A priest and a prophet

 When I was in junior high, I got into a war of wills with my mother. She was a hardcore Episcopalian, and was hellbent, no pun intended, on me getting confirmed in the church.

At the time, I had just emerged (mostly) from my nihilistic juvenile delinquent phase but had no interest whatsoever in religion

We butted heads but eventually struck a deal: I’d go to confirmation classes with Father Bill Kirkland, the new priest at St. Timothy’s in Hurricane, and then make my own decision.

Kirkland was one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever known, although I was slow in recognizing it. He was raised in rural Georgia as a severe fundamentalist, attending a very strict Baptist college with the original John Birch, for whom the hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory-believing John Birch Society was named.

Kirkland eventually moved on theologically but didn’t give up on religion. After serving in WW2, he studied theology at Edinburgh and at the famous Union Theological Seminary in New York. He taught philosophy at what would become the University of Charleston.

After a few classes, I began to conclude that this whole thing might not be as dumb as I thought. It apparently stuck, despite my best efforts to escape.

Kirkland was active and unafraid to speak out for social justice, but mostly he attended to priestly duties, celebrating sacraments, visiting congregants, comforting the sick, putting the dead to rest. After he retired, his ministry consisted of walking the dogs at the local animal shelter. 

The course of my life would probably have been very different without his influence. He reminds me of a cryptic line from Psalm 110 about a mysterious holy man who blessed Abraham in Genesis: “Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

I didn’t realize for years that he was a direct student of one of the greatest and most influential theologians of the 20th century, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), who left his mark in the halls of congress and on the picket lines of the labor and Civil Rights Movement.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Niebuhr’s “unswerving devotion to the ideals of freedom and justice”

I’d heard about Niebuhr for years, but my interest peaked years ago after reading Parting the Waters, the first volume of Taylor Branch’s powerful study of America in the King years. By then, I’d been working for the American Friends Service Committee for a few years, an organization that had close ties to Dr. King and others in the movement. I learned from Branch that Niebuhr was a major influence on King and many others. He has been claimed by people across the political spectrum—even people who weren’t religious.

Naturally, Kirkland was glad to share his memories of Niebuhr. I also took a l deep dive into his writings.

Niebuhr took the concept of sin seriously, but not the way we often use the term. He thought of it less as this or that misdeed but rather the all-too-human tendency to put ourselves and especially the groups we identify with (ethnic, racial, religious, national, political, etc.) at the center of the universe. If we all have this tendency as individuals, it is multiplied when we come to group behavior and social systems. Most individuals have consciences, but often the closest thing to the conscience of a group is its persecuted and despised minority. 

He was fond of quoting St. Augustine (354-430) as saying that “Without justice what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? And what is a band of robbers but such a kingdom in miniature?”

He also reminded us that we are often most dangerous when we think we’re the most righteous. You can call it human weakness, original sin, or evolutionary baggage, but ignore it at your peril. Many of the worst atrocities in history have been committed by true believers of one stripe or another who were sure they were right.

In Niebuhr’s view, there is no such thing as absolute purity. Human motivations are always ambiguous, and the conflicts of the world are between sinners, not between the totally evil and the totally righteous. That view may seem grim, but it’s a pretty good antidote for self-righteousness.

But if all are sinners, all haven’t done the same amount of damage. He called this “the equality of sin and the inequality of guilt.” There is a huge difference between the Roosevelts and the Hitlers of the world, one that matters.

This assessment of human nature challenges the ideas of inevitable progress or utopias, but the news about human nature wasn’t all bad. In addition to original sin, we’re also gifted with “original justice.” These views have profound political implications: to paraphrase a famous Niebuhr quote, our capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but our capacity for injustice makes it necessary.

For Dr. King, his theology was an antidote to “the false optimism characteristic of a great segment of Protestant liberalism” and “a persistent reminder of the reality of sin on every level of man’s [sic] existence.” According to Branch, King “came to describe Niebuhr as a prime influence on his life, and sometimes referred to Gandhian nonviolence as “a Niebuhrian stratagem of power.’”

In 1965, King invited Niebuhr, then 73, to participate in the famous march on Selma. He replied with regret that “Only a severe stroke prevents me from accepting … I hope there will be a massive demonstration of all the citizens with conscience in favor of the elemental human rights of voting and freedom of assembly.”

I’m grateful that, thanks to Kirkland, Niebuhr is part of my lineage. I learned this from him: a good society or group is one that is structured in such a way as to limit the amount of damage we can do to each other.

(This appeared as a column in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

A crime to be poor?

 I'm not sure how I managed to miss this quote by Kurt Vonnegut from Slaughterhouse Five...

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”

Hitting close to home

The state of the nation in the last few years is making me think more and more of Dante's Divine Comedy. This would be fine if it reminded me of the parts about Purgatory and Paradise, but I'm kinda stuck on Inferno now. 

The very first line of the very first canto pretty well sums up the state of the nation, as spoken in the first person: "In the middle of the journey of our lives I awoke to find myself in a dark wood, having lost the true path."

Ouch.

As the Poet/Pilgrim tries to push through the brambles he is threatened by three predatory beasts: a she-wolf, a leopard and a lion. Rivers of ink have been spilled over what these symbolize, but the most convincing explanation to me mirrors the classification of sins and punishments in hell.

The upper level of hell is for the greed (he used the term "incontinence," but that has other connotations these days), represented by the she-wolf. Then comes the level of the violence, represented by the lion. The lowest level is that of fraud and deceptions, which leaves the leopard.

Lost in the woods and threatened by greed, violence and lies...that sounds about right. In the poem, he has to literally go through hell to get out of it....hmmm.

Dante is aided by two guides at different parts of the journey. His guide through hell and lower purgatory was Virgil, who arguably represents natural human wisdom and effort, which will only go so far. To make it to paradise, he needs the assistance of Beatrice, who represents divine grace and mercy.

We could use both right about now.

Good advice, often unheeded

 

In the infernal depths of the Reagan era, I started working in the reference department of the main Cabell County Library in Huntington. Before that, I'd spent several relatively happy if ill paid years working at the branch in my hometown of Milton. It was a different world.

Huntington was and is one of WV's larger cities and was an industrial powerhouse at one time. All of which went to hell around then. It was a perfect storm of greed, deindustrialization, deinstitutionalization of  people with mental health issues without adequate community services or resources, rising homelessness in the process of become normalized, and slashes to the safety net.

All of this meant that lots of people were under extreme stress without a lot of safe places to go, the library being one. Part of the job was making sure it was a welcoming but safe place for all and occasionally defusing situations with people having a bad day or evening or year.

At the time, I was given the following advice from someone who had been at it a while about dealing with people in challenging situations: "never back somebody into a corner." 

I think it was originally meant literally as some of the library stacks involved dead end rows of shelves, but that advice has served me well over the years. As a point of general strategy, violence prevention or even self defense, it's not usually a good idea to put a potential opponent or person of concern in a position where their only way out is through you. As the saying goes, back a mouse into a corner and it will fight like hell.

Whenever possible, and it isn't always, I think it's a good idea to give opponents and people we meet in challenging situations a graceful way out. It's basic de-escalation.

I found this idea beautifully expressed in Rabelais'  hilarious and occasionally scatological 16th century novel Gargantua and Pantagruel, where the genial giant Gargantua puts it thus:

"For according to true military practice you must never drive your enemy into the straits of despair, because such a plight multiplies his strength and increases his courage; which was cast down and failing before. There is no better aid to safety for men who are beaten and dismayed than to have no hope of safety whatever. How many victories have the conquered wrested from the hands of the victors when the latter have not been satisfied with moderation, but have attempted to make a complete massacre and totally destroy their enemy, without leaving so much as one alive to convey the news! Always leave every door and road open to your enemies. Make them a bridge of silver in fact, to help them get away."

I think about Gargantua's advice today in the context of trying to influence certain politicians...let's say a US senator for example...to support policies you want them to take, such as, hypothetically speaking, to extend the Child Tax Credit. 

I don't think it's a good idea to demonize such an person and place them in a position where doing what you want seems like a defeat and humiliation, since this can often just stiffen their resistance. It's even worse to attempt a show of force when you don't have any.

To have a chance of actually getting things like that done, we need to make a bridge of silver not burn one.

Told ya

 Some of the hardest fights and most painful losses of the last few years were the passage of state anti-labor laws in a state with a long and proud union history. Specifically, these include passage of union busting right-to-work-for-less (RTWFL)  and the repeal of prevailing wage for public construction projects. Union members and supporters of working families fought those tooth and nail.

Supporters of these anti-worker bills promised the moon. Employers and workers were supposed to flock to West Virginia with the passage of RTWFL. The repeal of prevailing wage was supposed to save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. None of those things happened. In fact, the state has lost around 60,000 people since 2015.

WV Governor Jim Justice admitted that these were epic fails yesterday. Here's a snip from MetroNews:

“Really and truly, let’s just be brutally honest,” the governor said about a half-hour into Wednesday night’s town hall. “We passed the right-to-work law in West Virginia. And we ran to the windows looking to see all the people that were going to come — and they didn’t come. We got rid of prevailing wage. We changed our corporate taxes and we’ve done a lot of different things. And we’ve run to the windows and they haven’t come.

“We’ve absolutely built the field in a lot of different places thinking build the field and they’ll come, and they didn’t come.”

 Lots of us were saying "No ****" when we heard that. Unfortunately, the governor was saying that while all those things failed, this time around repeal of the state income tax will REALLY work.

It reminds me of the cartoon Peanuts when Lucy repeatedly held the football for Charlie Brown only to yank it away at the last minute. Will we fall for that again?

Epiphany

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, a major holy day in Western Christianity. It's one of my favorites (right up there with Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday). In an ordinary year, which this isn't, I'd attend special services whenever possible.

The word can mean something like manifestation, often of something divine, and the day celebrates the adoration of the Christ child by the Magi in the Gospel of Matthew. I don't take the story literally, but it means the  manifestation of divine revelation to the Gentiles. Other texts associated with the day are those of the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountaintop. 

The word also has grimmer associations. Antiochus IV, self-styling himself Epiphanes, was a Hellenistic king who considered himself divine and initiated a brutal persecution of the Jews in the 160s BCE. That persecution inspired the revolt of the Maccabees, one result of which is the Jewish holiday Hanukkah, which celebrates the cleansing of the Temple after its defilement with idols.

The Irish writer James Joyce borrowed the world from the realm of religion and used it to mean something like insight or inspiration. In that sense, it's kind of like a revelation or uncovering, which is the literal meaning of the Greek-derived word apocalypse.

In that sense, today is going to be a day of epiphany, manifestation and/or revealing in Washington as the fate of constitutional democracy, however imperfect, hangs in the balance. I'm guessing that the things said and done today will long be remembered.

This might be a good time to remember the words of Abraham Lincoln: “in times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.”

It's not just elections: how policy change happens.

 Although it’s hard not to think about such things right now, it’s not all about elections. Those of us who want to make the world more just also need to think about and advocate for specific policies to move things in that direction in real time at the national, state, and local level when opportunities arise.

I’d like to share a simple nonideological model for thinking about how policy change happens—or doesn’t. The model was developed by political scientist John Kingdon’s 1984 book “Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies.”

I’d been doing policy work for years before a friend mentioned the book. I checked it out and had to admit that, yeah, this is pretty much how it happens. I’m going to share a ridiculously simplified version.

First, let me state the obvious, policy change doesn’t happen just because it’s rational, because it’s the right thing to do, and/or it would help thousands of people. It happens when certain things come together.

In Kingdon’s model, a window for effecting change opens when three “streams” come together: the policy, problem, and political stream. 

The policy stream

The policy stream consists of ideas that trickle up from the “primeval soup” of advocacy groups, “policy entrepreneurs” (more popularly known as wonks), attorneys, staffers, and such. Ideally, policy ideas should be specific and well thought out, which usually means getting in the weeds.

For example, “health care for all” isn’t a policy, although I’m all for it. It’s a goal that could be achieved by several different policies, such as a national system on the British model, single payer as in Canada, or a hybrid. The same is true of calls to abolish this or that institution. I’m down, but actually moving in that direction would require enacting or repealing several specific policies.

However, even the best idea won’t go anywhere unless somebody—more like a lot of somebodies—care about it.

The problem stream

This is where the problem stream comes in. Some of the most important social change work consists of getting people to think of the issues we care about as problems that can and must be solved. Kingdon distinguishes between problems and conditions: 

“There is a difference between a condition and a problem. We put up with all manner of conditions every day: bad weather, unavoidable and untreatable illnesses, pestilence, poverty, fanaticism. ... Conditions become defined as problems when we come to believe that we should do something about them.”

It can take weeks, months, years, decades, or centuries to get people to think of things as problems that must be solved rather than unavoidable conditions. A great example is the battered women’s movement. When I was a child, comedians on television actually joked about domestic violence; that doesn’t happen anymore because of years of public education and advocacy—which led to major policy changes.

Given the extremely divided state of U.S. public opinion, clearly much work needs to happen here in terms of coalition building, communications, popular education, and messaging—which means reaching out beyond bubbles and comfort zones.

An example

For a longer view, think that for millennia many people believed that systems of forced labor such as slavery or serfdom were inevitable conditions of civilization rather than problems that needed to be solved and ended. A classic example of people who made progress in getting an issue into the problem stream are the Garrisonian abolitionists. 

They weren’t policy wonks: Immediate abolition of slavery based on moral suasion wasn’t a doable policy. They weren’t revolutionaries like John Brown and his biracial band, who pushed the issue past the breaking point with their raid in what is now my home state of West Virginia. They weren’t practical political actors, like Frederick Douglass or Abraham Lincoln. Nor were they the pure force of the Union army or the thousands of slaves who flocked to Union lines in what W.E.B. DuBois aptly called “a general strike.” 

Still, they got the anti-slavery issue out there for decades, without which some of the other work may not have happened. As Garrison summarized this approach, "I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. … I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD."

The political stream

Once an issue is in the problem stream, it’s possible to link policy issues as solutions, which leads us to the foulest and most polluted stream: the political.

Lots of things influence and shape the political stream. The most obvious is on all our minds lately: election results. But it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. The death or retirement of a key politician or Supreme Court Justice, a change of leadership, or even a quarrel between influential politicians can directly impact this stream.

The political stream can also be influenced—and opened or closed—based on social movements, which unfortunately can’t be manufactured at will; galvanizing events, such as natural or social disasters; or changes in the public mood. With any of these changes, what might have been possible becomes impossible and vice versa. And the situation changes all the time. 

We can’t always—or usually—anticipate or control such changes. But we can prepare for them and move when openings occur.

Case studies

Maybe some examples could help. Let’s start with health care, a key concern of mine these days. The first “mainstream” politician in the U.S. who advocated for something like national health care was Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, when he ran as an independent Progressive Republican.

He lost. In the 1930s and '40s, his distant cousin Franklin and successor, Harry Truman, advocated for it but were blocked by racist Southern politicians and powerful lobby groups. The political stream was blocked.

For a while the problem stream was blocked. Health care wasn’t terribly expensive. Many expensive procedures hadn’t been developed. And many Americans could access health care through their employers.

That changed. More and more jobs provided no health benefits. By the late 2000s, around 50 million Americans, many of them working, had no health care. And their lack of coverage drove up costs for everyone.

Thanks to the efforts of advocates and experiences of impacted people, this became a problem.

In the aftermath of the 2008 elections, Democrats, for good or ill, controlled the presidency, the House of Representatives and a veto-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate. The window for reform was open. For a few weeks.

In 2009, the majorities of both houses of Congress worked on a health reform plan, eventually coming up with a hybrid version that included expanding Medicaid for low income working families, establishing a mandate for some individuals and employers to provide health care, and creating a market or exchange where people could purchase more or less subsidized health care.

Neither version was perfect, but with the loss of the supermajority, the lesser version became the only option. No further improvements could be made immediately. Then it was time for defense. That’s where we are now.

Or consider the Iraq war. In the 1990s, neo-conservative activists proposed the policy of invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime to supposedly bring peace and stability to the Middle East (and we all know how that worked out). They gained no traction until the political and problem streams changed with the 2000 election and the 9/11 attacks. Then they linked their policy (war) to a problem (fear of terrorism) in a changed political stream (new president). 

A negative example

Here’s a case, one of many for me, of one that got away. Around the same time as passage of the ACA, a window opened for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would have been a true game changer in terms of rebuilding a middle class. It would have made it easier for workers to join unions, which could in turn negotiate for better wages, benefits, and conditions while also educating workers about policy issues.

The U.S. House passed EFCA around 2007. With the supermajority in 2009, a window was open in the Senate to make it the law of the land. That didn’t happen. People dithered. The supermajority was lost. The window closed.

When that happens, one can waste time, energy, and often money on beating one’s metaphorical head against a wall—or, without giving up hope, focus on things that could help the situation right now.

There are lots of negative examples like this one. Windows for major policy change can be opened or closed, but the latter is the most frequent option. Still, by tracking changes, we have a chance to distinguish between the possible and impossible.

So what does this all mean?

I’m convinced the model can help us figure where we are and where we need to go in our pursuit of more human and liberating policies. The stream metaphor can point the way.

First, are we really clear about the specific (and probably imperfect) policy we want? Is it doable and specific about implementation?

Second, does anyone who can help make it happen care? If not, that signifies more work that must be done in the short and long term.

Third, what needs to happen politically to make this happen? How can we engage and influence it, even if that involves waiting for opportunities? 

Fourth, what do we do if it’s not going to happen? (Solution: without abandoning one’s goals, move on to the next thing and deal with the threats and/or opportunities that emerge, while circling back when things change.)

Working it backwards

Then there’s the other side of the coin. This model can also be useful in trying to “kill” bad policy ideas that might roll down. Specifically, we can attempt to show that the proposed policy idea wouldn’t solve the problem suggested and could indeed make things worse, as is often the case. And we could offer realistic alternatives.

We could also argue that the issue at hand isn’t the real problem or could make the problem worse. Or we could direct our attention to figuring out what we can do to influence or close the political stream or at least redirect it a bit.

This overall approach is more a compass than a road map. But then, as many before us have tried to say, the map is not the territory.

But it can help us move in the directions we want to go.

(Note: this essay first appeared in a blog post on the American Friends Service Committee's website. There's also a link to a Facebook live discussion on the topic there.)

How to limit terms: by voting

 Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of (unsolicited) posts on social media that picture different political candidates and say that they’re either “good” or “bad” on term limits, with “good” meaning being for them.

I think being bad on term limits is a good thing.

First though, I get it. I’ve had conversations with people across the political spectrum who like the idea. People are tired of gridlock in Congress. They are tired of career politicians losing touch with constituents. They are tired of what has been called the Good-Ole Boy system, although it’s no longer an all-male club. Many people like the idea of having a fresh set of eyes on the issues of the day.

A famous Japanese-born Zen master Shunryu Suzuki talked about the advantages of having a beginner’s mind: “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind, there are few.” That said, I think there are better ways of getting there — and that imposing congressional or legislative term limits could actually be harmful to democracy, whichever way one leans politically.

First, there are two very powerful ways of limiting terms already. The first is simply for a politician to decide not to run again. The second, more powerful, option is equally simple: Vote out the people who are causing the problems.

While it’s true that incumbent officeholders often have an advantage over challengers, that advantage is no guarantee. Nearly every primary or general election cycle brings a story of a powerful politician swept out of office. Some election cycles are more like tidal waves, sweeping away longstanding majorities.

In West Virginia a few years ago, for example, Republicans gained the majority in the Legislature for the first time since 1932. To wax biblical, every two years or so, there’s a chance to say “how art the mighty fallen.” Term limits also would deprive voters of the chance to support candidates of their own choosing. But there are other compelling reasons to oppose congressional or legislative term limits.

For one thing, as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in his book, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” it takes a long time to get good at anything. Specifically, he talked about the “10,000 hour rule,” as in, it takes about that long to master a complex skill or body of knowledge. I’m not sure about the exact math, but I think he has a point. Even with expertise, in politics, it can take a long time to rise to positions of influence, such as leadership of committees.

Some aspects of public policy, from education funding to taxes and budgets to health care and beyond, are really complicated. It takes a good while to get a handle on them. To sweep out people arbitrarily before they get there — or even worse, once they do — is to ask for trouble. Put it this way: Would you want to fight in an army or serve on a fire department where officers, and rank and file, are new at the job and inexperienced?

The alternative is to let knowledge of the inner workings of complicated systems stay in the hands of unelected officials. Talk about a deep state.

There’s another reason that I think is more compelling in polarized times. People often lament “gotcha” style politics, in which scoring points against rivals is more important than getting things done.

This is an area where game theory can shed some light. A classic scenario with very wide application is the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” a situation in which two people are arrested for the same crime and held in isolation. If neither confesses, the sentence will be light for both. If both confess, the sentence will be moderate. If one confesses and the other doesn’t, the first one gets off easy and the second gets hard time. In this scenario, confessing is called defecting and keeping silent is cooperating with the other. The risks are highest for the one who cooperates.

What’s the best solution, since the two can’t talk to each other? The short version is that, in a one-time situation, there’s no incentive not to stick it to the other guy. That’s probably why it’s usually not a good idea to buy a used car or a racehorse from a total stranger you’ll never see again.

One of my favorite vents in the Gazette-Mail wound up on my refrigerator for months. It was something like: “To whoever sold me a F-150 pickup in the Walmart parking lot, you are not a true Christian.”

The incentives change, however, if the game is played over and over again. The longer people have to interact with each other, and the more people know and remember reputations from past behavior, the greater the chances that people will cooperate. In the words of political scientist Robert Axelrod, “Once ‘the shadow of the future’ lengthens, we have the basis for more durable relationships.”

Term limits would drastically reduce the “shadow of the future.” If you think things are bad now, I think they’d only get worse with term limits that would reduce the incentives to try to work things out. My suggestion: If you want to limit someone’s term, try the old-fashioned way. Vote.

The politics of health care in a pandemic

In a recent post about health care, I suggested that Oklahoma's ballot measure on Medicaid expansion would be one to watch. Well, sure enough, voters in that heavily Republican state approved the measure by a little over 50 percent. Considering the dark money that went into opposing it, I'd call that a landslide. Dollars seem to count more than votes most days.

Interestingly, Oklahoma was the first state to expand Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic. But it may not be the last. Missouri is scheduled to vote on the measure August 4. And so far, expansion has passed in every state where it was put on the ballot.

As I've argued many times before, it's good news any time a state takes advantage of this best provision of the Affordable Care Act. First, it improves and saves lives. Second, it creates jobs and generates a lot of economic activity. Third, it helps more people stay in the workforce. Fourth, each expansion makes it a bit harder to get rid of the whole thing.

Back to Oklahoma. This is also the state that took up the Trump administration's horrible idea of accepting a cap on Medicaid spending. Looks like that ain't gonna happen.

This article from Politico argues that the pandemic has upended the Trump/Republican dream of rolling back health care. I don't know if that's true, since the US Supreme Court could still do a lot of damage.

Still, I think we can agree that the optics, in the parlance of our time, of taking health care away from people or keeping them from getting it to start with just don't look that good. In an election year.

We'll see. But this is another reminder that all news isn't bad.

Lessons from Louisiana?

One of the more interesting news stories in the last few days was the reelection of Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards. It was a state that went heavily for Trump in 2016 and he campaigned heavily there before the election.

As was the case in Kentucky's race, a key factor was Medicaid expansion. Kentucky's Bevin tried to undo a lot of that state's progress in expanding health care (around 400,000) by imposing draconian reporting requirements that would have cut off tens of thousands. Edwards made the decision to expand Medicaid in his previous term, where it now covers around 500,000 people.

Here's an interesting take on the politics of Medicaid and what it might mean for the future. Sample quote: "In the last two years, Obamacare in general — and Medicaid expansion, in particular — have begun paying political dividends."

I'm reminded of a quote from the Psalms, "The stone the builder refused has become the chief cornerstone."

Thinking about the other f word

There’s been a lot of interest in the f-word lately. Of course, I mean the seven-letter one. To wit, fascism.

According to Merriam Webster, it was the most searched word on the internet on election night in 2016. It came close to being the word of the year for 2016 but it was trumped, no pun intended, by “surreal.” In Feb. 2017, The Washington Post reported that fascism’s share of internet searches in the new year was already five times the level of 2015.

Last year, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who spent her early years in its shadow in Europe, published a book titled “Fascism: A Warning.”

It’s shown up in the news quite a bit lately.

No doubt the word gets kicked around inappropriately, often coming to define a fascist as anyone with whom one disagrees.

The word had a fairly innocent origin. During the Roman Republic, one of the more democratic governments in the ancient world, lictors or bodyguards of officials carried fasces, a bundle of rods tied around an axe blade as a symbol of legitimate authority.

The symbolism was powerful. A single rod could be easily broken, but not many joined together.

It survived as a non-fascist symbol long after the ancient world, showing up both in the reign of French King Louis XIV (1638-1715) and in the symbols of the French Revolution which overthrew his dynasty in the late 1700s. You can even find fasces behind the podium of the US House of Representatives, on the left and right and on the seal of the US Senate.

It acquired its modern connotations when adopted by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Mussolini was originally a socialist before embracing authoritarianism, militarism, imperialism and extreme nationalism after World War I.

At first, Mussolini was more opportunist than ideologue. His initial platform called for women’s suffrage and social programs including greater representation of workers. However, those ideals soon faded as he reached an accommodation with traditional economic elites and crushed independent workers’ organizations.

Eventually the term was applied to other movements, most of which didn’t gain power. One notable exception, of course, was Germany, which would far eclipse fascist Italy in terms of power while it lasted.

Fascist movements often begin as a variety of populism, which can take many forms, some benign. Michael Kazin defined populism as “a language whose speakers conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class; view their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic; and seek to mobilize the former against the latter.”

John B. Judis distinguished between the populism of the left and right. In his recent book “The Populist Explosion,” he suggested that:

“Leftwing populists champion the people against an elite or an establishment. Theirs is a vertical politics of the bottom and middle arrayed against the top. Rightwing populists champion the people against an elite that they accuse of coddling a third group, which can consist, for instance, of immigrants, Islamists, or African American militants.” Or some other group. You can pretty much fill in the blank.

(Side note: I’d personally prefer we retire the language of left and right when it comes to current politics. Those terms refer to which side supporters or opponents of the French monarchy sat on at the National Assembly in 1789, which isn’t exactly a burning issue these days.)

Still, one can have populism of the “right” without having fascism. And fascist movements that gain state power generally ditch the populist agenda as leaders reach understandings with conservative and business elites. The populist base of such movements generally get thrown under the proverbial bus. A classic example of this is Hitler’s 1934 purge of more radical Nazi supporters in what came to be known as “the night of the long knives.”

So what does the word mean mean these days? And does it matter?

One scholar who has researched the history exhaustively is Robert Paxton author of “The Anatomy of Fascism” (2004). He defined it as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”

He saw the mobilizing passions of early stage fascism to also include the need for authority and “the closer integration of a purer community;” belief in superiority of the leader’s instinct over reason and logic; the beauty of violence and the will in pursuing the group’s aims; and the right of the chosen group to dominate others without restraint.

He saw the movement as including stages from their emergence to their establishment in the political system to gaining power to wielding it to a final stage of either radicalization or entropy. The good news is that while authoritarian regimes can last a long time, fascist ones don’t have much of a shelf life. So far.

Ever since fascist movements emerged in the first half of the 20th century, many Americans have asked themselves if it could happen here, a question that has been asked more frequently these days.

I think it’s possible but not inevitable. While this may be to be the closest this f-word has had to a moment in the sun in this country, I’m hoping it’s more of a flirtation than a long-term relationship.

Still, it might be good to recall the words of Pearl Buck, the only West Virginian (so far) to win the Nobel Prize for literature: “When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.”

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

Speaking of democracy...

...maybe a small town in Vermont has finally gotten it right by electing a goat, Ms. Lincoln, as mayor. According to this news story,

That idea to elect an animal as mayor came from the town manager. He thought it would be a fun way to raise money for the school to build a new playground and get kids to start thinking about local politics.

On voting day, the kids took to the polls with their parents and had their very own ballot with 16 candidates ranging from cats and dogs to a goat! Lincoln won by three votes...

"We were really pleased to see it was a civics lesson for the students and that they could be involved and decisions made in the town and it something that we hope to continue in the future getting the kids voting with their parents on a regular basis," said Christopher Stapleton, Lincoln's owner.

The election was also intended to be a fundraiser, but only $100 was raised instead of the $70,000 hoped for.

I could have told them that goats were a money pit. On the other hand, the last few years have shown that could could do a lot worse when it comes to elected officials. 

Condemned to repeat it?

Teachers don't strike often, but when they do they rip away the veil from West Virginia's open secret, which is hidden in plain sight. To wit, our colonial economy, the legacy of 100+ years of absentee corporate ownership and exploitation, which created private wealth for the overlords and public squalor for everyone else. 

Historian John Alexander Williams wrote that this colonial arrangement that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was characterized by

...a high degree of absentee ownership, which took on a new and increasingly controversial form as large corporations displaced the smaller firms and individuals who pioneered in industrial development; heavy dependence upon extractive industries oriented to distant markets; and a relative lack of those manufacturing industries that provided the greatest stimuli to material growth and welfare in the nation at large.

He also wrote that

 In its repetitive cycle of boom and bust, its savage exploitation of men and nature, in its seemingly endless series of disasters, the coal industry has brought grief and hardship to all but a small proportion of the people whose lives it touched.

All that is old news. But recent reporting by the Charleston Gazette-Mail's Ken Ward puts it into context for the new century in two recent ProPublica-supported pieces on the human costs of coal and whether we'll learn anything from it in the era of fracking. The jury's still out, but the home team isn't looking too lucky at the moment.

While I'm giving shoutouts to the Gazette, I second these words of political reporter Phil Kabler on the choices facing voters in the next election:

A fundamental question for voters in this election cycle and for the foreseeable future: Should state governments follow the Koch brothers/ALEC approach of shrinking funding for programs and services to the point of dysfunction in the pursuit of tax cuts that primarily benefit corporations and the wealthy, or should states impose a level of taxation that provides adequate funding for programs such as public education, higher education, transportation, infrastructure, public health, public safety, corrections and, yes, perhaps even the Human Rights Commission.

Annals of hypocrisy

You really can't make this stuff up. As my friend Ken Ward reported in yesterday's Gazette-Mail, WV's Republican representatives in the US House, who rode to power in part by pretending to give a ____ (fill in the blank) about coal miners, voted to cut funding on the federal Mine Health and Safety Administration.  Fortunately, the measure failed to pass the entire House.

UMWA president Cecil Roberts had this to say about that: "I am gratified that a majority of the House agreed with our position that we should not be cutting coal mine safety at a time when we are experiencing rising fatalities and serious injuries in America’s mines."

I guess you get what you vote for.

Speaking of abominations, then there's this.

Nothing like the real thing

During the worst crisis in American history, President Abraham Lincoln made time regularly to talk with and listen to all varieties of ordinary citizens. He understood that success in leading a democracy required an understanding of public opinion and the only way to get that was unfiltered contact with the public.

That meant spending time with uninvited visitors, singly or in groups and ranging from office seekers to petitioners to ordinary people to cranks. Lincoln called these occasions his "public-opinion baths" and viewed them as critical to his ability to govern.

As he told a Union officer, "I feel, though the tax on my time is heavy, no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again within the direct contact and atmosphere of our whole people. Men moving only in an official circle are apt to become merely official, not to say arbitrary, in their ideas, and are apter and apter, with each passing day, to forget that they only hold power in a representative capacity."

Lincoln admitted that many of the concerns brought to him were utterly frivolous and others were more or less important, but he believed that "all serve to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage, out of which I sprang, and to which I must return."

It was his way of keeping it real.

Unfortunately in today's political climate it's all too easy for political leaders to insulate themselves from their constituents, just as it's easy for us ordinary citizens to live in media bubbles where we stay in our political comfort zones.

For a democracy to work well, there's no substitute for direct contact. That's the only way that real connections can be made between citizens and their representatives. And it's the only way for representatives to understand the concerns of real people. And there's no more direct way for that to happen than by open and unscripted public meetings.

In this day and age, that may take a little political courage. But that's what leadership is all about.

There's no partisan monopoly on this. In March, after some occasionally tense pressure from citizens, Sen. Joe Manchin held four wide-open events from the eastern panhandle to Huntington. It wasn't always a love feast. He took heat from those who disagreed with some of his votes, but there was also a chance for honest give and take on the issues.

New Jersey Republican Congressman Tom MacArthur recently endured a mostly hostile five hour meeting with constituents, many of whom were angered by his vote to replace the Affordable Care Act with the Trump supported replacement.

Love him or not, at least he had the courage to show up and take it.

These days, you get points for showing up.

Whatever their political views, West Virginians deserve representatives and candidates who have the willingness and courage to show up for face-to-face meetings with those they represent.

Everybody needs a good bath every now and then.

(This appeared as an op-ed in Sunday's Huntington Herald-Dispatch.)

Lucky for us that would never happen

At least the one in mythology was harmless.

All kinds of things wind up in my inbox, most of which are unsolicited and quickly deleted. Still, I take a look every now and then. This weekend, I received a post from writer and public speaker Linda Arnold titled "You Just Can’t Reason With Some People – Here’s Why."

Among other things, she discusses narcissistic personality disorder, a mental disorder identified in the DSM-5 manual of the American Psychiatric Association. 


Arnold presents the following checklist and asks if it rings any bells with anyone in our lives:

Has a grandiose sense of self importance

Is unwilling to identify with the needs and feelings of others

Has a sense of entitlement – unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment

or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

Believes he or she is unique and special

Requires excessive admiration

Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love

Takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

Is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her

Often acts in an arrogant fashion

After checking that list, I thought, golly gee, wouldn't it be unfortunate if such a person were in a position of global responsibility? Like, you know....sad!

You really can't make this **** up

The website WalletHub recently came up with a list of the best and worst places for millennials to live. It's no surprise that West Virginia came out on the bottom. But, as my friend Stephen Smith wrote with Pastor Mason Ballard, it's the best state to come to if you want to make a difference. And God knows we need that.

One of the reasons WV is unattractive to newcomers is the fact that it's kind of falling apart and the Republican majority in the legislature wants to pass a poverty budget that keeps things that way. Gazette-Mail reporter Phil Kabler had a great riff on that theme in the first part of this column.

One thing that could make things better is a budget that invests in people and infrastructure, as Gov. Jim Justice has proposed. Some of us were hoping he would veto the  legislature's proposed budget. And some of us, including me, sounded the  alarm and urged people to contact the governor in support of a veto.

I guess that's something to scratch off the list. And that's no (metaphorical) BS.

Two last thoughts:

*first, this really is the year of political props; and

*second, as I've argued before, we really should change the state motto from "Mountaineers are always free" to "You can't make this **** up" At least until we deserve the old motto again.

Poverty pays if you aren't poor

“Poverty pays unless you’re poor.”

So said Don West, a rebellious Appalachian poet and educator and friend of mine who devoted his life to the struggle against it.

The evidence suggests he’s right.

Way back in 1971, sociologist Herbert Gans enumerated the different ways poverty benefits the non-poor in an essay titled “The Uses of Poverty: the Poor Pay All.” His findings hold up pretty well.

Then as now, it turns out that those who benefit the most from it are the wealthy.

Among the functions of poverty are these:

*Poverty ensures that the “dirty work” of society gets done in the form of the many jobs that are low-pay low-trust and low-status but are absolutely necessary for a society to work.

A pool unemployed and underemployed people also imposes “discipline” in the labor market and helps drive down wages for all workers. A bad job looks pretty good when you step over homeless people or drive past people holding “Will work for food” signs on your way to work. When hundreds apply for a handful of living wage jobs, it sends a strong message to the lucky few that they can be easily replaced.

This population can also be mobilized by the powerful and wealthy as strike-breakers or cannon fodder in war time or even as angry mobs that can be used to target other vulnerable populations.

*Because the poor work at low wages, they can perform the tasks (cleaning, child care, etc.) that make the leisure of the affluent possible. They also pay a higher proportion of their income in sales and consumption taxes, something likely to get worse if some in the Legislature get their way.

*Poverty creates a lot of jobs and economic opportunities for people, businesses and organizations which “service” the poor, from pawn shops to plasma centers to professionals to prisons.

*Poor people can be counted on to buy or otherwise consume the goods that others don’t want, whether it’s old food, second hand goods, or used cars. In a twist Gans couldn’t have imagined, huge corporations now get major breaks for dumping unwanted and often unhealthy food products to pantries and charities.


*Poor people are an ideal group to punish in order to uphold social norms. As Gans put it,
“To justify the desirability of hard work, thrift, honest, and monogamy, for example, the defenders of these norms must be able to find people who can be accused of being lazy, spendthrift, dishonest, and promiscuous. Although there is some evidence that the poor are about as moral and law-abiding as anyone else, they are more likely to be caught and punished when they participate in deviant acts.”

They are also less able to defend themselves against stereotypes and legal punishments.

*Speaking of deviance and social norms, the non-poor can derive a vicarious thrill from contemplating the real or imagined moral laxity of the poor.

*The affluent also have a long history of what I call cultural strip-mining, which consists of finding, commodifying, and profiting from the cultural creations of the non-wealthy. Think blues music, mountain ballads, folk art, etc. To paraphrase the Clash, the spice of poverty adds life where there isn’t any.

*A poor population helps boost the status and self-esteem of those who aren’t poor. It also gives the aristocracy a chance to display its generosity on the “worthy poor,” which presumably helps justify its existence.

*Because of their relative powerlessness, Gans noted that poor people can absorb the costs of change. If you need to wipe out a neighborhood for a new highway or development project, close down a school or locate a toxic dump, poor communities are a ready target.

There are also a lot of ways the affluent can use the poor for political purposes, some of which Gans couldn’t have anticipated.

He noted that “An economy based on the ideology of laissez-faire requires a deprived population that is allegedly unwilling to work or that can be considered inferior because it must accept charity or welfare in order to survive.”

An “unworthy” population is a powerful argument against working for a more just social order, since presumably such people would benefit the most from such an arrangement.

Politicians such as Ronald Reagan and many others elevated this process to an art by stirring racially-charged resentments against mythical “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks” buying steaks with food stamps. Wealthy people and corporations are still reaping the benefits of that strategy.
Tapping such resentment served to further enrich the already wealthy and contribute to a level of inequality unprecedented in recent history.

Finally, and this is just me talking, it seems like some people in positions of power and influence derive some kind of gratification by proposing and imposing laws and policies that impose humiliation, surveillance and degradation on poor people. The pleasure seems to be enhanced when masked as compassion. To me it’s the political equivalent of bullying or cruelty to animals.

Considering all the benefits the poor convey to the wealthy, there doesn’t seem to be much gratitude. But I guess that would defeat the purpose.

I’m reminded of some lines by the English poet William Blake:

“Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody Poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.”

Sticking it to which man?

This op-ed of mine ran in Tuesday's Charleston Gazette-Mail, although for some reason it didn't get posted online:

There’s a lot of talk lately about the working class. In an ordinary year, I’d be ecstatic because this is something I care about.  But this isn’t an ordinary year.

Lately, the term is often racialized, which is never a good sign. The Electoral College victory of the president elect is attributed to the white working class. While there are lots of ways of parsing the results, let’s assume that’s true and consider how working people are likely to fare now.

I guess we could start by saying that white working class people probably won’t have their names added to a registry, face mass deportations, or have travel restricted for reasons other than lack of money. There’s that anyway, although I kind of doubt this would have happened in any case.

But a number of policies now on the agenda could be harmful to working people.

Let’s start with the Affordable Care Act.  Around 30 million Americans could lose coverage if it is fully repealed without being replaced. Of these, over half are white, most of whom work for a living.

 In WV, Medicaid expansion alone covers nearly 180,000 people, about one out of ten. That doesn’t include people with disabilities or the tiny TANF or welfare population.  Around 37,000 working West Virginians got covered through the exchange.  Around 18,000 young people up to age 26 are now covered on their parent’s insurance. These people are overwhelmingly in working families. White ones too.

Losing expansion funding would be a devastating blow to hospitals and health care providers here and would result in job losses in one of the few growing industries.

The new administration could breathe new life into House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program. Medicare is a health care program for people age 65 and older who have worked and paid into the system. It provides coverage to over 55 million Americans and around 400,000 here, over 1/5 of the population. We’re tied with Maine in having the highest percentage of beneficiaries.

Ryan has also proposed block granting—and effectively cutting--programs such as SNAP and traditional Medicaid, both of which benefit working families. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the data shows that “The overwhelming majority of SNAP recipients who can work do so.”  SNAP benefits go straight to local businesses and help support thousands of retail and agriculture jobs.

Traditional Medicaid covers 70 million, including long term care for the elderly and people with disabilities. Many seniors who worked all their lives run out of savings when they need long term care. Medicaid picks up the slack. With block granting, some would have to quit jobs to care for elderly family members, even though they may be unequipped to do this. More seniors who worked all their lives will be in danger of abuse or neglect.

This would also mean losing federal matching funds, again with job impact. More than 10 years ago the WV Bureau of Business and Economic Research found that Medicaid spending supported economic activity that generated nearly 33,000 jobs. That number has only gone up since.

Medicaid and CHIP provide health care to children in many working families earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level—and most workers want their kids to live and be healthy. The programs also bring millions of dollars to local communities and sustain jobs.

The latest round of proposed tax cuts—a remedy that has yet to produce impressive results--would likely benefit the very wealthy, increase inequality, and reduce the ability of the federal government to respond to the needs of working families—for example by making vocational and post-secondary education more affordable.

From the earliest days of the republic, working people fought for a free public education for their children, which is likely to be undermined by a secretary of education committed to undermining it with a system of vouchers and privatization schemes. Speaking of labor history, another key demand of the past was the abolition of child labor, which has been praised by a group the newly appointed education chief has supported.

Then there’s trade, a major issue for working people. I’m not mourning the death of the Trans Pacific Partnership and I support revisiting trade deals to ensure workers’ rights and save American jobs. But a heavy handed approach could set off a trade war which the conservative Peterson Institute described as “horribly destructive.” Peterson estimated that this could cost between 1.3 and 4 million jobs. Progressive groups that ordinarily oppose Peterson on trade issues, such as the Economic Policy Institute, share similar concerns.

If the US ignores the dangers of climate change, working people will be hit the hardest by extreme weather events, like those that hit much of the state this summer. Scientific models project more droughts, floods, food shortages, wildfires, disease epidemics, etc. While we’re at it, if the US goes to war with the known universe over perceived slights on Twitter, it’s a pretty safe bet that working people would pay the highest price.

Then there’s the pick for secretary of labor, a fast food baron who opposes the minimum wage and talks about replacing workers with robots, saying that the latter are ““always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex or race discrimination case”

Sorry, but If this is a case of sticking it to the man, I’d have to ask, which man would that be? From where I’m sitting, it seems to be the one who is living paycheck to paycheck.

I think a real pro-working class program would be based on solidarity, not scapegoating. It would include such things as full employment and trade policies to strengthen the middle class; patching the holes in our pension and health care system, ensuring paid sick days and family leave; making debt-free post high-school job training and education a reality; strengthening K-12 public education; investing in things like early childhood programs and infrastructure; and guaranteeing the right of workers to organize. And, since widespread poverty exerts a downward pressure on everyone’s wages, it would support an increase in the minimum wage indexed to inflation.

It would recognize that an injury to one is the concern of all, just as the labor movement of the 1800s came to recognize that free labor could never prosper while slavery persisted. And it would promote international policies that would guarantee fair trade, a sustainable future, and what Lincoln called “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

I haven’t heard a lot of that.

Shape of things to come?

This is so not cool. The daily newspaper is starting to creep me out more than The Walking Dead. On the Gazette-Mail webpage today we have:

*an article about how the legislature, thanks to a right wing "think" tank, is considering vouchers for schools;

*another one about how they are considering cutting public education even more by cutting the business inventory tax;

*another one on how the state's public colleges and universities have been cut to the bone and are likely to be cut even more; and

*one more on Republican plans to undo the Affordable Care Act, which covers around 225,000 West Virginians.

The zombies are looking pretty good right now.