Through the roof

It's no secret these days that the ratio of income between corporate CEOs and workers is growing by leaps and bounds. Here is an op-ed from the NY Times about it and a pretty slick graphic feature on the same from the AFLCIO.

URGENT DARWIN FISH UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

West Virginia wants a Future Fund

Interesting news from today's Charleston Gazette:

A substantial majority of West Virginians favor a proposal to increase taxes on coal operators to create a long-term fund to help diversify the state's economy, according to a new survey conducted for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

More than two-thirds of those surveyed by Lake Research Associates support the idea of using natural resources taxes for a "future fund," of the sort promoted by the West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy, a progressive think tank.

Read more here.

Wonky footnote: those of us who have been promoting the Future Fund think there are lots of ways of doing, some of which don't involve increasing taxes on coal or gas, although if we put more in, we'd obviously be able to get more out. One proposal would simply set aside a percentage of any increase in gas severance taxes above a given point.

Still, the numbers are exciting. I hope this gives the idea a boost.

LIKE DENYING CANCER. WV's ruling class loves to deny climate change because of money. This item suggests that may not be the best idea to ever roll down the pike.

INEQUALITY MATTERS. Here's a look at the whole one percent thing and an item on CEO pay.

A VIEW FROM UP NORTH. Here's a column by Gazette editor Dawn Miller about a public meeting in Wheeling of the WV Senate's Select Committee on Child Poverty.

URGENT BUMPY HEADED DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

There's a switch

For the record, I have never said that I wasn't an idiot. The following incident is yet another reason that I forgo making that claim...

I have this laptop for work that I use when I'm on the road. A while back I noticed that the wireless didn't work on it anymore. I figured it must be a virus or something. Anyhow, I finally got around to calling the AFSC computer help desk.

I explained my problem and gave the model number. Then, with great delicacy and patience, the person told me politely that there was a switch on the side of the computer that turned it on and off. Sure nuff, there was. I flipped it and it worked.

I felt like Gilda Radner's Emily Litella character on the old Saturday Night Live. "Never mind!"

Would that all problems could be solved that easily. And that we didn't wait so long to ask for help.

AUSTERITY isn't much of a hit in Europe these days.

CEO PAY info here.

THE DREADED BRAIN FREEZE explained here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Confessions of St. Arpad

Like St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430), Arpad, the (sort of) Great Pyrenees security chief of Goat Rope Farm, has spiritual struggles of his own.

Just as Augustine, prior to his conversion, prayed for chastity, provided it come at a later date, Arpad has been heard to pray thus:

"Lord, make me a vegan--but not yet!"

UNIONS AND INEQUALITY. When membership in the former goes down, the latter goes up.

ON A RELATED TOPIC, many top CEOs take home more pay than their companies pay in taxes.

AUSTERITY=JOB LOSS. Meanwhile, back in real America, more than 200,000 public sector jobs were lost in 2010.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Back in paradise

Well, I'm back from a week in Italy. The trip was great. The getting there and back, not so much. The picture above was me after a particularly hellish airport day on the return trip.

On the positive side, I did get to spend a little time with the traveling Spousal Unit and to get a bit of a feel for Siena, Florence, Ravenna, and Rome and had plenty of food for thought and gullet, which will probably show up her e by and by.

In the meantime, here are some things that caught my eye after a week of being out of the loop...

MINIMUM WAGE VERSUS CEO PAY. Here's an op-ed on growing inequality by Holly Sklar.

FIGHTING FOR MEDICARE. Somebody's got to do it.

SOME THINGS SEEM TO GO TOGETHER. Like coal and poverty. Not to mention a boom and bust energy economy.

FUN AND GAMES. Some of my union friends and progressive allies are planning a tongue in cheek hot dog sale to fund tax cuts for millionaires. (We are a pretty shameless lot around here and there is no cheap stunt to which we will not resort.) Anyhow, the event got picked up by a Wall Street Journal blog.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

It's hard not to cuss these days

From the AFLCIO:

While 25 million unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers are drowning, CEO pay skyrocketed by 23 percent, for an average salary of $11.4 million in 2010, according to the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch. Released today, data compiled at PayWatch also show CEOs have done little to create badly-needed jobs, instead sitting on a record $1.93 trillion in cash on their balance sheets.

The 2011 Executive PayWatch features the compensation of 299 S&P 500 company CEOs and provides direct comparisons between those CEOs and the median pay of nurses, teachers, firefighters and others. For instance, while a secretary makes a median annual salary of $29,980, someone like Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf rakes in $18,973,722 million—632 times the secretary’s salary. The pay gap between Wall Street and Main Street has widened egregiously—as recently as 1980, CEOs made 42 times that of blue-collar workers.

There's more here and the full report is here.

And let's not forget the fact that the very wealthy are paying less in taxes. And there's a bit more here and especially here on the same subject.While we're at it, this article provides a good account of how things got to be this way.

El Cabrero grew up in a cussing family and I know a thing or two about obscenity. Trust me, it's obscene to talk about gutting Medicare and Medicaid and other programs that help low income and working people in the name of deficit reduction while continuing to cut taxes on the wealthy in a time of growing inequality.

OFF TOPIC BUT INTERESTING. I missed this Washington Post item when it first came out. It's an interesting take on how Glenn Beck kind of lost it.

TALKING SENSE. WV Senator Jay Rockefeller suggest that the US needs to get out of the current wars.

INTERESTING QUESTION. Ken Ward asks in Coal Tattoo whether WV's political leaders believe in science.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Almost gone

The real Mr. Miyagi. Chojun Miyagi (1888-1953), founder of the Goju-ryu style.

Ever since I began formally practicing karate in jr. high, I dreamed of going across the water to study it. The original "plan" called for going right out of high school but that didn't happen.

At the time, I was practicing the Shotokan style, which was headquartered in Tokyo. The longer I trained and the more I learned, however, the more I wanted to go to the source, i.e. Okinawa, where it was born.

The art now know as karate (for "empty hands") is probably the result of a combination of the indigenous Okinawan fighting art of te (meaning hand)and the Chinese martial arts popularly known as kung fu.

A poem written by the scholar Teijunsoku, born in 1663 includes these lines, which also reflect the values of karate:

No matter how you may excel in the art of te,
And in your scholastic endeavors,
Nothing is more important than your behavior
And your humanity as observed in daily life.

Over time, two major streams evolved which were named after cities in Okinawa, Shuri-te and Naha-te (Naha has since pretty much absorbed Shuri). Shuri-te is often described as being quick and light, while Naha-te is said to emphasize strength development and uses special breathing and dynamic tension methods in training. The leading Shuri-te styles today include Shotokan and Shorin ryu, while Naha-te is represented by styles like Goju-ryu and Uechi-ryu. A neutral observer would recognize both as being karate but also as being different.

Most of my background is in the Shuri-te tradition, so I'm hoping to round things off a little this trip.

Goat Rope posts will appear as usual through the weekend. After that, I'll try to blog from across the water but on a different time schedule.

THIS IS THE BRAIN on politics, revisited.

CEO PAY. Firms that received TARP money don't seem to be adhering to CEO pay guidelines.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. After a back and forth that has gone on for some time, funding for a program that helps people with disabilities and the elderly stay in their homes has been increased in WV. Not too many states are doing things like that these days.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Imagining the enemy

Source: Sam Keen's Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination. View slides here.

Goat Rope has been looking at political paranoia this week, past and present, with a special focus on historian Richard Hofstadter's classic essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics. This series was inspired in no small measure by the current political climate and the debate over health care reform.

If this is your first visit, it might help if you clicked on earlier posts, starting with Monday's.

According to Hofstadter, in the paranoid view, the enemy

“is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced."

There are no accidents in this view of the world. Everything that happens is the result of someone’s malevolent will. The enemy is seen to hold vast sources of power, whether through mass media, educational institutions, or financial resources. The enemy is always a master of mind manipulation.

Hofstadter believed that there was also an element of psychological projection involved in this worldview, where all the unsavory traits or desires of the elect are attributed to the enemy.

As psychologist Philip Zimbardo pointed out, this view of the enemy leads to dehumanization, which can in turn lead to all kinds of nasty stuff.

TWICE ROBBED. Low wage workers are often cheated out of overtime and minimum wages according to a new report.

WHAT'S NEXT WITH HEALTH CARE might become clearer after next week.

HAPPY LABOR DAY? Wage growth continues to erode in the wake of the recession, according to this snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile, bailed out CEOs are doing pretty good.

NATION AS VILLAGE. A children's book examines what America would look like if it was a village with 100 people.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Out of the darkness

The theme at Goat Rope these days has been Greek tragedy but you'll find links and comments about current events below. Today we start on the Oresteia by Aeschylus, one of the greatest dramatic works ever written. Its great theme is the human journey from violence and barbarism to democracy and the rule of law. Too bad the journey isn't over yet

According to Robert Fagles and W.B. Stanford,

Aeschylus was forty five in 480 B.C. when the Persians sacked Athens and destroyed the shrines of the gods on the Acropolis. Soon afterwards he fought in the forces which defeated the Persians at Salamis and Plataea, as he had fought in the Greek victory at Marathon ten years before. The Greeks in general, and the Athenians in particular, because they had played the major part in the triumph of Hellas, saw these victories as a triumph of right over might, courage over fear, freedom over servitude, moderation over arrogance.

In the optimistic climate that prevailed after that great victory, it was hoped that a new era of harmony, rationality, and justice would prevail. Aeschylus' trilogy about the violence-ridden family of Atreus developed these themes.

More to come.

CEO PAY. The Obama administration is proposing that firms that have received two rounds of bailout money must submit changes in executive pay to government oversight.

GROSSED OUT. Some scientists suggest a link between the emotion of disgust and conservative political attitudes.

HEALTH CARE. Millions of Americans want a public option to be included in health care reform, but it's going to be a struggle to get one.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Lost in a tale

El Cabrero has been musing lately about how literature can enrich daily life (as well as working for social justice). In fact, I often feel like I'm experiencing aspects of this story or that.

To give an example I mentioned last week, watching the tide of a policy battle surge back and forth in my state legislature reminded me of a comic version of the Iliad. I've also seen things in public and private life that remind me of various comedies and tragedies.

Of course, you can run anything into the ground. It can be kind of dangerous sometimes to confuse literature with real life.

The two best examples of that come from...literature. The thing that makes Cervantes' Don Quixote both funny and sad is that he can't tell the difference between the world he lived in and the romances he read. Another example might be Flaubert's Madame Bovary, who got ramped up on another kind of romance writing and messed up the lives of several people, including her own.

There are plenty of other stories of that kind of thing. Come to think of it, it's stories all the way down.

WHILE THE ECONOMY TANKS, CEO pay is doing just fine.

CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE. Here's a Newsweek profile of Harvard law professor, author, and bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren. She was way out in front on the whole debt crisis. El Cabrero strongly recommends checking out her books.

IT MUST BE HARD TIMES. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship got a pay cut.

TAXES. Animals collect them too.

COMPASSION ON THE BRAIN. Its roots go deep.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Fish day!

He's in there somewhere.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to announce that Fish Day officially occurred at Goat Rope Farm on Saturday April 4.

Normally, the creek has a decent amount of minnows and crawdads, but for the last two years it has dried up completely in late summer. It takes several months after the water is flowing again for the fish to show up.

The first customer of the spring showed up this weekend and was unusually large--about five inches. It's not clear at this point whether he (or she) meant to get here or just took a wrong turn.

I'm assuming they come from downstream since we're at the head of the holler and spontaneous generation isn't part of nature's normal operating procedures.

I can already hear a grateful world saying "Thanks for sharing!" Well, yer welcome.

IT'S BAD. The latest unemployment figures, that is. We're now at 8.5 percent nationally.

PASS THE POPULISM PLEASE. Check out the latest in CEO pay here.

A MODEST PROPOSAL to make the most of the federal stimulus package to ease unemployment can be found here.

THIS IS WEIRD. A robot has apparently made a scientific discovery on its own, according to the folks at Wired Science. They don't look like people yet though--unless they've really got us fooled.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Lately it occurs to me

While glancing at a calendar recently, El Cabrero had a sudden realization. It was 20 years ago this month that I started working on economic justice issues for the American Friends Service Committee. Talk about a long strange trip...

There have been a lot of bizarre twists and turns along the way, but the strangest one was that it happened at all.

First of all, it doesn't often happen that one finds the job of one's dreams reading the local want ads from a WV paper--but that's exactly how I heard about it. The want ad was looking for someone with an understanding of Appalachian culture to work on poverty and other economic justice issues.

As it turned out economic justice issues and Appalachia (the two are inescapably entwined) were the main subjects of my not infrequent rants. When I showed it to some people who knew me (some of whom occasionally read this blog), they just laughed.

Still, jobs like that, as rare as they were then (and now), didn't usually go to people like me. For one thing, it has often happened that people from outside the area get hired to work in places like WV--don't even get me started on that one. For another, such rare jobs usually go to people who are well connected.

I was anything but that, having spent most of the 1980s being poor. Those who have never experienced poverty might be surprised to find that living in it is a very time consuming thing. Although I followed current events and read and wrote a lot about issues related to social justice, the only social movement I knew first hand was the constant scramble to make ends meet.

Also, I was and remain basically a small town hick, uncomfortable in cities, even in the small ones that pass for big ones in WV. I didn't know any of the proverbial movers and shakers (although I had a friend who had been watching and keeping score over the years--you know who you are!) and they didn't know me.

But, as the eminent philosopher Tom Petty once noted, "even the losers get lucky sometimes."

CHEW ON THIS. The food revolution is going mainstream. You know something is up when even the karmically challenged city of Huntington, WV is planning community gardens.

SCAVENGING is also alive and well these days.

CEO BLUES. Here's a rant on CEO pay by a friend of mine from Sunday's Gazette-Mail.

URGENT ANCIENT CRUSTACEAN PREDATOR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Hades!

Persephone and Hades in the underworld, courtesy of wikipedia.

If this is your first visit to Goat Rope, the current theme is the Odyssey of Homer and what it has to say to us today. There are also links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts. Right now we're about to visit the land of the dead.

According to Greek myths, Zeus divided up dominion over the cosmos with his two divine brothers. He got the sky, Poseidon got the sea, and Hades got the underworld, or land of the dead--not exactly prime real estate.

Hades was also known as Pluto, a word associated with wealth as in plutocracy. That was probably because valuable minerals were buried under the earth and because he was kind of greedy for souls; once you go there, you're probably not getting out. Over time, Hades became the name of the place.

Hades doesn't show up in a whole lot of myths, but the best known one is of his abduction of the beautiful Persephone or Kore (meaning "young girl"), daughter of the earth and grain goddess Demeter. When her daughter was taken, Demeter was so bereaved that she wouldn't allow the crops to grow, thus threatening the whole order of things. Eventually a deal was worked out whereby Persephone divided her time between the underworld (the winter) and Olympus (spring and summer).

There's a whole lot more to the story. One good primary source is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

The whole story of Hades, Persephone and Demeter gave rise to one of the earliest and most long-lived mystery cults of antiquity, the Eleusinian Mysteries, which endured for well over 1000 years in the ancient world before being suppressed by imperial Christianity late in the 4th century.

Those initiated were sworn to secrecy about the ritual, an oath that they pretty much kept over all those years. Scholars are still debating the secrets of the cult, but they included a procession, sacrifice, fasting, drinking a special brew, and being shown some sacred symbols. It was believed that being initiated among other things improved one's lot after death.

In general, though, the underworld was a place you didn't particularly want to visit if you could help it, although a few heroes did and got out again. More on them tomorrow.

SPEAKING OF HADES, the US financial system may be going there.

HUNGRY COUNTRY. Here's more from AARP's coverage of hunger in America today.

HUNGRY STATE. This item from yesterday's Charleston WV Gazette-Mail looks not just at the demand for food from charities but its quality.

THEM BELLY FULL BUT WE HUNGRY to quote the immortal Bob Marley. This item looks at CEO pay and other corporate skullduggery.

DINOSAURS. Were they fitter than the competition or just lucky?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE CYCLOPS, CONSIDERED AS CHEESEMAKER

The Odyssey series continues, along with links and comments about current events. We're just now at the part where he meets the cyclops.

Speaking of which, sometimes El Cabrero's Spousal Unit reminds me of a cyclops. I'm not saying that she's a one-eyed giant cannibalistic monster, necessarily. Let's just say they have common interests. He's got goats (and sheep) and is a cheese maker.

When Odysseus and his men visit the cyclops Polyphemus cave, he is still out with his herd. It sounds a bit like Goat Rope Farm, only on a much larger scale. As Odysseus puts it,

'So we explored his den, gazing wide-eyed at it all,
the large flack racks loaded with drying cheeses,
the folds crowded with young lambs and kids...
And all his vessels, pails and hammered buckets
he used for milking, where brimming full with whey.'

We get a glimpse of the giant at work:

Back he came from the pasture, late in the day,
herding his flocks home...
Then down he squatted to milk his sheep and bleating goats,
each in order, and put a suckling underneath each dam.
And half of the fresh white mile he curdled quickly,
set it aside in wicker racks to press for cheese,
the other half let stand in pails and buckets,
ready at hand to wash his supper down...

It sounds kinda like home to me...

But I digress. As mentioned earlier, a major theme in Homer's epics is that of xenia, the sacred guest host relationship. Odyseus and his men get off on a bad foot, entering his cave without asking or being invited. They build a fire and started chowing down on the cheese before he even gets home. Didn't these guys ever hear of Miss Manners?

Polyphemus doesn't like surprises:

'Strangers!' he thundered out, 'now who are you?
Where did you sail from, over the running sea-lanes?
Out on a raiding spree or roving the waves like pirates,
sea-wolves raiding at will, who risk their lives
to plunder other men?'

Based on their past behavior, that's pretty much exactly what Odysseus and his men are. It's just about supper time...

More tomorrow.

NOT SO GOOD. A Rutgers University scorecard on the state of American workers found some disturbing--but not surprising--trends.

REDISCOVERING AN OLD FRIEND. AP reports that more Americans are using public libraries in hard economic times. I can't imagine how people could do without them in the best of times. At any given moment, El Cabrero is abusing the borrowing privileges of about four different library systems.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here is an item on books that changed history.

STILL MORE on CEO pay.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

LOTUS EATERS

Look but don't eat or you may not make it home. Some people think the lotus referred to in the Odyssey was the blue water-lily of the Nile. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The Goat Rope Odyssey odyssey continues, along with links and comments about current events. If you like Greek mythology and the classics, please click on earlier posts.

While the story has delighted listeners and readers for ages, it also deals with a current issue: the difficulties returning combat veterans face in trying to make the transition from war to civilian life. Lots of things have changed since then, but lots of things haven't.

At this point in the story, Odysseus in narrating his version of his journeys after the Trojan War to an audience of the peace loving Phaeacians, who will help him on his way home. Note: since Odysseus lies just about every time he speaks in this epic, he should be considered a very unreliable narrator.

As yesterday's post related, his first stop on the way home was a gratuitous raid on the Circones that ended badly and indicated that he is still in combat mode and not quite ready for peacetime life.

But that's not the only way to lose one's homecoming. After ten days in the stormy sea, Odysseus and his men arrive at the land of the Lotus Eaters. He sends out a party to scout among the natives, who represented a different kind of threat. The natives

had no notion of killing my companions, not at all,
they simply gave them the lotus to taste instead...
Any crewmen who ate the lotus, the honey-sweet fruit,
lost all desire to send a message back, much less return,
their only wish to linger there with the Lotus-eaters,
grazing on lotus, all memory of the journey home
dissolved forever.

In one of the rare moments in the Odyssey where its hero acts like a good leader, Odysseus forces his men back to the ship:

...I brought them back, back
to the hollow ships, and streaming tears--I forced them,
hauled them under the rowing benches, lashed them fast
and shouted out commands to my other, steady comrades:
'Quick, no time to lose, embark in the racing ships!'--
so none could eat the lotus, forget the voyage home.

It's not clear what kind of drug Homer had in mind here, but metaphorical lotus eating is a live and well today. Many people who have been through stressful and traumatic events--not just combat soldiers--find some equivalent of lotus to eat, smoke or drink.

The problem with lotus eating is that it's so addictive, you don't even have to have gone through an trauma to get hooked. We've got lots of different kinds of lotuses in our society. In fact, lotus eating of the modern pharmaceutical variety is a major cause of death in my state of West Virginia.

Looking back, I'm amazed at how many people I know or grew up fell under the influence, literally. It can cause you to lose you homecoming even if you never went away.

THROUGH THE ROOF. Here's another item on CEO pay.

SIFTING THROUGH THE RUBBLE of Census data, here's a snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute about how working families have lost ground since the 1990s.

ON CREDIT. Consumer outrage about abuses by credit card companies has led to proposals for new regulations.

FROM THE RIDICULOUS TO THE SUBLIME. There is new evidence in support of subliminal learning.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A BARD AT WORK

Homer and His Guide, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, courtesy of wikipedia. The guide, by the way, was a goat herder.

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the Odyssey of Homer, along with links and comments about current events. If this is your first visit and you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

Back in the proverbial day, stories like the Odyssey weren't read, they were heard as the songs of traveling bards, probably performed over several evenings. There was no such thing as Netflix in Argos, after all.

The bards often traveled from place to place and sang for their supper, accompanying themselves with the lyre. Interesting etymological note: the word text as in story and textile as in clothing are related as both involve weaving, in the former case with words. My guess is that a bard's performance was more like a poetry recitation accompanied by plucks on the lyre rather than wailing and strumming.

In the Odyssey, which was originally sung by a bard, there is the character of the bard Demodocus, who sings a song within a song. (Nice try, Shakespeare with the Hamlet/play-within-a-play thing, but Homer got there first.) This gives us a chance to see what a live performance might have been like.

After nearly 10 years at war and another 10 in various jams, Odysseus has finally made it to the land of the Phaeacians, who have promised to take him home to Ithaca. In the meantime, they entertain him lavishly with feasts and games. Demodocus is part of the entertainment. Like the Homer of legend, he is blind. Here's his first appearance:

In came the herald now,
leading along the faithful bard the Muse adored
above all others, true, but her gifts were mixed
with good and evil both: she stripped him of sight
but gave the man the power of stirring, rapturous song.

After a decent meal and a drink of wine, Demodocus begins to sing of the war. He is so good that his songs of the Trojan War bring Odysseus to tears as the painful memories return and help to inspire him to reveal his true identity. (Note: Jonathan Shay suggests that the singer is himself a combat veteran, which is one reason why his song rings so true.)

Homer also gave his audience a hint of how a bard was to be treated. A bit later in the story,

...Odysseus carved a strip of loin,
rich and crisp with fat, from the white-tusked board
that still had much meat left, and called the herald over:
"Here, herald, take this choice cut to Demodocus
so he can eat his fill--with warm regards from a man who knows what suffering is...
From all who walk the earth our bards deserve
esteem and awe, for the Muse herself has taught them
paths of song. She loves the breed of harpers."

Nothing like a little self-promotion. And it's only right that those who sing for their supper should get some decent tips. Come to think of it, maybe bloggers of epic themes should too...

STOP THE PRESSES!!!! Stunning new research has found that most teens pick their noses. If we had only known this sooner...

One of the researchers made this priceless remark:

"Some people poke their nose into other people's business. I made it my business to poke my business into other people's noses."

THROUGH THE ROOF. The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at CEO pay.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, the August 25 print issue of Business Week noted that an average S&P 500 CEO would only have had to work three hours in 2007 to "earn" what a minimum wage full time worker would have earned in a year.

HAPPY UP, Y'ALL. Here's another item on the predominantly Buddhist nation of Bhutan's efforts to increase gross national happiness.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

ROCKS AND HARD PLACES

The theme for this week's Goat Rope is the future of the labor movement. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

We know that union members tend to have better wages and benefits than their non-union counterparts and that polling indicates that millions of Americans would join unions if they could. So why isn't that happening?

American Rights at Work provides some answers:

Every 23 minutes a U.S. worker is fired or retaliated against for their support of a union.

Between 1993 and 2003, NLRB reports indicate an average of 22,633 workers per year were awarded backpay from employers after being fired or demoted for trying to organize.

91% of employers force employees to attend one-on-one anti-union meetings with their supervisors during union organizing drives...

51% of employers illegally coerce workers into opposing unions with bribes or special favors during union organizing drives...


30% of employers illegally fire pro-union workers during union organizing drives...


49% of employers illegally threaten to close a worksite during union organizing drives if workers choose to form a union...

46% of workers report being pressured by management during NLRB elections...

(Click the above link for more statistics and sources.)

There oughta be a law...

...about which more tomorrow.

AT THE OTHER END OF THE SPECTRUM, here's Barbara Ehrenreich on CEO pay. An excerpt:

...CEOs of large companies earn an average of $10.8 million a year, which is 362 times as much as the average American worker, and retire with $10.1 million in their special exclusive CEO pension funds.

Citing a recent report released for Labor Day by United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies, she notes that US CEO pay "wildly exceeds that of their European counterparts, who, we are invited to believe, work equally hard."

The report states that

"The 20 highest-paid individuals at publicly traded corporations last year took home, on average, $36.4 million. That's ... 204 times more than the 20 highest-paid generals in the U.S. military."

She is quick to point out, however, that they need every penny of it since it's so expensive to be rich these days.

NOW THAT SUMMER IS KIND OF OFFICIALLY OVER, here's an item on the vanishing American vacation.

COSMIC WATERGATE. From the Charleston Daily Mail:

Nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman arrives in West Virginia's capital Friday with "overwhelming evidence" that aliens from beyond have been visiting planet Earth for a long time...

For almost half a century, Friedman has explored the UFO phenomenon and spent much of his time on the lecture circuit, meeting audiences on better than 600 campuses and appearing on national television interviews, including, of late, the "Larry King Show."

His message:

"UFOs are real, and the government has been covering them up in what I call the ‘cosmic Watergate,' " Friedman told The Register-Herald in a recent interview.

The conference will be held this weekend in Charleston.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE TURN OF A PHRASE

Icon of the Archangel Michael.

This week on Goat Rope, El Cabrero is responding to a challenge from a reader to write about the five things I admire most about Jesus. The hardest part was figuring out where to start.

If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

The fourth thing I'm going to write about is Jesus' way with words. Official Goat Rope verdict: he had one. Big time. Whole libraries have been written on the sayings of Jesus and more could and will be written. I'm going to focus today on his awesome one liners.

My personal favorites include some of his comic visual images, like when he nailed hypocrites who made a show of religion while neglecting simple justice and compassion:

You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!

And speaking of camels, let's not forget this one:

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God

.

How about these for cutting through the #$&%:

No one who puts his hand on the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.

What goes into your mouth will not defile you, but what comes out of your mouth, that will defile you.

Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

To save your life is to lose it; to lose your life is to save it.

Follow me and let the dead bury their dead.

The first shall be last and the last shall be first.

Exalt yourself and you will be humbled; humble yourself and you will be exalted.

I could go on and on but I'm sure the Gentle Reader knows where to find more.

WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS. In light of the new Census report on poverty, health coverage, and incomes, the American Friends Service Committee calls for new priorities:

Congress should redirect the $720 million a day the U.S. is spending on the Iraq war to programs that reduce poverty at home, urged the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), responding to Census Bureau data released today.

“For $720 million, we could provide over 400,000 children with health care, or over a million children with free school lunches,” notes Joyce Miller, the American Friends Service Committee assistant general secretary for justice and human rights. “America’s shameful poverty rate should lead everyone to ask ourselves how we want to spend our tax dollars — on war or on education, health care, job training, affordable housing, and the like.”

CONSIDER THE LILIES. Did you ever want your own Spiderman suit? As in a real one? A group of Italian scientists say nanotechnology could make it happen.

MORE ON THE CAMEL/NEEDLE'S EYE THING. CEOs of major U.S. companies made more in a day than the average worker in a year.

MORE ON THE WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS THING. Here's an interesting essay by David Korten on rethinking the meaning of wealth in terms of life.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

CAUGHT IN A TALE

Caption: This man is liable to tell you anything.

The guiding thread through this week's Goat Rope will be a series of musings on how people explain the world, along with many other topics.

Let me explain.

One of the main ways that people make sense of the world is through stories. We are creatures of story and it seems to be our nature to construct narratives that explain our world.

Some scholars, such as Walter Burkert, who has written a lot about mythology, ancient Greece, and religion, believe we're hardwired for stories at the biological level.

Stories aren't the only way we try to make sense of the world, but they are probably the oldest and most deeply rooted way of doing it. Other ways include but aren't limited to rational speculation and scientific investigation. But even then, when it comes to the telling, it usually takes the form of a story.

We often see or construct stories when there's no basis for it.

And no matter how old we get, there's always a little of the child's "Tell me a story!" in there somewhere.

More on that next time.

SPEAKING OF STORIES, HERE'S ONE: a study of health care systems in the U.S. and Canada found the latter performing as well as the former at a fraction of the cost and with universal coverage:

TORONTO (CP) - Health outcomes for patients in Canada are as good as or better than in the United States, even though per capita spending is higher south of the border, suggest Canadian and U.S. researchers who crunched data from 38 studies...

"In looking at patients in Canada with a specific diagnosis compared to Americans with the same diagnosis, in Canada patients had at least as good an outcome as their American counterparts - and in many situations, a better health outcome," said one of the 17 authors, Dr. P.J. Devereaux, a cardiologist and clinical epidemiologist at McMaster University in Hamilton.


"And that is important because in the United States, they're currently spending a little over $7,100 per individual on health care annually, whereas in Canada we're spending a little over $2,900 per individual annually," he said in a telephone interview from Brantford, Ont.

REINING IN CEO PAY. According to Business Week,

The House voted Friday to give shareholders at public corporations a voice in executive pay packages that typically equal 500 times the salaries of workers at those companies.

The shareholder vote under the bill would be advisory only. But Democratic backers of this provision said that investors need a say when companies losing money or laying off workers are paying executives eight- and nine-figure salaries and retirement packages.

"This is not an aberration, and there is a hue and a cry from the American people across the American landscape that is saying something must be done," said Rep. David Scott, D-Ga.

The bill will fact a tough fight in the Senate and is opposed by the White House.

MINERS DIE, CEO PAY HIGH. Rescued from last week's news, International Coal Group's CEO was paid $1.6 million in 2006, the year 12 miners died at Sago and the company's stock fell by 42 percent. But that's nothing compared with the compensation of Massey CEO Don Blankenship, who received nearly $27 million. That's enough to buy almost anything...except maybe an election.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED