Three for a Monday

I don't always agree with conservative broadcaster Hoppy Kercheval, but I'm totally down with him on this one. In this commentary, he calls for passage of the Miners Protection Act, which would help prop up promised pension benefits for miners from the Abandoned Mine Lands program. After being held up for years by senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, it seems to be finally gaining traction. I think this is a put up or shut up moment for those who pretend to care about miners.

From last week's Gazette, here's a piece by physician and Republican delegate Matthew Rohrbach supporting a state earned income tax credit. My solution  to the state's budget crisis, not that anyone cares, would be to increase some taxes and offset any regressive effect on low income families with a state EITC.

Finally, former state supreme court justice Richard Neely argues here that there are several good reasons for WV to legalize marijuana,  not all of which are related to taxes and budgets. Or Cheetos.

Wrecker of mead-benches

El Cabrero is having fun here with Beowulf lately, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, check earlier posts.

If one were to make a list of the qualities of a good political leader these days, the ability to wreck the drinking halls of his foes might not make it to the top of the list, but it sure did in the opening lines of Beowulf. That was one of several attributed to an early king of the Spear-Danes.

Just for fun, here are the opening lines in the original Anglo-Saxon:

HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas, syððanærest wearð
feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum weorðmyndum þah,
oð þæt him æghwylc ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan; þæt wæs god cyning!

Did everybody get that?

Seriously, though, it's hard to recognize that as English apart from a few words, although it was just that in second half of the first millennium AD. It still might have been if a certain Norman called William the Bastard didn't become William the Conqueror. The alphabet was a bit different, as you can tell. For example the thing that looks like a weird letter p had a th sound. I haven't got around to figuring out the other ones yet.

Here's Seamus Heaney's version of the same passage:

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.

There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes,
a wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among foes.
This terror of the hall-troops had come far.
A foundling to start with, he would flourish later on
as his powers waxed and his worth was proved.
In the end each clan on the outlying coasts
beyond the whale-road had to yield to him
and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.

Scourging, wrecking, rampaging, collecting tribute. A "god cyning" (good king) indeed.

(My favorite phrase from the original is "hronrade," which means "whale road," i.e. the sea. I'm thinking about referring henceforth to the muddy river I grew up around as "the carp road.")

SAD BUT PREDICTABLE. Some conservatives are re-writing the narrative of the Great Recession by--you guessed it--blaming the poor.

POST-MASSEY. Will Alpha be any better? Here's Ken Ward's take on it. My guess: it would be hard to be worse.

DOING MORE FOR THE WORKING POOR. Here's a call for a state earned income tax credit.

UNCERTAINTY about Republican efforts to repeal health care reform has left many Americans in a tough spot.

GETTING REAL. Still, West Virginia is getting ready to implement reform (probably). The state insurance commission is proposing creating a state insurance exchange. Meanwhile a major expansion of Medicaid is on the horizon.

FILLING IN THE TRICERATOPS FAMILY TREE. A newly discovered ancestor of the three horned dinosaur weighed in at around 15,000 pounds and had a skull eight feet long.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The Tao of Ben

The late great Benjamin Franklin had considerable diplomatic skills whether he was pursing his many interests or that of his country. One insight that greatly contributed to his success was an early insight that arguments and forcible assertions seldom convince other people and may even have the opposite effect.

It's the old fact that if you push people, they usually push back.

In his early years, Franklin admitted to a fondness for argumentation. After reading about the life of Socrates, he even experimented with the Socratic method:

I was charm'd with it, adopted it and dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter...I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practis'd it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause observed.

After a while, however, he gave up the practice,

retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence; never using, when I advanced anything that may possibly be disputed, the words certainly, undoubtedly or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me , or I should think it so and so for such and such reasons; or I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken.

And that made all the difference:

This habit, I believe, has been of great advantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions, and persuade me into measures that I have been from time to time engag'ed in promoting...I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information and pleasure.

NOT GOOD NEWS. The unemployment rate jumped to 8.1 percent in February. Here's an analysis of the numbers by Dean Baker.

WAS IT ENOUGH? In light of that and other bad news, recent efforts to jump start the economy may not have been bold enough.

REUNITED. Efforts are in progress to reunite labor unions into a single, large umbrella organization.

EITC. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on the effort to enact a state Earned Income Tax Credit for families with low and moderate incomes in WV.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED