Dog whistling in our time

I'd like to give a shoutout to Ian Haney Lopez's new book, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. The title gives a pretty good hint of what the book is about. I'm working my way through the book now and I keep thinking about how WV's political climate today is a classic example of dog whistling.  Anyhow, you can learn more about the book here.

SPEAKING OF WRECKING THE MIDDLE CLASS, check out this post from Robert Reich.

MIGHT AS WELL check out this one from Krugman while we're at it.

Two from the Times

Here are two items from the NY Times the growing gap between the very wealthy and everyone else: one on how out of whack we are and the other on how some folks are getting better at conspicuous consumption.

One good, one bad

I've tried to blog a good bit lately about good things happening in WV. One such is the growth of community gardens and local food in former industrial areas such as Wheeling.

AS FOR THE BAD, libertarian delusions cover that pretty well.

Juvenile (in)justice

In case you missed it, here's my op-ed on the need for juvenile justice reform in today's Gazette.

MR. MOJO RISIN'. I have often been asked by out of state friends about WV Senator Joe Manchin. I usually say that some days are better than others (that's something the Spousal Unit frequently says of me). I'd  say that this was one of his good days. In a speech to Marine veterans, Manchin called for a cutback in US military adventures overseas.

INEQUALITY. What a drag.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Epic (non) fail

As Paul Krugman points out in today's New York Times, the Affordable Care Act is significantly failing to fail, although you might not know that by following the media. One place where that is especially true is El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. According to this article from last weeks Charleston Daily Mail,

6.59 percent of West Virginians are uninsured today; compared to 17.34 percent of West Virginians uninsured before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Based on the data...West Virginian saw the biggest drop in adult uninsured rate and had the most new Medicaid enrollees per capita than any other stat that expanded Medicaid coverage.

West Virginia now has the sixth lowest uninsured rate in the country.

In addition, the Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC), the state's largest hospital system, has seen "a dramatic decrease in self-pay patients, charity care, uncompensated care and bad debt since Medicaid and subsidized private insurance policies started becoming effective on Jan. 1."

In 2013, for example, five to seven percent of CAMC patients were uninsured. In Jan. 2014, the percentage dropped to 1.7 percent and is now around 1 percent. This could mean:

*a $20 million or 35 percent drop in charity care from one year to another;

*a $35.5 million or 51 percent drop in bad debt; and

*a $55.5 million or 43.8 percent drop in uncompensated care.

A lot of credit for all this goes mainly to Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, who made the call to expand Medicaid in May 2013. But it also should be noted that the WV Department of Health and Human Resources has done a magnificent job of signing people up.

To paraphrase Joe Biden, it really is kind of a big....deal.

Last word for the week...

...goes to Paul Krugman on all the bad things that didn't happen with the Affordable Care Act.

AND ONE FOR THE ROAD. This week I began the process of initiating my grandson into the mysteries of Wayne's World, one of my favorite movies (and one that I feel like I've lived). How could I have forgotten this line: "Marriage is punishment for shoplifting in some countries"?

A new state song

Readers of Goat Rope may recall that El Cabrero has launched an unofficial campaign to change the state motto of WV from "Mountaineers are always free" to "You can't make this **** up." I haven't gotten it on the state seal yet, but I'm told these things take time.

Earlier this week, whilst on a daylong road trip, an idea for another state song came to mind. Our main one is one I like, "The West Virginia Hills." Recently, "Take Me Home, Country Roads" as popularized by John Denver, gained semi-official status as well. Aside from the fact that the scenery it describes in the first verse applies mainly to Virginia, I'm not too crazy about that one.

My more serious nominee for at least semi-official song status seems particularly fitting when you consider our recent and more distant past, with things like chemical spills, mine disasters, industrial accidents, exploitation, and poverty. It's Bruce Springsteen's Badlands. Here's the chorus:

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay
We'll keep pushin' till it's understood
and these badlands start treating us good

I'm still pushing--and so are plenty of my friends and comrades. We haven't quite got there yet.

SPEAKING OF BADLANDS, here's an interesting essay on some and the economy that made them that way.

BAD ECONOMICS. Here's one from Krugman on how we took the wrong path.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

In lieu of a serious post...

...how about another gratuitous animal picture? This photo, taken this weekend shows Arpad, our Great Pyreness and official People's Commissar of Public Safety at Goat Rope Farm, with his latest treasure find, to wit a decomposing deer hide.

I don't presume to channel what he's thinking, but if I had to hazard a guess, it might be something like:  "Deer season--the gift that keeps on giving." For him, it's yet another proof of the generosity and benevolence of the universe.

And, while I love him dearly, at times like these I'm glad he's mostly an outside dog.

SPEAKING OF DOGS, Paul Krugman wonders here whether Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan's recent musings on "inner city" folks might be a "racial dog whistle." My only reservation about this conclusion is that I thought dog whistles were supposed to be so subtle that humans couldn't detect them.

SO WHERE WERE DOGS in the infinitesimally short explosion that gave birth to the universe? I'm guessing they were very tiny. And well insulated.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Having it both ways

The Charleston Daily Mail is a newspaper with Republican editorial leanings. You can frequently find denunciations within its pages of President Obama's alleged "war on coal." Presumably, one reason they are upset about this is because of the potential of miners losing their jobs.

Yet when the US Congress adjourned for the year without extending unemployment benefits to 1.3 million Americans, the editorial page applauded. It turns out that one of the counties hardest hit by the cut is Logan County, in the heart of West Virginia's coalfields, where 544 people will lose benefits.

One might think that for the sake of consistency, at least a few crocodile tears for jobless miners might be forthcoming, but that isn't the case so far.

Times like these make me wish we had a put up or shut up rule.

SPEAKING OF WV, it looks like the Mountain State will be one of the biggest winners under the Affordable Care Act. Just before Christmas, I heard that at least 83,000 West Virginians had signed up for expanded Medicaid benefits since Oct. 1.

DEFICIT MANIA. Krugman thinks the fever has broken.

OH REALLY? In his latest column, E.J. Dionne Jr. writes that "on a longer view, 2013 could be remembered as the year when the far right began to weaken, the forces of obstruction began to recede and the country began moving toward at least the possibility of constructive government." Reckon wonder if he's right?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

All that from a toe

You can always count on Goat Rope for the latest developments in Icelandic elves, zombies, dinosaurs, Neanderthals, and such. Oh yeah, and sometimes social justice stuff.

But let's get back to Neanderthals. Another story that broke over the holidays was one about sequencing the entire Neanderthal genome from a toe bone of a female that lived around 130,000 years ago.

This specimen revealed a lot of in-breeding but also a lot of interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans and another early group called Denisovans. It's not clear whether the inbreeding was common to all Neanderthals or just this batch from Siberia.

As for the inter-breeding....how can I say this? Let me just say that assuming I was younger and single, I think I'd have to be pretty anxious for a date to ask a Neanderthal out.

Now, if they'd just sequence the Icelandic elf genome...

JUST ONE OTHER LINK and, this being Friday, it's Krugman on the economy of fear.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

We all could use a mind mess

El Cabrero is something of a literary snob. I mean, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Aeschylus, Melville, Dostoevsky, Austen, Bronte, name it, I'm there. You can find all of the above discussed at length if you search this blog's archives (see upper left).

Still, every so often you gotta blow things out. And for the past few days, I've done this by listening to a Stephen King book. And it stoned me.

Some of you may recall the book or movie The Shining, about a haunted resort in the Colorado Rockies. You may also recall the little kid who said "Redrum" when things went south. King's latest, Doctor Sleep, is about that kid when he grows up.

I listen to books all the time when driving, running or doing mindless tasks. No big deal. But this one crawled up my inner quarters. If your mind needs messed with, give it a try.

OK, SO THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A SOCIAL JUSTICE BLOG. Well, for one thing, Stephen King is pretty progressive. For another, here are two great op eds by two of America's greatest columnists. Here's E.J. Dionne on Pope Francis, who is almost making me switch from the Anglican to the Roman team, and here's Paul Krugman on raising the minimum wage, which some of us are going to try to do in WV.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Four for the road

Paul Krugman shows up quite a bit at Goat Rope, but today's op-ed about a war on the poor is better than usual and worth a close look.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, one in five West Virginians, along with millions of people around the country, will face cuts in SNAP benefits (aka food stamps) today.

BLACK LUNG. There's an old saying that if you can't say something nice about somebody, don't say anything at all. Here's an article about a law firm that is really good at keeping sick miners from getting black lung benefits. Nuff said.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD. Workforce WV got a federal grant to provide paid training for displaced miners. It's not enough, but it's a step in the right direction.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Short load

West Virginia was the subject of a long and gloomy article in the Washington Post recently. Some other reflections on changes in the state over time can be found in this Gazette editorial.

Meanwhile, here's a good one by E.J. Dionne about why Congress has been trying to fix the wrong problem for the last few years and one more by Krugman about how ideology can sabotage government services.

Shoutout to a friend

I just finished reading an entertaining book by a friend of mine, Julian Martin. Julian, a native West Virginian unto the generations, has had an interesting life. He served in the Air Force, studied engineering at WVU, and was WV's first Peace Corps volunteer who wound up teaching for two years in Nigeria.

On returning, he taught for several years at Duvall High School in Lincoln County and has taken his lumps, sometimes literally, for social justice.

The book in question is Imagonna: Peace Corps Memories. More from Amazon here.

Imagonna, by the way, is a hillbilly term Julian's African students didn't understand. It means "I am going to..."

BAD IDEA. Here's why Senator Manchin should reconsider his health care reform delay idea.

FROM THE SAME FOLKS, food stamp or SNAP cuts scheduled for Nov. 1 will affect 48 million Americans and 350,000 West Virginians.

CHICKEN LITTLES are called out here by Krugman.

WEIRD CRITTERS TO LOOK AT here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Full point

In another lifetime, I used to referee karate tournaments. That was before I became convinced that karate should never have been turned into a sport and way before my trip to the Holy Land, aka Okinawa.

When I did ref though, I tried to be fair and watch as closely as possible regardless of what I thought of a competitor, his/her teacher or style and call em like I saw em.

In that spirit, I hereby call "Ippon!" (that's full point in Japanese) for Ohio Governor John Kasich, who pushed through, perhaps a bit roughly, Medicaid expansion for his state despite his firm Republican credentials.

And, once again, shame and nothing but shame on the rulers of the states that refuse this basic act of humanity. As Krugman argued today, the arguments against Medicaid expansion are just plain lousy.

Who wins? WV for a change

It looks like West Virginia will be among the states that will most benefit from the Affordable Care Act, thanks in no small part to Gov. Tomblin's decision to expand Medicaid to low wage working people. You can compare it with other states here.

As for the states that aren't expanding Medicaid, and for the politicians who want to beat down the poor some more, an explanation might be found here.

PILLS ARE OUR FRIENDS, RIGHT? When he's not policing uteri or witch-hunting for midwives or trying to keep people from getting health care, WV's Attorney General is pretty cozy with a certain pharmaceutical company.

WHAT TO GET THE PERSON WITH EVERYTHING? Try a six foot salamander.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

This doesn't happen every day...

...but I'm with Bill O'Reilly on Republican efforts to defund the Affordable Care Act. There's more here about how the efforts might backfire. And E.J. Dionne makes a great point here as well: the real fear on the right isn't the failure of  "Obamacare"--the real fear is that it will succeed.

THE OTHER BAD THING about the last two days is the vote in the US House to cut food stamp benefits. Here's a look at what the program means to WV.

CRAZY? Paul Krugman here wonders about the sanity of certain factions.

A ROWDY RIFF ON RANDITE RANTINGS here.

A RINGING ENDORSEMENT for establishing a Future Fund in WV appeared in today's Huntington Herald-Dispatch.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Wrapping up a week

In case you missed it, Krugman was on again today, talking about growing inequality and a recovery that mostly benefits the rich.

STILL WAITING FOR JUSTICE. Here's my friend Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo musing on the ongoing federal criminal investigation of Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch disaster. I know where some of us would like to see that go.

NOT SURE THIS GUY MADE IT. NASA has confirmed that a frog somehow got into a photo of a launch last week. I wouldn't bet much on his well being.

UGLY ANIMAL CONTEST. My vote is definitely for the blobfish.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The real hunger games

I took a few days off last week and Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games was one of the books I finished. The book's heroine, after all, is a fellow hillbilly and her home, District 12 would include what is now West Virginia.

It looks like House Republicans in DC want to play it for real. As Paul Krugman notes, they eliminated all funding for SNAP or food stamps from their version of the Farm Bill. Krugman gets in some zingers:

To fully appreciate what just went down, listen to the rhetoric conservatives often use to justify eliminating safety-net programs. It goes something like this: “You’re personally free to help the poor. But the government has no right to take people’s money” — frequently, at this point, they add the words “at the point of a gun” — “and force them to give it to the poor.”

It is, however, apparently perfectly O.K. to take people’s money at the point of a gun and force them to give it to agribusinesses and the wealthy.

FUTURE FUND. The buzz continues.

HOW COME NOTHING THIS COOL HAPPENS TO ME? A friend sent me a link to an interesting story last week. It seems that a 19 foot python fell from the ceiling of a charity-run thrift shop in Australia.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Monday mix

Remember liberation theology? Here's a tongue in cheek look at "subjugation theology," as in the religious justification of gross inequality. Sadly the latter seems to be doing better than the former these days.

The state of the state of West Virginia is discussed in a new book by one of two pals of mine named Sean O'Leary.

Paul Krugman takes up for the unemployed here.

According to British scientists, plants "do maths." I don't know which is stranger, that fact or adding an s to the end of the word math.