The ones that got away

Aside from links and comments about current events, Goat Rope is all about gratuitous animal pictures. Many of these are captured right here on the farm or in the course of travels.

This latest gem was found on the farm by the Spousal Unit. Praying mantises are one of my totem animals and are associated with a style of kung fu. I have related here before about how I got beat up by one such insect several years ago.

But sadly, we don't always have a camera around when we need it. During a recent trip to Vermont, we saw baby beavers while we were splashing around in a tributary of the White River. They were cute little buggers, especially the tails. Alas, we probably won't run across any of those any time soon.

Another one got away earlier this week as we were taking the dogs on their ritual 2 mile evening walk. It was an ichneumon wasp dragging a big but stunned spider across the road. If you recall, these guys stun their prey so they can move and lay eggs in them. The unlucky critter, an arachnid in this case, provides a living dinner to the larvae. Slowly.

This variety of wasp created great theological problems in the 1800s when people tried to find proof of divine providence in nature. Those seeking to find evidence of this had no problem with ordinary hunting and predation, but this kind of feeding seemed a bit...unsportsmanlike.

Lao Tzu said it best, "Heaven and Earth are not humane."

RESTORING THE MIDDLE CLASS. Here is a speech by Elizabeth Warren, who, if there's any justice, will head the new bureau of consumer protection.

HERE'S ANOTHER ONE. I don't always agree with this columnist, but I'm with him on letting the Bush era tax cuts go the way of archaeopteryx.

COAL, MONEY AND ELECTIONS. Here's an update on all three from Coal Tattoo.

GOING GREEN. Orangutans seem to be ahead of humans.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Back in paradise

It's always nice to come back from traveling to find the farm still standing and most of the critters alive and well. I'm playing catch up now, but here are a few links that caught my eye lately.

GREED AND COWARDICE get the blame for the US Senate's failure to deal with climate change, according to Paul Krugman. And while I'm not always on the same page as globalization cheerleader Thomas Friedman, I think he was right here. At times like these, I really miss WV Senator Robert Byrd, who was probably the only prominent politician in West Virginia who would or could have played a positive role on this issue.

I don't find it particularly comforting to think that most people alive now will be able to see how wrong the denial industry is/was about this.

A GOOD FIT. Here's hoping Elizabeth Warren gets the not to head the new bureau for consumer protection.

ADIOS. This paper from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recommends allowing high end Bush era tax cuts to expire.

PIGS apparently have complex emotions.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The old, the new

Whatever my political leanings may be, I have a really strong conservative streak--in the old sense of the word conservative, as in respecting the traditions of the past. I tend to value old things that have withstood the tests of time to new innovations.

I suspect more wisdom can be found in places like Greek tragedy, myths and old philosophies than in just about anything on the bestseller list. Science would be the major exception.

I think that's one reason why I like Confucius, whose approach to philosophy has been called (by whom I can't recall) "innovation through transmission."

A saying of his from the Analects that has influenced me is this one:

One who studies the old so as to find the new is worthy to teach others.

This doesn't imply a mindless repetition of old traditions but rather a critical evaluation of them in search of insights that apply to the current situation, a kind of dialogue between past and present. I've always suspected that the best innovators are not people who make up things out of new cloth but rather those who piece together old insights in new ways.

IF ALL GOES ACCORDING TO PLAN, WV Governor Joe Manchin will name the person who will fill the late Robert Byrd's US Senate seat (if not his shoes) today. As soon as that person is sworn in, we can probably expect yet another vote on extending unemployment benefits to the approximately 2 million people who have lost them. Lots of us hope that WV's vote will be the tipping point.

Here are three related items:

FOX NEWS TRASHES UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS. I know that's a shock, but read more about it, including debunking, here.

A DOUBLE IMPACT. To clear the palate, this issue brief from the Economic Policy Institute shows that UI benefits don't just keep jobless workers going but also help create and preserve jobs:

The reasoning is simple. Those who are unemployed are experiencing a major challenge to maintain anything close to their regular standard of living, so any assistance they receive will be spent on necessities, not saved. The spending that results as the unemployed pay their rent, buy groceries, and so on saves and creates jobs throughout the economy.

ASSESSING ARRA. Here's congressional testimony on the Recovery Act and what remains to be done to deal with the impact of the Great Recession.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE CORPORATE SUITES, the Washington Post notes that:

Corporate America is hoarding a massive pile of cash. It just doesn't want to spend it hiring anyone.

Read more here.

CHICKEN HAWKS. The loudest voices on the deficit are opposed to allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire.

ONE FOR THE ROAD. Here's the Washington Post on the passage of landmark financial reform legislation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Conscience and power

Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society is a masterpiece of anti-utopianism. The book, like much of his other work, is an extended polemic against naive and overly optimistic views of human nature and society.

While he doesn't hold to the idea of the "total depravity" of humanity, he takes the idea of sin very seriously. By sin, he doesn't mean disobeying this or that divine rule but rather the self-centeredness which causes people to do harm to others, the creation and even themselves. And if individual humans have sinful tendencies, groups are much more selfish and imperialistic.

He also argued that human motivations are inherently ambiguous and people often do the most harm when they think they are being the most righteous. Oppressors often quite sincerely believe that they are acting for the good of those they oppress--and some of the oppressed might do the same given the chance.

If that's the case, then while we might make this or that social improvement, society will always be an arena of struggle:

there is good reason to believe that the sentiments of benevolence and social goodwill will never be so pure and powerful, and the rational capacity to consider the rights and needs of others in fair competition with our own will never be so fully developed as to create the possibility for the anarchistic millennium...

While democracy represents a great advance over other forms of government, it still doesn't and can't eliminate the element of struggle:

Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises.

EASY STREET. Here's economist Dean Baker's latest rant on Wall Street.

ONE TO WATCH. WV Governor Joe Manchin has issued a call for a special session of the legislature to convene today. One item is health care related in the wake of national health care reform. The most contentious issues are those related to education.

CLIMATE. Here's some coverage of the new energy/climate bill that has just been introduced in the US Senate.

ONE SHOT DEAL. There's more scientific evidence that life on earth arose exactly once and that all living things have a single common ancestor.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Modern Times

It seems like one of the lessons of history is that capitalism is an enormously powerful, adaptive, productive and often destructive system. It can accomplish amazing things--even Karl Marx sang its praises in The Communist Manifesto--but it has the habit of melting down every so often.

One reason why the system hasn't seen a meltdown as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s (even though it's come close) is because of various reforms and regulations that have been enacted since that time.

Yet for 30 years or so, right wing ideologues who claim to be defenders of capitalism have been busy trying to undo the regulations and safeguards that help to stabilize the system--and they had a lot of success.

Yet when you consider that the wealthy and powerful have a much greater stake in it than anyone else, it seems odd to me that many of them have pushed for measures that would place it at risk.

It's like watching people trying to saw off the branch they're sitting on. The whole Goldman Sachs thing is a case in point. As E. J. Dionne Jr. wrote in a recent column,

Marx's predictions about the inevitable collapse of capitalism have been wrong so far because the system has worked reasonably well, thanks to the rules and redistributive programs established after the Great Depression.

The lesson is that the surest way to save capitalism is to regulate it in the public interest.

WHEN SORROWS COME, they come not single spies, but in battalions. The BP oil rig disaster that killed eleven workers threatens to eclipse the Exxon Valdez as an ecological disaster. Two more miners were killed in a Kentucky accident. The AP reports that Massey Energy will offer $3 million to the families of each of the 29 miners who died earlier this month.

THE ALTERNATIVE TO HEALTH CARE REFORM? Bartering with chickens. Why didn't I think of that?

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's something on the reform we got. And even Arnold likes it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: NOT GOOD