Moving from propaganda to problem solving?

 In terms of using cynical political strategies to promote bad agendas, the "war on coal" narrative that emerged in the Obama era worked as well in West Virginia (not in a good way) as the famous Republican national  "southern strategy" that rode white resentment to power in the wake of the civil rights movement.

(Both had a more or less subtle racial dog whistle component.)

The war on coal narrative basically blamed the ills of the coal industry and coal communities--mostly the results of market forces and automation-- on the policies of the Obama administration and similar targets.

 Meanwhile, people who were serious about dealing with coalfield problems, which are very real, pushed for policies promoting what's been called a "just transition," which the Climate Justice Alliance defines as " a vision-led, unifying and place-based set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy." As in solutions over propaganda and scapegoating.

There is actually some low hanging fruit here, along the lines laid out in the stalled RECLAIM Act, which among other things would reallocate Abandoned Mine Lands (not to be confused with abandoned land mines) funding to undo some of the damage caused by mining and create jobs. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the WV legislature yesterday, Republican supermajorities and all, approved a resolution calling on the federal government to allocate $8 billion to the state for more job-creating reclamation projects, which is something the Biden administration also supports.

At the risk of sounding like a certain US senator from WV, the measure enjoyed broad bipartisan support--for real--and was also hailed by environmentalists. I'm not sure how far this will go, but this kind of thing doesn't happen very often. Special shoutout to Delegate Evan Hansen (D-Monongalia County), who has taken a leading role in promoting economic transition ideas and addressing climate change. 

Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of legislators formed an informal working group to address coalfield revitalization. It would be nice if this means a real shift in focus towards problem-solving over politics.

Protecting West Virginia

This op-ed on the state budget crisis and all that comes with it appeared in today's Charleston Gazette-Mail.

It looks like West Virginia’s politicians are about to let the wrecking ball swing across the state budget.

It’s likely to seriously damage things like schools, public safety, job training, higher education, care for seniors and kids, health services, infrastructure, libraries, state parks and forests and other things that make our state livable to hundreds of thousands of state residents.

Not to be too Trumpian about it, but this is sad. Bigly.

The saddest part is that leaders are talking about the coming cuts as if they were a product of some kind of stern cosmic necessity.

Actually they aren’t.

And they’re saying things like, “We have to make these cuts.”

Actually “We” don’t. And neither do they.

And if they decide to cut the things that make life livable to current residents and attractive to future residents and investors, that’s on them. It will be because of deliberate actions they took or failed to take.

It’s true that some of West Virginia’s budget difficulties stem from declines in our traditional industries. But it’s also true that some of these wounds are self-inflicted. Around 10 years ago, state leaders decided to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from state revenues.

The idea was that business tax cuts would create jobs. But we have around 6,000 fewer private sector jobs now than in 2008.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. State taxes are a tiny part of the total cost of doing business — around 3 percent, some of which is deductible on federal taxes. This pales in comparison to things like labor, transportation, communication and such, all of which require public investments.

Meanwhile, higher education spending declined in both relative and absolute terms. The cost of tuition more than doubled in a state with the nation’s lowest higher education attainment — and the low incomes that come with that.

In fact, the amount of revenue lost to business tax cuts could have provided free college tuition and fees to all in-state public college and university students. With some left over.

That would have been a game changer, but it was the road not taken.

Incredibly, in spite of any and all evidence, some politicians want to cut taxes further. Some even want to shift burdens to working and low-income people by replacing income taxes with sales taxes.

While that might sound good, income taxes are progressive in that those with more income pay at a slightly higher rate. But lower income people by necessity spend more of their money than those better off — and they’d pay a higher share if that change is enacted.

I call to witness Adam Smith, prophet of capitalism and author of The Wealth of Nations. He said:

“The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

And:

“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion ... . It must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxuries, and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people, that ought ever to be taxed.”

This addiction to tax cuts when the state is on the verge of failing reminds me of the literal addictions that have poisoned the lives of so many West Virginians. But policy makers have less excuse than those driven by the desperate pangs of physical addiction.

And if legislators think there’s no support for protecting West Virginia’s assets, they’re wrong. Recently Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, a national polling firm, conducted a statewide survey of 603 registered voters.

They asked this question: “thinking about the state taxes you pay, would you be willing or not willing to maintain funding for public schools, Public safety, and aging roads and bridges in West Virginia, even if that meant raising your own state taxes?”

The answer may surprise some people. Seventy percent of statewide voters said yes, including 79 percent of self-identified Democrats, 69 percent of Independents and 63 percent of Republicans.

Voters were particularly protective of education. Nearly 90 percent were opposed, most of them strongly so, to laying off teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and aids or of other K-12 educational funding cuts.

Next on the list of priorities was support for state parks and the Department of Natural Resources, which is not surprising in a state full of lovers of the outdoors — and those aware of the importance of tourism to our economy.

Other priorities supported by an overwhelming majority included higher education, support for drug treatment, public health programs and the Promise Scholarship. Most voters think this is a very serious problem and think the problem is too many tax cuts rather than too few spending cuts.

There are plenty of revenue options if legislators are willing to step up. It’s a question of priorities. In the words of Jesus: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

It’s pretty clear. Most voters want to live in a state that works and one that is worth living in.

Those who want to live in a failed state can find plenty of options around the world. We don’t need to create another one here.

#ProtectWV #nofailedstate.

License to...?

I have to admit it. I had trouble getting worked up about the topic on this session of the Front Porch. What do you think?

The best crime fighter may well be a job

I'm not sure whether this is lazy or efficient or both, but here's the text of an op-ed I wrote in today's Charleston Gazette about how a short term jobs program led to a longer term drop in crime:


I am not generally on the same page as former vice president Dick Cheney, but he might have been onto something when he said “The best anti-poverty program I know is a job.”

Some recent research indicates that a job might just be the best way to stop a bullet as well.

Here’s the story: A while back, the city of Chicago started an eight week summer jobs program for high school age students in high crime, low income neighborhoods. The jobs paid $8.25 an hour and generally involved placement in a public agency or non-profit where participants might be camp counselors, tend community gardens or work as office assistants.

The program was scientifically evaluated by Sara Heller with the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the University of Pennsylvania and published in the journal Science.

For the study, participants were placed randomly in three groups. One group worked 25 hours per week. Another worked 15 hours and received an additional 10 hours in learning about managing social and emotional issues. A third control group didn’t participate in the program but was free to pursue or not pursue other locally available opportunities.

The results were striking. While there wasn’t a great deal of difference between the first two groups, arrests for violent crimes decreased by 43 percent over 16 months compared with the control group. That’s pretty huge.

It’s especially interesting that the effects continued long after the eight weeks of employment were over.

Lots of things could have been involved here in the crime drop. More money is an obvious factor, as is less time to get in trouble. More household income might have allowed parents to reduce their work hours and be more involved with the young people.

It’s a little harder to account for the long-term effects, although the Washington Post’s Wonkblog suggests that “students who had access to jobs may have then found crime a less attractive alternative to work. Or perhaps their time on the job taught them how the labor market values education. Or maybe the work experience may have given them skills that enabled them to be more successful -- and less prone to getting in trouble -- back in school.”

As Jeff Mervis wrote in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s website, the study shows you can have “lasting effects from a surprisingly simple and low-cost intervention: a summer job.” It should go without saying that solutions like this are way better -- and cheaper -- than locking people up.

These kinds of programs have long been advocated for communities like Charleston’s West Side by community leaders such as my friend the Rev. Matthew Watts and others.

Unfortunately, as the University of Chicago reports, youth employment in the summer months is near a 60-year low and there were many more young people to apply for the Chicago program than can be accepted.

One would hope that solid evidence like this would build support for more programs like this to provide real opportunities for people in disadvantaged communities.

And while West Virginia has a different set of problems than Chicago, we do have the lowest workforce participation rate in the nation, a fact that drags down all our other statistics. The rate is particularly low for young workers aged 16-24, which dropped from 56.6 percent in 2008 to 47.9 percent in 2013. It stands to reason that young people who are neither working nor pursuing educational opportunities are more likely to get in trouble.

State leaders should take another look the issue and develop programs, including subsidized employment, to increase participation rates, particularly among at-risk individuals, with a long range goal of working towards full employment.

And, since state leaders have spent the better part of a year pondering juvenile justice reform, they might do well to consider trying pilot youth employment programs. It makes a lot more sense than paying over $100,000 per year to lock up a kid who isn’t a threat to public safety.

It’s another example of the old saying about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure.

The broken link

I mentioned in  yesterday's post that I worked with friends from the WV Center on Budget and Policy on a report about The State of Working West Virginia, something we've done every year for the last seven or so.

Anyhow, I'd like to point out some interesting things from the report that my friend Sean O'Leary dug up. It's all about one thing that is messed up with today's economy. According to conventional wisdom, "a rising tide lifts all boats." And sometimes it does. Just not so much around here lately.

People used to assume that if the economy was growing, jobs would too. And that if productivity went up, so would wages. Here's what Sean pointed out on GDP and jobs:

West Virginia ranked 3rd highest among the 50 states in real GDP growth from 2012 to 2013, at 5.1 percent. But the state ranked dead last in job growth, actually losing almost 7,000 jobs. West Virginia actually lost jobs even as the economy grew. In fact, the link between the growth of the economy (real GDP) and job growth has been weak for much of the past decade. While real GDP grew by 17.2 percent since 2002, job growth has been an anemic 3 percent 

Ditto the wages and productivity thing:

 West Virginia’s productivity, or economic output per worker, increased by 5.8 percent from 2012 to 2013, the third biggest increase among the 50 states. But just as growing GDP has not translated into more jobs, even though West Virginia’s workers are producing more, their pay has not reflected their production.

Since 1979, West Virginia’s worker productivity has increased by more than 50 percent, while median compensation, the wages and other benefits earned by the worker in the middle of the distribution, has only increased by 4.5 percent,,.Workers are benefiting little from both economic and productivity growth.

Holy surplus value extorted from the toiling masses, Batman! Just kidding. Mostly. But clearly something is out of whack.  One symptom of that is rising inequality. Sean again:

West Virginia’s economic growth and productivity gains of the past three decades have not resulted in widespread broad prosperity. Instead, more and more of the state’s wealth and income are flowing to the top, benefiting the wealthiest.

Between 1979 and 2011 the state’s average real income grew just 3.9 percent, but over that time period, all of that growth was captured by the top one percent of richest West Virginians. The average real income for the top one percent grew by nearly 71 percent, while the average real income for the bottom 99 percent fell by almost three percent.

Because of that lopsided income growth, the share of income held by the top 1% in West Virginia has steadily grown since 1979, and is reaching historically high levels (Figure 2.4). And as the West Virginia’s economy grows more top heavy, the income gap widens. In 1979 the average income of the top 1% was 10.1 times higher than the average income of the bottom 99%. By 2011, that ratio had grown to 17.7 times higher.

The average income of the bottom 99 percent in West Virginia would be 12.3 percent higher if they still earned the same share of income they earned in 1979. That is equal to about $5,200 per person. Instead, those income gains were collected by wealthiest in the state.

Short summary: once upon a time in the USA, we grew together. Now, we're growing apart. And we will continue to do so at great cost to our democracy unless things change. Which means unless people change things.

Leveling out

El Cabrero has been a bit of a blogging slacker lately, a trend that may continue over the next several days due to road trips and such. I'm not sure whether it was a question of being tired or uninspired, but I guess the two might be related.

Anyhow, here's an interesting tidbit I came across lately from the book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett:

A dramatic example of how reductions in inequality can lead to rapid improvements in health is the experience of Britain during the two world wars. Increases in life expectancy for civilians during the war decades were twice those seen throughout the rest of the twentieth century. In the decades which contain the world wars, life expectancy increased between 6 and 7 years for men and women, whereas in the decades before, between and after, life expectancy increased by between 1 and 4 years. Although the nation's nutritional status improved with rationing in the Second World War, this was not true for the First World War, and material living standards declined during both wars. However, both wartimes were characterized by full employment and considerably narrower income differences--the result of deliberate government policies to promote co-operation with the war effort. During the Second World War, for example, working-class incomes rose by 9 per cent, while incomes of the middle class fell by 7 per cent; rates of relative poverty were halved. The resulting sense of camaraderie and social cohesion not only led to better health--crime rates also fell. 

Three thoughts occur to me. One, it would be nice to get the same result minus the world war thing. Two, these days wars don't do much to reduce inequality. Instead, they only make it great in lots of areas.  Three, the Whackadoodle element would call the authors freedom haters.

NOT SO BAD. Here's economist Dean Baker on the latest jobs numbers, which are giving Whackadoodles hissy fits.

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. Lots of people have wondered whether things have really changed since Massey Energy was bought out by Alpha Natural Resources. I've always said that whatever its flaws, Alpha is significantly less evil than Massey was back in the day. In fact, in the extremely unlikely event that I was in charge of Alpha, I'd make the company slogan be: "Alpha...we're less evil." Can you imagine former Massey CEO Don Blankenship talking like this?

A CROCODILE TEAR FOR PLUTOCRATS here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Of plague and such

The extensive staff of this blog searches day and night for items of possible interest that would cater to a reader's every whim. That's just how we rock em.

The latest example of this is this item about an anthropologist who studies medieval skeletons to learn more about the Black Death. Interestingly, people seemed to live longer after the plague was over, possibly because it weeded out the weak and possibly because living standards went up in a less crowded world.

That really was an example of supply and demand in action. After the 14th century pandemic, so many people had died that demand for labor exceeded supply and wages for survivors went up. I'm guessing there was plenty of unoccupied housing to be had as well.

While El Cabrero is all about improving conditions for workers, I think I'd prefer it to happen without such drastic measures in 21st century.

ANOTHER WHACK to supply side economics is delivered by Jared Bernstein here.

WONKY BUT IMPORTANT. Economist Dean Baker looks at the minimum wage as an anti-inequality measure here.

TALKING COAL. Here's a thoughtful article from the State Journal about the downturn in coal employment and what might be done about it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

For the last several years, El Cabrero has been painstakingly crawling through several volumes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I'm now within 200 pages of the end.

 It's been kind of a chore, the literary equivalent of heavy lifting, but it has been rewarded by flashes of brilliance, wit and that great 18th century turn of a phrase. Here's an example of the latter. The occasion is his contemplation of the speed with which the discovery of gunpowder increased the destructiveness of war:

If we contrast the rapid progress of this  mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.

Roger that.

BETTER BUT NOT GOOD. Here's Krugman on the latest jobs report.

CITIZENS (NOT) UNITED. E.J. Dionne writes about a really bad court decision here.

DITTO THIS. Here's the Charleston Gazette calling on the legislature to create a mineral tax trust fund for the future.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Napoleon again

Watching the WV legislature is an occasionally enjoyable spectator sport. Earlier today, which is almost yesterday at this point, I watched an interim committee meeting in which the staff person for an anti-gay "religious" group dug himself in deeper and deeper in a rambling speech.

A line from Napoleon which may well have appeared here before came to mind: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

(Of course El Cabrero has no enemies. He may, however, have any number of euphemisms.)

THIS IS GOING TO BE INTERESTING. The Supremes vs health care reform, that is.

EXTREME INEQUALITY makes for bad economics.

THE WHOLE REGULATIONS KILLING JOBS THING isn't all it's cracked up to be.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Profits or jobs?

President Obama's jobs speech last night laid out a vision for giving a boost to a fragile recovery. Here are some reactions from the Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute, the Campaign for America's Future and the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

My short take is that, while the proposed American Jobs Act is not perfect (I'd prefer less in tax breaks and more in direct job creation), it is a step in the right direction.

I guess he wasn't just happy to be there

El Cabrero scrupulously combs the web daily in order to come up with hard hitting relevant information for you, Gentle Reader. Today I hit the jackpot.

According to this AP article, a gentleman from D'Iberville Mississippi was arrested at a grocery store after leaving the store with several items in his shorts which were unpaid for, including two bags of jumbo shrimp and a pork loin.

That in itself isn't particularly noteworthy. However, also included amongst these in-shorted items (I just made that word up) were two live lobsters.

Now, I'm no legal scholar but it seems to me that the shoplifting charge should not include the lobsters. There should be some kind of general understanding that would prevent people who put live lobsters with intact claws in their undergarments from being charged with a criminal offense. Rather, it should be assumed in such cases that such people had a pretty compelling reason to do so.

WHAT HE SAID. Here's Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz on what it would take to put Americans back to work.

SPEAKING OF WORK, here's a look at green jobs in the coalfields from Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo. Short version: there are some, but there could be lots more.

JOBS OR AUSTERITY? In times like these, you can't have both.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Choose a weaker enemy

It is a sad fact of social and political life that people often suffer outrageous oppression or exploitation from the very powerful but end up taking their frustrations out on some powerless group that is easy to scapegoat.

It's way safer...

I've been in a medieval mood since visiting Italy this summer and one book on my current pile is Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose. There's a great illustration of the above point in that novel when the young monk Adso converses with the whacked out Salvatore, who resides at the monastery where the action takes place.

Salvatore grew up in extreme poverty and was swept up in radical and heretical movements. Although the "horde of shepherds and humble folk" he joined dreamed of bringing down the overlords, they mostly wound up massacring defenseless Jews instead. Adso then asks why the Jews were attacked when their main oppressors were greedy lords and bishops. To quote from the book,

He replied that when your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies. I reflected that this is why the simple are so called. Only the powerful always know with great clarity who their true enemies are.

Gee whiz, it's a good thing that nothing like that can happen any more, huh?

A MODEST PROPOSAL. Here's a suggestion that this country needs some good jobs.

POLITICS TODAY is getting pretty weird. On all sides.

STAY COOL. Fiddler crabs chill out with their big claws.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Who knew?

Image by way of wikipedia.

We interrupt Goat Rope's regularly scheduled programming due to a major news development reported this weekend on NPR which has forced El Cabrero to remake his cognitive map of the world.

According to someone who should probably know,

"Alligator wrestling is not a thinking man's sport."

And to think that all these years I was convinced you had to be really good at math to do it...

One other point to ponder about that statement...it was made to people who paid $100 to learn how to wrestle alligators. Could there be some intended or unintended irony or something there?

MASS DISTRACTION. Here's Krugman talking sense on jobs and deficits. Again.

TWO FROM LABOR. Here are two good Labor Day op-eds from the Charleston Gazette. The first is by Teamster leader Ken Hall and the second by state AFLCIO secretary treasurer Larry Matheney.

SPEAKING OF WORKERS, a new report (the easiest part of which was written by yours truly) looks at the state of working West Virginians. Here's a link to press coverage from the Gazette and the West Virginia News Service and here's a link to the report itself.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A literary disagreement resolved

According to a widely told story (which didn't happen exactly as told), back in the last century the American writers Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were said to have a disagreement about the nature of the very wealthy.

Fitzgerald was said to hold to the view that "the rich are different from you and me." Hemingway supposedly said, "yes, they have more money."

Scientifically speaking, the results are in. And the winner is...Fitzgerald. The very wealthy, taken as a group, do tend to be a bit different from most folks--and not in a good way. Read more about it here.

I always thought Fitzgerald was the better writer of the two...

THE NEGLECTED CRISIS is the jobs crisis.

FOOD INSECURITY affects nearly one in four American households with children.

LOW RESERVES. Three out of five Americans say they don't have the savings for a $1000 emergency expense.

MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL. It appears that most Americans are against it. I wonder if this CNN poll will trigger yet another industry hissy fit? Or will they just blame the EPA?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Parthian shots

As we head into another hot weekend, here are a few items that caught my eye...

OH GOOD. At the rate we're going, US wage levels will soon be competitive with those of China.

DEALING WITH THE WRONG CRISIS. Paul Krugman, America's Cassandra, nails it again.

DECLINING UNION MEMBERSHIPS, INCREASING INEQUALITY. Here's an academic paper about the connection between the two.

Stay cool.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The exact measure of injustice

I find myself wondering these days where the drive to oligarchy and plutocracy currently in progress in the US will end. I think Frederick Douglass (see past two posts) answered that question well back in 1857:

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

MAKING IT PLAIN: here's a simple guide to the bogus debt crisis in the US that was written for a Latin American audience.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's something on the real crisis, i.e. that one that has to do with jobs.

DEEP CUTS. Here's how the Satan sandwich debt ceiling deal would work in practice if across the board cuts are made.

DOUBLE DIP, ANYONE? The economy might be having one.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Get up, stand up

I've been thinking lately about some words of wisdom from the great abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. He had a strong belief that people would not stand up for the rights of those who don't stand up for their own.

The world in which we live is very accommodating to all sorts of people. It will cooperate with them in any measure which they propose; it will help those who earnestly help themselves, and will hinder those who hinder themselves. It is very polite, and never offers its services unasked. Its favors to individuals are measured by an unerring principle in this—viz., respect those who respect themselves, and despise those who despise themselves. It is not within the power of unaided human nature to persevere in pitying a people who are insensible to their own wrongs and indifferent to the attainment of their own rights. The poet was as true to common sense as to poetry when he said,

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.

This kind of reminds me of a story passed down about my late great grandfather, John "Crawfish" Gillespie (he got the nickname after blowing off his middle three fingers with a shotgun given him by a Confederate politician and war veteran). When hosting someone at his table, he asked the guest if he wanted more peas and corn.

"I don't care," said the guest.

Old Crawfish replied, "If you don't care, I'm sure I don't give a damn."

BROTHER LARRY SPEAKS. Here's a good op-ed on the debt ceiling "Satan sandwich" deal and what it ignores by my fried Larry Matheney of the WV AFLCIO.

AN AUSTERITY INDUCED RECESSION? Maybe.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The biggest loser?

Pyrrhus of Epirus, one of many who lost by winning.

One of the things like makes life and history different from sports and games is that in the former, you can't tell right away exactly who the winners and losers are. Sometimes an apparent victor is a long term loser and vice versa.

A classic example of losing while winning is that of a Greek king named Pyrrhus who fought the Romans nearly 300 years BC. He won, but at a terrible price. As Plutarch put it,

The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.

On the other hand, one could make a good case for saying the South won the American Civil War. Yes, the cause of an independent Confederacy was lost, but after a few years of Reconstruction, old elites were able to re-establish themselves and institute a system of racial segregation and exploitation that lasted for nearly a century.

It might be too soon to say who the real winners of the 2010 election cycle were. Yes, one party lost a majority and another party gained one in the House, but it might be that the real victory of the last two years was ending the worst of a catastrophic recession, making some financial reforms, and, as this item argues, passing a historic comprehensive health care reform bill. The author argues that "The bill was more important than the election."

Time will tell. First, the new law will have to survive Republican attempts to choke off its funding.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's another take on the health care struggles ahead.

JOBS VS DEFICITS. This is likely to be one of the other major policy fights over the next few years.

TAKING IT TO THE STATES. New Republican majorities in many states plan major cuts to jobs and services.

UPPER BIG BRANCH UPDATE. Two federal grand juries are investigating Massey's mine disaster. Also, Massey stock prices went up Friday amidst rumors of a buy out.

TO END ON A POSITIVE NOTE, congratulations to Edison Pena, the rescued Chilean miner who completed the New York marathon yesterday!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Nature and nurture

Random animal picture.

For the past week or so, I've been thinking and blogging first about human evolution and lately about political and social ideas. I'm about to wade into the murky swamp where these may or may not overlap.

As I mentioned here yesterday, one difference between the political left and right has to do with their respective views of human nature. Those on the right tend to view it as something fixed, whereas those on the left tend to see it as something malleable and shaped by social conditioning.

It seems to me that there's a little truth in both--although both views when taken to extreme have done a lot of harm. Radical utopians after a number of revolutions have killed or harmed lots of people in misguided efforts aimed at moulding new and better people. Those on the other end of the spectrum have likewise done lots of harm, using their fixed view of human nature to justify class, caste, gender, racial, ethnic and colonial domination.

AFTER UNEMPLOYMENT, new jobs often pay less.

WHAT NEW JOBS? Here's a look at what kind of jobs are opening up in the post-recession private sector.

UNEMPLOYMENT. Here's Robert Reich on why it's civilized to extend unemployment benefits.

PARTY ON. The first known example of collective feasting amongst early humans (s0 far) happened around 12,000 years ago. I'll bet they really started long before then.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A mote to trouble the mind's eye

The opening scene of Shakespeare's Hamlet does a masterful job of setting the mood. It is midnight on the battlements of Elsinore castle. Bernardo and Marcellus relieve their fellow soldier Francisco.

They are basically grunts, far down the chain of power and command, but they sense something is amiss. Old Hamlet, their king, died under mysterious circumstances. His brother Claudius married the widowed Gertrude and displaced young Hamlet from the succession. There are rumors of war with young Fortinbras of Norway and a military buildup is in progress which "does not divide the Sunday from the week." On top of everything else, a ghost resembling Old Hamlet has been seen in full war gear the last two nights.

Bernardo and Marcellus have invited the scholar Horatio to witness this for himself. Horatio, full of the "modern" learning is skeptical but is convinced when the ghost appears. All agree this is a bad sign, one which reminds Horatio of those said to have occurred at the time of Caesar's assassination:

A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.--

I especially like his courteous if unsuccessful effort to converse with the spirit:

Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:
If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid,
O, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death...

The spirit remains silent and they resolve to tell young Hamlet of it the next day. It's a scene that has worked to get the audience's--and the reader's--attention for the last 400 years.

JOBS. Here's an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute on the latest trends in the jobs picture.

MINE WARS, PAST AND PRESENT. The Charleston Gazette's Jim Haught had a good column in Sunday's paper reviewing the history of West Virginia's mining conflicts--including the latest battle to get Blair Mountain listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

GRIDLOCK. Here's a discourse on the disfunctionality of the US Senate.

HERE'S A SHOCK. A coal industry-commissioned study of itself found it to be all good all the time. By the way, a belated happy birthday to Ken Ward's uber-blog Coal Tattoo!



GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED