A zombie lie that needs to be put to rest

“Zombie lie” is a term that has come into use in recent years. It means a false statement that keeps getting repeated no matter what the facts are.

It seems to me that the number of zombie lies walking around these days roughly approximates the number of undead flesh-eaters you might find on a good episode of “The Walking Dead.”

Some of the most prominent zombie lies these days have to do with the markets and the role of government.

Economist Dean Baker laid into one of the biggest zombie lies in his book, “The Conservative Nanny State.” It consists of the idea that conservatives support market outcomes while progressives rely on government.

Baker made the case that “both conservatives and liberals want government intervention. The difference between them is the goal of government intervention, and the fact that conservatives are smart enough to conceal their dependence on the government.”

The other big difference is that conservatives want to use the power of government to distribute more money to those who already have at the expense of everyone else.

There are plenty of ways this can happen. If you want a current example, you need look no farther than the vastly unpopular tax “reform” bill. It gives huge breaks to corporations and the wealthy that are likely to be paid for by cuts in programs for working Americans, seniors and kids — and favors those who inherit wealth without lifting a finger over those who work hard every day.

Then there are trade deals that expand the rights of multinational corporations at the expense of workers, communities, land, water and other natural resources.

Then there are numerous varieties of government subsidies for businesses ranging from the energy to financial to the agricultural sectors — not to mention the role that governments play in cleaning up the messes of the private sector, a term economists refer to as “negative externalities.”

Patents and intellectual property rights are in effect government sanctioned legal monopolies that protect their owners from free market forces. For example, this is the main reason the inexpensively produced prescription drugs cost so much to consumers. Any tiny modification of the drug in question extends the period of legal monopoly and freedom from competition. In a real free market situation, this would never happen.

Baker argues that bankruptcy laws allow the government to “act as a strong-arm debt collector for businesses that did not accurately assess the risks associated with their loans.” On the flip side, many West Virginia coal miners have found that bankruptcy laws also favor corporations that want to dodge long-standing promises to retirees, widows, and children.

“Tort reform” is a way for corporations to influence the government to avoid paying for the costs of the damages they may inflict on people, intentionally or otherwise.

Powerful interests are often able to use their influence to curb the government entities created to regulate them, a practice known as “regulatory capture.” (I could list examples from the current administration in Washington but it would take too much space.)

For that matter, corporations are government-sanctioned legal entities that are authorized to act as “persons.”

If all that wasn’t enough, it would be impossible to list all the times that the powers of the state — police, military, courts, prison, surveillance — have been used to break strikes, repress freedom movements, and defend big business interests at home and abroad, often at a high cost in human lives. You could fill a few bookshelves just with examples of that in West Virginia history, not that we teach our kids much about it.

All that looks like a (heavily armed) conservative nanny state for the well off to me. And it's way more generous than the one that supposedly exists to protect poor and working people.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose holiday is celebrated this month, came much closer to describing the real situation: “We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.”

(This appeared as an op-ed in last week's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

If you've been good this year...

...and we are using an honor system, you have Goat Rope's permission to reward yourself by watching this cute duck billed platypus video. And take a look at these swimming pigs while you're at it.

Thanks to a friend for forwarding those links. Now, back to the salt mines:

BUDGET DEAL. Here are two takes on the recent federal budget compromise. Economist Dean Baker is not amused, but the good folks at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities seem to think it could have been worse. Maybe they're both right. Still, it's a shame the deal didn't include an unemployment insurance extension.

OWNING WEST VIRGINIA. There's been a good bit of press about the release this week by the WV Center on Budget and Policy and the AFSC WV Economic Justice Project about who owns the state. Here's my favorite.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Signal or noise?

Like many people in WV and elsewhere, I've been eagerly following the federal investigation of Massey Energy's 2010 Upper Big Branch disaster which killed 29 coal miners. The latest development is a delay in sentencing for a former company official, David Hughart, who pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiring to violate safety standards and to covering up for them.Part of it may be due to summer scheduling, but it looks like ongoing cooperation between Hughart and federal prosecutors, who have signaled that charges may move up the corporate chain.

Would that it were so.

BAKER'S DUO. Economist Dean Baker takes another whack at austerity here and comments on the Affordable Care Act here.

URGENT WOOLLY MAMMOTH UPDATE here.

SOON TO BE A TWEET. On a road trip to WV's eastern panhandle, I had a WV town insight: Milton is the Anti-Shepherdstown.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Duly noted

Whilst driving to the glorious capitol city of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, I came upon a bumpersticker with a ribbon of indeterminate color and a picture of a set of brains. The caption read: "Support zombies."

FRIENDS OF WHOM? There is a good op-ed in today's Charleston Gazette by UMWA official and state Delegate Mike Caputo.  It asks a very basic question: where are the so-called Friends of Coal when it comes to supporting real coal miners who are at risk of losing promised benefits from Patriot Coal.

To state the extremely obvious, it's one thing to kiss up to coal companies and quite another to stand with coal miners and communities.

DEFICIT HYSTERIA gets whacked here.

URGENT FISH EATING FLYING DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Life is our dictionary

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the work of 19th century American sage Ralph Waldo Emerson, with a current focus on his essay/lecture The American Scholar. The essay didn't make a huge splash at the time but over the years its influence grew and he is now seen as a forerunner of those pragmatists and reformers who wanted to broaden the definition of education and scholarship to include knowledge of practical life.

This passage is typical:

Life is our dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors; in town--in the insight into trades and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get the tiles and cope-stones for the masonry of to-day. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.

That sounds lie a precursor to the current support for vocational education, although it is also about how practical life enriches and creates living language.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN. Here's a critique of the Obama administrations approach to the deficit debate.

IN CASE THIS BLOG HAS BEEN TOO MODERATE FOR YOUR TASTES, read this.

NO CLIMATE CHANGE HERE, BOSS, even though an Arctic sea route is probably going to open up later in this century.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Bibliomancy...

...is the word used for the practice of divination with books. One who engages in bibliomancy will randomly pick out a passage in a book and seeking profound meaning from what one finds. Over the centuries, several books have served, including the works of Homer, Virgil, the I Ching, and, of course, the Bible.

I have a problem, however, with using the Bible for this purpose, particularly in traditional book form. Anyone who knows anything about the Bible can pretty much pick what kind of passage he or she is likely to find just by deciding which part of the book to open.

In general I'm not sold on the whole thing or at least wasn't up till now.

This morning, however, my first significant act of the day was opening my beat up copy of Moby-Dick and coming upon this sentence:

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

Now I'm sold on bibliomancy. I'm all about careful disorderliness. And somehow, for all my readings of that book, this is the first time that passage has really struck me. I now declare myself officially vindicated.

Thanks, Ishmael!  You too, Herman.

STILL WRONG. Here's Dean Baker taking another swipe at deficit hawks.

CATCH THIS WAVE if you dare.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: LET ME CHECK A BOOK

A mighty theme

It's been a long time since I've gone off on a long literary jag, but I feel one coming on now. And the topic is...you guessed it...Moby-Dick. I have hit on that book now and then but am finally up to the challenge of really rolling in it. I was prompted by two events.

First, I found my old, beat up and highlighted copy of the book where it had been lingering in my daughter's house. Second, I listened to Nathaniel Philbrick's Why Read Moby-Dick?, which reminded me how much I love it. I think I can come up with more reasons than he did as to why the book is worth many a read.

As Melville said, "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it." Perhaps the same can be said of blog posts. While I'm not sure that my series on Moby will be mighty, I can think of no mightier book to base one on.

Consider yourselves forewarned, shipmates.

INCOME INEQUALITY may be a bar to economic growth.

THE WRECKING CREW. Bad economists as WMDs?

THE TRAVAILS OF TRUE LOVE are especially hard for this ancient lizard.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A little rare unity

"How good and how pleasant it is when the brethren dwell together in unity" reads the opening line of Psalm 133. There's not a whole lot of unity these days in the US, especially when it comes to the nation's economic and political mess.

Still, every once in a while, groups from different sides of the political divide can come together around some ideas for dealing with current problems. One such idea has been mentioned here before as recently as this week, to wit work sharing, also known as job sharing.

As NPR puts it in a piece about this area of agreement, this policy, now a major part of the safety net in Germany and several other places, including some states,

allows companies to reduce worker hours in lieu of layoffs. The workers could then receive unemployment insurance for the hours they are no longer working.

Say a company, instead of laying off workers, reduced overall worker hours by 25 percent. Under the so-called job-sharing program, the workers would be eligible for one day a week of unemployment benefits.

There's more on the idea here.

It's not silver bullet for a country a long way away from the right track. But it could be a step in the right direction.

What he said, revisited

Hats off to billionaire investor Warren Buffett for his recent op-ed in the New York Times titled "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich." Here's a sample:

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

And here's the conclusion:

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

Does that make him a socialist?

MIRACLES, MATTER AND MORE. Here is the latest version of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

WORK SHARING makes sense as an alternative to mass unemployment.

MOTHER NATURE has her moments when it comes to engineering.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Beware the bananas

The staff of this blog never rests in its quest for the most interesting and relevant news stories around the world. Today's post is only the latest example.

The German paper Spiegel reports the following:

It is a nightmare scenario for any supermarket. Last Friday morning, as an employee was unloading bananas from a crate in a large grocery store in south-western Germany, a large, greyish, hairy spider about 13 centimeters long jumped out and scuttled under a shelf.

The member of staff checked the Internet for images of spiders resembling the one he had just seen, and was shocked when he found a match: a Brazilian Wandering Spider (Phoneutria nigriventer), billed as one of the world's most venomous and aggressive spiders.

(For freedom lovers, 13 centimeters is over 5 inches.)

Despite a major spider-hunt, the critter in question has not been found. Spiegel continues:

Anyone encountering it should be very careful. Amy Stewart, the author of "Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects," cites the Brazilian Wandering Spider as one of her top five worst bugs. A bite doesn't just cause severe pain, but also leads to breathing problems, paralysis and even death.

That isn't all. Stewart writes that the creature is fearless and so aggressive that it will stand on its hind legs, prepared to take on any challenger, however big.

(Spiegel is too delicate to add that the spider's bite has bizarre, unpleasant and seemingly opposite effects on the unmentionable parts of human males.)

All of this is to say, be cautious around bananas.

I ask again, is this a full service blog or what?

BUDGET BLOWHARDS discussed here.

OH GOOD. WV Senator Joe Manchin gets Koch brothers money.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A fiend out of hell

The theme at Goat Rope these days is Beowulf, although you will also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

I've been blogging on this subject for a while now but am just getting around to the cool parts, i.e. the monsters. You may recall there are three in all, Grendel, a kind of humanoid man eating giant; his unnamed mother, who was if anything nastier than her son; and a dragon. Grendel first appears after Hrothgar, king of the Spear Danes, builds Heorot, his grand mead hall. All that nightly carousing by drunken proto-Vikings gets on Grendel's last nerve.

Things were going just fine for Hrothgar and his drunken buddies, but trouble was waiting in the wings. Here's a passage from Seamus Heaney's translation:

So times were pleasant for the people there
until finally one, a fiend out of hell,
began to work his evil in the world.
Grendel was the name of this grim demon
haunting the marches, marauding round the heath
and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time
in misery among the banished monsters,
Cain's clan, whom the creator had outlawed
and condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel
the Eternal Lord had exacted a price:
Cain got no good from committing that murder
because the Almighty made him anathema
and out of the curse of his exile there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms
and the giants too who strove with God
time and again until He gave them their reward.

The Anglo-Saxons had a real thing about the story of Cain, and found in it an explanation and origin for all kinds of nasty creatures that inhabit northern European folklore. More on that tomorrow.

REJECTING THE FRAME. Economist Dean Baker takes on one of his favorite targets here.

AMERICAN WORKERS. Does American business need them any more?

HEALTH CARE REFORM. What will the US Supreme Court do when it lands in the docket?

OH GOOD. Meat eating machines and furniture are here.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN on walking.

BACK TO MONSTERS. Here's an interesting if lengthy New Yorker profile of filmmaker, author and monster fan Guillermo del Toro.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"Tough decisions"

I have a fondness for the ancient Chinese philosopher known in the West as Confucius (aka Kong zi or K'ung-tzu). When he was asked what he would do first if given a position of influence in a government, he said he'd start with "the rectification of names," which kind of means words more into line with reality. George Orwell made the same point in the mid 20th century.

Certain words are often over-used in the realm of politics and could use a little rectification. One example of this is the expression "tough decisions," which some politicians are proud to have made. Generally, a tough decision is one that sticks it to the working class, the poor or relatively underprivileged, usually by cutting some program which puts some resources in their direction.

These days, such "tough decisions" involve things like shafting the unemployed.

As Tony Judt put it in his recent book Ill Fares the Land,

These days, we take pride in being tough enough to inflict pain on others. If an older usage were still in force, whereby being tough consisted of enduring pain rather than imposing it on others, we should perhaps think twice before so callously valuing efficiency over compassion.

The term used around here for decisions that inflict punishment on the powerless is a little different. It's a compound word, the first part of which is "chicken" and the last is best left to the Gentle Reader's imagination.

TALKING SENSE. Here's a good editorial from the Washington Post about the need for Congress to act on unemployment insurance and aid to states.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, 38 Americans have lost unemployment benefits every minute since June 2.

A MODEST PROPOSAL. Economist Dean Baker suggest we treat corporate irresponsibility the same way we do drunk driving.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Dirty institutions

Rosa Parks, 1955. Image by way of wikipedia.

Henry David Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience didn't make much of a splash when first written, but it was destined to have a major worldwide impact. The events that led to the essay took place during his stay at Walden Pond.

Here's how he laconically describes what happened in Walden:

One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and children like cattle at the door of its senate-house. I had gone into the woods for other purposes, But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to get my dinner of huckle-berries on Fair-Haven Hill. I was never molested by any person but those who represented the state.

Of course, people have been resisting unjust laws and governments since ancient times--the Greek tragedy Antigone is a literary example of ancient civil disobedience. The histories of Josephus provide examples of Jewish non-violent resistance against the Romans under Caligula and Pilate. But Thoreau was one of the first to articulate it clearly and his essay about an almost accidental encounter would have a much greater influence than anyone at the time might have dreamed.

It's amazing what people can do sometimes even when they're not trying.

LIVING ON EARTH devoted a program to the changing view of the late WV Senator Robert Byrd on coal issues.

BAKER'S DOZEN (minus ten). Here are two good columns by economist Dean Baker. The first is about the politics of unemployment, while the second is about the growing inequality that is at the root of the economic crisis.

ANOTHER INTERESTING TAKE on the economic crisis can be found here.

GETTING EMOTIONAL can have its benefits.

BIRD BRAINS. They are more similar to those of mammals than previously thought. Having watched the complex behavior of the feathered inhabitants of Goat Rope Farm, I can't say I'm surprised.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Radical minds

It would be hard to think of two people more different than Henry David Thoreau and Karl Marx, but the transcendentalist and the red exile sounded alike in their critique of early capitalism.

Particularly in his early writings, the young Marx denounced the alienation of the workers and their degradation in an industrial system that reduced the individual worker to "an appendage to the machine." The hyper-individualist Henry picked up on the same theme, noting in Walden that

lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

He also noted that

the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer

This rant about social inequality from Walden could go toe to toe with those in the Communist Manifesto:

The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and "silent poor." The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves. The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood-pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world.

I'm not sure what he thought could be done about it, given his distaste for collective action, but at least he saw it. It's also interesting that he almost accidentally gave the world a blueprint for nonviolent action in his essay on civil disobedience.

YOUR GOOD DEED FOR THE DAY would be to call your US senators and urge them to pass HB 4213 with an amendment to extend COBRA benefits and help states avoid layoffs and cuts to services by extending the federal Medicaid match for another six months. The bill would extend key provisions of the recovery act, including jobless benefits. Families USA has provided a toll free number: 888-340-6521.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, the public supports continuing the benefits mentioned above.

MYOPIA. Economist Dean Baker takes another swipe at deficit hawks. If they win, he argues, the recession and accompanying unemployment are likely to linger.

SPIDER GIRL FIGHTS can be deadly.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A fellow of infinite jest

(Goat Rope is almost done with a long jag on Hamlet. If you like this kind of thing, click on earlier posts. If not, scroll on down to the links and comments section below.)

If you ask just about anyone what image comes to mind when he or she thinks about Hamlet, chances are it is the prince holding Yorick's skull so there's no way I can pass by the graveyard scene in act 5 without including it.

Hamlet and the gravedigger have been bantering back and forth when the former picks up a skull and asks who it belonged to.

First Clown: A whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was?

HAMLET: Nay, I know not.

First Clown: A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a
flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull,
sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.

HAMLET: This?

First Clown: E'en that.

You know what comes next. He takes the skull and launches into the second most famous speech in English literature:

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that.

The thing is, that back that bore him a thousand times was probably the major--and possibly the only--source of affection in his childhood. Hamlet Senior seemed to be pretty busy smiting the sledded Poles and engaging in combat with Norway to get too involved and his mother was probably preoccupied with her own affairs (no pun intended).

A NEW KIND OF BUSINESS? Here's an interesting item from NPR about how lawyers are working to create some kind of legal status for corporations that are more interested in positive social outcomes that the bottom line.

FREE LUNCH OR FREE MARKET. In this piece, Dean Baker takes on the misconception that conservatives rely on the market while progressives rely on government intervention. In fact, both groups use government to pursue their ends. The real question is, who benefits?

PAY EQUITY. Here's a new look at the gender gap in wages.

MORE THAN LINES. This National Geographic article looks at the Nasca culture in ancient Peru.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A positive step

The old WV State Penitentiary in Moundsville. If those walls could talk...

For many years, a trend in West Virginia and around the country was to build more prisons and lock up more people, often for non-violent offenses. The predictable result was prison overcrowding, excessive costs, problems with re-entry, etc.

It's gotten to the point where we can't build our way out of this. Even if construction on massive new prisons began today, the overcrowding rate wouldn't change by the time they were built unless other things changed as well.

There are welcome signs that this is starting to change. Here's an excerpt from an AP item that ran in last Sunday's Gazette-Mail:

An average of three new inmates a day entering the state's correctional system has left West Virginia with a stark choice: build new prisons or change the way it thinks about crime and punishment.

The first option is unattractive in a time when state agencies are trimming their budgets and revenue is drying up. A new prison would cost up to $200 million, according to Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein.

That leaves the second choice, which politicians have long feared will expose them to the charge of being "soft on crime,'' a tag no one wants during an election year in a conservative state.

Gov. Joe Manchin, though, is willing to risk political backlash by proposing policies he says will save the state hundreds of millions in the long run and do a better job of rehabilitating prisoners with the best chance at being productive members of society.

In the last few years, the state began a major day reporting effort as an alternative to incarceration in regional jails. Now on the agenda may be accelerated parole for non-violent, low risk offenders and increased attention to drug treatment and rehabilitation programs.

This makes sense since most people who go in are going to come out sooner or later and prisons are not generally known as places that improve behavior. A saying that has been heard more than once in statehouse circles is “We need to lock up the people we’re afraid of, not the ones we're mad at.”

(Hamlet will return tomorrow.)

MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED. President Obama is urging Congress to "finish the job" on health care reform.

REALITY CHECK. For all the whackadoodle paranoia about a government takeover of health care, a new study shows that the government will pay more than half of all health care costs by 2012 as things now stand.

ROOTS OF THE RECESSION. Here's part of an interview with economist Dean Baker on the bubble that burst all over us.

WHISPERING CANINES. De-barking dogs is something of a controversial subject these days.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

When the time comes

Timing is everything.

Lately the theme here is public policy and how it gets made--or doesn't. I've been bouncing off some of the research of political scientist John Kingdon's very useful book Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Although this book was written in the 1980s about federal legislation, it rings pretty true today even at the state level.

If you are interested in this kind of thing, you can get in touch with your inner policy wonk by clicking on earlier entries.

As mentioned earlier, Kingdon refers to wonks as policy entrepreneurs, who are people willing to put time and effort into developing ideas for how laws and programs could work.

Let's say a given wonk or group of wonks develops a really good policy idea. As the saying goes, that and a couple of bucks will buy you coffee in most places unless you like the fancy kind. It's important in this early stage to get the idea out there to as wide an audience as possible--and especially the audience that pays attention to such things and can help make them happen. He calls this process "softening up," a term that brings artillery barrages to mind.

As he put it,

Who are policy entrepreneurs trying to soften up? Some of the time, they speak of educating the general public. Presidential speeches, for instance, are used to "bring the public along," in the words of one bureaucrat...

A second target is a more specialized public, peculiar to a particular issue.. As with the general public, the purpose of the softening up is to insure that the relevant public is ready for a certain type of proposal when the time does come...

I think the key words are "when the time does come." I've frequently written here about the similarity of this kind of work to my martial arts hobby. As much as one might like to, you can't usually kick someone in the head (in a friendly way) just because you want to; you can only do it when an opening exists.

In my experience as in Kingdon's analysis, it takes a long period of preparation to be able to move quickly to get something done when this happens. But without an opening or a window, it probably won't happen. That's what makes it interesting.

NOTHING BUT SHAME. Here's E.J. Dionne on dirty deeds done dirt cheap (to coin a phrase) in the US Senate. And here's the way the prospects for health care reform looks now.

EASY MONEY. Economist Dean Baker calls for a tax on financial speculation here.

FREE MEDS. 270,000 West Virginians may be eligible for free prescription drugs under the WVRx program.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Whose nanny state?

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the bankruptcy of "conservative" economic theory, which is pretty clear these days. But before getting there, I think it's a good idea to clear up some misconceptions.

One such is the idea that progressives want to use the government to redistribute wealth, while those who call themselves conservative believe in leaving it to "the market."

As the economist Dean Baker has pointed out over and over again, the reality is that both use the government to redistribute wealth. The main difference is that the former use it to distribute wealth upward and the latter prefer to use it to benefit those with low or moderate incomes--and this has been true for well over a century.

As Baker points out in his free web book The Conservative Nanny State (linked above), there are any number of ways that state power has been used to spread the wealth upward. These include:

*chartering corporations. These were not present from the day of creation. In fact, corporations are legal entities recognized by governments which protect investors from legal liabilities and enjoy the same legal rights as persons. If a sole proprietor or partnership incurs serious debts or liabilities, the owners are responsible for the whole thing. Corporations protect investors by limiting what they can lose if things go south.

*issuing patents, which give some businesses an artificial monopoly for a period of time as a reward for innovation. I'm not debating the value of the idea, just pointing out that in a really free market system, people would be free to make knock offs of inventions and sell them for less than those who came up with them.

*using state power to break strikes and thwart labor organizing.

*using tax policy to impose relatively heavier burdens on labor than on investment income.

The list could go on and on but you get the idea.

STIMULATE US. If your congressperson is sitting on the fence about the American Renewal and Reinvestment Act, which would help those hardest hit by the recession and help get things moving again, this would be a good time to give them a nudge.

RESTORING THE BALANCE. Here's Robert Reich on the role unions can play in rebuilding the middle class--but we'll need the Employee Free Choice Act to get there.

MILITARY MARRIAGES are often another casualty of war.

SCIENCE IS BACK, which is probably a good thing.

URGENT SPITTING COBRA UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

I herd that

Don't even think about it.

Sometimes one good book will lead to another. I recently read and highly recommend Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, even though I'm sure it will bust the bubbles of many readers who are uncomfortable about our animal origins.

In that book, he pretty much demolishes some cherished ideas, such as the belief that all human behaviors are purely social constructions ("the blank slate"), that all nasty human traits are the result of culture ("the noble savage"), and that our minds are somehow floating ghosts that haunt the region of our heads ("the ghost in the machine").

In one part of the book, Pinker revisited the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and referred to a study by Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen that found that

violent cultures arise in societies that are beyond the reach of law and in which precious assets are easily stolen. Societies that herd animals meet both conditions. Herders tend to live in territories that are unsuitable for growing crops and thus far from the centers of government. And their major asset, livestock, is easier to steal than the major asset of farmers, land. In herding societies a man can be stripped of his wealth (and of his ability to acquire wealth) in a blink. Men in that milieu cultivate a hair trigger for violent retaliation, not just against rustlers, but against anyone who would test their resolve by signs of disrespect that could reveal them to be easy pickings for rustlers.

Golly willikers, I wonder what it would be like to grow up in a culture like that? And keep your hands of my goats, bub...

But seriously, that is an interesting idea. Sometimes cultural norms often long outlive the situation that gave birth to them. But if you think about it, many people all over the US and the world live in situations where there is no positive relationship with a governing authority and where all the perceived good things of life--from respect and status to money and valuables--can be taken away.

CRYSTAL BALL. Here is one prediction about the near future of the economy in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. Short version: bad but maybe not as bad as the nation as a whole. That'd be a switch.

OWN TO RENT. Economist Deal Baker proposes a simple solution to the foreclosure crisis here.

URGENT MUMMY UPDATE here.

THE SOUL IN THE STONE. An archaeological artifact reveals ancient attitudes towards immortality.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE GODDESS STRIFE

Caption: This isn't one of her better pictures.

El Cabrero is a big fan of ancient Greece. Philosophy, art, literature, politics, history, a pluralistic approach to religion, name it. Unfortunately, the objects of my admiration sometimes had the self-destructive tendencies of the heroes of their tragedies.

They were like the Ziggy Stardusts of the ancient world. They took it all too far, but boy could they play guitar--or kithara, as the case may be.

Back in the heyday, Greece wasn't a unified country like a modern nation or an empire like those of Alexander the Macedonian or the Romans. It was a diverse collection of city-states which took political forms ranging from democracy to monarchy to tyranny to mixed governments. To the extent they were united at all, it was by language, myths, religion, and custom, including the famous panhellenic games which were the forerunners of our Olympics.

They had plenty of shortcomings but one of the biggest was an addiction to strife or Eris,which/who was also a goddess. According to the poet Hesiod in Works and Days, there were actually two goddesses of strife, one good one bad. The bad one led to war and destruction:

So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honour due.

The other, theoretically at least, to led healthy competition:

But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with is neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.

In practice, the two often get muddled together, as you may have noticed.

According to another mythological strand, the whole Trojan war grew out of the spite of the vengeful goddess Eris at not being invited to a wedding (although, in my experience, strife is usually at most weddings anyway, invited or not). She makes an appearance in Homer's Iliad with a particularly apt description:

Strife whose wrath is relentless, she is the sister and companion of murderous Ares [god of war], she who is only a little thing at the first, but thereafter grows until she strides on the earth with her head striking heaven. She then hurled down bitterness equally between both sides as she walked through the onslaught making men's pain heavier. She also has a son whom she named Strife.

Anyway, strife or Eris, whether personified or not, brought down classical Greek civilization. The fall was long and slow, but a major step on the way was the long and fratricidal Pelopponesian War, masterfully recounted by Thucydides. That will be the guiding threat through this week's posts.

I don't plan on working the parallels between the Greeks and us too hard but I think it's safe to say that this goddess is still with us.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. William Schweke of the Center for Enterprise Development recently published this op-ed about a rational approach to economic development for West Virginia (and elsewhere). He warns that

the state should not be frightened into radical proposals by the dogmatic anti-government crowd to cut regulation, taxation and other responsibilities to the bone.

WORTH READING. The latest edition of Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree is available. Jim, an Episcopal priest (yay team!), is a master of metaphors and this issue is full of them.

UNLEASHING WHATEVER DEPARTMENT. Meanwhile, over at West Virgina Blue, Antipode has published a good critique of Unleashing Capitalism, a libertarian tract that has become the Holy Writ of the WV right wing.

CALLING ALL WEST VIRGINIANS. I've noticed that readers of Goat Rope come from all over, but I'd like to ask those who live in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia to read this and respond appropriately in this economic justice campaign. Short version: please check out the link and contact the legislature (it's easy if you go there) to preserve access to education for welfare recipients. It's the best way for people to permanently escape poverty.

THREE ITEMS. For those who don't get the Charleston Gazette or the Sunday Gazette Mail, there are three items in there I highly recommend. One is an article by Paul Nyden on economist Dean Baker, who will be giving a talk in Charleston today on the theme of The Conservative Nanny State. Another is an op-ed by Perry Mann on a lifetime of reading. Finally, there is the heart-rending story by Tara Tuckwiller about a young girl from WV who is doing her part to stop the war in Iraq. Her mother is about to be sent there.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED