The Supreme Cult strikes again

 As a native and lifelong resident of West Virginia, I find it particularly galling that the disastrous Extreme Court Supreme Cult Supreme Court EPA decision bears the name of a state suffering from the impacts of climate change and urgently in need of a transition to just and sustainable economy.

 West Virginians are intimately familiar with the human and natural consequences of not adequately regulating industries that harm our people, land and rivers.

 The history of this state is punctuated by industrial disasters and the slower but potentially more devastating impacts of pollution and environmental degradation. This SCOTUS decision will only make things worse. The struggle continues...

Along those lines, here's a link to a response to the decision from the national AFSC and here's the accompanying call to action.  

More on coal

Say what you want about WV Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, but he clearly isn't afraid to play the role of adult when needed. Meanwhile, the head of Appalachian Power had some interesting things to say about the future of coal.

I have a modest proposal to add to the coal debate. First, if state politicians want to oppose the Clean Power Plan, let them knock themselves out. But whatever happens or whoever gets blamed for the troubles in the coalfields, how about we take full advantage of federal proposals to help communities there.

In case you were wondering...

...West Virginia's leaders have been on a major ruling class hissy fit over the Obama administration's proposed Clean Power Plan. Gee, nobody saw that coming.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD. On the other hand, two friends of mine who recently started a program to bring yoga to West Virginia's prison population got some nice coverage in the Gazette today. One of them was a guardian angel of mine on a triathlon I barely managed to finish. I now owe her a karmic debt.

MORE GOOD NEWS. WV continues to make huge strides in child nutrition. The Harrison County school board recently decided to dramatically expand its participation in a federal program that provides free breakfast and lunch to all students in schools with high poverty rates. They piloted the program at three schools last year.

Even better, one heretofore holdout county, Wetzel, recently decided to provide free meals to all kids county wide. On the cosmic scale, this might not seem like a big deal, but it's a huge one for the kids who no longer have to deal with stigma and the parents who no longer have to worry about another bill.

A big thank you to the adults in those counties who stood up for kids!

In case you missed it...

...this rather lengthy NY Times article on former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship came out while I was traveling. I agree with Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo that it's a bit odd an article of that length didn't mention the role of federal prosecutor Booth Goodwin.

Speaking of coal, WV's ruling class is celebrating the Supreme Court ruling on the EPA. I'm not sure that this will be enough to bring back a booming economy in southern WV, however.

Talking sense about West Virginia

I'm not saying it doesn't happen very often, but I'm always glad when it does. Here's a article from the State Journal that talks sense about higher education, taxes and the state budget. And then Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo tries to do the same on a bit of a tender subject these days. 

Different worlds

West Virginia is a fairly small state, but sectional differences between north, south, east and west are huge. I can't think of a better illustration of this fact than these two recent news items. The first describes hard times in coal country while the second describes an alternate universe in the state's eastern panhandle. Changes in both places, along with the gas boom in the north, make for a volatile political mix.

GOOD LUCK. Being poor means, among other things, that one can't afford to have any bad luck, which is unfortunate since most of us do at some point. Here's a little look at what that means in the context of the minimum wage.

GOOD POLICY. Here's an item on subsidized jobs, an idea that seems to have bipartisan support. There were some innovative jobs programs as part of the Recovery Act, but most shriveled up when the funding dried up.

The last word...

...of the work week goes to Ken Ward at the Charleston Gazette and Coal Tattoo. Ken points out here that even if WV's ruling class got its wish and made the EPA disappear, the state's coal industry would still be in trouble due to cheap natural gas and coal competition from elsewhere. At some point, we need to deal with it.

Coal kabuki and climate

In case you missed, Ken Ward over at Coal Tattoo has some things to say about how West Virginia's leaders might deal with the whole Obama/climate change/EPA thing. I'm not holding my breath though.

Still, it's impossible to deny that these are tough times in the coalfields. Alpha Natural Resources recent layoff announcement is just another case in point.

That's all the more reason why we need to start talking now about economic transition.

Something useful for a change

West Virginia's political leaders threw a world class ruling class hissy fit in the wake of the Obama administration's efforts to deal with climate change, which can't be true here because of money. For what it's worth, I'd like to pitch two reality based assessments of the current situation. First, here's Kentucky's Jason Bailey talking about some practical ways of dealing with Appalachia's problems. Second, here's Ken Ward from Coal Tattoo calling leaders to a higher standard. Whether anyone is listening is an open question.

So this is my state

I sooo knew this was coming:  a command performance ruling class hissy fit regarding the Obama administration/EPA's efforts to curb carbon emissions. Everybody who was anybody, with the singular exception of retiring Senator Jay Rockefeller (and the ghost of Robert Byrd) joined in to bash the president and EPA.

AND WHILE WV IS BASHING THE FEDS, it looks like WV gets more federal $ than any other state per capita.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD.  One bright spot is this Gazette article about how Medicaid expansion is helping former prisoners deal with addiction issues. Actually, WV is a national leader in implementing the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

We used to be so much cooler...

Feel the noise

If you hear anything really loud next week, it just might be WV's ruling class throwing an epic hissy fit over the Obama administration's efforts to rein in carbon emissions and address climate change/global warming.

The hissy fit has been going on with peaks and valleys pretty much since 2009, but it's probably going to hit a new level.

Yesterday, I tweeted (@elcabrero) something like this:

World history WV style: the US entered WWII after Obama and the EPA bombed Pearl Harbor.

Sadly, that really isn't that much of an exaggeration.

Over at Coal Tattoo, my friend Ken Ward wonders when if ever folks here will actually deal with it. And Paul Krugman looks at the actual costs here.

At some point, I hope people here get around to facing a few facts. Like how the market, which some people worship as a god, is doing way more to coal than regulations. Or that maybe climate change/global warming is real (how bout the weather, by the way?). Or that however much coal has been and will be part of WV's economy, we're never going back to the WWII days when mines employed over 100,000 people. And that we need to have some rational, grown up discussions about what's next.

Meanwhile, apparently the nice folks at the WVU Bureau of Business and Economic Research didn't get the hissy fit memo. They recently released a report that forecast steady economic growth for WV over the next few years.. Here's some news coverage and here's the full report.

Here's a shock

Not. First, a top coal industry lobbyist doesn't really want to talk much about climate change. I didn't see that one coming.

And here's another shock: as my pal Sean O'Leary in the eastern panhandle points out, the industry doesn't want to talk much about how the market is doing way more to hurt WV coal than the EPA or the black guy with the unusual name in DC.

And this might be a shock to the majority in the US House who vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act about as often as Lady Macbeth washed her hands: poll numbers supporting it are going up, even in Republican districts. More people are inclined to "implement and fix" rather than "repeal and replace."

The war on whatever

It is an article of faith among West Virginia's ruling class that any and all of the ills of the coal industry are solely the fault of a certain black man in the White House and his diabolical EPA. Actually, I imagine that some of the smarter ones know better but still feel obligated to pretend that this is the case.

I guess it would be too inconvenient to recognize that the gas boom in northern WV has anything to do with the coal bust in southern WV.

Many "conservatives" around the country are joining the "war on coal" chorus. The irony here is that the real driving force behind the relative decline of coal as an energy source is the market which these same people worship as a god.

Meanwhile, here's a bit of rationality about the subject from the Christian Science Monitor.

Coal stuff

You can't be around most WV politicians very long without hearing about the Obama administration's "war on coal." According to this scenario, the EPA is a rogue agency totally bent on destroying the inoffensive industry and everything would be just peachy without it.

This post from the WV Center on Budget and Policy suggests that regulations aren't the main problem here.

Meanwhile, this post by Beth Spence reminds me that the same people jabbering on about the "war on coal" are the same ones who could make meaningful mine safety legislation pass--but they can't be bothered to do that.

So close

This week saw a series of taxpayer funded pep rallies for coal in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. I'm not sure whether the festivities included torchlight parades, but there were plenty of ritualistic denunciations of the EPA and President Obama, both of which are regarded by the great god coal as the source and font of all evil in the world.

Newspaper coverage of such events is always good for lively comments from the trolls that lurk about the web the way giant carp lurk around the bait shop at Beech Fork State Park. A friend of mine highlighted one such comment, which I'm pretty sure is satire and good satire at that. But it's not that far removed from what lots of folks say with utter sincerity:

What is good for coal is good for WV. Coal is WV. Either you are a friend of coal or an enemy of coal. The enemies need to move out of this state. People don't mind the pollution because they know pollution doesn't hurt anyone. Global warming is as lie. Using tax dollars to support coal companies is the best investment we could make. Think of how much better WV will be 20 years from now when when get rid of the stupid mountains and forests. Public enemy number one of coal and WV is the Kenyan born socialist Obama. Obama's eco-thugs are shutting down the mines and laying off miners. Without coal our state will become a waste land and there won't be any jobs. We won't even be able to watch the Mountaineers play ball because the tree huggers will take away our TV's. From the 1800's on, the coal industry brought prosperity to WV. We need to stop the regulation. If a miner gets hurt its his fault. Don't like the smoke from the power plants? Then don't breath. Do us all a favor"

The ones that get away

Any time you try to work for social justice, you're bound to win some and lose some. And, given the forces you're up against, the odds, statistically speaking are not in your favor.

I usually tell myself not to take things personally, to focus on conditions and act in accordance with them, and if something doesn't work out, to flow into the next technique. And not to be encumbered by hope.

I'm usually pretty good about taking my advice but this week...not so much. I had been marginally hopeful that some things might make it through the WV legislature. One measure, that would have helped people who need unemployment insurance but can't get it now, made it farther than before but died due to "the rich man's frown," to quote an old labor song. I guess that's to be expected, given that the forces of organized wealth have something like an absolute veto power over anything they don't like, whether it makes sense or not.

But another one, which might have taken a step or two towards addressing the major racial disparities in the state, managed to die on the last night despite having made it through both chambers (in different forms that were not reconciled). That one was in the bag until things fell apart for reasons that had nothing to do with public policy. I won't go into the whys, although it had to do with politics in the sense of the saying that in West Virginia everything is political except politics and that's personal.

For a lot of this week, I've felt like the lyric of a John Hiatt song that refers to "throwing up ashes on the floor." Not an attractive image, but it seems to fit. And I kept thinking about those birds in the movie March of the Penguins who went through a winter of hell for an egg that didn't hatch.

Given the fact that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, it probably isn't such a big deal that one decent bill in a small state died, but this one got to me. It seemed like one little thing that could be done in a universe sliding toward entropy or Ragnarok.

I'm starting to get over it, using my preferred medicine of hard physical training. There will be plenty more struggles to come--and, no doubt, plenty of similar outcomes.

AN AGE OF ACTIVISM? Maybe.

FIDDLING AROUND with a fragile recovery could be dangerous.

WASHINGTON SEEMS TO HAVE FORGOTTEN the unemployed.

COAL KABUKI, CONTINUED. This ought to be good for another ruling class hissy fit.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The Beowulf cookbook

When pressing events don't intrude, I've been blogging about Beowulf lately. I mean, somebody's got to do it. If you aren't into that kind of thing, you can skip to the links and comments section.

After going over this first major work of English (sort of) literature several times, I think I've got the recipe down. It has four main ingredients:

1. A full cup of Tolkien. Old J.R.R. was a major medievalist and possibly the 20th century's greatest Beowulf scholar. He also got a lot of inspiration and ideas from the text for his fiction, including orcs, dragons sitting on hoards, the term Middle Earth, Rohan, and the whole ambiance thing;

2. An equal amount of the Sopranos. Each little kingdom is like a mob family, with a lord who distributes benefits (or "ring-giver") and loyal retainers. At any sign of weakness, another crew will muscle its way in. It's a culture of honor where violence can break out at any moment and feuds are common;

3. A full cup of pagan warrior ethic, in which the greatest immortality one can have is to live on in legend after death. The Greeks called this kleos; and

4. A tiny drop of Christianity, minus any references to Jesus.

Mix the first three ingredients and coat sparingly with the last one, bake for a few centuries and there you have it.

ONE MORE TIME, here's a de-bunking of several right wing lies about health care reform.

COAL KABUKI covered here. At least things remained peaceful as far as I could tell.

WAL-MART is moving to promote healthier foods. I still won't shop there, but in the spirit of fair play I'll give them 5 points.

URGENT SLIME MOLD UPDATE here.

TESTING, TESTING. It may work better than studying.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Coal kabuki

We finally got around to watching Avatar on Netflix. The story about a corporation mercilessly exploiting mineral resources sure made me glad nothing like that ever happened in Appalachia.

Meanwhile, other mining dramas are unfolding here. First on my list is yesterday's report by MSHA on the causes of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, which appear to be a lethal mix of methane, failed equipment, excessive coal dust and noncompliance with safety regulations.

Second is the predictable theater that followed in the wake of the EPA's veto of Arch Coal's Spruce Mine mountaintop removal permit. Many state politicians and the coal industry are calling for a rally for coal for today.

As Ken Ward pointed out in Coal Tattoo, the Friends of Coal website actually referred to the event as "a call to arms," although that was taken off the web when word got out.

The use of such obviously incendiary language so soon in the wake of the Arizona massacre seems to be a bit....ill chosen, to say the least.

Even before the Arizona tragedy, quite a few people I know in West Virginia have been concerned that overheated rhetoric is going to lead to violence here sooner or later. I hope that won't happen today.

Meanwhile, here's what I'm pretty sure is the real deal:

1. During the Bush years, the industry could do pretty much whatever it wanted.

2. Those years are over. While the Obama administration has no intention of abolishing coal mining or even mountaintop removal, it does take the law more seriously and will push to reduce the environmental and other impacts.

3. If the permit would be revised to limit the impact, it would probably be approved. This kind of thing has already happened before. And, as Ken Ward noted here, an engineering study by Morgan Worldwide found that an alternative plan would have reduced environmental impacts while still allowing substantial mining to take place.

But, given the choice between throwing a hissy fit and problem solving, the smart money around here still seems to be on hissy fit.

At times like these, I miss the voice and vision of Senator Byrd.

Rural crime ring busted!!!

A suspect was recently apprehended following a series of tomato theft and vandalism incidents in the vicinity of Goat Rope Farm. The unsub (that's crime buster lingo for unidentified subject of an investigation) refused to identify himself or to issue any statements.

Due to the absence of witnesses, formal charges were not pressed. He was, however, dropped off in the middle of a field about a half mile down the road.

SPEAKING OF FARMS, here's a dispatch by Michael Pollan on the food revolution.

CREATING JOBS. One provision of the Recovery Act has created hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide in both the public and private sector.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, a new report shows the Recovery Act aka stimulus played a major role in the economic recovery.

DENIED. The EPA rejected petitions that denied climate change, as Ken Ward reports in Coal Tattoo.

HIRE THE LADY. Paul Krugman gives the Obama administration a friendly thrashing here and urges that Elizabeth Warren be given the post of the new bureau of consumer protection. Not that anybody cares, but I concur.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Hamlet, revenge!

Several years ago, my judo teacher died. He was a great guy who volunteered his talents for years after hectic days as a public school administrator.

Although his mobility was impaired toward the end by old injuries, his chokes were sublime. When he sunk one on you, it didn't hurt at all. It felt like you were taking a nice long nap.

I attended his funeral with several of his other students. The thought occurred to us at the time that if this was a Chinese movie, we'd be plotting revenge right now. For the uninitiated, a standard plot in many martial arts movies is avenging the death of a teacher.

Revenge has been the theme of a great deal of literature, not to mention history, but the Elizabethans were really bonkers about it. Revenge plays became a major genre of the the theater during the Golden Age of English theater in the late 1500s and early 1600s (i.e. before the Puritans ruined everything).

The genre of revenge plays was influenced by the Roman writer and philosopher Seneca. In a typical revenge play, someone--often a legitimate ruler or powerful person--is murdered and replaced by another powerful figure. Sometimes the ghost of the slain person will appear to a protagonist and urge them to take vengeance. Then follows a period of intrigue and subterfuge leading up to the final crisis. The protagonists and his accomplices may die before its over.

Sound familiar? Shakespeare hit all these notes in Hamlet but whacked the whole genre in the process. Harold Bloom calls it "Shakespeare's revenge upon revenge tragedy..."

PEACOCKS. Krugman's latest column focuses on the difference between posturing and real solutions to the nation's economic problems.

HEALTH CARE moves from center stage, for now.

TRAMPS LIKE US, baby, we were born to run barefoot. (The story doesn't say where, however.)

COAL. Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo has an interesting post on the EPA's new approach to mining permits.

LANGUAGES. A new view of how languages evolve challenges earlier models. Simplicity seems to help determine which ones spread the farthest.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED