentions to balance the budget or rescind the Bush tax cuts in future years. They are not especially eager to do any of these.

The most likely result, even some Democrats acknowledge, will be a limited reshaping of the budget by restoring some proposed cuts in a variety of domestic programs, including children’s health care, Head Start and home heating assistance for the poor and the elderly.

I hope they'll do better than that. In any case, advocates of working people, the elderly, and children will have another budget battle in the days ahead.

RANDOM THOUGHT OF THE DAY: If you ever get really bored, try this. Watch infomercials on TV. It doesn't matter what they're for--exercise gear, cleaning materials, cookware, health gimmicks. Then call the toll-free number and ask whoever answers stupid questions about the product, such as a. Can this be used for time travel? b. Will it remove the taint of Original Sin? Does it convey the power of invisibility? El Cabrero and his cabritos used to pass many a dull afternoon in this manner.

Goat Rope...your source for better living.

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