WV needs to renew SNAP stretch

 In many parts of the world, autumn is a time for harvest festivals celebrating the end of the growing season and laying up stores for the winter. One example is the recent celebration of Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, known in Hebrew as Succoth. That’s also part of the basis for the American Thanksgiving holiday. 

In the Bible, harvest time demands special consideration for the poor. In Leviticus (19:9,10) it says, “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.”

Unfortunately, many low-income West Virginians lost out on the chance to glean and store up for winter when the popular SNAP Stretch program was suspended in mid-August due to lack of funding. 

SNAP is the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP Stretch is a program that boosts the purchasing power when people use SNAP benefits at participating farmers markets. It provides a dollar-per-dollar match to buy locally grown fruits, vegetables, herbs, plants, and seeds. The matching rate goes up for seniors and families with children.

SNAP Stretch is a winner all around, but let’s start with those for hungry people. Regular SNAP benefits aren’t nearly as generous as some people tend to believe. They average around $6 per person per day, an amount many people spend on fancy lattes at a coffee shop. The boost in buying power from SNAP Stretch can make a big difference.

There are also health benefits. While heavily processed foods can be a cheap source of calories, they are often high in sugar, salt, fat, and other ingredients associated with increasing risk of obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other ailments. That’s a sharp contrast with fresh local foods.

There are the economic gains. I’ve read that the average food item purchased by Americans comes from around 1,500 miles away, usually made and distributed by (publicly subsidized) food conglomerates. God knows what’s been done to it by whom by the time it gets to us.

 And that “food product” is often sold in big box retail stores that siphon money out of the local economy. There’s a huge difference between that and putting money directly into the hands of neighbors in exchange for healthy homegrown food.

According to the Food Research and Action Council (FRAC), each dollar’s worth of SNAP benefits generates $1.79 in economic activity, supporting local farmers, markets, businesses, and jobs.

There are other benefits. Eating fresh locally grown food helps us reconnect with the turning of the seasons. There’s a big difference between opening a bag of frozen corn versus shucking a few ears grown by neighbors. If you eat animal products such as dairy, eggs, or meat, chances are that those from small local farmers were produced more humanely than those from huge factory farms where many animals never see the light of day.

SNAP Stretch helps build community. You can spend hours wandering the aisles of big box stores without a lot of human interaction. You can even check out with a machine without as much as nodding at the checkout clerk. That’s not going to happen at a farmers’ market. At my local market, it’s not unusual to see people hit every truck and table, talking to growers and fellow shoppers as well.

The influential food writer Michael Pollan said it well:

…there is a lot more going on in them than the exchange of money for food. Someone is collecting signatures on a petition. Someone else is playing music. Children are everywhere, sampling fresh produce, talking to farmers. Friends and acquaintances stop to chat. One sociologist calculated that people have ten times as many conversations at the farmers’ market than they do in the supermarket. Socially as well as sensually, the farmers’ market offers a remarkably rich and appealing environment. Someone buying food here may be acting not just as a consumer but also as a neighbor, a citizen, a parent, a cook. In many cities and towns, farmers’ markets have taken on (and not for the first time) the function of a lively new public square.

In times like these, we need more of that.

This program was developed by the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition and funded by a mixture of USDA and local funding, sometimes provided by a mix of philanthropy and COVID-era public money. It has reached nearly 80,000 families and put around $3 million into local farm economies. When funding dried up this summer, activities, 26 markets in 21 counties lost out.

One way to make sure this doesn’t happen again—and to do so before the next growing season—is for the legislature to provide annual funding to match federal contributions in the next session. A few hundred thousand dollars a year is decimal dust in a $5 billion state budget, but it would benefit families and farmers statewide. We’ve spent much more on stranger things with less public benefit.

Since I started with a Bible verse, I might as well end with one. In chapter 6 of Matthew, Jesus said “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

(This appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Two easy actions to protect food assistance

 There are a lot of scary things about the debt ceiling/hostage crisis in Washington, but the scariest to me at the moment is the prospect of millions of people being kicked off SNAP food assistance in order to pay for tax cuts for rich people. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that if work reporting requirements (that don't promote work) are implemented along the lines of the Retch, Croak and Die Act  Limit, Save, and Grow Act, 275,000 people per month could lose benefits. That would be devastating not only to those directly impacted but also to local charities, businesses and communities.

There are two easy actions you can take to try to ward this off. First, the American Friends Service Committee has prepared this easy to use action alert targeting both houses of congress that can be used by anyone in the US. If you're in West Virginia and want to just message Senators Manchin and Capito, here's a link provided by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. 

Why not shoot the moon and do both? I cannot guarantee that doing this will guarantee a fortunate rebirth in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha, but it's couldn't hurt.

Making sure kids get food

I’m not a terribly a superstitious person — except maybe for things like throwing spilled salt over the left shoulder. Or not rocking an empty chair. Or knocking on wood when speaking of the future.

But those are purely scientific.

I have one superstition I take seriously: It is very bad luck in West Virginia to call a good piece of legislation or public policy a “no-brainer.” For some reason, the no-brainers are the hardest things to get done here.

A case in point during the most recent legislative session was House Bill 2794. It really was, well, one of those bills that should not have required undue cerebral effort. It was a very short and simple bipartisan bill addressing summer and out-of-school food programs for K-12 students.

It would have required county school systems, with the assistance of the Office of Child Nutrition, to survey students about the availability of nutritious food when schools were closed to determine local food needs. Counties would have been required to collect information about the availability of nonschool food resources and distribute this information to all students. This wouldn’t be that hard. Often organizations such as Family Resource Networks or public libraries already have that information.

It would have required that counties provide or participate in training opportunities to provide information for organizations wishing to host summer or nonschool feeding sites again with Office of Child Nutrition assistance.

Finally, it would have counties report survey results, a summary of activities, plans and recommendations for feeding kids when school isn’t in session to the Child Nutrition Office, which would share information about innovative and successful program initiatives around the state to promote best practices.

The idea wasn’t just to promote summer feeding but also to prepare counties to make sure kids have access to nutritious food in emergency situations. Like the one we’re in right now.

Friends of mine, including students, worked hard to move this bill, which eventually passed the House Education Committee. Unfortunately, it was referred to the Finance Committee, even though it had no cost to the state budget.

After heroic efforts by a lot of people, the bill was placed on the agenda of House Finance and then, deliberately, skipped over. The clock ran out and the bill died.

So here we are, in a serious emergency of unknown duration. Some counties are doing amazing work in getting food out and partnering with other organizations and volunteers. Still, some kids are falling through the cracks.

If there was ever a time for something like HB 2794, this would be it.

It would be a great if Gov. Jim Justice would finish what some legislators started by issuing an executive order enacting key provisions of the bill. In or out of school, kids still need to eat.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Fatal to be hungry

I've spent a decent chunk of the last several years in working with friends to try to fight off attack on poor people in general and food assistance in particular. It would probably be safe to say our success has been limited.

Several of these fights are still in the works and are caused by the Trump administration's human wave attacks on SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program).

While musing on that subject, I ran across a couple of quotes about hunger and the cruelty and the enormous condescension people show to people who are poor.

Let's start with cruelty:

"It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you."

Now cruelty's close relation, condescension:

“It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.”

I'm not sure which is worse.

But what did they eat?

Folks who weren't aware of or involved in the great WV teachers strike of 2018 probably aren't aware of the huge role food played in it.

(Of course, one might point out that given the huge role food plays in keeping living things alive this shouldn't be a huge surprise...)

During the strike, enemies of the teachers spread the lie that teachers were "striking against feeding the kids," since many WV children rely on school food for a big chunk of their daily nutrition.

Obviously, such people didn't know, or pretended not to know, that teachers routinely feed kids and do all kinds of other things to help them survive. Or that teachers and community members went to great lengths during the struggle to prepare meals for kids while schools were closed.

The other side of the food story was the solidarity shown by others from all over in sending tacos, pizza and such to teachers and school service workers while they were raising hell in the capitol. I'm sure similar things happened at local picket lines.

It's hard to think of a more basic way than food to show solidarity.

Anyhow, from Bon Appetit,, here's an account by Berkeley teacher Jessica Salfia on food and the good fight.

Farm bill facts

Allow me to start with a personal rant. We're entering week 3 of no internet at Goat Rope Farm. It appears that Frontier Communications is out of the customer service business. Anyhow, there is some news about a vital issue in play, to wit the Farm Bill, which will have a huge impact on food security for millions of Americans.

Here's some info from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in DC:

We’ve still got the dueling House and Senate farm bills that propose dramatically different visions for SNAP, which helps 1 in 8 Americans put food on the table. Yesterday afternoon, the House just barely passed their version of the farm bill (H.R. 2), which would cut SNAP by nearly $19 billion and take away food assistance from 2 million people. The narrow and partisan margin of support for the bill — 213 votes in favor, all Republican, and 211 votes against the bill from some Republicans and all Democrats, largely because of the SNAP cuts and harmful changes — strengthens our argument that the House farm bill SNAP title is the wrong approach. It’s also a huge testament to your relentless efforts to drive a narrative about the House farm bill and encourage members to vote no, so thank you for all you’ve done and continue to do!

Meanwhile, the Senate is gearing up to vote next week (starting Tuesday) on a bipartisan farm bill that protects and strengthens SNAP. The bill represents the right path forward and gives us an opportunity to reiterate just how misguided and harmful the House farm bill is. But we can’t take things for granted in the Senate: As we’ve shared before, we remain deeply concerned that amendments could be offered during the floor debate to cut SNAP or make harmful changes that would restrict access or take away food assistance from struggling families who need help.

They urge folks to message senators ASAP opposing any amendments to the bill which would reduce or restrict basic food assistance.

Going out on a high note

It started with Harry. But didn't end there.

There's been a lot of downer news this week, but here's a positive item to close it out. Some people may remember how several years ago celebrity chef Jamie Oliver came to Huntington, WV--billed as the most unhealthy city in the US--to try out his food "revolution" in the public school system.

The series created a lot of drama, which actually misrepresented the situation. The reality is that my home county of Cabell is a national leader in child nutrition and in feeding kids breakfast and lunch for free.

Here's a great story, titled "Revenge of the Lunch Lady" about the real food revolution. And it's one that worked.

Sweet talk

This week's Front Porch podcast is about sugar and its role in public health. Or rather, undermining public health.

Otherwise. a slow political weekend, huh?

Up in smoke

West Virginia has made some strides in the direction of reason in its criminal justice system, but there is still huge room for improvement. The Charleston Gazette recently reported that marijuana arrests accounted for over half of the drug busts in the state.

For the record, El Cabrero is no stoner. I figure if alcohol was good enough for my old man and my hillbillly and Scotch Irish ancestors, it's good enough for me. But still...there's got to be a better way.

THE CRISIS THAT WASN'T. For years, deficit scolds like Paul Ryan have been warning that Medicare costs, like those of Social Security and Medicaid, are growing at an unsustainable rate. That turns out to be BS too, thanks in part to the Affordable Care Act.

ANOTHER CIVILIZED STATE? Could it be that even a state like Tennessee is considering expanding Medicaid?

ANOTHER GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR is in the quality of food.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Farmers gotta eat too

In case you missed it, here's a great piece from the NY Times about how real, i.e. non-corporate, farmers are faring in the food revolution. The short version is: not so good. But the writer puts forward some good ideas about a progressive agenda for farmers who are trying to produce food the best way.

SPEAKING OF PROGRESSIVE AGENDAS, in the wake of WV's chemical spill and the ensuing water crisis of last winter, a new business group has formed. The WV Sustainable Business Council promises to be a positive addition and a fresh voice with a long term vision.

A SHOUTOUT TO CAMUS. The French writer and philosopher Albert Camus has been a big influence on me, although I'm not a huge fan of his most popular novel, The Stranger, which has the distinction of being a book read by George W. Bush. (Talk about making the short list....) Still, I found this piece on how that novel influenced this writer to be worth a look. As for myself, I'm a Plague kind of guy.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Hungry planet? No wonder

A new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that around 40% of US food is wasted, which is bad but doesn't surprise me too much. Here are some factoids about it:

*The amount of food wasted is the equivalent of 20 pounds per person per month;

*The annual dollar value lost is $165 billion;

*Wasted food rotting in landfills accounts for about 25% of US methane emissions; and

*Reducing waste by 15% would be enough to feed 25 million people.

Waste occurs at every step of the way, from production to post harvest handling and storage to processing and packaging to distribution to consumption, and different food products experience different degrees of waste along the way. However, it most waste occurs in the consumption stage, which includes in home and out of home use.

The report includes plenty of recommendations to reduce waste at every stage.

(It occurs to me, however, that there'd be a lot less wastage if people had chickens and such. Not to mention composting. And let's not forget actually eating it.)

If you don't want to read the whole report, here's the CNN story.

Apropos of nothing

Just think: if Mark Twain had never existed, Americans would have either had to find other people to attribute clever sayings to or else come up with clever sayings on their own.

One that has been showing up a good bit for some reason in the last week may or may not have been something he really said:

"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

(A very similar quote has been attributed to attorney Clarence Darrow.)

WHO'S TO BLAME for a shaky economy and deficits? The elites, not the folks in the streets.

MEDICARE SHUFFLE. It looks like congressional Republicans, after getting a little love at town meetings in their home district, are backing away from Paul Ryan's plan to gut Medicare.

CAPPING THE CAP. Here's a good op-ed from the Charleston Gazette opposing the spending cap proposed by some in Congress, including, unfortunately, WV's junior senator.

MORE THAN A YEAR after Massey's Upper Big Branch mine disaster, family members are disappointed by congressional inaction on mine safety.

DENY THIS. Climate change may be affecting global food production.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

This and that

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” – John Rogers, Kung Fu Monkey

More along that line here.

NOTED. A death in Pakistan.

DEBT CEILINGS AND SPENDING CAPS discussed here. This column once again shows why WV Senator Joe Manchin is wrong on this one and is inviting the Ryan plan in by the back door.

THE POLITICS OF FOOD. Here's Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, taking on charges of foodie elitism.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

It's a (downward facing) dog's life

This is Wu practicing heat yoga beside the fireplace.

This winter, the Spousal Unit started taking yoga classes and loved it. I was curious but it was her gig so I waited to be invited. I thought it might be a good balance to the other kinds of things I do, like karate, running, weights, jumping rope and smiting a heavy bag with hands and feet.

Karate and yoga are (very) distant cousins, if some of the legends are right. There's a chance that some of its influence came with Buddhism to China and parts farther east.

I expected it to be a nice, relaxing thing that might help with old injuries, of which there are many. There was some of that to be sure. I did not quite expect it to kick my hind quarters, but that's exactly what it's doing, especially in the power and heat yoga classes. I had no idea that plank asanas or positions were even harder to do than knuckle push ups.

Anyhow, on a recent visit to a public library, I came across a fun and diverting book about the early days of yoga in America, where it was often seen as a suspicious and possibly lewd activity that undermined public morals.

The book was The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America by Robert Love. The "Oom" in question was P.A. Bernard, a Midwestern kid who ran into an apparently authentic yoga master in turn of the century Nebraska of all places. After various run ins with the law and the forces of decency, he established himself on a spread near Nyack, New York and attracted many prominent Americans in the first half of the century. Bernard was part yogi, part huckster, part ladies man and 3/4 showman.

It's a fun read if you feel so inclined. And I think I'm hooked as far as the yoga thing goes.

AUSTERITY. Cutting budgets in a time of high unemployment is not the best way to deal with the crisis or with long term debt, Paul Krugman argues.

GETTING MEAN. From the UK Guardian, here's a look at how potentially violent far right nativist groups have been energized by Obama's presidency.

HEALTH CARE REFORM. Here are some ideas about how to defend it.

FAST FOOD WORLD. American-style diets are making people sick around the world.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

On the (swan's) road

The theme here lately, with some interruptions, has been the old Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. This may or may not be due to the fact that the WV legislature is in session and I've been kind of busy lately. You will find links and comments about current events below.

To recap, Hrothgar, king of the Spear Danes, had a pretty good string of luck and celebrated by building Heorot, the greatest of all mead halls, which were places where between raids lords and thanes and various other people would hang out, feast, and drink themselves to oblivion.

Things were going peachy until the monster Grendel started eating people who stayed there and generally preying on the population. As the poem goes,

There was panic after dark, people endured
raids in the night, riven by terror.

This was not only a major inconvenience for Hrothgar, but kind of a humiliation too. Here this mighty king who conquered others couldn't even keep his home turf safe. The situation lasted for some years, until at last the story came to the ears of Beowulf, a thane of the Geats who lived in southern Sweden, about whom this was said:

There was no one else like him alive.
In his day, he was the mightiest man on earth,
high born and powerful.

Beowulf's name means "bee wolf" or bear. He is the son of Ecgtheow and nephew of Hygelac, the king of the Geats. As a young man, Ecgtheow received shelter from Hrothgar and Beowulf intends to return a favor as well as win glory. He received no discouragement from the Geats, who checked the omens and found them favorable. He recruited a posse of fourteen warriors and set off by ship on "the swan's road" in search of glory.

He obviously found it, or there wouldn't be a poem, huh? More tomorrow.

THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET. Here's Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on President Obama's budget proposal.

DIFFERENT GALAXIES. E.J. Dionne evokes Star Wars in this column about the brewing federal budget fight.

HOW ON EARTH DID WEST VIRGINIA NOT MAKE THIS LIST of states with the worst eating habits?

IF YOU EVER WONDERED HOW TO FIGHT OFF A CROCODILE, click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

To wind and tide

OK. Or Hwaet if you want to get Anglo-Saxon about it. Let it be duly noted that when I pass over to the Great Perhaps, I don't want a fancy funeral. I'll settle for one just like that given to Scyld Scefing, the ruler of the Spear-Danes in the early part of Beowulf.

In lieu of flowers, here's how it should be done, by way of Seamus Heaney's translation. First, take me out to a Viking ship like this:

they shouldered him out to the sea's flood,
the chief they revered who had long ruled them.
A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour,
ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince.
They stretched their beloved lord in his boat,
laid out by the mast, amidships,
the great ring-giver. .

But make sure it's decked out like this:

Far-fetched treasures
were piled upon him, and precious gear
I never heard before of a ship so well furbished
with battle tackle, bladed weapons
and coats of mail.

Then pile it on:

The massed treasure
was loaded on top of him: it would travel far
on out into the ocean's sway.

And deck me out:

They decked his body no less bountifully
with offerings than those first ones did
who cast him away when he was a child
and launched him alone out over the waves.

Then raise a standard and shove me off:

And they set a gold standard up
high above his head and let him drift
to wind and tide, bewailing him
and mourning their loss. No man can tell,
no wise man in hall or weathered veteran
knows for certain who salvaged that load

Any questions?

ON THE AGENDA. WV advocates for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault highlighted their public policy agenda yesterday. One of these priorities is modernizing unemployment to cover people who have lost employment due to domestic violence, stalking and sexual assault when they are again available for and seeking work.

FOR FOR THOUGHT and for the future.

NOT IF SOME PEOPLE I KNOW CAN HELP IT. It is suggested here that clean energy sources could meet most of our needs by 2050.

SPEAKING OF ENERGY, a draft study by the Department of the Interior on the future of mountaintop removal mining is stirring up predictable controversy here. Here's Ken Ward on the topic in the Gazette and in Coal Tattoo.

THIS COULD REALLY HAPPEN. For your amusement from The Onion.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A close call

This might be an odd thing to fess up to, but I kind of like the smell of skunk--from the right distance--say when driving along a country road or when wafts of the scent are carried along by a breeze. But when it's point blank contact, that's a different story. It's totally different from what you get at a distance and causes burning around the eyes.

We used to have a boxer who could not resist ponking any such creature with his rather square face, this being his prime mode of investigating the world. He got the point blank treatment twice and both times required considerable bathing in tomato juice and other concoctions in an effort to remove the odor, although you could still smell a bit of it on him for a long time afterward, especially when he got wet.

We had a close call this weekend, as skunk odor started drifting through an open window. Our first thought was that Arpad, our (kind of) Great Pyrenees had a skunk encounter of the third kind. Arpad goes on major farm security patrol at night and has been known to take out possums in the twinkling of an eye. Had he had is first skunk skirmish?

This would have been a much bigger deal than a sprayed boxer, since Arpad weighs in at around 150 pounds and his long hair is growing back from his summer buzz cut. De-skunkifying him would be a task on the order of building a small to medium sized pyramid.

It turns out we dodged the bullet this time around. But I have a feeling that his day is coming.

DEMAND SIDE ECONOMICS. Paul Krugman takes aim at excuses for inaction on unemployment.

FOLLOW THE MONEY. The Koch brothers, oil billionaires funding right wing political causes, have sprinkled some cash in West Virginia, including the economics department at WVU.

CHECK THE NUMBERS. It's becomea media meme that health care reform is unpopular. But an AP poll shows that many Americans wanted it to go farther than it did.

DO YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT? Plenty of Americans do.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The language of extremism

Carthage, by John Mallord William Turner (1755-1851).

We interrupt Goat Rope's regularly scheduled programming to share this quote from Alberto Manguel's book A Reader on Reading. It seems to be a good description of the right wing noise machine these days:

Almost everything around us encourages us not to think, to be content with commonplaces, with dogmatic language that divides the world neatly into black and white, good and evil, them and us. This is the language of extremism, sprouting up everywhere these days, reminding us that it has not disappeared. To the difficulties of reflecting on paradoxes and open questions, on contradictions and chaotic order, we respond with the age-old cry of Cato the Censor in the Roman Senate, "Carthago delenda est!" "Carthage must be destroyed!"--the other civilization must not be tolerated, dialogue must be avoided, rule must be imposed by exclusion or annihilation. This is the cry of dozens of contemporary leaders. This is a language that pretends to communicate but, under several guises, simply bullies; it expects no answer except obedient silence...

NO NECESSARY CONNECTION (BUT THERE MIGHT BE). Here's Frank Rich taking on the Manhattan mosque hysteria and its likely effects, which aren't good.

MORE OF THE SAME here.

TALKING TAX CUTS here.

NOT A SURE THING. For a long time, home ownership was seen as a way to build wealth. Anymore, not so much.

FOOD REVOLUTION. Here are some possible ingredients.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Sweeping the Street

I haven't been following the financial reform debate as closely as health care and my opinion on that topic mostly consists of thinking that we need some. But even with the polarized political climate, Politico yesterday reported that there's a good chance for some kind of reform to pass the Senate with at least some bi-partisan support.

I do have one recommendation, not that anybody is sitting on the edge of his or her seat waiting to hear it. If and when a new agency to protect consumers is established, I hope the catbird seat goes to Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor who grew up in poverty and is now overseeing TARP. Here's an article about her from this week's NY Times.

Warren has long been an outstanding advocate for consumers, a leading expert on bankruptcy and a foe of predatory lending. I first became aware of her through her writings, starting with All Your Worth, a down to earth guide to personal finance and including The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, both of which were co-written by her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi.

I was elated to see her take the position of overseeing TARP and think she'd be a natural to run the new agency. It's a safe bet that she wouldn't be anybody's lapdog.

ALL DONE. The final version of health care reform passed the US House yesterday.

WHAT'S IN THE BILL? Here's a fact sheet from the Georgetown Center for Children and Families about what health care reform will mean for low income and working families.

WHAT DIFFERENCE WILL IT MAKE? Here's a snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute about the expansion of health coverage that should be on the way.

MORE ON WHACKADOODLEISM here.

SUPERSIZING THE LAST SUPPER? The portions have gotten bigger (in art, anyhow) over the last 100 years.

SPEAKING OF FOOD, here's a local look at obesity and diet and such.

THERE'S ALWAYS ROOM for another hominid.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A king may progress through the guts of a beggar

Goat Rope is meandering through Hamlet these days, although you'll also find links and comments about current events below if Shakespeare isn't your thing.

Things really start falling apart at the end of act 3. The play did indeed catch the conscience of the king but Hamlet bungled his attempt to whack him. Then follows a highly charged and kind of Freudian confrontation between Hamlet and his mother Gertrude, during which the former kills Polonius as he hid behind a tapestry, thinking him to be the king.

By this point, Hamlet seems to be beyond ordinary human empathy, merely telling his mother at the end of their meeting that he'll "lug the guts" to a neighbor room.

There follows an amazing exchange between Hamlet and his uncle Claudius about the murder of Polonius which is full of dark humor:

KING CLAUDIUS Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

HAMLET At supper.

KING CLAUDIUS At supper! where?

HAMLET Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain
convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your
worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all
creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for
maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but
variable service, two dishes, but to one table:
that's the end.

KING CLAUDIUS Alas, alas!

HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a
king, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING CLAUDIUS What dost you mean by this?

HAMLET Nothing but to show you how a king may go a
progress through the guts of a beggar.

KING CLAUDIUS Where is Polonius?

HAMLET In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger
find him not there, seek him i' the other place
yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within
this month, you shall nose him as you go up the
stairs into the lobby.

KING CLAUDIUS Go seek him there.

(To some Attendants)

HAMLET He will stay till ye come.

By now, Hamlet's feigned madness is getting kind of close to the real thing.

BUBBLES. Here's Paul Krugman on the need for real financial reform.

ARE THE VOTES THERE for comprehensive health care reform? Maybe.

INEQUALITY matters.

SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF. Exercise helps reduce anxiety among the chronically ill by 20 percent.

IF SPRINGTIME EVER COMES, here are several reasons to consider growing some of your own food.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED