Will we learn?

This op-ed of mine about the need for the state legislature to protect WV's water appeared in the Friday Charleston Gazette:

I was traveling out of state last January when I got an email from a friend at the Council of Churches about a chemical spill in Charleston.

At first, I didn’t think much of it or have any idea of how huge that event would turn out to be.

After all, things like that happen fairly regularly in West Virginia. A sludge leak here, a shelter in place there, a tank, a truck, a train … we kind of get used to it.

Shame on us for that.

I remember a line from Dostoevsky that goes something like “Man gets used to anything, the scoundrel.”

If there was any silver lining in last year’s Freedom Industries spill, it was in the fact that this time the effects of a disaster weren’t confined to rural people up a holler in southern West Virginia. The spill inconvenienced some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the state. Legislators of both parties had to look at signs in the Capitol warning that water was to be used only for flushing toilets.

Adversity, like wealth, is something distributed very unequally, although it tends to be concentrated on the other end of the spectrum.

That experience of shared adversity, all too rare, gave a sense of urgency last year as legislators labored throughout the session to come up with a workable bill that had pretty much universal support.

Now, it looks like the lessons of that shared adversity are in danger of being forgotten. Several bills have been proposed that would weaken protections on our drinking water.

One argument in favor of that is that the Freedom Industries spill was an outlier far beyond the norm. That’s true as far as it goes. But then the recent oil train wreck, Upper Big Branch, Buffalo Creek, Farmington, and Hawks Nest disasters were outliers too.

Come to think of it, West Virginia itself is a bit of an outlier. In the language of statistics, I think you could make the case that we’re a standard deviation or two away from the arithmetic mean.

For that matter, things like severe winter storms and structure fires are outliers of a sort. Fortunately, they don’t happen very often, but we still need snowplows and fire departments.

We hear a lot these days about improving West Virginia’s economy so that it’s easier for families to stay here and thrive. But I know of several young families that have moved out of state or are planning to because of the spill. I know plenty more who have said one more thing like that and they’re out of here. The people I’m thinking about are young, educated, smart and productive, i.e. exactly the kind of people we need more of.

We also hear a lot about making West Virginia more business friendly. However, it would be very hard to calculate the harm done to hundreds of local businesses by the chemical spill. Thousands of workers, particularly those in the service sector, lost work and wages. And these are people who don’t put their money in an overseas hedge fund: they spent all they get right here. Along with that, thousands of school children missed classroom instruction and many of these missed the only nutritious meals they were likely to get those days.

West Virginia’s tourism industry, which generated well over $4 billion in 2010, took a hit as well. Further, incidents like that, not to mention the latest mishap, make the state less attractive to new business investments, particularly those that don’t involve trashing the place.

While any piece of legislation or policy can be improved, any changes to state water laws should not come at the expense of public safety or water quality.

There are many thoughtful people who believe that water will be to the coming century as precious as oil was in the past. And water is something our state is blessed with. It would be nice to think that we’ve learned something from last year’s mess and over 100 years of the exploitation of our natural resources and people.

The jury is still out on that.

Water and workers

El Cabrero got snowed in today, but a lot has been going on at the capitol. Early this morning, citizens urged the Republican legislature to keep water protections.

Meanwhile, West Virginia got another reminder about what can happen to our water. This afternoon, a train carrying crude oil derailed in rural Kanawha County. According to the Gazette, at least 14 tanks are on fire and some have exploded. There is now burning oil on the Kanawha River.

Water intakes for the communities of Montgomery and Cedar Grove were turned off because of the accident, according to a release from the state Department of Health and Human Resources. While the intakes are off, customers are asked to conserve water, according to the release.

ANOTHER IT'S NOT ALL BAD REMINDER. Despite the snowstorm, a huge crowd of workers and citizens showed up today to protest attacks by the Republican legislature on the rights of working people. One Facebook  friend of mine called it "a sea of Carhardt..."

Reasons why

On more than one occasion, I have expressed my desire to update the WV state motto from "Mountaineers are always free" to something that fits better these days.

I like the old one, but it seemed to apply more back in the days when WV broke with the slave owning aristocrats of Virginia to join the Union or when union miners and other workers fought hard against the abuses of corporations.

West Virginians seem to be a lot more servile, docile and domesticated these days.

As I've mentioned before, my choice for a new motto is "You can't make this **** up."

Here are a few reasons why: water, women, and workers. Oh yeah, and whack

The watery part of the world

For a bit of a change, the Spousal Unit and I spent Thanksgiving week on the Florida Gulf Coast. It's been nice renewing my pretty shallow acquaintance with salt water. Among the things I've seen that aren't usually part of a West Virginia November are dolphins, an alligator, pelicans, lizards and any number of seabirds. It's been good to verify that saying of Melville's from Moby-Dick about the link between water and meditation:

Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

The salt mines of Appalachia await...

Another plus or two

This could be an accident, or I could be getting things totally wrong, but it looks like my beloved state of West Virginia may actually be on the verge of protecting its drinking water. If I'm wrong, which may well be the case, please don't wake me up.

Another small plus is the possibility of bus transportation between Charleston and Morgantown.  It may not be much, but I'll take what I can get.

Three streams (no water pun intended)

The water crisis brought on by Freedom Industries' chemical leak provides a good real life illustration of what I think is a useful tool from political science. It's from John Kingdon's Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies.

Theory is important, by the way. No one serious about affecting social change should ignore it. Or worse, substitute it with bad or just tired rhetoric. And the main reason to develop good theories in this context is to be able to apply them in real situations.

In Kingdon's model, policy changes happen when policy windows open. Policy windows open when three streams come together: the problem stream, the policy stream and the political stream. Specifically, those interested in enacting a policy need to be able to "couple" it to something that is widely seen to be a problem when political conditions are favorable. When the streams don't come together, it's hard to get anything major done.

The chemical leak made plenty of people see the need for clean water to be a problem. It's an open question as to whether it will be possible to muster the political will to enact strong enough policies to protect it.

There are lots of roles to be played in this arena. One is the wonkish role of developing policies and trying to pitch them to the political stream and link them to problems people want to act on. Another is to muster pressure to move the political stream in the right direction. Still another is raising public awareness that this or that is a problem that can really be addressed.

One thing is for sure in the water crisis: we've got the problem stream covered. We'll see in the next few weeks how or if the others come together. I hope they do. Its a safe bet though that the toughest stream will be the political one.

Oh good

Well, I guess everybody can relax. John Boehner, Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, told the world in the wake of West Virginia's chemical mess that "we have enough regulations on the books."

According to Salon,

“I am entirely confident that there are ample regulations already on the books to protect the health and safety of the American people,” Boehner continued. “What we try to do is look at those regulations that we think are cumbersome, are over-the-top and are costing our economy jobs. That’s what our focus continues to be.”

That ought to take care of everything, right? I feel better already. I'm sure WV Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito agrees.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN REALITY, here's a good op-ed by a friend of mine on how we're trashing our water and why that might not be such a great idea.

Water and meditation

The theme at Goat Rope these days, with some interruptions, is Moby-Dick and why everyone who hasn't should drop everything and read it. Or listen to a good recording of it. Or do either one again if one already has.

Here's another reason to do it: Melville says things in there that many of us have already thought or felt, only he says it  better. Or maybe he articulates something that was always in us, if somewhat vague and unformed.

Here's an example (and we're still in Chapter 1). Ever since I was a kid, I was drawn to water. Creeks, rivers, ponds, lakes, and the occasional ocean. Even a good mud puddle will do in a pinch. The absence of water, as in a drought, feels to me like the hatred of God. There's something soothing and calming about it.  Sometimes I just want to gaze at it and do nothing.

Ishmael put it way better:

Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

COALFIELD BLUES. Here's a great AP story on hard times in the coalfields.

TALKING SENSE AGAIN on the economy is Paul Krugman.

SPEAKING OF WHITE WHALES, this one can imitate human speech.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

As goes the creek...

There are any number of ways to assess the state of the world. One measure I use that is entirely personal and arbitrary is the state of the creek that runs through the yard. As goes, the creek, so goes the world. More or less.

When it is flowing continuously and full of minnows and crawdads and such, all is well or at least more tolerable. When it is dry and lifeless, as often happens in late summer, the world at large seems the same way.

It's not that things are all that great when it's healthy; it's just that things seem all that much worse when it isn't.

Sometimes when the creek goes dry, it can be months before minnows show up again, even after the water comes back. When that happens, I check each day and usually celebrate the first arrival of fish. (Search this blog for "fish day" and you'll see what I mean).

I am pleased to announce that although it ran dry recently, heavy rains earlier this week restored it for now anyhow and somehow minnows have reappeared from whatever isolated holes they were surviving in.

All of which is to say that there may be hope for the world after all.

MAKE THEM. Here's a proposal for reviving the progressive agenda.

OH REALLY? Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry recently suggested that there was no broad scientific agreement on climate change. Here's a bit of fact checking.

ABOUT THAT WAR ON COAL. It doesn't seem to be going well, since mining employment has actually gone up.

URGENT THINKING ELEPHANT UPDATE here.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. I really screwed up and reversed the key words in a metaphor about gold and silver in yesterday's post. My bad.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Pronunciation wars

An old John Prine song goes "There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes." Substitute hole in arm with store for farm and that would be me. Several times a month it seems, I go there, shell out money, and go home with a couple hundred pounds of critter food. Each time it occurs to me that the animals on our farm need to get a damn job...

The Spousal Unit has her own problems with that store and she is engaged in a protracted war with it. It is a war over pronunciation and pronunciation wars, like wars of religion, ask and give no quarter.

She take particular umbrage over their pronunciation of the word "caprine" as in pertaining to goats. They pronounce it capreen like marine rather than caprine like alpine. Although she is trained in anthropology and linguistics, she does not celebrate this as an example of social diversity but rather seems to see it as a grave moral flaw. She does not tire of pointing out that we don't pronounce the word canine as caneen or feline as feleen.

When she asks for a brand of goat food with the word caprine in it, she receives blank stares when pronounced her way and eager assistance when pronounced their way. Each such incident only further provokes her wrath. Her goal seems to be to wear them down like water on a rock until the proper pronunciation is recognized.

This could be yet another long war. And before you misunderestimate it, don't forget that the Hatfield-McCoy feud (in which I may have had a distant cousin on the Hatfield side) is sometimes said to have begun over a dispute about a pig. It's hard to tell where a war over goats could go.

THE NEXT STEP. Proposed bills to address climate change are dead. Here's a look at what may be next.

YOU'VE HEARD OF PEAK OIL. What about peak water?

URGENT FLYING DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Accidents of history

Painting by the artist Jacques-Louis David of members of the National Assembly taking the "tennis court oath" not to disband until they had given the country a constitution.

It is only by an accident of history that we divide political perspectives into left and right. It just kind of happened that in the early days of the French Revolution supporters of the monarchy sat on one side of the room while its opponents sat on the other.

In the long run, this was particularly unfortunate for the left, at least in terms of spin or "framing." Left in several languages has connotations that are sometimes quite literally sinister, while right sometimes means, well, right.

I think it's high time we come up some other metaphor, spatial or otherwise, to describe political differences. As a friend of mine likes to say, these days is more a matter of up and down than left and right.

ALONG THAT LINE, here's a New Yorker piece on some billionaire backers of "populist" right wing groups.

STILL MORE. Here's Times columnist Frank Rich with more of the same.

OH THE WATER. This op-ed by a friend of mine looks at one of our most vital natural resources.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Bad for business

You may have heard this rant from me before but here goes again. Around here, the coal industry and its supporters, including most of WV's elected officials, follow flawless logic when it comes to climate change. It goes like this:

1. Anything which goes against the perceived interest of the coal industry cannot possibly be true.

2. Acknowledging the truth of climate change and the permissibility of trying to do something about it goes against the perceived interests of the coal industry

ERGO...

Climate change cannot possibly be true and nothing should be done about it.

Q.E.D.

Not everybody associated with the coal industry is buying it. Michael Morris, President of American Electric Power supports climate change legislation.

As a matter of fact, the US Chamber (Pot) of Commerce is taking some hits from major corporations for its opposition to climate change legislation. A number of companies have either withdrawn from the Chamber or expressed their differences. This interesting item from the New Yorker compares the Chamber's response to that of Massey Energy. According to James Surowiecki, while many companies in the past may have parroted the party line, things are different now. The new attitude

...may reflect a calculation that global warming is simply too big an issue to get wrong, both economically—few companies are really going to benefit from the melting of the polar ice caps—and from a public-relations point of view. It’s also probably no coincidence that these resignations have come at a time when the Chamber’s anti-regulatory zeal looks not just outmoded but self-defeating. Had the Chamber supported tougher regulation of financial and housing markets, after all, the myriad small businesses it represents would undoubtedly be better off today. And it’s far from clear that across-the-board hostility to regulation is really in the best interests of the free-enterprise system. We assume that lobbies always recognize what’s best for their members. But they don’t, and, in the case of climate change, they may very well be missing what the companies that have resigned in protest have seen: global warming isn’t just bad for the planet; it’s bad for business.

WHACKADOODLE DANDY. Here's another item on our old pal political paranoia.

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE and some of it is a mess.

ELECTIONS HAVE (HORMONAL) CONSEQUENCES. Testosterone and voting...who'd have thunk it?

ANOTHER TWIST. Here's the latest in the Megan Williams story.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Story time

These dogs are arguing about politics.

El Cabrero's late father, the bad joke magnet, used to tell one about a rural resident who called the sheriff's department because there were 20 dogs carrying on in his yard.

"Are they mad?," the dispatcher asked.

"Well, 18 of 'em seem pretty upset."

No matter what happens tomorrow, some dogs are going to be upset. And one thing that will undoubtedly happen is that the post-mortem explanation industry will kick into gear to explain WHY THINGS HAPPENED THE WAY THEY DID. Most of them will be absolutely convinced of the validity of their explanation.

We can't really help it. Ever since people have been able to talk, they have made up explanations or stories--mythological, logical or otherwise--to explain things. We are driven to come up with a narrative or story that sounds good and connects events together in a way that makes sense.

That is to say, we torture the data until it confesses.

The problem is that while we're addicted to our narratives, there is absolutely no necessary connection between our explanations and what really happened.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, calls this the narrative fallacy, which

is associated with our vulnerability to overinterpretation and our predilection for compact stories over raw truths. It severely distorts our mental representation of the world; it is particularly acute when it comes to the rare event.

Once again, a little skepticism is called for, not only about the stories we hear from others but our own as well.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

BY THE NUMBERS, here's a look at the current US economy, courtesy of the Economic Policy Institute.

WATER could be the new oil.

A GREEN NEW DEAL? Why not?

WHY DO WE BELIEVE in weird stuff?

GEORGE ORWELL gets a tip of the hat here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

HOMO ECONOMICUS

Dostoevsky, courtesy of wikipedia.

It seems to be a fact that people in every age and time view their temporarily prevailing model of the world to reflect the eternal truths of the cosmos and human nature.

In the age of Newton, the universe was like a watch or machine. In the digital age, the mind is, of course, like a computer. Some ancient cultures where the hand loom prevailed believed that our fates were woven like a tapestry.

In our (post) modern world, a model of human nature prevails in economic circles that views people as organic calculators maximizing benefits through "rational" choices. I recently read an engaging book on the subject which attempted to demonstrate that any number of activities, no matter how seemingly absurd, were really rational. It's easy to do that when you argue circularly and assume the truth of what you intend to prove.

It is the opinion of El Cabrero that if we really were all that rational, things would be a good bit less messy. I'm with Dostoevsky, who wrote this in Notes from the Underground:

When . . . in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?

OH THE WATER. Here's an item on a key issue of the new century.

CLOSING IN. For the world's few remaining forest people, there's less and less room to hide.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER. The latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree is here. It's an avian theme this time around.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE OTHER AMERICAN IDOL

Nicolas Poussin's Adoration of the Golden Calf, courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero was recently asked to give a talk on the economy to a Catholic rural ministry conference in my beloved state of West Virginia. The diocese has made a special priority of health and well-being and it occurred to me that that's not a bad lens to use in thinking about economic issues.

Religiously speaking, I'm a theologically laid back Episcopalian with periodic Buddhist and Taoist inclinations working for a Quaker group. (I kind of like the Greek gods too, but try not to talk about that in public very much.) I have a great deal of respect for the economic and social justice teachings of the Catholic Church and have found the diocese to be a valuable ally in working on public policy issues.

Lincoln once said that while he'd like to have God on his side, he had to have Kentucky. When I'm working on economic policy stuff, I'd like to have God on my side but need the Catholic church. Not that I'm saying they're mutually exclusive or anything...

Anyhow, it occurred to me that when it comes to the economy, idolatry is alive and well. I'm using the term in the non-sectarian sense of both elevating any relative good to the level of an absolute and in the sense of worshipping a human creation. Although people make the economy through their own actions, we often act and speak as it it were some kind of god ruling over us.

More on that tomorrow.

SAD NEWS. The number of Army suicides increased again last year, with about a quarter of those taking place in Iraq.

GOOD QUESTION. This item asks why America executes people with mental disabilities.

OH THE WATER. You've heard of peak oil. What about peak water?

BAD "FARMING." Here's a good editorial from the NY Times about the horrible way our industrial food system treats animals in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). It's bad for workers, the environment, consumers, and causes a great deal of unnecessary misery for the animals involved.

A SEA CHANGE? Here's yet another indication that the religious right no longer has a lock on evangelicals.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED