Oh good

Congressman and former vice presidential candidate Paul "Ayn Rand" Ryan was in West Virginia recently campaigning for Shelley Moore Capito in her bid for the seat of the retiring Senator Joe Rockefeller.


According to Ryan, Capito will help get rid of the Affordable Care Act, which  has brought Medicaid coverage to around 134,000 working West Virginians since Jan. 1, not counting another 40,000 or so who got coverage under the ACA in other ways. In fact, the law that Capito will presumably get rid of has made WV one of the state's with the lowest rate of uninsured residents, as noted in yesterday's post and resulted in huge savings for the state's largest hospital system..


Nice. Let them eat Atlas Shrugged.


FIGS, ANYONE? Here are the latest musings of my friend the  Rev. Jim Lewis at Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

Min-rant

Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito had an op-ed in the Gazette Sunday attacking the Affordable Care Act as unaffordable. With all due respect, I must point out that her past track record may compromise her status as an oracle.

For one thing, she had no problem with uncritically supporting the Iraq War. In fact, she was one of Bush's main cheerleaders. The cost of that war, by the way, is pushing $1 trillion dollars. And the cost in dead and wounded Americans is around 4,500 American military personnel and over 30,000 wounded. Estimates of Iraqi dead are all over the place but most estimate well over 100,000 slain. No sticker shock there.

As for the cost of lost revenue from the Bush era tax cuts, they were pushing another $1 trillion between 2001 and 2010 alone. Again, no sticker shock there.

I guess it's a question of priorities.

TOWN MEETING: WV CONGRESSMAN RAHALL ADDRESSES IRAQ

Congressman Nick J. Rahall (WV III) addresses a town meeting in Charleston.

Around 100 people attended a public forum in Charleston Saturday. WV Congressman Nick J. Rahall was the featured speaker and later fielded questions from attendees.

Rahall, who represents WV's third district, has been an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq from the beginning. In 2002, he was part of a delegation that visited that country to urge the regime to allow weapons inspectors, which it subsequently did.

That step wasn't enough to head off the Bush administration's predetermined pursuit of an unnecessary war.

Rahall recently returned from another delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Israel and Syria, noting "This is the kind of surge we need--a surge of diplomacy." He further stated that "Communication and conversation does not mean capitulation."

Here's WCHS TV's take on the event:

A packed room at the Christ Church United Methodist listened to Rahall discuss his recent trip to the Middle East. The Democrat was asked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to join her and others on the trip. He said the purpose of the trip was to prod all sides toward peace...

A child who had his hand raised for a half-hour before someone in the audience pointed him out asked Rahall why President Bush sent troops to Iraq in the first place. Rahall responded that he wished he knew the answer and that he didn't vote for this war from the beginning.

The town hall meeting was sponsored by the West Virginia Council of Churches, West Virginia Patriots for Peace, the West Virginia Citizen Action Group, the A-F-L C-I-O and the American Friends Service Committee.

The event was held in the district (WV II) of Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, a strong supporter of both the war and the Bush administration. She did not attend.

Senator Robert C. Byrd did not attend, but sent a representative with a letter supporting the forum and speaking of the need to "begin to put some sanity in our foreign policy again."

Retired WV United Methodist Bishop William Boyd Grove moderated the forum.

A RHETORICAL FLOURISH,WINNERS AND LOSERS IN IRAQ, AND ANOTHER MESS

Caption: Bantam rooster and noted free-market economist Dr. Denton "Denny" Dimwit is a master of rhetoric.

Political rhetoric is never exactly innocent, but El Cabrero suspects that the rhetoric of our time, particularly that of people in power, is way over the top.

What better antidote can there be than a dose of George Orwell's classic 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language"?

Here are some nuggets:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible...

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer...

Political language--and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

WINNERS AND LOSERS. Tha March/April issue of Foreign Policy has an interesting feature by several authors on the subject of "Who Wins in Iraq?" There are ten winners.

Sneak preview: the U.S. didn't make the list.

The top three winners were

1. Iran ("After nearly 25 years of wrestling with Saddam Hussein, Iran's Shiite rulers have the war to thank for their newfound power.");

2. Moqtada al-Sadr ("How a radical Shiite cleric became the most powerful man in Iraq"); and

3. Al Qaeda ("The terrorist network was on life support after September 11--until a new front opened in Baghdad and revived its mission.")

Other "winners" who made the list were, in order, Samual Huntington of "Clash of Civilizations" fame; China; Arab dictators; the price of oil; the United Nations (diplomacy may not be so stupid after all); Old Europe (see previus item); and Israel.

My guess is that the legitimate interests of the American people are buried somewhere in the "also ran" category.

ANOTHER MISTAKE WAS MADE. The latest collateral damage inflicted by the Bush administration hit the Medicaid program, which provides health care to around 55 million children, people with disabilities, low income families, and elderly Americans.

The so-called Deficit Reduction Act of 2006 (you know, the one that didn't reduce the deficit) included draconian cuts to social programs and harsh new rules in order to pay for more tax cuts for the rich. This is from the New York Times:

A new federal rule intended to keep illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid has instead shut out tens of thousands of United States citizens who have had difficulty complying with requirements to show birth certificates and other documents proving their citizenship, state officials say...

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

The article quotes state officials who say that the rule changes haven't turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid but has resulted in significant drops in rolls due to the difficulty of complying with the new rules.

Of West Virginia's congressional delegation, only Shelley Moore Capito supported the Deficit-Reduction-Act-Which-Didn't-Reduce-the-Deficit.


SPEAKING OF IMMIGRANTS EATING ALL THE HEALTH CARE (NOT)...Doh! The same issue of Foreign Policy cited above has a little item titled "You Can No Longer Argue..." It completes the sentence like this: "...that illegal immigrants are an excessive burden on U.S. healthcare...According to a RAND Corp. study on healthcare spending in the United States, foreign-born residents, particularly the undocumented, use far fewer medical services relative to their population share than U.S.-born citizens."

Legal immigrants make up 9.9 percent of the population and account for 7 percent of health care spending; undocumented workers are estimated to be 3.2 percent and account for 1.5 percent of healthcare spending.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

EDMUND BURKE: THE BEST CONSERVATIVE but first some WV items

Caption: This amphibian considers reptiles to be reckless innovators.

FIRST THE GOOD NEWS: The Employee Free Choice Act passed the U.S. House by a margin of 241-185. Among WV's delegation, only Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito voted against it. There's a good post about that at West Virginia Blue. See the item "Capito spins anti-union vote as pro-union."

WHAT THE? While you're at WV Blue, scroll on down to the post "Tax Breaks for the Rich" for info on the WV Senate's proposal to drastically cut corporate taxes. This would mean drastic cuts in education, services, and infrastructure. At this moment, the Gazette reports that it doesn't seem likely to pass the house, which is a good feature.

THE HORSE'S MOUTH. Check out Jim Lewis's new Notes from Under the Fig Tree for an account of his arrest at Congresswoman Capito's office over her Iraq position, his hearing, and other interesting items.

NOW BACK TO THE SERIES ON CONSERVATISM:

If there is an Achilles' heel of conservatism, it is it's historic tendency to side with with politically and economically dominant groups. When this happens, there are pretty simple reasons for it: nearly any society consists of winners and losers. The winners want to keep their winnings, whether they were gained by fair means or foul.

(In fairness, it could also be said that the Achilles' heel of radicals is the belief that a major transformation of society by peaceful or violent means would bring about an improvement for the majority of people outside the ruling elites. To put it mildly that's not always the case and often such changes make things worse for everyone.)

But I'd say the best conservatives can transcend this weakness. The British statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is a case in point.

Born in Ireland, Burke served for many years in Parliament where he was spoke eloquently and effectively against abuses of power. He defended the American colonists and recommended a conciliatory policy in the 1770s and later exposed English crimes against the people of India.

He was, in other words, a progressive conservative, i.e. one who recognized that society should be prudently reformed and that abuses should be corrected, but he was realistic enough to know that most human actions have unintended consequences.

He parted company with some of his former radical allies, including his former friend the Anglo-American revolutionary Thomas Paine, over the French Revolution. His 1790 Reflections on the Revolution in France is one of the best books of political theory ever written.

Burke had no doubts that the excesses of the French monarchy needed to be corrected. But he was convinced that one should seek to reform past abuses in a way that respected a people's history and tradition and that trying to start again with a blank slate would lead to violence, chaos, war, and tyranny...which is pretty much what happened. While El Cabrero intends no disrespect to the French Revolution, it was, well, a goat rope.

Here's are some sample quotes:

The science on constructing a commonwealth...is not to be taught a priori... The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs...The rights of men in governments are...often in balances between differences of good; in compromises sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil...

So when and how should good people deal with abuses of political power and when should patience give way to resistance?

The speculative line of demarcation where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act, or a single event, which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged, indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom nature has qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands; the brave and bold, from the love of honorable danger in a generous cause; but, with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good.

He also had a long-term view of society as a partnership "between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born." That's an insight we could use today given the disastrous impact of this generation on the earth's resources.

Sometimes he could go too far, as for example, when he referred to the mass of lower class English subjects as "the swinish multitude."

Thomas Paine responded to his former ally's Reflections with Parts I and II of The Rights of Man, where he accused Burke, with some justification, of pitying the aristocracy and ignoring the sufferings of the lower classes: "He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird."

Actually, the world needs both its Paines and Burkes in proper measure. In the end, both were right. As Craig Nelson wrote of British political history in his recent Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations,

In the end, Burke's Reflections accurately predicted that the French Revolution would finish in bloodshed and tyranny, while Paine's Rights just as brilliantly anticipated, two hundred years ahead of its time, the style of government for close to half the world's nations today. The great irony of this epic struggle in British political history is that, when it came to dear old Albion, both would be right. The English polity over the coming decades would glacially reform itself, just as Burke proposed, but into a structure not all that different from the one envisioned by Rights of Man.

It would be nice to think they are somewhere now arguing about who was right...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WV NEWS FLASH AND UPDATES

We interrupt Goat Rope's ongoing series on conservatism for this news flash.

(You guys must be living right--two Goat Rope posts today!)

((You'll have to wait for the next post for the gratuitous animal picture.))

PRIEST PLEADS GUILTY TO TRESPASSING ON CAPITO'S OFFICE OVER IRAQ SURGE.

I guess you could call him The Capito One. The Rev. Jim Lewis, a retired Episcopal priest, pleaded guilty yesterday of trespassing in Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito's Charleston office.

Rev. Lewis visited the office on Feb. 16 with a delegation from WV Patriots for Peace to express concern for Capito's vote against a House resolution opposing President Bush's escalation of the war in Iraq. While other members left the office, Lewis remained, noting that U.S. troops in Iraq had to stay so he would too. He was ordered to pay a fine of $50 or do a day of community service.

Here's the Gazette story.

Here is an excerpt from the statement Rev. Lewis gave in municipal court:

Your honor, I find it ludicrous that I have been charged with a citation for trespassing.

Mr. Bush has received no citation for trespassing in Iraq.

Ms. Capito has received no citation for having been an accessory to our trespassing in Iraq.

No one in the CIA, or the Bush Administration, has received a citation for trespassing on international law, and the human rights of prisoners, for having shipped over a thousand prisoners to other countries where they are being tortured.

No one in the Justice Department has received a citation for having trespassed on the Constitution by using illegal wiretaps and surveillance techniques to spy on U.S citizens.

No one in Congress has received a citation for having trespassed on U.S. taxpayers by allocating billions upon billions of dollars, many of them squandered illegally, for a war that threatens the very soul of our nation...

I want to apologize for any trouble, inconvenience or anxiety I may have caused the staff at Representative Capito’s office.


My fervent hope is that everyone involved in this situation will come to understand that my actions were motivated by conscience, a sense of duty to my God and to my country, and, last but not least, my concern for all peace-loving people who work and pray for an end to this war.

BISHOP'S STATEMENT OF SUPPORT: In addition, WV Episcopal bishop the Rt. Rev. W. Michie Klusmeyer issued the following statement of support:

This communication comes to attest that the Rev. Jim Lewis is an Episcopal priest in good standing, resident in the Diocese of West Virginia. As such, he agreed at his ordination to “ proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ”. It is our understanding in the Episcopal Church that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a Gospel of peace.

In his action of “sitting in” at Shelley Moore Capito’s office on February 16, he was following the tenants of the Church that call for promoting peace and non-support of war. Father Lewis was speaking out specifically against the war in Iraq, consistent with the voice of the Episcopal Church against unjust war. The war in Iraq does not meet the “just War” criteria. Beginning with St. Augustine in the early 7th century, the church has supported the Just War criteria in evaluating acts of defense and aggression. Three basic conditions for a just war were established at that time, and elaborated upon over the centuries. The three basic conditions for a just war include: authorized authority, just cause, and rightful intention. Although President Bush is clearly our authorized authority in the US according to just war conditions, “just cause” and “rightful intentions” have not been adhered to in this war.

In his endeavor to serve as a prophetic voice, father Lewis has repeatedly attempted to speak with our elected leadership to vote the “will of the people” rather than the will of the Party. When that failed, due to an unwillingness to listen to the electorate, Father Lewis proceeded to remain in Congresswoman Moore Capito’s office until such time as he spoke with her, or was removed.

As Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, I strongly support Father Lewis in his message, and in his actions.

Rock on, Episcopalians! Did El Cabrero mention he was one too?

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL...The U.S. House of Representatives is likely to vote on the Employee Free Choice Act today. This bill would restore the right of workers to form unions. Specifically, it would allow workers to organize when a majority sign a card authorizing union representation, increase penalties for companies that illegally fire or harass workers for trying to organize and would provide mediation and arbitration for first contracts. It would be an important step towards restoring the middle class and putting the country on the road to shared prosperity.

If you haven't contacted your congressperson yet, now would be the time. Here's some information.

Coincidentally or maybe not, Congresswoman Capito is the only member of WV's delegation who has not come out in support of EFCA.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: INSURMOUNTABLE