WV and the Clean Power Plan

One place you can find a fairly civil discussion of some of the issues involved is on the latest installment of The Front Porch.

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!

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. 

It's about time

For a good while lately, people on my end of the spectrum have been calling on the federal government to step up and assist those parts of Appalachia going through tough times because of the decline of coal. It looks like that is starting to happen, although on a fairly small scale.

I also found it interesting that WV's new senator, who metaphorically could be said to be a high priestess of the "war on coal" cult, is critical of the program, although she doesn't quite come out against it. For mythology buffs out there, her comments seem downright Protean to me.

A day late and...

Usually I leave Obama bashing up to others who are better suited to it and more capable of it. However, I feel obliged to point out to the administration, as if anyone was listening, that their belated concern about Appalachia and the future of coal communities might have been more helpful a couple of years ago. I guess you could say "Better late than never" about this. But not by much.

And here's a little bit of more good news for a coal community while we're at it.

On possibly detecting a member of the order Rodentia by olfactory means, metaphorically speaking

Maybe El Cabrero is just uncommonly cynical, but does anyone else find anything fishy about the post-election miraculous recovery of Alpha Natural Resources? Back in July, they filed a WARN notice warning 1,100 workers of imminent job loss, a move industry supporters and some politicians attributed to President Obama's "war on coal." Now, a month after the elections, it looks like 750 will keep their jobs.

That's funny. I thought Obama was still president.

If memory serves something different but similarly fishy happened with Murray Energy after the 2012.

Things that make you go hmmmm.

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.

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.

A poetical Puritan

I would have been pretty useless in the English Civil War of the 1640s. Politically, I'd probably be sympathetic with some of the Roundheads. Theologically, cradle Episcopalian that I am, I'd be with the Cavaliers. And Puritanism just plain gives me the creeps.

However, I must say the Puritan poet John Milton had his moments. I just came across these lines from his Comus:

If every just man that now pines with want
Had but a moderate and beseeming share
Of that which lewdly pampered luxury
Now heaps upon some few with vast excess,
Nature's full blessings would be well dispensed
In unsuperfluous even proportion...

LESSONS LEARNED? Here's economist Jared Bernstein on how safety net programs performed during the Great Recession.

THIS OUGHT TO BE JUST THE THING to start another ruling class  hissy fit in West Virginia.

THIS IS SOOO GROSS. Have you watched a lamprey video lately?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Really?

I woke up this morning (sounds like the beginning of a song) and, after completing a few rituals, began scanning the web for news. I was a bit disappointed to find this story which said that the Obama administration is considering going after the states that recently took steps towards legalizing marijuana.

I say again, really?

Full disclosure: I am not and never have been a marijuana person. When I was in junior high, I would gladly have done any drug I could find. Alas, the only drug I could find at the time was gasoline to sniff, which may explain a few billion missing brain cells. In the end, I'm OK with missing the drug train. I figure if alcohol was good enough for my old man and my Scotch-Irish ancestors, it's good enough for me.

But still...the whole war on drugs thing has proven to be about as good an idea as Prohibition. It kind of is the same idea. It has had all kinds of unintended consequences, nearly all of which are bad. It's been pointed out over and over that marijuana is not responsible for anything remotely resembling the body count racked up by alcohol and tobacco.

Let's face it: all law enforcement is selective. Shouldn't the administration have bigger fish to fry? And aren't there better uses for federal resources these days?

JUST ONE LINK, BUT ONE TOO GOOD TO IGNORE. Zombie-ism...it isn't just for humans anymore. Here's a look at zombie spiders.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

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.

Then what?

El Cabrero is getting a little worried about the ruling class in my beloved state of West Virginia. As I've mentioned before, they are several years into a protracted hissy fit over the allegedly job-killing agenda of the Obama administration and its "war on coal."

They had a bit of a setback recently when it was noticed that coal jobs are actually significantly up to their highest level since the mid 1990s, higher even than the ruling class Golden Age of the Bush administration.

Resourceful guys that they are, no pun intended, they managed to dodge that bullet by essentially saying, "Yeah,  well, maybe, but he's about to start killing jobs."

(It is a truth universally acknowledged amongst the WV ruling class that declining jobs in coal mining are exclusively caused by black commanders in chief and not by things like a warm winter, cheap natural gas and competition from other places.)

Here's what I wonder about though. Suppose Romney wins in November and the EPA is gutted or abolished and mining regulation falls back into industry hands and enforcement is replaced by "compliance assistance." If coal jobs go down then, as will probably be the case, who are they going to blame?

The Obama excuse is bound to wear off in time and then it may become apparent that there were plenty of warning signs about the long term decline of Appalachian mining but that the people running the state were in a state of denial and blew any chances to work towards some kind of transition that might have eased the crunch because they were too busy throwing a hissy fit.

But, knowing them, they'll probably find somebody else to blame it on.

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"

Watching the show

One of my favorite West Virginia spectator sports is watching our ruling class throw hissy fits. They're really good at it. In fact, they are now starting year four of a protracted hissy fit aimed at the Obama administration's "war on coal."

Short summary: the Bush administration let the industry do pretty much anything it wanted to all the time. The Obama administration has sought to mitigate some of the negative impacts of mountaintop removal mining and to take steps to deal with carbon emissions and climate change.

No self-respecting WV politician would admit willingly to either the possibility that mountaintop removal isn't the best thing since sliced bread or that climate change is real and caused by human activity. That's just not where the money is.

So, anytime a mountaintop removal permit is challenged or denied or the EPA takes steps to cut down on carbon, it's on.

One favorite tactic of the hissy fit is to accuse the administration of killing coal jobs, as the above billboard on I-64 illustrates.

The only problem is that coal jobs here have actually increased by 1,500 or 7.4 percent since 2009, the highest level since 1995.

Now, I wouldn't expect these facts to get in the way of a good hissy fit. In fact, the rhetoric is only likely to be amped up at a series of taxpayer funded coal pep rallies that will take place this week. Everybody who is anybody, politically speaking, is sure to be there.

My favorite part of the whole thing is a comment by a coal association official about the job numbers: "We're glad to provide gainful employment."

Just in case anybody missed it, let me unpack that a bit: if coal jobs numbers are up, it's because of the benevolence of the industry. BUT if they go down (even when they don't--in fact, even when we pretend they go down when in fact they really go up) it has nothing to do with automation, competition from other areas, with plentiful and cheap natural gas or with market conditions. Rather, it's the black guy's fault.

Everybody got it?

The sad part is that it seems to be working.

R.I.P. Turk Lurk

It is with sorrow that I must report the passing of The Turkey Formerly Known As Diego, aka Turk Lurk. He has been a resident of Goat Rope Farm for about four years now. He died of apparently natural causes, although romantic rivalry may have had something to do with it.

There was never a more ardent suitor when it came to the ladies, although he seemed to have trouble sealing the reproductive deal. It does appear, however, that at least two of the baby turkeys now bopping around the farm have his genetic imprint.

He was a really sweet, gentle, genial and tame bird. For years now, I have amused myself (and torment co-workers on conference calls) by exchanging endless verbal greetings with him.

May he be reborn in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha, where he can work towards ultimate enlightenment under the most favorable of circumstances.

BY WAY OF LINKS, here are two on the politics and reality of coal from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Oh really?

If you have been in or around West Virginia any over the last couple of years, you will have heard a lot about the Obama administration's "war on coal." If you drive anywhere in the state, chances are you've passed a billboard with a picture of several Appalachian states with words that reads "Obama's no jobs zone."

West Virginia's ruling class has long mastered the art of the hissy fit and they have been throwing one ever since W left the White House.

But as Ken Ward notes in Saturday's Charleston Gazette, coal employment in Appalachia is actually at a 14 year high.

So if there is a "war on coal" being waged by the administration, I guess you could say it's not going very well. Or you could just call BS.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TCB

Random animal picture, this one being of Little Edith Ann at Halloween, yet another reason why dogs hate that holiday.

The lame duck session of Congress that begins today has some serious business to take care of, provided it has the guts and will. Around two million Americans are going to exhaust unemployment benefits in December. In West Virginia, the number is around 11 thousand. The numbers will only get worse in 2011.

This needs to happen, given that there are around five jobless workers for every new job that opens up. And economists are expecting sluggish job growth for the next year or two, maybe longer. Ideally, the extension should last for a year.

Ever since the 1950s, Congress has acted to extend benefits when unemployment was 7.2percent or higher and we're way about that point now.

This extension has to happen in the lame duck session because the new majority in the House is not likely to do it. I'd really like to be wrong about this, but I think it's a good bet that the new majority will be hostile to anything that benefits working people, the unemployed and people in poverty. And for all their talk about fighting deficits, you can bet that they'd like nothing more than to extend Bush era tax cuts for the rich indefinitely.

There is something we can do about this. Tomorrow, Nov. 16 is a national call-in day to Congress to extend unemployment. The WV AFLCIO is urging people to participate in the call-in campaign tomorrow and has provided a toll free number: 1-877-662-2889.

Please take a minute to make the call. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH, here's yours truly on the need for the WV legislature to take some action of its own on unemployment insurance modernization.

CAVING (METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING). The White House, that is. Maybe.

SPEAKING OF METAPHORS, they seem to live in certain regions of the brain.

ANOTHER FIGHT IN THE WORKS is preventing repeal of health care reform.

SOMETHING ELSE TO DENY. Melting glaciers. It might be a bit harder to deny rising sea levels in the future though.

UN-WELL BEING. West Virginia takes the lead again.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Useful errors

I was in an interesting conversation this weekend about the root causes of social problems, which caused me to start thinking about the slippery issue of causality. Or maybe not.

The human tendency to think in terms of cause and effect is deeply ingrained and probably has roots in evolutionary biology. Being able to infer causal patterns was no doubt adaptive in relatively the simple environments in which early humans lived.

The problem comes when we all too readily assume that causal explanations we find satisfying are true. Natural selection, that "blind watchmaker", doesn't really care about truth; it just cares about what is useful.

My old pal Friedrich Nietzsche put it this way:

Throughout immense stretches of time the intellect produced nothing but errors; some of them proved to be useful and preservative of the species: he who fell in with them, or inherited them, waged the battle for himself and his offspring with better success.

Thought for the day: would you prefer truth without utility or utility without truth?

UNUSEFUL UNTRUTHS. Paul Krugman takes aim at the prevailing narrative on the economy and the recession.

CORRUPTION. Big money, sleazy politics.

SOCIAL ANIMALS. Research on twins suggests that people are socially oriented even before birth.

DEATH BY BREAKFAST. Here's a look at some unhealthy menu items.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED