Good point

We hear a whole lot in this political season about President Obama's "War on Coal," which is basically a cynical way to assign the blame for the industry's woes, many of which are due to basic market forces, on a person who just happens not to be white. The specific political subtext in all this is the assumption that if the president's opponent wins, everything will be all good here all the time.

Meanwhile, nobody around here seems to have noticed that programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which Romeny/Ryan have targeted for gutting, have an even bigger impact on the state's economy than the coal industry.

The folks at the WV Center on Budget and Policy point out here that

...in 2011 approximately $12.7 billion or 20.5 percent of the state’s $62 billion in personal income came from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The U.S. average was 12.8 percent...

For comparison, only 5.5 percent or $3.4 billion of personal income in 2011 was derived from coal mining and natural gas extraction – two of the largest industries in the state.

I don't mean to belittle the economic hardships in the coalfields. These need to be faced in a proactive way rather than used to score dubious political points. But imagine how bad things would look in places like southern West Virginia if drastic cuts to the bedrock safety net--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid--went hand in hand with market-driven declines in mining.

MORE ON THAT here.

A TALE OF TWO STORMS. Krugman does a heckuva job contrasting Katrina and Sandy.

IT'S ALREADY WORKING. Here's a cheer for the Affordable Care Act.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A radical Tory

I've been making my slow way through James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, mostly to indulge my affection for 18th century English prose. Johnson was an interesting person, one for whom conversation was a game of one-up-manship.

His political views were generally very conservative. His groundbreaking dictionary of the English language included the following definitions of the two parties of his day:

Tory: One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the church of England, opposed to a Whig.

Whig: The name of a faction.

Yet on a critical issue of his day this hardcore Tory was ahead of his time. At one point, Boswell noted disapprovingly that "He had always been very  zealous against slavery in every form..." He even went so far as to drink a toast at Oxford in which he said "Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies."

Unlike Boswell, Johnson had no sympathy for the American revolutionaries of the 1770s. In fact, he put his finger precisely on a major contradiction of the period when he asked, "how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of the negroes?"

Good question.

FRAME THIS. Here's George Lakoff on what to look for in tonight's presidential debates.

COOL RANT by a good friend here.

IT'S NICE TO BE IMPORTANT, but it's more important to be nice. If you're a baboon anyway.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Let them eat emergency rooms

It's kind of entertaining these days watching the whole political circus. Or circuses, to be more exact, there being so many to choose from. I must admit to being amused by presidential candidate Mitt Romney's latest prescription for health care for the uninsured: using the emergency room.

Ironically, this is something that another Mitt Romney not so long ago denounced as "socialism," as this Huffington Post article points out. His  Massachusetts plan, this Mitt said, was designed to put a stop to that.

On the other hand, many conservatives view the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, as socialistic, even though it was modeled largely on the Massachusetts plan associated with you know who.

Is anybody else confused yet? Would the real socialist please stand up...

Meanwhile, for all the talk about how unpopular health care reform is supposed to be, I imagine there would be hell to pay if provisions of it were actually repealed.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, WV is on the verge of making decisions about how its health care system will unfold. I wouldn't look for a lot of boldness here.

HE'S RIGHT THIS TIME. El Cabrero is not always on the same page with David Brooks, but I think he nailed with this piece on conservatism old and new. To tell the truth, I kind of like the old version.

A DRASTIC CURE. An historical study of Korean eunuchs suggest that castration could lead to longer lives. Which leads me to ask, who wants to live forever anyway?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Show up and smile

Earlier this month, presidential candidate Mitt Romney held a rally in Ohio which was intended to show that coal country was solidly behind him. It turns out that those miners who attended were told to do so by their employer. The event was mandatory and unpaid.

Another example of democracy at its finest.

SPEAKING OF COAL, here's some interesting news in the ongoing Upper Big Branch federal investigation.

THE ECONOMY ISN'T GROWING MUCH but poverty is.

WHAT MAKES INEQUALITY WORSE? Declining union membership.

HEALTH CARE REFORM. Most West Virginians favor parts of it.

CULTURE, CUSTOMS AND TRADITION aren't just for humans anymore.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED