The Walking Dead: WV legislature version

 I had to stop watching “The Walking Dead” television show a few years ago. It reminded me too much of real life.

I’m not saying that dead and decomposing people are literally shuffling around eating the living and turning those who get bitten by them into fellow flesh-eating walkers. Not yet anyway, although not much surprises me lately.

But it is the case that harmful policies and ideas that should long ago have been decently buried are shuffling around with considerable alacrity in the Legislature. And they do bite.

One such walker is Senate Bill 59, which would cut down on unemployment insurance for workers who lose their jobs from no fault of their own. A similar bill was defeated and buried last year, but it’s returned from the crypt. As was the case last year, the bill passed the Senate. Last year, fortunately, it died in the House of Delegates. This year, its fate is up for grabs.

The short version is that the bill would increase the number of hoops that people who have lost their jobs or been laid off need to jump through to get a fraction of their usual earnings, possibly threatening their ability to access this lifeline for their families.

If that weren’t bad enough, it also reduces the eligibility period for receiving unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to as little as 12, depending on the state unemployment average.

That’s another problem. West Virginia is a very economically diverse state, with unemployment, poverty and other measures of economic well-being (or the lack of it) varying widely from county to county. A statewide index would basically shackle the majority of rural counties to employment conditions that prevail in more urban and prosperous areas.

Not to pick on Monongalia County, but it’s in a different economic universe than counties like McDowell, Mingo, Logan, Wyoming, Calhoun, Clay, Wirt, etc. Mon and other counties with more economic options shouldn’t set the pace for the entire state.

Further, people laid off from well-paying jobs, such as mining or manufacturing, often take longer to find comparable work with their skill set because of local market conditions.

Let’s play it out a little further. Imagine a machinist or electrician laid off with a reduced term of eligibility. They might well take a job paying much less than a living wage that doesn’t take advantage of their knowledge or skills, while knocking someone else out of a job at the lower end of the market. When employment conditions improve, they’ll drop the old job like a hot potato, simply creating more churning and turnover for their new employer.

The ultimate effect would be to drive down wages for all workers, not to mention cause an economic loss to local economies. Unemployment benefits get spent really quickly on the basics.

These benefits also help ward off other social problems. Research on child well-being shows that economic supports in hard times increase the “protective factors” for kids and families. Every additional $1,000 spent by states on benefits is associated with a reduction in child maltreatment reports, less substantiated child maltreatment and fewer kids in foster care.

A recent study published in Demography, Duke University’s research journal, even found that “the harmful effects of job loss on opioid overdose mortality decline with increasing state unemployment insurance benefit levels. These findings suggest that social policy in the form of income transfers played a crucial role in disrupting the link between job loss and opioid overdose mortality.”

According to the authors, there is “a growing body of evidence that [unemployment insurance] may mitigate the harmful effects of job loss on physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes. They concluded that “cuts to social welfare benefits such as [unemployment insurance] have second-order effects on outcomes such as health that extend well beyond basic financial needs.”

All of which is to say that being poor and unemployed isn’t nearly as much fun as some rich people seem to think.

To be fair, sometimes well-meaning people confuse unemployed workers with those not in the labor force and think cutting unemployment insurance will boost labor force participation. They are actually two different populations. The labor force consists of all workers, including those who recently lost jobs through no fault of their own.

If the intent is to boost labor market participation, rather than just stick it to families that hit a rough spot, there are better ways to do that, some of which have been proposed as bills in this session. One obvious step in the right direction would be increasing state investments in child care, which can cost more than a college education and typically hit at a time when a family’s earning capacity hasn’t reached full bloom.

Another would be to support policies such as a Medicaid buy-in that would help lower wage workers keep health benefits if they have a chance to get a raise. Or West Virginia could join the number of states that offer refundable child tax credits or earned income tax credits.

Incredibly, while some state lawmakers support cutting assistance for the jobless, others have called for setting aside $500 million in American Rescue Plan money intended to help families and communities with the damage done by COVID to give away as corporate handouts to mostly out-of-state corporations.

It’s a question of priorities. Are we going to stand beside a coal miner’s daughter whose dad gets a layoff notice from the mine, or are we going to turn our back on them?

(This ran as a column/op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Some people really do want it all

 Lately I’ve concluded that some people really do want it all.

For evidence, we don’t have to look much farther than the legislature, where some bills under consideration would strip away some of the few remaining protections for working people, especially some of the working people that politicians pretend to care for: workers in mining, manufacturing, and construction. Those are the kind of jobs that promote stable families and communities.

Senate Bills 2 and 3 would harm workers and their families by reducing and radically restructuring the unemployment insurance (UI) system. SB 2 would cut eligibility for UI from 26 weeks to 12 in most cases. SB 3 would increase the amount of paperwork, bureaucracy and hoops unemployed people would have to jump through.

The overall effect would be to drive down wages for everyone by making it harder for people to find jobs that pay a living wage.

This is a classic case of a solution in search of a problem. The state unemployment rate is at a historic low of 3.7 percent.

 In a January press release, Governor Justice, with the apparent approval of Babydog, said “When you think about what we’ve accomplished over the past three months with our unemployment rate, it’s unbelievable…We shattered the all-time record. Then we came back and did it again the next month. And now we’ve shattered it all over again this month.”

The state’s unemployment fund is as good as it’s ever been. As a result, premiums paid by employers into the fund have been reduced.

If the bills are passed that main outcome would be a further weakening the position of workers in the labor market in the interest of those who want to pay the lowest possible wage at a time when inequality is at record levels…which goes back to the some-people-want-it-all thing.

But those bills aren’t the only games in town. House Bill 4394 would make it harder for workers and/or their families who are injured or killed on the job from seeking compensation. Specifically, the bill deals with the issue of deliberate intent, which makes employers liable if they know of unsafe working conditions but take no action to correct them.

Nationwide, workplace hazards kill, injure, and/or disable more than 100,000 workers each year. In 2019, for example, 5,333 workers died on the job from traumatic injuries. Many more die from occupational diseases.

It’s hard for even a cynic like me to fathom how this could pass in West Virginia, where we can measure out our lives with industrial accidents and disasters. 

Without even trying to exercise my memory, which isn’t what it used to be, I can recall the Freedom Industries water crisis that affected around 300,000 people, the Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 miners, the Sago mine disaster that killed 12, the Aracoma mine fire in Logan County where two miners died, the Willow Island tower collapse in Pleasants County that killed 51 construction workers, the Pittston Coal Buffalo Creek disaster that killed 125, and the Farmington mine disaster that killed 78.

That doesn’t even cover the untold thousands here whose lives were shortened or made miserable by Black Lung and other work-related diseases and injuries.

I mean, really.

This gruesome record reminds me of a line from a labor song about just this issue: “If blood be the price of your cursed wealth, good God, we have paid it in full.”

On a less dramatic note, another bill that could hurt workers and their families is House Bill 4007, which would reduce and ultimately phase out the state income tax, which is the only tax in the state that doesn’t fall hardest on those with lower incomes. The biggest beneficiaries are the wealthiest. 

Even Adam Smith, author of the 1776 Wealth of Nations, a celebration of emerging capitalism, would not approve. In his classic, he wrote that “The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

This would ultimately result in making our tax system even more regressive by increasing consumption taxes on poor and working people or else result in cuts to programs that invest in health, economic opportunities, education and training, public safety, etc. for communities, seniors, kids and families. Or some combination thereof.

So yes, some people really do want it all. 

The only question is, are they going to get it?

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

Another double standard

I was disappointed to see that Gov. Jim Justice plans to cut unemployment insurance benefits on June 19 while the state and nation are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic aftershocks.

Specifically, he plans to end the federal $300 weekly supplement to benefits that were part of the American Rescue Plan, presumably because people receiving the benefit are “scamming the system.”

Under the Rescue Plan, the supplemental benefits would expire on Sept. 6 in any case.

The cuts would impact around 42,000 West Virginians, including 18,000 or so self-employed or contract workers who have lost work due to the pandemic. It would mean a loss to the state’s economy of $12.6 million per week.

When you multiply that by 12, the number of weeks between the state and federal deadlines, that means a loss of over $151 million to West Virginia’s economy. That amounts to losing the equivalent of 3,775 jobs paying $40,000 for a year.

The infusion of pandemic-related boosts to unemployment insurance and the spending they allowed have saved millions of jobs, kept businesses open, boosted GDP (gross domestic product), increased personal income, kept people in their homes and saved countless families from disaster. As of May 15, Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation has brought more that $1.2 billion to West Virginia alone.

When the cuts come, unemployment benefits will drop back to their normal level of replacing around 40% of income from the lost job. Losing that much income is tough any time, but at least a delay until September would give the economy more time to recover.

This is another example of a curious double standard in which nobody in power bats an eye over corporate giveaways or tax cuts for the rich that create no jobs or lowering severance taxes on out of state companies, but cows are had when benefits to ordinary people seem too generous.

The snarky writer H.L. Mencken once defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” What we’re dealing with here is the haunting fear that somewhere, somehow a peasant might catch a break. Otherwise, how could the merry race to the bottom for working people continue?

No wonder groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pushing to end the benefits; they want to pay people as little as possible.

I don’t make a cult of our current economic system, but there is a simple market-based solution to the problem if people are concerned about a labor shortage: it’s the supply and demand thing.

In a market system, when demand for a commodity is higher than the supply the remedy is simple: increase the price. That sends a signal that prompts others to bring more of the commodity to the marketplace, ending the shortage.

Like it or not, in a capitalist economy, labor power is a commodity and a higher price for it means higher wages.

In recent decades, corporate profits as a share of GDP have dramatically increased. So has the income and wealth of the most affluent. So has productivity. The same can’t be said of workers’ wages.

As David Leonhardt recently wrote in the New York Times, “If anything, wages today are historically low. They have been growing slowly for decades for every income group other than the affluent. As a share of gross domestic product, worker compensation is lower than at any point in the second half of the 20th century.”

This is especially true of West Virginia, where median income is nearly the lowest in the nation.

The problem, Leonhardt argues, is that in recent years we’ve come to accept low wages as the norm. Maybe that’s what needs to change.

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

Protecting vulnerable workers

When it comes to amateur epidemiology these days, I think there are two kinds of people: those who know they’re not experts and those who don’t.

I’m in the former category.

Like millions of Americans and people around the world, I’d like for things to get back to some kind of normal, preferably a better normal than we had before. I miss seeing people face to face, going to libraries, social and family gatherings, visiting Taylor Books in search of the ever-elusive no-bake cookie, eating out, contact sports and all that.

But I don’t want a rushed return to “normal” if it means another spike in COVID-19 infections and fatalities, which is inevitable if restrictions are lifted too soon.

In Georgia, for example, moves to reopen led to a more than 40% spike in the coronavirus incidence rate, which represents the number of infections per 100,000 people, between April 21 and May 2. For some, that will mean death.

The Texas Tribune reported on May 14 the largest daily increase in COVID-19 infections and fatalities since the outbreak began, with 1,448 infections and 58 deaths. That state began the reopening process on April 17.

A reopening spike would hit West Virginia particularly hard. As has been widely reported, the Kaiser Family Fund found that we have the highest share of adults at risk of serious illness if infected, at the rate of 51% compared to a national average of 41%. That includes around 32% of people between ages 18 and 64, the prime working years.

One area that demands a careful approach is dealing with unemployment insurance. As of this writing, 143,149 West Virginians have filed for unemployment insurance since the outbreak. Some of those who are unemployed have compromised immune systems or live with someone who does. As things now stand, when their employers open, they will have to choose between risking health and life or losing unemployment benefits. Many of those who would have to make that decision are low-wage workers, with a disproportionate representation of women and African Americans.

Currently, immunocompromised people can be exempt from this dilemma with a doctor’s excuse. However, that could be a problem for people who are self-quarantining for health reasons — and for the estimated 60,000 West Virginians who have lost health insurance during the crisis or the more than 120,000 who didn’t have health coverage to start with.

According to federal Department of Labor guidelines, “Federal law would permit a state to determine whether the separation [from employment due to the outbreak] here is a quit or a discharge and whether the circumstances are allowable under the state’s good cause/just cause provisions. If permitted under the state’s good cause/just cause provision, states should consider how they will adjudicate the reasonableness of an individual’s separation for reasonable risk of exposure. One such factor could be considering if the individual is in a population that is particularly susceptible to COVID-19.”

In general, I think the Justice administration has done a good job of dealing with the outbreak. But I respectfully suggest that giving this matter more consideration isn’t a matter of playing politics or keeping people on unemployment forever. It’s about looking out for the lives of West Virginia’s working families.

(This ran as an op-ed in last week's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

They'll stone you when you're trying to be so good...

WV Governor Jim Justice's COVID-19 press conferences can be pretty unpredictable, but it was truly weird yesterday to see him basically lose his temper when asked by a reporter about a sign-on letter that several groups (including AFSC) sent about unemployment insurance for vulnerable workers and/or family members. You can view his rant here. And here's the news article written by the reporter.

(Short version: he pretty much says the groups want everyone to be on unemployment forever--not true--and that the same people wanted to let dangerous murderers and such out of prison--also not true.)

Here's the response of those who sent the letter:

As Governor Justice often reminds us, West Virginia has the largest share of its population in the country who is at risk of serious illness if they contract COVID-19. The governor has been a leader in protecting vulnerable populations throughout this crisis, and it’s disappointing to hear him dismiss the concerns around continuing to protect these populations as the state begins to reopen. Among the groups that signed onto this letter are frontline service and health workers, communities of color, and disability rights groups, all of whom represent populations that are themselves at elevated risk or who have family members at risk of serious illness due to underlying medical conditions. 

The governor has the authority and the obligation to protect at-risk workers from being forced into work situations which put them at significant risk of coming into contact with COVID-19. West Virginia code states that a person is not disqualified for unemployment insurance benefits if they leave their employment for health reasons, including a condition that could be worsened or aggravated by work. We’re also asking for more transparency out of WorkForce WV, including that the agency publicly release the conditions their office is using to determine suitable work during the COVID-19 crisis.

Our intention is to work with the Justice Administration and WorkForce WV to ensure that at-risk workers are not forced to choose between their health and their finances. Public health is not a political issue.  

 A weird thing about all this is that nobody was looking to pick a fight with the Justice administration. In fact, most of those who signed on have been generally supportive of his approach..

The fact remains that reopening will expose vulnerable people to infection and possible death. Then there's this: as Sean O'Leary with the WV Center on Budget and Policy points out, federal guidelines explicitly allow for these factors to be taken into consideration as state's consider reopening and unemployment insurance options. None of which involves what Justice referred to as "playing politics."

At least we know now that someone reads these things...

Back to work?

Like most people I know, I'd like things to get back to normal...preferably a better normal than the one we had before the outbreak. However, the rush to reopen could mean a spike in infections and even fatalities.

AFSC in WV was proud to sign on to this letter to Governor Jim Justice and key members of his administration. There's a lot to it, but the main point is that when businesses reopen, many people with compromised immune systems--or who live with those who do--will have to choose between losing unemployment insurance or risking life and health. Those workers most at risk of this are disproportionately low wage earners, women and African Americans.

The letter makes several recommendations, the most important of which are that the administration:

*Confirm that individuals with health conditions that put them at risk for complications due to COVID-19 are entitled to unemployment benefits if they leave or turn down work that risks exposure.

*Allow individuals who live with at-risk individuals to continue to collect unemployment if they turn down or leave work that risks exposure.

It's a pretty radical idea: just this once, let's pretend that human life is more important than squeezing every drop of profit out of the labor of low wage workers.

Stating the obvious

It's becoming clear that the COVID outbreak is threatening the economy as well as the health and lives of people all over, with people staying away from work and businesses (although not the local Kroger store!) and cancelling travel plans.

The Trump administration has come up with a "stable genius" plan to boost the economy: cut the payroll taxes that fund things like Social Security and Medicare.

This rivals the brilliance of building a border wall in Colorado or digging a moat and filling it with snakes and gators...

There are some obvious problems with the plan, as Chye-Ching Huang with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out in this blog post. For starters, this wouldn't do a whole heckuva lot for the people who need it most, i.e. the people who miss work and don't get paid.

Another problem is that the economy needs a pretty big jolt sooner rather than later. Getting a few dollars more in a paycheck over a long period of time wouldn't make that much of a difference and it would weaken Social Security, etc.

Huang argues that "Sending stimulus checks to most Americans would put more money in households’ hands much more quickly than a payroll tax cut of the same cost. Also, stimulus checks can be sent both to workers and to people without earnings, including people receiving Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, or VA benefits and people unable to find jobs."

She also stresses the importance of strengthening and reforming unemployment insurance and food assistance programs, as well as enacting and extending paid sick leave.

And, while we're stating the obvious, let's not forget investing in public health and not messing with Medicaid.

Some kind of omen

Image by way of wikipedia.


The ancient Greeks and Romans, and other peoples as well, frequently sought for signs or omens in the flight of birds or actions of various animals.

If I leaned that way, I'd be searching for the message in this: early this morning the Spousal Unit and I saw something unusual while walking our boxer. First, there was a weird sound on the hill that reminded me of crows cawing. Then, in the early light, we saw three shapes moving which turned out to be possums. Two of them got into a pretty serious fight while one looked on (unless they were mating in a most unseemly and indecorous manner). Our best guess is that two males were fighting over a female.

It was quite a possum zoot suit riot. I've seen a few possums in my day, but never anything quite like this.

I wonder what the Romans would have made of it...

The only thing I know for sure is that those guys were lucky Arpad, our Great Pyrenees, sat this walk out. He has long since declared unconditional war on all such creatures and would have taken all three out in the blink of an eye.

MINE SAFETY. Here's my latest rant in the Gazette.

A DEAL has apparently been reached on extending unemployment insurance.

PLUTOCRACY VS. DEMOCRACY. The latter is the underdog.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

I don't know how they did it...but they did

I mentioned in yesterday's post that the Spousal Unit and I were going to celebrate Valentine's Day by watching a 101 year old film adaptation of Dante's Inferno. Mission accomplished.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting them to nail it. I encourage you, Gentle Reader, to take an hour or so as soon as you can and watch this eerie but amazing film. It's about as close as you can get to the spirit of the Inferno without reading it. Or going through hell with Virgil.

I am convinced that there is a hidden Dante geek within every Goat Rope reader.

Click here to watch. 

And, yes, you're welcome.

OUT DOING DANTE? Yes, it can be done. Click here to see hilarious underwater pictures of dogs.

DEAL ON UNEMPLOYMENT? Maybe.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Of shoes and walking

I took part in a press conference today aimed at urging Congress to pass a clean extension of unemployment benefits. The theme of the event, and of similar events around the country, was "Walk in my shoes" and among the people who spoke was an unemployed electrician.

It occurred to me that the theme of walking in the shoes of other people fits pretty well. It's a basic matter of empathy, which aside from being a basic human trait also seems to be found in the animal world. Back in the 18th century, philosophers like Adam Smith and David Hume argued that the real basis of morality lay in the emotions. Smith's book on the subject was titled The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

As chance would have it, this week I picked up a new book at the library titled The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen (cousin of Sacha of Borat fame). Unlike other books on the subject, this one zooms in on the brain. I haven't got through the book yet, but I think he argues that the root of  human cruelty and evil is a breakdown of empathy....which unfortunately seems to be pretty popular these days.

SPEAKING OF MORALS AND ECONOMIC MATTERS, check this out.

MINE SAFETY AND DISTRACTIONS. Here's a good blog post from Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo on Governor Tomblin's mine safety bill, which is more about drug testing.

AN ALZHEIMER'S BREAKTHROUGH? Maybe.

  GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

More on the whole zombie thing

I have mentioned more than once that my over-educated daughter has an inordinate fascination with zombies. Prompted by her repeated expressions of concern, I have undertaken extensive research and watched one episode of The Walking Dead.

 On the basis of this scientific research, I have developed what I call the Cabrero Theorem of Zombie Apocalypses, which should be worth a Nobel Prize. It goes like this: the survivability of a zombie outbreak is inversely proportional to their intelligence. Or, conversely, it is directly proportionate to their stupidity.

(In other words, if they are smart, communicative and can use tools, we're gonna get eaten.)

((But then if they were, would they really be zombies?))

 You can quote me on this, but please use a footnote.

NO DIRECT CONNECTION, but how about that US House of Representatives?

STIRRING UP A HORNET'S NEST. A local controversy with racial overtones is brewing in Charleston, where Kanawha County school officials are resisting a community-led effort to name the new West Side Elementary School after Mary Snow, a great African American educator.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MARRIAGE is discussed here.

  GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Of fat cats and three for the road

2011 is a pretty good year for fat cats. Here's a picture of a rally held yesterday in Charleston calling on congress to extend unemployment insurance. The rally was supported by union members, the usual suspects, and people from Occupy Charleston, some of whom just got back from rampaging around Washington DC.

"JOB CREATORS." Here's Krugman on the real life Gordon Gekkos.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS A LITTLE SAFER TO GO UNDERGROUND. Here's the latest on former Massey CEO Don Blankenship's latest coal maneuvers. (It occurred to me that the last few days may have been a bit of a PR setback.)

FRACKED UP. I am shocked, shocked at this report suggesting that hydraulic fracking may not be good for water supplies and human health. I'm glad that WV politicians and industry hacks are already at work denying this.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

First fire

A seasonal milestone came and went this weekend. On Saturday evening, for the first time in months, I stoked up the wood stove in a big room that serves as a sometime dining room and general vegging space.

It was an "oh yeah" moment for me. For the last several months, I've thought of the woodpile as place of physical exertion whereat I do battle with recalcitrant fallen trees. It was nice to be reminded what all that exertion was for.

Although we don't cook with it or rely on it as the primary heat source for the house, there is nothing quite like a fireplace on a chilly evening. No wonder that the hearth was the center of the home in earlier centuries.

Hestia, Greek goddess of the hearth, was poor in mythology. You don't see her rampaging around the fields of Troy in the Iliad. But she held a place of honor in the daily life and devotions of the Greeks. For good reason.

WHO'D A THUNK IT? Scientists are using Twitter to study how moods rise and fall on a global basis.

MAYBE WE WERE RIGHT AFTER ALL. Back in 2009, there was a big struggle in the legislature to address the solvency of WV's unemployment insurance fund. Labor took the lead and I tried to get in a lick or two as well. Some business groups fought it tooth and nail. It now turns out the the fund weathered the recession well and that, unlike many states, WV hasn't had to borrow from the feds.

AMERICA'S FIRST BIG YOGI didn't do headstands.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Head-banging sharks

Rock on, dude.

Every so often a news story surfaces that restores my faith, not in the world exactly, but in some small part of it. I was consoled to learn from the Spousal Unit about this story on NPR about the apparent musical preferences of sharks.

Now, if I got to write Nature's script, I would have given sharks a taste for hard rock and roll. It would just seem wrong for them to be fans of Donovan or Brianna or Yoko Ono.

This time, things seem to have worked out my way. According to the radio story,

...when Matt Waller, a charter boat operator in South Australia's Port Lincoln, played "Back in Black" and "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC underwater, he says the sharks become less aggressive. Some even rub their snouts against the caged speakers, which is adorable in a terrifying way.

"I guess the visual people expect is that of a shark with long hair kind of headbanging past the cage doing the air guitar," Waller says in an interview on All Things Considered. "But, of course, sharks don't actually have ears, and it's the frequency and vibration they're after."

If they turn out to like Alice Cooper as well, things will be just perfect on that front.

RULE BY CREDITORS. Here's Krugman's latest.

WANT MORE ECONOMIC GLOOM? Millions of Americans are likely to run out of unemployment benefits this year. And then there's talk of a double dip recession.

ON THE OTHER HAND, West Virginia's economy grew at four percent last year, the fifth highest rate in the nation.

HOT ENOUGH FOR YOU? Get used to it.

OUT OF WHERE? Here's an interesting update on research into human ancestors.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Just say yes

I wouldn't recommend carrying a copy of Nietzsche whilst deer hunting to everyone, but it works for me. The deer weren't in the neighborhood at the time anyway so the book was good company.

Nietzsche is sometimes called a nihilist, but that is far from the truth. His main quarrel with many kinds of religion and philosophical idealism was that they were nihilistic to his way of thinking in that they sought for some other reality beyond the one we live in.

One theme of his that shows up again and again is the challenge to say "yes" to life in spite of all its nastiness, or, to put it another way, to try to live in such a way that we can and want to say yes to the whole package. Here's how he expresses it in terms of a New Year's resolution:

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati [love of fate]: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole, some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

DENIED. A move to extend emergency unemployment insurance failed in the Senate. But the banks are doing fine.

HIGHLIGHTING HISTORY. A new map and poster highlight black history in West Virginia and the many ways events here have shaped the nation.

THE MEANING OF LIFE. Some people do just fine without worrying about it.

ANIMAL EXTINCTIONS are bad for your health.

AT LEAST THERE'S NO SHORTAGE of stars.

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

Babies and bullies

Scottish philosopher David Hume.

The debate about the origin of morality is an old one in philosophy. Two major strands emerged in western philosophy in the 18th century.

One of these was associated with thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment such as David Hume and Adam Smith. This tradition found the basis of morality to be in the emotions, as expressed in the title of Smith's work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. By contrast, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant attempted to base morality on reason.

Two hundred plus years later--and with lots of water under the bridge--it looks like the Scottish Enlightenment holds up pretty well in light of evolutionary biology and research on the emotions.

A major ingredient of morality is empathy, which is nothing if not putting yourself in the place of another and trying to feel what he or she feels.

Here's an interesting item about how an innovative project is combating bullying by reawakening empathy.

Note: props are required, including a live infant.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW (and more) about unemployment insurance and why Congress needs to extend it ASAP.

DEALING WITH DEBT. Paul Krugman is unimpressed with the deficit commission.

INTERESTING TAKE on the political scene here.

URGENT SEA LION UPDATE here.

IF YOU EVER WONDERED JUST HOW cats drink the way they do, click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Ups and downs

El Cabrero just got back from a visit to the in-laws in Vermont. Every time I go, I try to take a side trip to hike up Mount Mansfield, the state's highest mountain. This year, I also wanted to see how little Edith Ann would do on the trail. She turned out to be a natural climber.

The trail I use is "only" 3.3 miles to the summit, but those would be headed largely in an upward direction. The trail starts out in the woods

but as you go up, the trees get smaller and smaller and give way to mostly rock. It's a bit like climbing up a demonic stairway built by ancient Greek Cyclopes. I had to skitter up lizard style at a few points.

The trail is such that it is hard to see just how far away and up there the summit is most of the way, which is probably a good thing.

Going down is less demanding on the legs, lungs and ticker but can be more dangerous. You have to make every step consciously to avoid a nasty fall. I'm not sure why I'm drawn to this mountain so much. It wouldn't be exact to say that I enjoy the climb--it kind of a pain at the time--but I enjoy having climbed it.

MISCONCEPTIONS about unemployment insurance are answered here.

NOT A RAVE REVIEW. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was the subject of this op-ed in the Washington Post.

SOMETHING ELSE TO DENY. NOAA just released a report on the state of the climate.

"THE RECESSION GENERATION." Effects of the current downturn on children could be long lasting.

LAST AGAIN. El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia didn't come off too good in a recent ranking of states in terms of wellbeing.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The missing piece in the climate debate

Random picture of the official Goat Rope vegetable garden.

Yesterday I linked to a website devoted to worker justice and environmental sustainability issues. If there's ever an issue that needs to be addressed in an energy state like West Virginia, this is it.

On the site, there's an interesting white paper with the title Climate Legislation Must Provide a Just Transition for Workers, which speaks to that condition.

Here is just a teaser from the executive summary:

1. Fear of job loss is a major reason people oppose climate protection legislation.

2. The worker protection strategy of current climate bills is flawed and inadequate.

3. Climate protection advocates need a bold program to ensure that every worker, retiree, and community impacted by climate legislation can count on a secure future.

4. Rightwing politicians and self-serving business interests are exploiting the inadequacy of worker protection provisions to gut or defeat climate legislation.

There's a lot worth looking at here (this isn't even half of the executive summary) and these are the kinds of issues that need to be addressed if we're ever going to get this right.

TODAY COULD BE THE DAY the US Senate finally helps the 2.5 million Americans who have exhausted unemployment benefits, thanks to the vote of newly appointed West Virginia Senator Carte Goodwin. Yesterday, this was the subject of a speech by President Obama.

THE NEXT THING I hope Congress moves on is extending aid to states. Without it, the recovery will be slower and weaker.

SPY ON THIS. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

PASS THE RECOVERY, PLEASE. Corporate profits are up but hiring isn't.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A new start

WV Governor Joe Manchin announced Friday that Carte Goodwin would fill the US Senate seat vacant since the death of Robert Byrd. Goodwin is a Charleston attorney and former legal council to Manchin, comes from a family with very good political connections and a tradition of public service. I'm guessing that this could be the beginning of a long career in public office, although the next stop from here will be somewhere other than the Senate.

Whatever the future holds, it is likely that Goodwin's appointment will be good news for the more than 2 million Americans who have exhausted unemployment benefits. If all goes according to plan, a vote on unemployment insurance will happen shortly after he is sworn in on Tuesday. Goodwin's vote is likely to put the vote to 60 and overcome a Republican filibuster. It is likely that he will also support key measures also needed to prevent a double dip recession, such as extending key provisions of the Recovery Act such as FMAP, the federal Medicaid match to states.

I hope it goes according to plan. That would indeed be an auspicious beginning. And I like the thought of WV tipping the balance in the direction of sanity.

ON THE DOWNSIDE, it doesn't look like he'll follow the lead of Senator Byrd on coal and climate issues, as Ken Ward points out at Coal Tattoo.

WORTH CHECKING OUT. Here's a site devoted to deal both with worker justice and with sustainability issues.

A NEW TWIST. Here's an item from the NY Times about conscientious objectors and changing times.

SOUNDS FAMILIAR. Here's how the resource curse works in Louisiana. Golly, it's a good thing nothing like that happens in WV, huh?

DARWINIAN MORALITY is discussed here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED