Deja vu all over

It's time for federal budget kabuki theater again in the nation's capitol. House budget committee chair Paul Ryan just released his proposed budget, which is every bit as nasty and scary as it was last year. Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities refers to it as "Robin Hood in reverse--on steroids." Read more about it here.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT in growing the economy is discussed in this op-ed by a friend of mine. It's nice to see somebody else feeding the right wing trolls that lurk at online news sources.

AND JUST TO COVER ALL THE BASES, here's an item on a jellyfish inspired aquatic robot.

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Short rations again

No time to ramble today, but here are a few items that caught my eye:

FAMILIES CHALLENGE MASSEY SALE. A lawsuit is in the works challenging the sale of Massey Energy to Alpha Natural Resources in the wake of the Upper Big Branch disaster and the facts that have emerged since it occurred in April 2010.

"RIGHT WING SOCIAL ENGINEERING." Congressman Paul Ryan's plan to gut Medicare continues to generate political blowback. More on that here.

SPEAKING OF POLITICS, bees have an interesting system.

WHEN SPIDERS ATTACK,they do it really well.

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Apropos of nothing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A la carte

El Cabrero is about to hit the road for a few days but here are some items that caught my eye:

ROCK ON, ROCKEFELLER. West Virginia's senior senator Jay Rockefeller takes on plans to arbitrarily cut the federal budget at the expense of working and low income people.

NO LOVE FEAST. Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) found his plan to torpedo Medicare was a tough sell on a tour of his home state.

THE BACK DOOR PLAN. Here's more on the splendidly bad idea of global caps on federal spending.

AFTER OSAMA. Will scaling back military engagements and spending be on the agenda?

FAIRNESS ON THE BRAIN. A sense of justice (however apparently dormant at times) seems to be innate. Scientists may even have found its location in the brain.

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Of snuff and stuff

The Spousal Unit diligently scans those parts of the Charleston paper wherein readers call in to vent their views on various issues. These can range from the ridiculous to the sublime and everywhere in between. Some of the best ones wind up on the refrigerator door.

Here's one from yesterday's paper:

It's never really right to leave your filthy snuff spit for the janitor. I don't care who you are. Deal with it yourself or don't do it. It's filthy.

So there, snuff spitters.

LAID TO REST. West Virginia native and world renowned musician Hazel Dickens was laid to rest yesterday in Mercer County. Here's an item about her life from NPR.

IT'S ABOUT MONEY, NOT IDEOLOGY. Dean Baker suggests that the key to understanding the Ryan budget plan is to look at who gets what.

MILITARY SPENDING. Here's an interesting take from surprising sources.

WORKING WEST VIRGINIA. The state's labor force participation rates, generally amongst the lowest in the country, got even lower during the Great Recession. Also, public employees in the state make less than private sector workers when you control for age and education level.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES may reveal a lot about people who believe them.

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Errors in pairs

"A Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or and Individualist"--C.S. Lewis


THE PATRON SAINT OF GREED. Here's another look at Ayn Rand.

SPEAKING OF BAD IDEAS, the Republican plan to gut Medicare doesn't seem to be playing all that well.

AND THEN THERE'S THIS about taxes, the federal budget and the deficit.

MINIMUM WAGE. In many parts of the world, it's going up. Here, not so much.

PESTICIDES may be bad for a child's intelligence.

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Who the cap fit

Russian Orthodox icon of Isaiah, by way of wikipedia.

Since this is Holy Week for many Christian communities, I thought I'd trot out a passage from Isaiah (10:1-3) and send it out to Congressman Paul Ryan.

Ryan, if you recall, is the Ayn Rand devotee who came up with the proposal to gut Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP and other domestic programs to pay for more tax cuts for the rich in the name of deficit reduction.

Here goes:

Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people,
making widows their prey
and robbing the fatherless.
What will you do on the day of reckoning,
when disaster comes from afar?

I don' think you'll find that in Atlas Shrugged. Oh yeah, and one more thing: the real Atlas is the working class.

GIRD UP THY LOINS is biblical for "get ready to rumble." Literally, I think it meant something like "put on your protective groin cup--things are going to get nasty." In any case, it's time to do that. Even though Ryan's plan may not fly, there's a good chance his allies are going to try to push it through the back door during the upcoming vote on raising the debt ceiling.

They will probably try to push through a global spending cap, which would do all the same nasty things and leave out all the real things that need to be done. Here are some good talking points against this idea. Please take a look and start talking.

GETTING READY FOR GREEN. Here's an item from Forbes about a West Virginia based company that is getting ready for the solar boom.

EASTER BUNNIES AND MORE can be found in the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

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Things are tough all over

Random animal picture.

This news item caught my eye today:

Retired Massey Energy Co. chief Don Blankenship's total compensation fell 48 percent in 2010 as he tried to right the struggling company following the nation's deadliest coal mine explosion in decades, an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing shows.

Blankenship earned just over $9 million in total compensation last year, compared with $17.3 million in 2009.

Maybe we should take up a collection. I'll get right on that. As soon as I finish organizing my nonexistent tie collection.

A NO GO. Eighty four percent of Americans oppose Republican House Budget Chair Paul Ryan's proposal to kill Medicare and gut Medicaid and other programs to pay for more tax breaks for the rich in the name of deficit reduction. More on that here.

A NEW TWIST ON THE WARRIOR POSE. Wounded soldiers from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning to yoga as part of their rehabilitation.

WORKING FOR A LIVING. Here's a look at the state of West Virginia's workforce from the WV Center on Budget and Policy.

WANT TO LIVE LONGER? these things might help.

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Drop everything...

...and read this column by E.J. Dionne Jr. from the Washington Post.

He makes the point that I tried, much less eloquently, to make here last week, namely that the American republic is being deserted and betrayed by elements of its ruling class.

The sad thing (one of many sad things) is that if they succeed, in the long run they will lose, along with the rest of us.

MAKE IT PLAIN. Krugman suggests it's time to draw the line.

WHO PAYS? Not these corporations.

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Calling em like you see em

Usually this blog on weekends is devoted to silly stuff, with the heavy lifting saved for the week. Today, however, I can't help but break tradition and give a shout out to Congressman David McKinley, a Republican who represents West Virginia's First District.

Congressman McKinley was one of only four Republicans to vote against Congressman Paul Ryan's radical budget plan that would gut Medicare and severely damage Medicaid and CHIP while giving more tax breaks to the affluent.

I don't live in his district but felt led to call his Wheeling office to express my gratitude. His staff person told me that he promised long ago to protect programs for seniors and I remember that during his campaign he promised to act independently.

His courage and adherence to principles over partisanship and reality over ideology is very commendable. I would encourage anyone who lives in West Virginia, and especially those in his district to contact his office and express gratitude for his vote on this crucial issue.

Res publica

I'm not sure at what point I became a classics geek, but reading a book from my long-dead grandfather's bookshelf must have been a contributing factor. The book was one that has delighted readers for nearly 2000 years--and also inspired several of Shakespeare's plays.

I'm referring to Plutarch's Lives, which were really parallel biographical essays about prominent Greeks and Romans. Plutarch was a Greek scholar and official who lived from around 46 to 120 AD. His Lives weren't scholarly biographies, but great stories which aimed to extract moral lessons. He would compare and contrast two people who found themselves in similar situations.

Some of the characters, such as Theseus and Romulus, were more legendary than historical, but others were real people whose lives were well documented, such as Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great.

What surprised me about reading it was the fact that I liked the Romans a lot better than I thought I would. The Greeks were brilliant hot dogs but they couldn't keep it together for very long. The Romans had more staying power.

I've been thinking about the Roman Republic lately in light of current events. I am not one of those cranks who thinks that history repeats itself. But, as Mark Twain said, sometimes it rhymes. Here's the short version, which I might write more about later: the Roman Republic worked as well as it did because of a class compromise.

The Roman constitution was mostly unwritten, but it eventually granted some powers to the lower orders. The republic fell apart when the elite walked away from the compromise. While they enriched themselves and amassed huge land holdings, common people were often landless, heavily indebted, and unemployed. A period of protracted, almost gangland conflict ensued until Augustus was firmly established as undisputed emperor.

As an empire, it would endure for centuries--in the east part of it lasted until the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. But the republic was long gone before Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC.

If extremists in Congress, like Paul Ryan for example, push through their agenda to gut Medicare and Medicaid and slash other programs that benefit people with low and moderate incomes to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy, this would signal the end of what's left of the American class compromise. I'm sure the empire could hang on for a while, but the republic would be seriously damaged.

A BETTER PLAN. The Congressional Progressive Caucus unveiled its own plan, which includes investing in jobs and people.

DRAWING A LINE. Here's Paul Krugman on the president's budget proposal.

WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? Ryan is a big Ayn Rand fan and requires his staff to read that stuff.

"GOVERNMENT BY PEOPLE WHO HATE YOU." Here's Dean Baker's take-no-prisoners analysis of the Ryan plan.

SAY WHAT? Here's an interesting item on the origins of human language.

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Slouching towards Ragnarok

Recent political events have made me think of Naomi Klein's 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In it, she argues that economic elites and their political allies have a pattern of taking advantage of natural or human-made disasters to push through an extreme agenda that would never fly in normal times.

We're seeing that unroll right before our eyes as extremists in Congress are taking advantage of deficit hysteria to push through a radical budget bill developed by Congressman Paul Ryan. Short version: it would gut Medicaid, dismantle Medicare and dramatically spending on programs that benefit ordinary Americans--while extending tax cuts for the wealthy.

Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a webinar yesterday (I'm paraphrasing but it was pretty close to this) that when you look at the details, the Ryan plan is more about redistributing wealth upwards than reducing the deficit.

If this goes through, it would basically be closing time for the middle class.

However, there is something you can do. The Coalition on Human Needs is urging people to call their representatives toll free at:

1-888-245-0215

and deliver a message something like this:

I am a constituent and I strongly urge you to vote NO on the House Budget Committee's Budget Resolution. It would slash Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, education... in fact, all the investments that help Americans to be economically secure. It denies vital help for low-income and middle class people while giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to millionaires and big corporations. Please reject these extreme proposals - they would weaken federal protections in a recession and stall economic growth for us all.

The House is likely to vote on the measure this week so now is the time.

OBAMA'S PLAN. Here are reactions to the president's deficit reduction proposals from Dean Baker with the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

WEST VIRGINIA AND THE CIVIL WAR. Here's an item about our progressive past from the Washington Post.

ON THE OTHER HAND, here's an item from the New York Times about our not-so-progressive present.

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Round and round

One economist I try to follow is Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. I've learned a lot from several of his works, including a study of how abundance of natural resources affects economic growth, and such books as The End of Poverty and Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. (I even used the latter as a textbook in a college class I taught.)

This piece by Sachs in the Huffington Post caught my eye. And this quote jumped off the page:

In the end, we have gotten from President Obama what we feared from Senator McCain: an expanded war in Afghanistan, an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, sharp cuts in spending for communities and programs for the poor, a continuation of Guantanamo and military tribunals, unchecked bankers' pay and bonuses, and enough loopholes to reduce corporate taxes to less than 2 percent of GDP this year, despite a boom in corporate profits.

Yippee! Not.

That's not the whole story. But, alas, it is part of it.

ALONG THOSE LINES, here's a political rant.

DEALING WITH BULLIES. Capitulation doesn't work too well.

RISKY BUSINESS. The House Republican plan to gut Medicare carries political risks.

URGENT DINOSAUR/SAUROPOD UPDATE here.

FRACK! Marcellus shale drilling methods might wind up polluting more than burning coal.

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Uprooting the evil in the fields that we know

The Spousal Unit used to work for a social justice organization which shall remain nameless in New England. It was not unusual, depending on the news headlines, for people to call her up and scream "What are you going to do about Burma?" Or Bosnia. Or wherever the latest crisis was.

To my discredit, I found this to be hilarious. I mean no disrespect to anyone anywhere and don't mean to minimize global problems. But some people apparently believed that one could pull out pixie dust from some orifice and blow it halfway around the world and make everything OK.

We all have a limited reach and range of things which we can affect. That range will vary from time to time and situation to situation. Sometimes it might reach very far. But, as the Stoic philosopher Epictetus observed long ago, some things are within our control and others aren't. It makes more sense to me to focus on the things over which we have a degree of control.

(Did you guys notice the elegant way I avoided ending that sentence with a preposition? A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with.)

We can't do it all, but we probably can do some. Which leads to the last in a series of practical insights about working for social justice from The Lord of the Rings. As Aragorn, who knew a thing or two about a thing or two, put it,

...it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

That's a pretty tall order as it is.

FIVE REASONS CONGRESSMAN RYAN'S BUDGET PROPOSALS ARE NOT COOL: this, this, this, this, and this.

MAKE THAT six.

THE BUTCHER'S BILL. Here's what gutting Medicare and Medicaid would mean for West Virginia.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, jobless claims dropped again.

YES, VIRGINA, THERE IS A class struggle.

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