Rural crime ring busted!!!

A suspect was recently apprehended following a series of tomato theft and vandalism incidents in the vicinity of Goat Rope Farm. The unsub (that's crime buster lingo for unidentified subject of an investigation) refused to identify himself or to issue any statements.

Due to the absence of witnesses, formal charges were not pressed. He was, however, dropped off in the middle of a field about a half mile down the road.

SPEAKING OF FARMS, here's a dispatch by Michael Pollan on the food revolution.

CREATING JOBS. One provision of the Recovery Act has created hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide in both the public and private sector.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, a new report shows the Recovery Act aka stimulus played a major role in the economic recovery.

DENIED. The EPA rejected petitions that denied climate change, as Ken Ward reports in Coal Tattoo.

HIRE THE LADY. Paul Krugman gives the Obama administration a friendly thrashing here and urges that Elizabeth Warren be given the post of the new bureau of consumer protection. Not that anybody cares, but I concur.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Meet it and live it

El Cabrero has been winding his way through Thoreau's Walden again and I'm just about at the end of it. Sometimes funny, sometimes inspiring and insightful and sometimes exasperating, I've never failed to get something out of it.

Here's another little gem, extracted from a passage where he talks nonsense about poverty:

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.

Odd as he was, Thoreau pretty much did that. It's harder than it sounds.

DEMOCRACY. Here are some tips on making it work.

A PROGRAM THAT WORKS. A little-known program of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is putting people to work.

TWO DEFICITS. Here's yet another call for addressing the jobs deficit first.

ALBION. Evidence from an archaeological dig suggests that early humans or their relatives inhabited England much earlier than previously believed.

THE POLITICS OF VIDEO GAMES is discussed here. Much seems to involve blowing up people and things and accumulating stuff.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

There is a tide...

El Cabrero spends a good bit of time working on public policy issues at the state and federal level. I find it fascinating that some issues seem to rise to the surface and get a lot of attention while others--often very important ones--don't.

Sometimes, when issues get "hot," the result can be the passage of significant legislation, but other times they fade from public view for years, decades or even for good.

Sometimes openings exist to get things done and other times they don't. When an opening occurs, one needs to be able to act swiftly and skillfully. And when there is no immediate opening to accomplish a particular goal, the best one can often do is lay the groundwork to take advantage of an opening when it eventually occurs.

It kind of reminds me of these lines spoken by Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Over the next few days, I'm going to try to follow that thread through the labyrinth. I just hope I don't get eaten by the Minotaur...

THE STIGMA IS FADING FAST about food stamp usage, as the NY Times reports. Nowadays, one in eight Americans and one in four children are depending on them.

JOBS! In this op-ed, Paul Krugman calls for direct public sector job creation.

DEFICIT DISORDER, REVISITED. Here's economist Dean Baker talking sense on the federal deficit.

STATUS AND US. This op-ed by yours truly on the social determinants of health came out in the Gazette and Common Dreams yesterday.

LABOR. This Gazette article looks at the future of the labor movement in WV.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A good deed for the day

Last month's health care rally in DC.

If you're casting about for something to do today or have a few minutes to spare in a good cause, today is a national call in day to Congress to support health care reform.

This is a critical time to weigh in on the issue. Big guns and loud voices are trying to kill meaningful health care reform. But here's a good reality check: the Center for American Progress estimates that while Congress is in recess in August, 400,000 more Americans will lose health coverage.

From the AFLCIO blog:

Now it’s time for Congress to hear the voices of America’s workers. Together with Health Care for America Now! (HCAN), AFL-CIO unions, state federations, central labor councils, community allies and health care advocates are mobilizing for a National Call-In Day for Health Care tomorrow, July 28, from 9 a.m. EDT to 5 p.m. EDT.

Call 1-877-264- HCAN (1-877-264-4226) and tell your representative in the U.S. House to support the House health care reform bill, (H.R. 3200). You also can e-mail or fax your lawmaker with the same message. Click here to find your representative and his or her contact information.

The House bill contains a public health insurance plan option and shared responsibility, including an employer “pay or play” requirement—and does not tax health care benefits working families receive through their jobs.

The word is that despite public opinion research that shows major support for reform, calls against it are outnumbering those in favor by two to one.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's a commentary on the subject I did for WV Public Broadcasting.

THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. Tennessee is using part of its share of stimulus money for direct New Deal style job creation for unemployed workers. That's what we need all over the country.

GUT FEELINGS. Here's an interesting article about scientific research into hunches and intuition.

OH THE WATER. Here's an interesting green energy possibility using ocean currents. I guess we won't be doing a lot of that in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia (unless climate change gets really bad).

BUT WAIT--NOT TO WORRY. Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo describes a coal industry confab in which climate change was denied. That's a relief. Guess I can scratch that one off the list. I wonder whether they talked about how many dinosaurs were in Noah's ark...I bet you could fit a lot in if you used babies.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED