Class warfare, revisited

Right wingers frequently accuse people of class warfare any time anything related to inequality is discussed, but they are the best ones at waging it. Here's just one example: due to federal budget cuts pushed through last year have resulted in Legal Aid of West Virginia laying off 15 case handlers and closing the office in Logan County.

Legal Aid served over 24,000 West Virginians in 2010.

Similar cuts are taking place around the country. Add to that efforts to restrict access to the ballot and shred safety net programs and the truth becomes a little clearer.

I'd like to be able to call down some kind of cosmic retribution on the perpetrators, but I'm afraid my clout doesn't reach that far. I guess it's up to us.

THE SAFETY NET: WHO NEEDS IT? Lots of folks.

COMFORT FOOD is the theme of the latest edition of Notes From Under the Fig Tree by the Rev. Jim Lewis (disclosure: I gave the woman mentioned in the second part of the newsletter his telephone number).

SIDESHOWS. Here's Ken Ward with more on the tenuous connection between mine safety and drug tests.

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My summer of Shelby

The R.H.O. himself.

The summer of 2011 officially ended last week and the weather is starting to act like it, for now anyway. I'll remember this season for several reasons, some pleasant, some not. The trip to Italy was cool; the constant knee pain not so much.

But aside from all that, I will remember this as my summer of Shelby. It was during this season that I listened to an unabridged recording of all three volumes of Shelby Foote's masterful Civil War trilogy.

I'm talking over 110 CDs of around an hour and 15 minutes each. If I did the math right, that comes out to 135+ hours. That's a lot of Shelby. He took up my time doing chores, driving, walking the dogs, mowing the lawn, etc.

I have mentioned before how I worship him and have been known to channel him from time to time. I love his long, rambling sentences and sharp wit. I only wish the version I listened to was read by the author. But then I'd listen to a recording of the real Shelby reading the phone book.

When you spend that much time with an author you notice things. I noticed that Shelby had a real issue with William Tecumseh Sherman, which is perhaps not so surprising from a true son of the south.

I wish I had a dollar for every time he referred to Sherman as a "red headed Ohioan." He seemed to be unable to refer to Sherman, who is bound to show up a lot in a book on the subject, without mentioned his hair color.

It made me wonder whether the divine Shelby had a thing about redheads too.

NEED A DOSE OF POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SANITY? Click here.

CLASS WARFARE, JUST MATH or basic morality?

THE AMERICAN LEFT and its impact on America is discussed here.

YOUR TALKING ANIMAL FIX is here.

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Feeding the trolls

I understand that it is the custom in Zen Buddhist monasteries to collect any remaining grains of rice after a meal and offer them to the hungry ghosts. Hungry ghosts in the Buddhist conception of the wheel of life and death are those beings who were greedy in previous lives.

In that unpleasant state or realm, one has a huge and empty belly that is always hungry but a tiny throat that can't swallow much. Feeding them is a meritorious act of generosity.

I've come to think of writing op-eds, like this one of mine, as a similar act since putting one in the paper feeds the trolls, which in this case refers to right wingers who lurk around the web in order to attach their remarks to pieces they disagree with like lampreys latching on to fish.

I devoutly hope that this act of providing nourishment will serve me well in my next rebirth.

THE DEATH PENALTY. E.J. Dionne argues that only conservatives can end it.

CLASS WARFARE, revisited.

CHIMPANZEES are just not that into cooperation.

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Unspectacular and always human

"Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table."--W. H. Auden

GET BUSY. Here's a "Move the Money" toolkit from AFSC about how to get involved in working for a sane federal budget

CLASS WARFARE? Elizabeth Warren rather forcefully whacks that notion here.

ONE TO WATCH. Here's a new website that aims to be a resource for state and national acting to promote shared prosperity. The name of the site says it all: buildingthemiddleclass.org.

FOR ADULTS ONLY. Wild (but probably not very hot) squid sex is discussed here.

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This is our concern, Dude

This item from CNN pretty much sums up the problem for millions of Americans:

Over 46 million people are living in poverty, 2.6 million more than in 2009 and the poverty rate has reached 15.1 percent.

The outlook is grim. The recession has compounded decades of growing economic inequality, structural poverty, and urban decay. With the projections that unemployment will remain high for several years, these numbers are not likely to improve.

Making matters worse, as Ron Haskings at the Brookings Institution noted, "Safety net programs run by the federal and state governments are helping millions of families avoid poverty, but thee programs could be subject to cuts at the federal and state level because of continuing deficit and debt problems."

The article goes on to note that most politicians from either major party don't even want to go there. Methinks a key task of the next stretch is to get their attention, which will no doubt require making some noise and kicking up some dust.

THIS WOULD BE FUNNY IF IT WAS A JOKE. Republicans are crying "class warfare" over Obama's proposal that millionaires should pay at least as much in taxes as middle class Americans.

BORED WITH BURIAL OR CREMATION? Get juiced.

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The new normal?

Here's an interesting--and ominous--statistic: more than 42 million people last year had to flee their homes because of natural disasters. This was more than twice as many as the year before. Climate change might have a thing or two to do with that.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said the increase from 17 million displaced people in 2009 was mainly due to the impact of "mega-disasters" such as the massive floods in China and Pakistan and the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.

It said more than 90 percent of the disaster displacements were caused by weather-related hazards such as floods and storms that were probably impacted by global warming, but it couldn't say to what extent.

It looks like 2011 is going to have some nasty numbers of its own. As this Newsweek article suggests, extreme weather is likely to be the new normal.

CLASS WARFARE FROM THE PRESIDENT? As if.

FIXING THE ECONOMY. Here are some ideas.

ANTI-WAR BIPARTISANSHIP? Maybe a little bit.

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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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Paying attention doesn't cost anything

Several years ago, a friend and I spent a day and night at a Theravada Buddhist monastery in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. It was old school (which is kind of what "Theravada" means) as in no food after the noon meal, hour-long meditation sessions, chanting in Pali and English.

The main item on the bill of fare was mindfulness meditation. We were supposed to be mindful of every step, every breath, every bite of food. The scripture that we chanted was the Mahasatipatthana Sutta or Great Discourse on Mindfulness.

During the sitting sessions, we were supposed to focus on the breath. When the mind wandered, as it inevitably did, we were to note the thought or feeling without reacting to it and return the mind to the breath. Over and over again. The idea was to develop one-pointed concentration and ultimately the ability to apply awareness to all activities.

The closest I came to one-pointed awareness that day was thinking about how bad my knees were hurting. As I've said before, seated meditation isn't my strong suit; the moving kind works best for me. But one of the main points of either kind is simply paying attention. We are on automatic pilot most of the time, but with practice we can learn to bring conscious awareness to all kinds of things.

That would be another practical Buddhist insight for people interested in social justice. There is and never will be any substitute for paying attention to what is going on. Noticing things is the first step to changing things.

CLASS WAR? More like a one-sided class beatdown.

FROM THE UBER-BLOGGER OF ALL THINGS COAL. Ken Ward of Coal Tattoo had two interesting posts yesterday. The first is about changes in a possible severance package for Don Blankenship if Massey Energy is sold, as some rumors hold. The second is the warm and tender relationship between that company and former WV supreme court justice and current congressional candidate Spike Maynard.

IT'S ALMOST DRESS-UP-YOUR-DOG-DAY. Whether they like it or not.

URGENT COBRA UPDATE here.

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The little sacrifice of vanity

Benjamin Franklin, whatever else you can say about him, possessed a lot of social intelligence which he used to great effect in pursuing his various interests.

Yet another example of this can be found in how he approached gaining support for a lending library. At first, when he solicited subscriptions, he presented the library as his own idea (which it kind of was). But...

The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions, made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one's self as the proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos'd to raise one's reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's neighbors, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project.

From then on,

I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading. In this way my affair went on smoothly, and I ever after practis'd it on such occasions; and, from my frequent successes, can heartily recommend it. The present little sacrifice of vanity will be amply repaid.

According to Lao Tzu,

...the sage works without recognition.
He achieves what has to be done without dwelling on it.
He does not try to show his knowledge.

CLASS WARFARE? Jim Hightower thinks conservatives don't have a clue about it.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's another take on it.

GOING TO WASHINGTON. El Cabrero just finished and highly recommends Van Jones' book The Green Collar Economy. I just found out he's on his was to DC to work with the Obama administration. Here's an interview.

FORECLOSURES were up in Feb. over last year's levels.

HEALTH CARE. A business group issued a report that shows the US health care system is a liability.

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