A zombie lie that needs to be put to rest

“Zombie lie” is a term that has come into use in recent years. It means a false statement that keeps getting repeated no matter what the facts are.

It seems to me that the number of zombie lies walking around these days roughly approximates the number of undead flesh-eaters you might find on a good episode of “The Walking Dead.”

Some of the most prominent zombie lies these days have to do with the markets and the role of government.

Economist Dean Baker laid into one of the biggest zombie lies in his book, “The Conservative Nanny State.” It consists of the idea that conservatives support market outcomes while progressives rely on government.

Baker made the case that “both conservatives and liberals want government intervention. The difference between them is the goal of government intervention, and the fact that conservatives are smart enough to conceal their dependence on the government.”

The other big difference is that conservatives want to use the power of government to distribute more money to those who already have at the expense of everyone else.

There are plenty of ways this can happen. If you want a current example, you need look no farther than the vastly unpopular tax “reform” bill. It gives huge breaks to corporations and the wealthy that are likely to be paid for by cuts in programs for working Americans, seniors and kids — and favors those who inherit wealth without lifting a finger over those who work hard every day.

Then there are trade deals that expand the rights of multinational corporations at the expense of workers, communities, land, water and other natural resources.

Then there are numerous varieties of government subsidies for businesses ranging from the energy to financial to the agricultural sectors — not to mention the role that governments play in cleaning up the messes of the private sector, a term economists refer to as “negative externalities.”

Patents and intellectual property rights are in effect government sanctioned legal monopolies that protect their owners from free market forces. For example, this is the main reason the inexpensively produced prescription drugs cost so much to consumers. Any tiny modification of the drug in question extends the period of legal monopoly and freedom from competition. In a real free market situation, this would never happen.

Baker argues that bankruptcy laws allow the government to “act as a strong-arm debt collector for businesses that did not accurately assess the risks associated with their loans.” On the flip side, many West Virginia coal miners have found that bankruptcy laws also favor corporations that want to dodge long-standing promises to retirees, widows, and children.

“Tort reform” is a way for corporations to influence the government to avoid paying for the costs of the damages they may inflict on people, intentionally or otherwise.

Powerful interests are often able to use their influence to curb the government entities created to regulate them, a practice known as “regulatory capture.” (I could list examples from the current administration in Washington but it would take too much space.)

For that matter, corporations are government-sanctioned legal entities that are authorized to act as “persons.”

If all that wasn’t enough, it would be impossible to list all the times that the powers of the state — police, military, courts, prison, surveillance — have been used to break strikes, repress freedom movements, and defend big business interests at home and abroad, often at a high cost in human lives. You could fill a few bookshelves just with examples of that in West Virginia history, not that we teach our kids much about it.

All that looks like a (heavily armed) conservative nanny state for the well off to me. And it's way more generous than the one that supposedly exists to protect poor and working people.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose holiday is celebrated this month, came much closer to describing the real situation: “We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.”

(This appeared as an op-ed in last week's Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Subsidize this

The latest WV Public Radio Front Porch podcast/program is about Gov. Jim Justice's proposal to get the federal government to subsidize eastern coal as a matter of rent seeking national security and also about disasters like Hurricane Harvey.

More important, however, is the pressing question of what food item would be your nickname if sandwiched (no pun intended) between your first and last name? You may have to listen to make sense of that one.

Stating the obvious

One thing that disasters like WV's recent floods remind us of, if we need it, is that there's a role for government in our everyday life. Such as responding to disasters, promoting public safety, promoting public health, maintaining our infrastructure. All that kind of stuff. As amazing as volunteers can be, they can't do it all.

Here's a great op-ed on that theme by a friend of mine whose home was damaged when the Elk River rose. I hope that decision makers--and voters--think about things like that.

Feeling witchy?

Image by way of wikipedia.

If you are, maybe it's because tonight is Walpurgisnacht, which in some northern European countries was a festival accompanied by bonfires, dancing and pagan overtones. The name comes from the fact that May 1 is the feast of St. Walpurga, an English missionary to the Franks in the 700s.

Walpurga herself wasn't witchy, of course, but the time of year was, as in exactly six months from Halloween or All Saint's Day. In German folklore--and in Goethe's Faust Part I--it is the night of the witches' sabbath, where they knew a thing or two about partying.

While we're on a literary jag, Walpurgisnacht is also mentioned in Bram Stoker's eerie story Dracula's Guest, which didn't make it to the novel. Some weird things happened then too.

Alas, the weather is pretty wet at Goat Rope Farm today, so I wouldn't hold out much hope for a bonfire.

And don't forget: if tonight is Walpurgisnacht, that means tomorrow is the Celtic holiday Beltane!

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY? Click here.

INFOGRAPHIC? Click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: FLYING ON A BROOM

Short load

West Virginia was the subject of a long and gloomy article in the Washington Post recently. Some other reflections on changes in the state over time can be found in this Gazette editorial.

Meanwhile, here's a good one by E.J. Dionne about why Congress has been trying to fix the wrong problem for the last few years and one more by Krugman about how ideology can sabotage government services.

Deja vu all over

It's time for federal budget kabuki theater again in the nation's capitol. House budget committee chair Paul Ryan just released his proposed budget, which is every bit as nasty and scary as it was last year. Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities refers to it as "Robin Hood in reverse--on steroids." Read more about it here.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT in growing the economy is discussed in this op-ed by a friend of mine. It's nice to see somebody else feeding the right wing trolls that lurk at online news sources.

AND JUST TO COVER ALL THE BASES, here's an item on a jellyfish inspired aquatic robot.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The not so mighty hunter

Another deer season has come and gone. I made several efforts this time, but things didn't break my way.

I think part of the blame for this lies with the deer themselves. At one point, I might have had a shot at a group of them. Looking through the scope, I saw one deer licking another one.

It would have been so much easier if the deer in question would have been giving the other one the finger (although I know there are logistical problems for deer associated with performing that gesture).

Deer should be meaner. And uglier. Then everything would be perfect.

DEAL OR NO DEAL, REVISITED. Here's economist Dean Baker's take on the unemployment/tax cut deal.

FEAR OF SUCCESS. Here's a take on the right wing's fear of successful public programs.

PLUTOCRACY REVISITED. A former neo-con fesses up.

GAME CHANGER. The WV Senate will be under new management.

BLASTED MOUNTAINS AND BLOWN UP BUDDHAS. All the way from the state of Maine, this article compares the coming destruction of Blair Mountain with the blown up Buddhas of Afghanistan.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A DAUNTING JOURNEY

Circe, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the Odyssey of Homer, but you will also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

After many ordeals, Odysseus and his men have it pretty good on the island of Circe. As he put it:

...there we sat at ease,
day in, day out, till a year had run its course,
feasting on sides of meat and drafts of heady wine...
But then, when the year was through and the seasons wheeled by
and the months waned and the long days came round again,
my loyal comrades took me aside and prodded,
'Captain, this is madness!
High time you thought of your own home at last,
if it really is your fate to make it back alive
and reach your well-build house and native land.'

Circe is cool with all that (unlike the other nymph Calypso in a similar situation). She promises to help but warns him that he must undertake yet another journey if he is ever to make it home:

'Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, old campaigner,
stay no more in my house against your will.
But first another journey calls. You must travel down
to the House of Death and the awesome one, Persephone,
there to consult the ghost of Tiresias, seer of Thebes,
the great blind prophet whose mind remains unshaken.
Even in death--Persephone has given him wisdom,
everlasting vision to him and him alone..
the rest of the dead are empty, flitty shades.'

It will be a dangerous trip, beyond the confines of the know world. It sounds like the dead "lived" underground beyond the Mediterranean somewhere in the Atlantic, which the ancient Greeks considered to be the river Oceanus. Neither he nor his men are glad to hear the news. She gives him final instructions for his task and helps him on his way.

The way you know you've really arrived as a mythological hero, by the way, is to take a trip to the land of the dead. Odysseus will join the company of Orpheus, Heracles, and Theseus. In future years, Aeneas and Dante will make the trip as well.

Come to think of it, I guess we all will, one way or another.

AMERICAN HUNGER. Here's an item from AARP on the growing problem of hunger and food insecurity in the US.

OCCUPATIONS have their problems, as economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses in this op-ed on Iraq and Afghanistan.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT in helping the economy grow is discussed here.

PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE. Financial compatibility may be the key to a good marriage.

RELIGION ON THE BRAIN, literally.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, if you feel like a theological workout, here's an interesting paper on the history of Christian views of warfare.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Caption: From the Gospel of Thomas, "If two make peace with each other in a single house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move from here!' and it will move."

In addition to rants about current events, this week's Goat Rope is a series of musings on the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries.

If you're familiar with the New Testament gospels and read Thomas, many of the sayings in it will seem fairly familiar and consistent with the picture of Jesus that emerges from Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Other parts will probably seem really strange. And then there are some that are kind of in the middle; they sound like something Jesus might have said or close anyway. This may be because parts of Thomas were assembled very early, possibly before the other gospels, while other parts represent the later theological elaborations of some early Christian community.

As an example of the familiar, verse 94 has Jesus say "One who seeks will find; for [one who] knocks it will be opened."

Then there are passages from Thomas that don't appear in the canonical gospels but could be authentic sayings of Jesus (or at least are similar to what he might have said). For example, in the other gospels, Jesus says "No man can serve two masters." Thomas also has "A person cannot mount two horses or bend two bows" (47). The cryptic command to "Be passersby" (42) could work with the canonical sayings where Jesus sends his followers on the road.

This kind of sounds like Jesus:

"If two make peace with each other in a single house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move from here!' and it will move." (48)

as does this:

"Love your brother like your soul, protect that person like the pupil of your eye."

Some scholars think that some of the following brief parables, one of which was quoted here yesterday, could go back the the historical Jesus:

96 Jesus [said], The Father's kingdom is like [a] woman. She took a little leaven, [hid] it in dough, and made it into large loaves of bread. Anyone here with two ears had better listen!

97 Jesus said, The [Father's] imperial rule is like a woman who was carrying a [jar] full of meal. While she was walking along [a] distant road, the handle of the jar broke and the meal spilled behind her [along] the road. She didn't know it; she hadn't noticed a problem. When she reached her house, she put the jar down and discovered that it was empty.

And then there are the truly strange parts, which lean towards gnosticism and are probably of later origin. Here's an odd one:

Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) domain."

They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) domain as babies?"

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the (Father's) domain]." (22)

In these verses, salvation is seen less as moving forward to some consummation than as moving back to the origin. When asked how the end will be, Jesus replies:

Have you discovered the beginning, then, so that you are seeking the end? For where the beginning is, the end will be. Fortunate is the on who stands at the beginning: That one will know the end and will not taste death. (18)

And finally, there are some parts of Thomas that just make you think, whatever their origin may be. El Cabrero's selection of Thomas' Greatest Hits will run tomorrow.

But now, back to today's salt mines...

HEALTH CARE. It should come as a shock to no one that two recent studies of health care by the Commonwealth Fund finds the US bringing up the rear among developed countries in the quality of its health care system. Karen Davis, president of the group, noted that “The United States stands out as the only nation in these studies that does not ensure access to health care through universal coverage and promotion of a ‘medical home’ for patients."

POWER POPULISTS VS LOSER LIBERALS. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research frequently points out that progressives or "loser liberals" often lose the struggle over ideas by accepting the idea that they want to use the government to redistribute market outcomes whereas conservatives want to rely on the market. "Power populists," by contrast

doesn’t accept the basic government/market distinction that loser liberalism treats as its starting point. The power populists see government policy as determining who wins and loses in the market place.

Both sides use government. The real difference between progressives and economic conservatives is that the latter use government to distribute money upward while the former want to use it to help middle and low income people. Check out his ebook The Conservative Nanny State.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED