Down dog

Edith crashing (photo credit Spousal Unit)

This blog has been sorely neglected lately. It was a combination of things, including:

*a brutal 60 day legislative session;

*Hell Day (when the time changes, robbing innocent people of a blessed hour of much needed sleep); and

*a mandatory staff retreat that entailed a 1000 mile car round trip.

I'm trying to lick my wounds, although I lack some of the abilities in that department displayed by some other residents of Goat Rope Farm.

HERE WE GO AGAIN. Session aside, WV's ruling class last week was engaged in another hissy fit over Hilary Clinton's unfortunate remarks about coal. In fairness to our ruling class,however,  leading national Democratic politicians seem to have forgotten how to throw their WV counterparts a bone every now and then.

In this climate it's nice to find some common sense. Here's what my friend Ken Ward had to say about WV's economic situation and what can be done about it at Coal Tattoo. It's also nice to see that the  Gazette-Mail's conservative editorial side has come around to the idea that WV should take advantage of federal initiatives to help the coalfields rather than just complain about it.

NOTE: I hear some people are not getting Goat Rope through email these days. If that's the case, I think you might need to resubscribe.

Hard Times

The latest Front Porch podcast is out. This time the focus is on WV's tanking economy and budget and what we might be able to do about it. I'm not as pessimistic as some people. Maybe that's because I've been to Gaza...

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.