Pulling the plug

A friend suggested a while back that I blog about how Wal-Mart is pulling out of many communities, after driving local businesses out as well. Bloomberg Business has an interesting article on just that.

What's really sad is that a Wal-Mart is closing in one place where it's truly needed: Kimball WV in the state's poorest county of McDowell, which is known among other things for its food deserts. The Spousal Unit and I often rant about the retail giant, but we agree that the Kimball one gets a pass. Too bad they're pulling the plug. A lot of things just won't be available there in a place where travel is hard and people don't have much to spend.

Due to a decades-long decline in coal employment, McDowell has hit hard already. It really didn't need another hit. Wal-Mart no doubt killed local businesses. I'm not sure what will take its place.

If Wal-Mart can do it, why not congress?

The retail giant Wal-Mart got a lot of attention last week with the announcement that around half a million of its workers would get a raise in April, setting their wage floor at $9 per hour. The plan is to move it to $10 by next year. This is due in part to a big push by Wal-Mart workers, labor groups and others to get the company to step up.

The NY Times made some interesting points in this editorial:

There is no doubt, for example, that many more workers at Walmart (and elsewhere) would be making the federal minimum wage but for the fact that 29 states and the District of Columbia, as well as some cities, now have minimums above the federal level.

There is also little doubt that Walmart (and other employers) would pay more if low wages were not, in effect, subsidized by taxpayers, who pay for the food stamps and other public assistance that low-wage workers rely on to get by. This argues for improved labor standards that would shift the burden back to employers.

Clearly, the federal minimum wage, unchanged since 2009, needs updating. Overtime-pay standards have not been meaningfully updated since the mid-1970s. Collective bargaining protections also have been serially weakened by legislation in the states and by court rulings.

Roger to all that.

Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 for almost six years. The obvious question is, if Wal-Mart can do it, why can't Congress? But I think most people reading this know the answer to that.

Great days in retail

What does it mean when Wal-Mart collects donations to help its "associates" stay afloat? Or McDonald's suggests employees sell Christmas presents for cash? Hmmmm....maybe it's time to raise the minimum wage.

What they're thinking

At this writing, there's talk of an approaching debt ceiling/shutdown deal emerging from the Senate. That kind of news makes me wonder what they caved in on this time. I guess we'll know soon. At any rate, here's an interesting look at the folks who gave us the shutdown and how they look at the world. It's worth a look.

WEIRTON STEEL TO WAL-MART. Here's an op-ed by yours truly about how WV's economy has changed over the years. Mostly not in a good way. But there is some good news in there too.

FUN AND GAMES WITH THE AG. Here's an item by a friend of mine across the state about how WV's attorney general is working hard to keep people from getting health care.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD. German scientists are trying to raise drought resistant barley so we can still drink beer in a climate changed world.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ABOUT TO HIT THE CEILING

Okay...

I admit it. Some of the turkey boys on our farm may not be the brightest crayons in the box.

 Here are our two oldest males again chasing each other around a grill and posturing to try to impress each other and their own reflections. Round and round and round.

They seem more obsessed with each other than with the females. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The whole grill thing, however, is kind of sad.

THE ANTI-WAL-MART. Here's a comparison between wages and benefits at Costco, Wal-Mart, and Wendy's.

MORE GOOD TIMES from the WV Attorney General's office.

REAL APES don't dog paddle.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The Beowulf cookbook

When pressing events don't intrude, I've been blogging about Beowulf lately. I mean, somebody's got to do it. If you aren't into that kind of thing, you can skip to the links and comments section.

After going over this first major work of English (sort of) literature several times, I think I've got the recipe down. It has four main ingredients:

1. A full cup of Tolkien. Old J.R.R. was a major medievalist and possibly the 20th century's greatest Beowulf scholar. He also got a lot of inspiration and ideas from the text for his fiction, including orcs, dragons sitting on hoards, the term Middle Earth, Rohan, and the whole ambiance thing;

2. An equal amount of the Sopranos. Each little kingdom is like a mob family, with a lord who distributes benefits (or "ring-giver") and loyal retainers. At any sign of weakness, another crew will muscle its way in. It's a culture of honor where violence can break out at any moment and feuds are common;

3. A full cup of pagan warrior ethic, in which the greatest immortality one can have is to live on in legend after death. The Greeks called this kleos; and

4. A tiny drop of Christianity, minus any references to Jesus.

Mix the first three ingredients and coat sparingly with the last one, bake for a few centuries and there you have it.

ONE MORE TIME, here's a de-bunking of several right wing lies about health care reform.

COAL KABUKI covered here. At least things remained peaceful as far as I could tell.

WAL-MART is moving to promote healthier foods. I still won't shop there, but in the spirit of fair play I'll give them 5 points.

URGENT SLIME MOLD UPDATE here.

TESTING, TESTING. It may work better than studying.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Who knew?

This one doesn't have a sign. Image by way of wikipedia.

Ordinarily, the Huntington WV Herald-Dispatch isn't all that interesting, but earlier this week a story caught my eye. It seems that two people were arrested for taking a motorized shopping scooter for a little ride on US Route 60 from a Wal-Mart to a local strip club at around 1:40 in the morning. A drink or two may have been involved.

I don't know about this one. It only seems fair to me that if Wal-Mart doesn't want you taking their scooters and tooling around on them on major roadways to strip clubs in the middle of the night after tossing down a few, they ought to have a sign telling you that straight out.

I mean, gee, without a sign like that how would you know? It could happen to anybody.

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE. Here's good background on why Congress needs to act now to extend benefits.

PLEASE READ THIS. It helps to explain why extending unemployment insurance is so important.

WHAT HE SAID. Here's a cool rant about the economy by a friend of mine.

PLUTOCRACY, USA.

FILE 13. Economist Dean Baker thinks the deficit commission report should go there.

MASSEYLAND. The tug of war between Massey Energy and MSHA just got extended.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

One would have thought

Random animal picture.

One would have thought that market fundamentalism, the worship of "unleashed" unregulated capitalism, would have taken a mortal blow after 30 years of deregulation finally resulted in the worst financial crash since the Great Depression. The Gentle Reader may have noticed that this has not come to pass.

One dogma of the cult of the market god you still hear a lot today is that government action cannot do anything to promote economic vitality (other than cutting taxes for the rich).

Lately I've been reading Felix Rohatyn's Bold Endeavors: How Our Government Built America and Whit It Must Rebuild Now. In that book he points out numerous examples of how government action helped spur economic growth throughout our history. Examples include the Louisiana Purchase, the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad, land grant universities, the interstate highway system, the GI Bill and more.

Not all of those were pretty at the time and some we might now wish we did differently but all show that public investments and policies have always had a major role in moving the economy.

On a different but related subject, he also includes a great anecdote in the book about what it was like to go to college with veterans who had just returned from WWII and were taking advantage of the GI Bill. Rohatyn's family were Jewish refugees from Nazi occupied Europe before the war. While he attended college after the war was over, a representative from his national fraternity visited and warned that their charter could be expelled because they had "unsuitable" members, one black and one Jewish.

As he tells it,

Then the two veterans intervened. Politely yet forcefully, they explained to the visitor that they had not fought a war against the Nazis in Europe to see racial laws enacted in the United States. With the shocked national representative wedged stiffly between them, the two veterans escorted the man out of the house and to the railroad station.

They wound up losing the charter but keeping the house. And their dignity.

THE FORECLOSURE CRISIS was bad enough. The bogus foreclosure crisis is a real mess.

CUT THE CUTS. Yet another poll shows overwhelming support for allowing Bush era tax cuts to expire.

I'M STILL NOT SHOPPING THERE, but in the spirit of budo and fair play, let it be noted that Wal-Mart is going to start buying more local produce.

THE NOT SO SELFISH GENE. Some research suggests an evolutionary basis for altruistic behavior (short version: it's a turn on).

DOUBLE SHOT OF LOVE. A new study suggests that intense, passionate love can be an effective pain reliever. Another study found that couples that had been together for a long time--say 40 years--knew less about their partner's preferences than couples who had been together for a much shorter periond, although they expressed more contentment with the relationship than did younger couples. Maybe Dylan was right when he said, "True love tends to forget."

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Cositas

Imaginitive drawing of the long since destroyed temple of Zeus at Olympia. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero has been so busy slacking and blogging about books for the last several days that current events and snarky comments about the same have been sadly neglected.

One more book for the road though: Tom Stone's Zeus: A Journey Through Greece in the Footsteps of a God was a lot of fun. I'm a big fan of the Hairy Thunderer and the whole Olympian family and this book scratched that itch.

(It's a bit ironic that many people have seen some kind of moral progress in the triumph of monotheistic religions over polytheism. At times I must admit that the evidence for this seems underwhelming...)

Anyhow, aside from the usual news fare of carnage and collapse, here are some items that caught my eye in the last week or so:

RECORD FINE FOR MINE FATALITY. From the Dec. 24 Charleston Gazette, Aracoma Coal Co., a subsidiary of Massey Energy, admitted criminal safety violations in a fire in which two miners, Don Bragg and Ellery Hatfield, died in 2006. The company pleaded guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony. The company must pay a record $2.5 million in criminal fines and an additional $1.7 million in civil fines.

WAL-MART COUGHS IT UP FOR WORKERS' UNPAID WAGES. Far be it from me to take joy in the misfortunes of others, but this is freakin' awesome!

SIGNS OF THE TIMES, PART ONE. Last week, an AP story reported that a growing number of Americans have been giving up their cats and dogs as the economy tanks. Yesterday's Gazette reported that both pets and farm animals have been abandoned at an increasing rate in West Virginia.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES, PART TWO. On a little less grim note, more people are using repair shops to fix old items rather than buy new ones as money gets tighter.

One thing that struck me on a trip to Mexico last summer was the vast number of businesses there that fix up all the things that people here just throw away. It was another reminder of how wasteful we are.

DEMOGRAPHIC ODDITY. At a time when adults in industrialized countries have grown taller, the average height of African-American women has been declining, beginning with those born in the 1960s. The effect is most pronounced in women with low and median incomes, while those with higher incomes have actually grown taller.

ONE MORE THING. Happy New Year and don't drink and drive!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DID THEY BELIEVE IT?

Raphael's School of Athens, courtesy of wikipedia.

(Note for first time visitors: The theme here lately is the Odyssey of Homer, along with links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.)

The American writer H.L. Mencken defined puritanism as "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Puritanism as a turn of mind has been around a lot longer than the dissenters from the Church of England in the 1600s.

It was a major factor in some schools of Greek philosophy, especially that of Socrates and Plato (judging by what we know of the former from the latter). Along with some other killjoys, these people criticized Homer and other poets and purveyors of Greek myth and tragedy for teaching immorality by portraying the gods as behaving badly.

They just didn't get it. As noted previously, several of these gods were at least in part personifications of natural forces: storms, the sea, wild animals, sexual desire, earthquakes, etc. And nature is not known for being moralistic. For that matter, the whole point of many myths is that humans should not try to overreach or act like gods lest they bring about their own destruction.

Socrates liked to torment lovers of myths and poetry by asking them logic-chopping questions and dismissing them if they had trouble answering...as if the whole point of art, song and story was not to speak to the conscious and unconscious and rational and irrational parts of the human psyche. And as if it was all taken literally.

Plato went farther than his teacher. In the Republic, he wanted to ban poets and only teach edifying state-approved stories to its citizens, something that has been the dream of tyrants through the ages.

Goat Rope verdict: there is arguably more enduring and useful wisdom in the Greek tragedies than the whole of Plato's corpus. Get over it, dudes, or drink the hemlock.

For many Greeks, however, there was little room for doubt. To experience awe over storms or fear over breaking oaths and mistreating hosts or guests was to experience Zeus. To experience desire was to experience Aphrodite. To cultivate the land was to honor Demeter and receive her gifts. To drink wine was to experience Dionysus. And so on.

Some of the other gods were derived from and represented human experiences, such as marriage, sickness and healing, exchanges, music and poetry, metal-working etc.

Athena, the main divine character of the Odyssey, is a special case. In that story (and to a lesser extent in the Iliad), she is experienced either openly or, more often, in disguise. Directly or indirectly, she is who/what restrains people from taking rash actions and who/what brings hope, stength and wisdom to people who were tired, forlorn or hopeless. Next time you get a boost when you need it, consider that an Athena moment.

All these examples are derived just from daily life, not counting sacred festivals or holidays. All religions make sense from the inside, and Greek religion was no exception.

ILLUSIONS OF WAR. Here's Krugman on what the war in Georgia might mean.

WAL-MART: EVERYDAY WORKER INTIMIDATION. Labor groups are urging the Federal Election Commission to investigate whether the retail giant broke any laws by telling employees the world would come to an end if they voted the wrong way.

HOME FORECLOSURES are up 55 percent from this time last year.

BAD BALLOON. Meanwhile, inflation is at its highest rate in 17 years.

VERY COOL HOT IDEA. Researchers think they've found a way to turn roads and parking lots into solar energy collectors.

IT'S OFFICIAL. Joggers live longer than people who don't exercise (most of the time).

IS THAT A BIGFOOT IN YOUR FREEZER or are you just happy to be here? Two searchers in Georgia claim to have found a dead one.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WE COULD BE HEROES

The ancient Greek hero Theseus didn't take any bull from anybody. Here he is in a dust up with the minotaur.

Aside from news and links about current events, the theme at Goat Rope lately is Homer's The Odyssey. If this is your first visit, please click earlier posts. The series started Aug. 4.

Odysseus, the eponymous main character of the Odyssey, is one of many classical Greek heroes, although the word meant something different then than now. We tend to think of heroes as morally exemplary people who do good things. Think about the firefighters who died on 9/11.

For the ancient Greeks, a hero was someone who lived larger than life and whose deeds were remembered after their death. Many prominent heroes did as many or more bad things as good one. Oedipus, for example, was a hero. On the positive side, he solved the riddle of the Sphinx. But then there was that whole father killing/mother marrying/plague causing thing...

King Agamemnon in the Iliad was a hero--and a jerk who sacrificed his own daughter, caused a plague of his own, and enraged his best fighter Achilles at great cost to the Achaeans, as the Iliad recounts. Heracles and Theseus were heroes who did some good things, like killing the occasional monster, but some of their other deeds were not so nice.

Being a hero didn't save you from coming to a bad end, either. Jason of Golden Fleece fame had a miserable fate after dumping the witch Medea for a new model. Medea didn't go quietly, to say the least.

Still, Greek cities treasured the tombs of their local heroes and offered them sacrifices in the hopes that they would aid the home team when it needed it. There was a nice legend about the ghost of Theseus appearing at the battle of Marathon to help defend Athens from the Persian invasion.

The thing to remember is that Homer is not trying to prepare Sunday School lessons or political propaganda. He tells a story that shows the characters with warts and all. The message is not so much "be like them" as it is to learn from the story.

OH GOOD. Israel may be preparing to attack Iran. That should make everything just perfect.

GREEN DAY. Businesses are starting to get serious about sustainability, according to Newsweek.

MORE ON WAL-MART'S POLITICAL AMBITIONS here.

GOT KAFKA? Here's a review of a biography of the world's most realistic writer. And I'm not just saying that because I woke up as a giant bug today.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TAKING THE LONG WAY HOME

Odysseus, courtesy of wikipedia.

"Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove--
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sungod blotted out the day of their return.
Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,
start from where you will--sing for our time too."

It's been a long time since El Cabrero went on an extended ancient Greek jag, but I can't resist any longer. Lately I have been revisiting Homer's epic poem The Odyssey and have been struck again by its power.

For nearly 3000 years, the saga of "long tried, noble Odysseus" and his ordeals has been a favorite for people of all ages. It has given us several words, including odyssey itself, mentor (a character who befriended Odysseus' son Telemachus while his father was away), siren, cyclops, calypso, and probably more.

It has inspired many other literary works and films, including Virgil's Aeneid, James Joyce's Ulysses, the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Charles Frazier's powerful Civil War novel Cold Mountain, and more. Odysseus has shown up in places like Dante's Divine Comedy and the poetry of Tennyson. The Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) even wrote an epic sequel. I'm sure I'm leaving out plenty of other examples of its enduring influence.

There are lots of reasons for its popularity. For one thing, it really is a great story as Odysseus suffers ordeal after ordeal on his way home from Troy. Although most of us haven't spent 10 years besieging a sacred city and finally sacking it, we can probably all identify with the desire to go home, i.e. to reach a place of peace, security, and safety. We probably don't run across too many cyclopes or cannibalistic giants or make pilgrimages to the Underworld, but everyone has problems and challenges that have to be overcome with courage and strategy.

Finally, the real subject matter of the Odyssey is an urgent issue today in America: how is it possible for veterans who have endured incredible hardships and survived the ravages of war make or miss their homecoming? As the Odyssey shows and the experience of generations of combat veterans shows, the challenges and dangers don't stop when the war ends.

Way more to come.

WAL-MART--EVERYDAY LOW ACTIONS. A certain retail giant is warning its employees that the world will come to an end if giant corporations don't continue to completely dominate everything, especially elections and labor law. Where's the thunderbolt of Zeus when you need it?

HOW LOW WILL IT GO? Here's the Economic Policy Institutes's latest take on the state of the recession.

UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT. Some US hospitals have taken to deporting sick or injured immigrants.

LET US CULTIVATE OUR GARDEN. Words of wisdom from Gazette columnist Perry Mann.

TALKING SENSE ON HEALTH CARE. Click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DARKNESS VISIBLE

Lucifer falling. Gustave Dore's illustration of Milton's Paradise Lost. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Let's start with an unsolicited product endorsement. El Cabrero officially recommends that anyone interested in making the world be a little less nasty should get their hands on a copy of Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo's book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. It's not just a useful and important book. It's a page turner.

For starters, you can go to the book's informative website right now.

Zimbardo has been a leading figure in social psychology for decades. He is best known for the disastrous but illuminating Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), in which psychologically normal students were randomly assigned to prisoner and guard roles for an anticipated two week experiment. The mask quickly became the face and the roles became real. Guards began abusing prisoners within 36 hours and prisoners began to show signs of acute mental distress. The experiment had to be called off in less than a week.

In his 2007 book, Zimbardo not only recaps the SPE but generalizes its conclusions and summarizes other relevant research, with all too many illustrations from recent events.

There's a lot to unpack there, but here's a start. Most of the evil acts from human history haven't been committed by sociopaths but rather by normal people. As C. P. Snow put it,

...you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.

Usually, when we try to explain evil behavior, we look at the individual psychology or disposition of the people who engage in it. But this misses two other factors that exert a much greater influence on what happens: the situation and the system that underlies it.

More on that tomorrow.

STATING THE OBVIOUS. Oil may have had something to do with the unnecessary war in Iraq.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE. On a related note, many Americans are rethinking their love affair with the car.

THE PROPER MEASURE of poverty and what to do about it is discussed herein.

TWO MILLION VIOLATIONS. A Minnesota judge ruled that Wal-Mart made employees work off the clock and skip breaks over 2 million times. Workers were granted back pay to the tune of $6.5 million. This fall, a jury will consider punitive damages.

LET THEM EAT ETHANOL. A recently leaked World Bank report blames biofuels for the global spike in food prices.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

STRENGTH OF THE HILLS

John Brown's "fort" in Harper's Ferry. Image courtesy of the New York Historical Society by way of the Library of Congress.

"These mountains are the basis of my plan... God has given the strength of the hills to freedom; they were placed here for emancipation of the negro race; they are full of natural forts, where one man for defense will be equal to one hundred for attack; they are full also of good hiding-places, where large numbers of brave men could be concealed, baffle and elude pursuit for a long time."--John Brown, 1847

The theme of this week's Goat Rope is the February celebration of Black History, with a West Virginia thread running through it. You will also find links and comments about current events.

One reason why West Virginia shows up so often and in so many ways in the history of African Americans in this country has to be location, location, location. Until 1863 it was an often uneasy part of Virginia.

Western terrain, with some exceptions, was little suited for slavery and many residents of that part of the state resented the predominance of wealthy planters in state politics. The "peculiar institution" was concentrated in what would later be West Virginia's eastern panhandle and the Kanawha River Valley.

In 1831-32, in the wake of Nat Turner's rebellion, there was serious talk in the Virginia legislature about abolishing slavery, a move which had serious support among westerners, although it was eventually defeated.

Radical abolitionist John Brown famously chose Harper's Ferry as the site of his abortive efforts to launch a slave insurrection. It is one of history's ironies that, while Brown failed at nearly everything he attempted, he was ultimately successful in forcing the issue to a crisis.

As he was about to be hanged after his trial in nearby Charles Town, he commented "This is a beautiful country. I never had the pleasure of seeing it before..."

(Charles Town, by the way, was the birth place of Martin Delany, a free-born African American physician and abolitionist who was commissioned a major in the union army in Feb. 1865. )

As the Civil War approached, most westerners opposed Virginia's secession from the Union and the move to form a new state enjoyed significant if not universal support. Voters here overwhelmingly approved the Willey Amendment in 1863 which provided for the abolition of slavery in West Virginia and cleared the way for its admission into the union.

It is fitting that the site of Brown's raid was the place of the first public meeting of the Niagara Movement in 1906. The Niagra movement was founded by W.E.B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter and others and called for full civil rights for African-Americans. It is widely viewed as a forerunner of the NAACP.

According to historian John Alexander Williams, author of the classic West Virginia: A History, in August 1906, DuBois led Niagra members on a barefoot pilgrimage to the engine house where Brown was captured (pictured above):

"and here on the scene of John Brown's martyrdom," as DuBois told the story, "We reconsecrated ourselves, our honor, our property, to the final emancipation of the race which John Brown died to make free."

CORRECTION. A reader pointed out that I got Lincoln's birthday wrong yesterday. My bad--I meant to say it was the 12th. Also, the spellchecker on blogger isn't working so there are probably some typos here.

CLIMATE TIPPING POINTS. Here are some I hope don't happen from the nice folks at Wired Science.

IS WAL-MART RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT? It kinda sounds like it.

UNDEREMPLOYING UNEMPLOYMENT. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute makes the case that longterm unemployment warrants action now--and is likely to get worse in the future.

PAY AS YOU GO. As the economy slows and debt mounts, some consumers are moving back to operating on a cash basis.

BAD TO WORSE. President Bush's proposed federal budget is as bad as we've come to expect it to be. Senator Byrd wasn't happy about scholarship cuts and slashes to mine safety programs.

UNSTIMULATING. The WV Center on Budget and Policy just issued a report showing that the new stimulus proposed by the Bush administration and Congress could cost WV millions.

AN UNKNOWN GOD. Archaeologists in Greece have found an altar dedicated to an unknown god who pre-dates Zeus. Whoever it was, he or she was probably way less entertaining.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FREUD AND DOSTOEVSKY (AND WAL-MART, IRAQ AND GLOBAL WARMING)

Caption: This man is now portraying the devil that appeared to Ivan Karamazov while the latter was a little unhinged. Is it Ivan himself, a real devil, or just his fevered imagination?

El Cabrero begs the reader's forbearance while he attempts to get Dostoevsky out of his system. The last two posts didn't quite do it...

Sigmund Freud once called The Brothers Karamazov "the most magnificent novel ever written."

This is no doubt because the theme of the book is the murder of a father by a son and Sig never met a story about parricide he didn't like. After all, according to his theory of the Oedipus complex, that was something all sons unconsciously wanted to do.

I'm not sure how Dostoevsky would feel about that. He didn't have much use for what passed for psychology in his day, once saying "I am not a psychologist. I am a realist." His version of "realism," however is pretty out there, given his menagerie of characters, which includes intellectual axe murderers, saintly prostitutes, brooding nihilists, and holy fools and elders.

As William Hubben wrote,

All of Dostoevsky's stories belong to the literature of extreme situations. An ominous restlessness broods over the men and women in his novels. Frequently their reaction to seemingly small incidents is excessive, and events take a most unexpected turn.

The author would probably agree with that anyway. He once wrote "Always and in everything I go to the extreme limit." In his view, part of the human condition is the fact that we don't know our limits:

The ant knows the formula of its anthill; the bee the formula of its beehive...but man does not.

Ironically, it is said that in his later years, Freud couldn't abide reading Dostoevsky's novels in the evening because the characters were too much like the patients he dealt with during the day.

(OK, one more thought--how come nobody gets brain fevers any more like his characters got?)

TAX SUBSIDIES FOR WAL-MART. Good Jobs First is a policy resource center that promotes accountability for corporations and governments in economic development. They recently updated their Wal-Mart subsidy report. If you go to the site, you can click on your state to see how much the giant has gotten in corporate welfare. In El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, that number is around $9.7 million. Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs First executive director sums it up pretty well:

That a company with a predatory business model and a poverty-wage labor policy can even qualify for job subsidies suggests many public officials still don’t get it.

DISPLACED IRAQIS. This is from AP:

More than 4 million Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in the country, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday, warning that the figure will continue to rise.

The number of Iraqis who have fled the country as refugees has risen to 2.2 million, said Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. A further 2 million have been driven from their homes but remain within the country, increasingly in "impoverished shanty towns," she said.

THIS IS JUST GREAT. Remember the part about the Bush administration getting serious on global warming? Nevermind...

The Bush administration is drastically scaling back efforts to measure global warming from space, just as the president tries to convince the world the U.S. is ready to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE TWO BUMS, PLUS WAL-MART AND HUMAN RIGHTS AND A WV ITEM

Caption: Here are two bums.

(This week's posts are loosely connected. If this is your first visit, please consider clicking on the last two.)

El Cabrero has a soft spot for the Wobblies, a nickname for the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical branch of the labor movement that saw its best days between its founding in 1905 and the massive political repression that accompanied the First World War.

Their goal was to unite all workers, regardless of skill, race, sex, religion, or national origin, into One Big Union. They were also very clever in making use of funny and irreverent songs, poems, and signs (similar to modern bumper stickers) which they called silent agitators to get their message across.

They gave the labor movement some of its best songs, such as Solidarity Forever, which was inspired by a coal strike in El Cabrero’s beloved state of West Virginia, The Commonwealth of Toil, Bread and Roses, and The Preacher and the Slave.

One Wobbly poem called The Two Bums, is the most eloquent statement on social policy that I’ve ever found.

Then as now, people are all to ready and eager to blame all social problems on poor and working people and ignore the vast harm done to the vast majority by a wealthy and powerful minority of people who own and control most economic and political power.

Here it is:

The Two Bums

The bum on the rods is hunted down as an enemy of mankind
The other is driven around to his club, is feted, wined and dined.

And they who curse the bum on the rods as the essence of all that's bad
Will greet the other with a willing smile and extend a hand so glad.

The bum on the rods is a social flea who gets an occasional bite
The bum on the plush is a social leech, bloodsucking day and night.

The bum on the rods is a load so light that his weight we scarcely feel
But it takes the labour of dozens of folks to furnish the other a meal.

As long as we sanction the bum on the plush the other will always be there
But rid ourselves of the bum on the plush and the other will disappear.

Then make an intelligent organised kick get rid of the weights that crush
Don't worry about the bum on the rods get rid of the bum on the plush.

(Railroad trivia note: the "rods" referred to here are the rods underneath rail cars--not a very safe way to travel cross country.)

ON THE PLUSH. Our old friend Wal-Mart made the cover of the print version of Business Week again, but this item about its human rights record from the online version of the magazine is even more interesting. Here's the lead:

Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental group based in New York, is best known for scathing reports on political issues such as the Rwandan genocide and the Congo's use of children in its military. But late on Apr. 30, the human rights group focused on Wal-Mart (WMT), issuing a report that charged the giant retailer with using strong-arm tactics and, in some cases, illegal means to stop its workers from forming unions. In a 210-page report, the organization says "the retail giant stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus."

This is only the second time in the organization's 29-year history that it has issued a book-size report on a corporation. The first one was on Enron in 1999. The study's author, Carol Pier, says the group decided to focus on Wal-Mart because of its broad impact on labor practices and the U.S. economy. "Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the world. Therefore, the way it treats its workers matters," says Pier, senior labor rights and trade researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Our message is that when the world's largest economy has labor laws that are so weak that it is unable to prevent the world's largest corporation from violating workers' rights to organize, it is troubling."

WV ITEM. We hear a lot of complaints in this state from conservatives about the drastic growth of state government. Last week, Antipode did some math and found that state spending actually declined over the last 25 years as a proportion of state GDP.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SECOND PLACE, plus stuff on Wal-Mart

Caption: It's not yet clear how happy these brothers are, but they have eight more lives than the people discussed here today.

You can find all kinds of things in this week's Goat Rope, but the guiding thread is the story of a conversation about happiness that took place between the ancient Greek sage Solon and Croesus, the wealthy and arrogant king of Lydia in what is now Turkey.

If this is your first visit, please scroll down to the earlier entries.

Croesus was miffed to find out that Solon did not consider him to be the happiest of mortals, but he thought surely that he had to come in a close second. When he asked who was the next happiest, Solon, who was obviously trying to teach Croesus a moral lesson, replied

Two young men of Argos, Cleobis and Biton. They had enough to live on comfortably; and their physical strength is proved not merely by their success in athletics, but much more by the following incident. The Argives were celebrating the festival of Hera, and it was most important that the mother of the two young men should drive to the temple in her ox-cart; but it so happened that the oxen were late in coming back from the fields. Her two sons therefore, as there was no time to lose, harnessed themselves to the cart and dragged it along, with their mother inside, for a distance of nearly six miles, until they reached the temple. After this exploit, which was witnessed by the assembled crowd, they had a most enviable death--a heaven-sent proof of how much better it is to be dead than alive. Men kept crowding round them and congratulating them on their strength, and women kept telling the mother how lucky she was to have such sons, when, in sheer pleasure at this public recognition of her sons' act, she prayed the goddess Hera, before whose shrine she stood, to grant Cleobis and Biton, who had brought her such honour, the greatest blessing that can fall to mortal man.

After her prayer came the ceremonies of sacrifice and feasting; and the two lads, when all was over, fell asleep in the temple--and that was the end of them, for they never woke again.

The Argives had statues made of them, which they sent to Delphi, as a mark of their particular respect.

That sounds pretty grim to people today, but part of Solon's point was that happiness (eudamonia) is not a matter of life's quantity but its quality. A happy life is one that is honorable and socially useful and concluded with dignity. Fortune is changeable and until it's over one can't say with certainty whether a person is happy or just lucky.

Croesus still didn't get it, as we'll see tomorrow.

OUR OLD FRIEND WAL-MART. It's too soon to tell whether the retail giant Wal-Mart, which is a rich as Croesus (even if its workers aren't) is happy or just lucky. A recent article in the NY Times describes the company's take-no-prisoners approach to investigating employees with a team composed in part by former FBI, CIA, and Justice Department officials.

The April 2 New Yorker has a fascinating article on the company's corporate culture. The latest twist involves hiring liberal/Democratic political operatives to help bolster its somewhat tarnished image.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: WE CAN'T SAY FOR SURE UNTIL IT'S DEAD

HOLY STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, BATMAN!

Caption: Here's another odd alliance.

Here's something I could never have made up. On Wednesday, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced the formation of a campaign for universal health care.

That's not strange in itself. The weird part is in the alliances. According to the SEIU press release,

The founding members of the new partnership, which was announced at a Washington, DC, news conference, are SEIU and Wal-Mart, the largest health care union and the largest corporation in North America, respectively; AT&T; Intel; Kelly Services, Inc.; Communications Workers of America; the Center for American Progress; the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy; and the Committee for Economic Development.

Did anyone else notice the mention of a certain Arkansas-based company in that list?

SEIU is in fact a very active partner in Wal-Mart Watch, the mission of which states

Our aim is real change -- transparent and lasting -- to benefit Wal-Mart communities. To date, we have made remarkable progress in getting Wal-Mart to respond to a wide array of concerns about its business practices. Wal-Mart has acknowledged the harm it causes by providing poor health benefits that force its employees to seek taxpayer-supported public assistance. It has taken some promising first steps on a long road toward creating a more environment-friendly business. We are hopeful the company is serious when it acknowledges that change is necessary, and we will continue to push Wal-Mart forward.

As our nation's largest employer and most successful company, Wal-Mart is most certainly an American institution. Wal-Mart occupies a unique position in our world by virtue of its size, reach and responsibility for the livelihoods of millions of workers and the needs of billions of consumers. And with such overwhelming influence come certain moral responsibilities.

In 2006 we launched A Handshake with Sam, seven moral principles that reflect sound business practices and responsible corporate behavior in the twenty-first century. Our mission is to persuade Wal-Mart to assume its leadership role as America's largest corporation and enact positive change. If Wal-Mart commits to these principles and assumes the moral responsibility we expect of our biggest and most important American corporation, it will have proven worthy of America's admiration.

The new campaign released a statement of principles, which begins thus:

America’s health care system is broken. The traditional employer-based model of coverage in its current form is endangered without substantial reform to our health care system. It is being crushed by out of control costs, the pressures of the global economy, and the large and growing number of uninsured. Soaring health costs threaten workers’ livelihoods and companies’ competitiveness, and undermine the security that individuals of a prosperous nation should enjoy. We can only solve these problems – and deliver health care that is high quality, affordable, accessible and secure – if business, government, labor, the health care delivery system and the nonprofit sector work together.

If nothing else, this will draw a lot of attention to the issue, if only because of the unexpected alliances. This one falls under the "dog bites man, no news/man bites dog, news."

Another idea that occurs to me is that this shows that even giant corporations respond to public pressure.

This will be one to watch...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED