One more push for an expanded Child Tax Credit

 Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021 in response to the human and economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a complicated piece of legislation that included aid to state and local governments as well as individuals and families.

One of the most important—if temporary— parts was an expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which provided monthly payments to families with children based on the age and number of children. During the all too brief time that it was in effect, child poverty dropped with record speed in 2021, reaching an all time low of around five percent. Workforce participation of parents and caregivers increased while the expanded CTC was in effect.

Research showed that families spent most of the additional income on things you might expect food, housing costs, child care, utilities. People who study child well-being have long regarded economic security as a protective factor that reduces the probability of maltreatment and abuse. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, receipt of CTC payments were associated with a decline in maltreatment reports and emergency room visits.

Statistics alone aren’t the whole story. Between July and December 2021, I was part of a group effort to collect stories from West Virginia parents and caregivers about what effect the CTC had on their families. The results were about as basic as you can get. 

One family was finally able to fix a broken toilet, which is kind of a big deal. Some children got beds of their own for the first time in their lives. Other parents were able to buy tires or repair vehicles so they could go to work. Another bought enough firewood to get through the winter. Others bought clothes and shoes for school. Some children were able to take part in sports, extracurricular activities, or go to lessons they would otherwise have missed.

You get the idea. If you were in one of those families, you can probably add to the list.

Unfortunately, in January 2022, Congress allowed the expanded CTC to expire. This ended much needed assistance for millions of working class and low-income families. The child poverty rate more than doubled in 2022.

Now there’s a chance to undo at least some of that damage. Despite extreme political polarization, the Republican-led US House of Representatives approved a bipartisan tax plan that would partially expand the CTC again. To her credit, Republican Representative Carol Miller, who represents southern West Virginia, supported the measure. It passed the House by an incredible 357-70 margin. 

This expansion of the CTC is not as generous or inclusive as the 2021 version, but it could benefit 16 million low-income families and lift as many as 500,000 children out of poverty by 2025.

The bill is now stalled in the Senate but it’s not dead yet. In an era of razor thin majorities, every vote counts. It would probably have more of a positive proportional impact in West Virginia than in most other states.

West Virginia’s senators could help move it across the finish line. This time around I hope they do.

(This appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Too good to be true?

 A month or so back, I spoke with New York Times reporter Jason DeParle, who was working on a story about child poverty in West Virginia. That article came out yesterday (or was it the day before?) and it had some surprising conclusions, the biggest one being that child poverty declined dramatically in the US over the last few decades and that this change was even more dramatic in West Virginia:

 Child poverty has plunged over the last generation, and few places have experienced larger declines than West Virginia, a state that once epitomized childhood deprivation. Poverty among the state’s children fell nearly three-quarters from 1993 to 2019, according to a comprehensive analysis by Child Trends, a nonpartisan research group, conducted in partnership with The New York Times. That compares to a 59 percent drop nationwide.

If West Virginia’s child poverty rate was as high now as in 1993, nearly 80,000 additional children would be poor, a population larger than the state capital, Charleston.

That was news to me, especially considering that these changes didn't include the vast influx of COVID related federal aid from the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan. It kinda sounds too good to be true, although my WV comrades have worked on that issue for years and years.

Just when I was beginning to think my life wasn't a total waste, a friend--we can call him Mr. Buzzkill--sent me this response to the national poverty numbers in the Times article. Short version: different poverty measures show vastly different results.

However that data fights wind up, I did find some encouragement in the story itself, which profiles some West Virginia families living in or near poverty. It showed how years of undramatic grunt work on policy at the state and even county level can eventually show some real positive changes for real people. 

I'm talking about things people worked on here, offensively and defensively, like EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) outreach, defending SNAP, advocating for access to education for people in the "welfare" system and challenging its more draconian aspects, supporting state adoption and expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program to 300 percent of the federal poverty level over13 years, Medicaid expansion, free school breakfast and lunch, defending child care, support services for people on or leaving TANF, raising the state minimum wage and such can really make a difference in the lives of real people.

I think at least those programs and policies that so many West Virginias have fought for made things less bad than they would otherwise have been. I'll take that.

 

Names to words

 Sometimes the names of people, real or fictional, become words. Sometimes that's a good thing, like the helpful Mentor in the Odyssey, who helped the young Telemachus, son of the wandering Odysseus. If you like Russian novels, you might call a tortured intellectual friend a Raskolnikov. 

A lot of times, however, it's not a good thing. Examples include Judas, Benedict Arnold or Scrooge. Those who remember World War II might remember that the term "quisling" as in traitor came from Norwegian Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling.

If he's not careful, a certain senator from West Virginia might become a word. Not in a good way. Yesterday I saw an article that reported a 40 percent increase in child poverty since the expanded Child Tax Credit ended in December. The headline referred to "the Manchin effect."

It's easy to repent of the sins of others, but I can't imagine wanting to be remembered for that in this world...or judged for it in the world to come if such there be.

Quick action needed to save the Child Tax Credit

Calling all WV people! There is a disturbing article in Politico to the effect that WV Senator Joe Manchin may want to throw hundreds of thousands of WV kids--and millions from other places--under the bus by slicing the Child Tax Credit from proposed federal legislation. The expanded CTC has reduced child poverty by millions since it went into effect in July. And it dies today unless congress takes action, with Manchin being the key vote.

Manchin has been saying he's not hearing from West Virginians about this. We know that's not true but I'm hoping you can make it even less true by calling his Charleston  (304) 342-5855 and DC 202-224-3954 offices ASAP to save the program

Perfect timing for a seasonal reference

 I think most people can agree that it’s been a tough year, but it hasn’t been all bad. We’re in the middle of the fastest drop in child poverty in the nation’s history, thanks largely to the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) that went into effect on July 15.

Around 346,000 West Virginia children have benefited from the credit. 

According to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, “The fourth monthly payment of the expanded Child Tax Credit kept 3.6 million children from poverty in October 2021. The Child Tax Credit reached 61.1 million children in October and, on its own, contributed to a 4.9 percentage point (28 percent) reduction in child poverty compared to what the monthly poverty rate in October would have been in its absence.”

That’s pretty major, and the numbers they’ve been tracking have been getting better month by month since it went into effect in July of this year. Given the chance, they’ll just keep getting better.

Contrary to fears that the CTC would discourage employment, the US jobless rate is at a 21 month low, while Governor Justice announced in October that the WV not seasonally adjusted unemployment rate  was 3.2 percent, the lowest on record.

That shouldn’t be a surprise if you think about it. The boost in monthly income is helping people stay in the workforce while looking after the needs of children.

Recently I’ve been part of an effort to collect and share stories from WV families about what they’re doing with the CTC. Here’s a sample in no particular order of how people are using it to improve their lives: paying for braces for kids, new clothing and shoes for kids, paying off bills, buying food, winter heating, car payments and insurance, kid’s doctor bills, fixing water problems, buying a new toilet, internet access, school supplies, moving to a better and safer home, visiting family members not seen in years, mortgages, utilities and preventing cutoffs, household supplies, and extracurricular activities for kids like sports, camps and cheerleading.

No doubt it’s going to make Christmas a little brighter for many families here and around the country. 

Unfortunately, all those benefits could die this month unless congress passes legislation to extend it without restrictions that would cut off those who need it most. 

Given the holiday timing, I can’t help thinking about the comments of pre-repentance Scrooge in Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. When reminded of the needs of the poor at this time of year, he asks “Are there no prisons?...And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?”, referring to the miserable shelters indigent people were sent to at that time.

When he was told that many poor families would rather die than go to such places, he says "If they would rather die…they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

(I would like to think that we’ve made a little progress in mercy, compassion and social policy since Dickens penned those words in 1843.)

In the end, even Scrooge experienced a change of heart at this time of year and did the right thing. I hope something similar happens in the US Senate, with some help from West Virginia.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Some really good news for kids and families

 I’m a big fan of getting quick results ... the good kind, anyway. It doesn’t happen very often and is even rarer when it comes to solving big social problems.

But it’s happening right now for millions of American families, in terms of increasing food security and reducing economic hardships.

Here’s the background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Census Bureau developed the Household Pulse Survey, which is designed to quickly and accurately collect information on how American households are doing and distribute it in as close to real time as possible “to inform federal and state response and recovery planning.”

One very recent survey measured the impact of the newly expanded and refundable child tax credit, which went into effect July 15 and reached about 35 million families with a monthly credit of up to $300 for kids age 5 and under and $250 for those age 6-17. The tax credit has the potential to dramatically reduce child poverty and the long-lasting damage that causes for as long as the program lasts.

The results after just one installment have been startling. The census survey found that food insecurity, defined as “sometimes or often not having enough to eat,” in households with children dropped by nearly 24%. Specifically, before tax credit benefits went out, about 11% of households with kids experienced food insecurity. After the first round, that number dropped to 8.4%, a reduction of almost one-fourth.

Households without children didn’t see any improvement in this area, so we can safely attribute the change to the child tax credit.

(As a math-challenged person, I sometimes find the difference between percentages and percentage points to be confusing, and I’ve stumbled over it more than once, but a percentage point is just the number for arithmetic difference between two percentages, while a percentage expresses that difference as a fraction of 100.)

The survey also asked families how hard it was to meet basic household expenses. Not surprisingly, households with children were more likely than those without them to report that making ends meet was “somewhat difficult” to “very difficult” before and after the child tax credit went into effect. But after just one round, the number of families with children experiencing hardships declined by 8% while it increased for adult-only households by nearly 5%, an effect not as large as that for food security but still statistically significant.

Where was the money spent? Pretty much where you’d expect: About 57% of households spent at least part of the money on educational expenses, including books, supplies, tutoring, tuition, transportation and after-school activities; 47% spent some on food; 28% spent it on internet, telephones and utilities; 25% bought clothes; and 17% of households with a child under age 5 spent the money on child care.

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, had this to say about the early results: “It looks like families are using this to pay for basic needs that their kids have. These are things we know many families are struggling with. This extra payment is going to reduce the number of families at risk.”

Not all the money was spent right away, however. Nearly a third of parents saved most of it — and that’s a good thing, too. Many financial experts stress the importance of personal savings for many purposes, including a cushion for emergencies, major purchases such as homes or vehicles, financial security and higher education.

About 40% spent most of the credit paying down household debt, which has nearly doubled to about $15 trillion over the past 20 years. Home mortgages make up the lion’s share of debt, but there’s also plenty from student loans, car payments, credit cards and such. Paying debt down or off is a huge stress reliever and has been called the key to financial success.

That’s a pretty impressive record for a 1-month-old program. If it’s extended beyond 2021, a measure now under consideration in the U.S. Senate, this could be a life changer and lifesaver for millions of Americans.

And our two senators will have a lot to say about that.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

A very big deal for kids

 Child poverty is expensive. According to a 2018 article in the journal Social Work Research, it costs the U.S. over $1 trillion a year, or around 5.4% of the country’s gross domestic product.

Contributing factors to that price tag are things like loss of economic productivity, costs associated with increased health care needs and contacts with the legal system, homelessness and mistreatment.

That may sound like a lot, but tons of solid research has emerged over the last several years about the long-term effects of adverse childhood experiences on social/emotional/cognitive development as well as health, substance use disorder, incarceration and lowered economic outcomes.

While not every child who experiences poverty has a lot of adverse childhood experiences —and many kids not in poverty have plenty — these experiences are strongly associated with economic hardship and poverty, both in childhood and later in life.

Conversely, economic supports and a positive cash flow are protective factors from many of these negative outcomes. Poverty may not directly cause all of them, but it can make everything worse.

For that matter, our relative position within a given society, even if we’re not at the very bottom, has a lot of impact on how healthy we are and how long we’ll live.

The decades-long public health research of British epidemiologist Michael Marmot, author of “The Status Syndrome: How Social Status Affects Our Health and Longevity” and other books, has identified some basic factors at work here.

The short version is we’re social animals who need a degree of autonomy or control over our lives to thrive.

And we crave the ability to fully participate in the society in which we live. Lack of one or both increases the fight-flight-or-freeze stress response, which is adaptive for short term dangers like a tiger attack but deadly in the long term.

One experiment really opened my eyes to the long-term effects of low socioeconomic status in childhood. Nearly 200 healthy volunteers were exposed to rhinovirus, which causes the common cold. They were also surveyed about their family background and experiences and then were observed for several days.

Amazingly, those whose parents didn’t own their homes or owned it for a shorter period in childhood were more likely to get sick — and this effect was independent of the volunteers’ current age, sex, race, body mass or socioeconomic status.

It seems that these experiences engrave themselves on our bodies whether we’re aware of the impact or not.

That would be the bad news. The good news is that, thanks to a provision of the federal American Rescue Plan, child poverty is about to drop by nearly half. Right now. The only questions are how well we do at signing people up for the right help and how long the program lasts.

The American Rescue Plan expanded the federal Child Tax Credit and made it refundable for most families, to the tune of $250 per month for kids aged 6-17 and $300 for those under 6, including newborns.

In terms of impact, this could be as huge as the enactment of Social Security in 1935, Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, or the Affordable Care Act of 2010. According to Social Work Research, “it is estimated that for every dollar spent on reducing childhood poverty, the country would save at least $7 with respect to the economic costs of poverty.”

Most families won’t have to do a thing to qualify for the credit, provided the adults file tax returns with the IRS. Fully 35.2 million American families received the first installment on July 15. It’s also estimated that 346,000 West Virginia children, 93% of all children in the state, qualify for the credit.

However, those who are in greatest danger of missing out are those who need it most. It’s been estimated that as many as four million American families might be eligible for the credit but didn’t file income taxes due to low earnings. It’s hard to know the exact numbers of such families in West Virginia, which has more than its share of low-income families, but we’re clearly talking about thousands of kids and tens of millions of dollars.

The IRS created an online portal for non-tax filers and they’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible, but it does require basic information, including things like an email address and Social Security numbers.

Some families, especially those without broadband, may need help in applying.

Fortunately, the American Rescue Plan offers a potential solution. The state of West Virginia will receive a total of $1.35 billion in federal aid, while city and county governments will receive around $677 million to address the impacts of the pandemic, including economic hardships. If even a small fraction of that funding could support outreach, including paying navigators to help sign people up, it could make a huge difference.

In addition, community groups, places of worship and public agencies such as libraries could all play a role in improving the lives of West Virginia’s children by helping to get the word out. Probably the biggest opportunity to reach those who are missing out will come as kids go back to school.

Mahatma Gandhi famously called poverty “the worst form of violence.” We should make the most of this chance to dramatically reduce its toll. And fight like hell to make that permanent.

(This appeared as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Tough times

This hasn't been the best of news weeks for West Virginia. First, a Kids Count report came up that child poverty in the state has increased by 13,000 kids since 2008. On top of that, we now have the highest unemployment rate in the nation. There are things that would help, given the political will, as this article from the Clarksburg Exponent-Telegram reports.

Something else that would help would be for Congress to put up or shut up by helping Appalachia's coalfields transition to a more diversified economy. So far, they've done neither.

Laying it out

Earlier this week, I had the chance to participate in a press conference held by Our Children Our Future, the campaign to end child poverty in West Virginia. At the conference, we laid out our legislative goals for the coming year.

Among the top five priorities are:

*securing funding for key family support programs. Over the last few years, funding for these has been cut and then restored after a major hassle. We're hoping for a better solution this time.

*expanding access to early childhood education. A little invested here can yield and save a lot down the road.

*reforming WV's juvenile justice system. I mean really, how much sense does it make to lock up truants at a cost of over $100,000 per year compared to dealing with the problem in the community.

*protecting Medicaid and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) at the state and federal level and expanding access to mental health coverage.

*protecting WV's drinking water. Despite last year's Freedom Industries chemical spill that poisoned the water of 300,000 West Virginians, some in the legislature want to gut last year's water safety bill. We are not amused.

It's going to be a changed landscape next year politically, but we're hoping to find bipartisan support for these key issues.

You can read more here, here, and here.

In fairness to chimps...

In yesterday's post, I said some unflattering things about our cousins the chimpanzees (not that I don't say worse things about humans most days). Here's the other side of the coin. If we inherited our capacity for intra-species violence from our chimplike common ancestor, it looks like we also got a sense of fairness from them too. It's always a mixed bag.

SCISSORBILL was a term used by the Industrial Workers of the World back in the day to describe workers who just didn't get it. The term refers to the bill of a duck, as in cutting off your nose to spite your face. As in low income workers who finally get health care from the Affordable Care Act but support politicians who want to repeal it. Earlier this week, I linked a NY Times article about that. Here's another take on the subject.

CHILD POVERTY. Despite some progress, it got worse in WV in 2013, according to the latest Census data..

First steps

I'm feeling pretty grateful at the moment. For the first time in something like three months, I actually jogged first one mile, then two, over the last couple of days.

I'd been having a great running year (for me), including some longish trail runs and a half marathon. I started working on speed, a relative thing, and ran my best miles in 10 years. Then it happened. I came down suddenly with plantar fasciitis, which is the next best thing to having a nail in your heel.

Running was out of the question. Some days, especially in the morning, I could hardly walk. Other forms of exercise, like skipping rope or kicking a heavy bag, were also no-nos reinforced by serious pain.

Some things you just have to wait out. I think yoga helped, especially sun salutations where you hold the downward facing dog for several breaths.

I'm not better yet, but the nail in my heel is now something like a thumbtack. And, while my running may look like walking or even a zombie shuffle to others, I'm glad to have it back.

For those who aren't runners, it's hard to explain, but there really is no substitute. Anything else is just making do until you can do it again.

WHACKADOODLES who want to shut down the government aren't polling too well these days.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD. In some countries, extreme poverty is declining.

THINK ABOUT THIS. "Poverty is more harmful to children than gestational exposure to cocaine," according to a recent study.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The big three

Yesterday, I took a visiting friend and co-worker to see some of my favorite parts of the state, which are around the New River Gorge area. (It seems like the only time I get there is when I'm doing that.) It struck me once again that the three necessary elements of any self-respecting WV scene is the obligatory combination of mountain, river and railroad track. I think of them as the Appalachian trinity.

MAKING  A SPLASH. Several legislators got an earful yesterday when members of the Our Children Our Future campaign to end child poverty in WV visited the capitol. Read more here.

BETTER OFF? Lots of people will be under the Affordable Care Act.

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

From Vikings to Quakers

I've been amusing myself lately by blogging about the Vikings, those fun loving Norsemen of old who liked to swill mead and plunder monasteries. I was even more amused to learn a while back of a connection between Vikings and Quakers, two groups most people don't usually associate together.

It turns out that the North Midlands of England, where Quakerism was strong in its early years, was also the place with the most Viking colonists back in the day. In David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in American, the author quotes historian Hugh Barbour as saying,

"...in the central region of the North, the Pennine moorland, where Quakerism was strongest, the villages were mainly Norse in origin and name, and Norse had been spoken there in the Middle Ages. From the Norsemen came the custom of moots, or assemblies in the open at a standing stone or hilltop grave, which may have influenced the Quaker's love for such meeting places."

I enjoy the thought that the great great great....grandfather of an earnest Friend might have been a berserker back in the day. I guess it's more proof that Odin has a sense of humor.

POVERTY AS A CHILDHOOD DISEASE is discussed here.

TWO FROM COAL TATTOO. Here's a post from my friend Ken Ward about the future central Appalachian coal. along with one on the new book about Massey Energy and its former CEO Don Blankenship

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED
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Full load

A lot of interesting items have caught my eye recently. First, El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia is, according to a Gallup poll, officially the most stressed state. Hawaii was the least. Maybe they ought to send us to Hawaii for a while and see how that works.

ONE POSSIBLY STRESSED WEST VIRGINIAN is a Republican legislator who suggested elementary kids should have to work for their meals, the poor ones anyway. Stories about the debate on the Feed to Achieve Act, when the comments took place have shown up on the Huffington Post and a Washington Post blog.


Here's what he said during the debate: "If they miss a lunch or they miss a meal they might not, in that class that afternoon, learn to add, they may not learn to diagram a sentence, but they'll learn a more important lesson."

I'm not sure what that lesson might be. 

AT LEAST OUR LEGISLATURE DIDN'T DO THIS. According to the Post's Wonkblog, Montana may have blown its chance to expand Medicaid because one confused legislator cast an unintentional vote. Doh!

HAIRY THUNDERER OR COSMIC MUFFIN? Another study suggests that people who believe in a punitive God are more likely to have emotional problems. And, I would surmise, to kill people in the name of that God.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

This is what happens...

...when 20 odd turkeys sleep in a redbud tree.

(In case the picture is unclear, the horizontal tree used to be a good bit more vertical, no thanks to this guy and his buddies.)

CHILDREN IN AMERICA fare worse than those in most Western nations.

ON THIS DATE 101 YEARS AGO, members of the United Mine Workers began their historic Paint Creek/Cabin Creek strike that marked the beginning of the Mine Wars--and eventually inspired the writing of the song Solidarity Forever, which has become the international anthem of the labor movement. Too bad people don't know the verses better than the chorus...

CALLING OUT THE SENATE. This op-ed by Gabrielle Giffords is getting a lot of attention.

AND AGAIN, this time by WV native Michael Tomasky.

AYN RAND WOULD NOT BE AMUSED. According to a new poll, most Americans think the distribution of wealth is unfair and that the federal government should do something about it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Their admonishing smile

This is a busy time for El Cabrero, so rather than hunt up stuff to post each day, the theme for this stretch is the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essays and poems had such a huge influence on much of American life and letters in the mid 1800s. This week, we're looking at his essay Nature, in which he makes more than one good point.

I admire this passage, which is in part about solitude and in part about how we don't value that which we take for granted.

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches  One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years  how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty  and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

It really is true that if these celestial lights were only visible once in a great while we would give them more of the attention and reverence they deserve. The same is no doubt true of many other things.

WAR ON COAL? Whatever.

CHILD POVERTY PROBLEM? Real.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Child poverty

There are plenty of downers in West Virginia's political landscape. But one encouraging thing is a growing campaign to combat child poverty in the Mountain State. The effort is spearheaded by the WV Healthy Kids and Families Coalition but includes dozens of partners, some of whom agree on very little else besides the idea that child poverty is bad.

I guess that's a start.

Here's an op-ed on some of the issues and the campaign from my friend the Rev. Matthew Watts.

Nobody planned it this way, but through fortuitous timing, Roman Catholic Bishop Michael Bransfield released a pastoral letter on child poverty titled Setting Children Free: Loosening the Bonds of Poverty in West Virginia just as the campaign is ramping up.

It's too soon to tell how much impact this  campaign over the coming months and years will have but a huge one would be nice.

SPEAKING OF CHILDHOOD, there's a lot of evidence that negative experiences in that period can have lifelong impacts. One such study is the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, which has an interesting story of its own. To find out more, check out this three part story here, here, and here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A blast from the past

In between discs of an unabridged recording of Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogy, this weekend I caught this NPR story on an old musical favorite, Peter Tosh, once a member of Bob Marley's Wailers. It's worth a listen.

As an economic justice person working for an organization that is best known for advocating peace, I have to admit that I have a particular fondness for the chorus of his song "Equal Rights"

Everyone is crying out for peace yes
None is crying out for justice
I don't want no peace
I need equal rights and justice

I must admit to have mellowed a bit with age; I still want justice, but I'll take peace too if it's on the table.

CAN'T OR WON'T act to fix the economy? Mostly won't.

RETHINKING THE DRUG WAR. It hasn't worked too well.

PROTECTING THE POOR. A wide variety of WV groups have called on their congressional delegation to spare programs that are lifelines to low income people in budget deliberations.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Real fear

El Cabrero just finished teaching an evening college sociology class on Deviance and Social Control. I enjoy teaching that class as it provides a chance to look at the dark side of social life, including the damage done both by those who violate social rules and the damage done by those who get to make social rules.

(In case you were wondering, the latter group has done way more harm.)

I try to make such classes as practical as possible and bring in as much good information and ideas as I can find from many sources. One book that I took another look at this time was The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, which was first published in the 1990s.

De Becker is a security expert with considerable experience, personal and professional, in dealing with violence and threats. Unlike many in that trade, he does not try to drum up business by scaring the hell out of people unnecessarily. In fact, he argues that one reason we may miss out on listening to real fear from real threats is that we waste a lot of time and energy on worry and anxiety about things that are not threats.

Real fear, he suggests, is the body's intuitive response to specific real threats or danger signals. It's not something that most of us feel all that often, but when we do it's time to listen.

I had an experience of that when I was about 13 or so and I was lucky enough to listen to it. When I was in junior high, I used to think it was really cool to hitchhike. My usual destination was an unincorporated town about five miles away which seemed cool at the time.

Don't ask me why.

Anyhow, once when hitching back, a car stopped full of older teens or young men who were rough looking. I'm taking knuckles dragging out car windows. I used to do and have done all kinds of stupid things in my life, but that time something inside me screamed "NO!" and I listened. I thanked the driver and headed off on foot the other direction.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I got in the car. I'm glad I don't know.

EXTENDING UNEMPLOYMENT is the post popular part of the deal between President Obama and congressional Republicans.

HOW'S YOUR POVERTY I.Q.? Find out here.

HEALTH CARE. It's another case of YOYOs (You're on your own people) versus WITS (We're in this together people).

ANOTHER WAR THAT HASN'T WORKED TOO WELL is the war on drugs.

COOL INSECT and other small critter pictures here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED