WV Climate Alliance on Inflation Reduction Act: "A good first step"

The WV Climate Alliance is composed of representatives of more than 20 state organizations (including AFSC) concerned about  the threat of climate change. The group released this statement to coincide with the signing of the bill into law.

Charleston, WV: The WV Climate Alliance has come together to release a joint statement in support of the Inflation Reduction Act as a “Good First Step”. Passage by the House Friday puts this historic legislation on president Biden’s desk for his signature. This legislation will now begin to move our nation forward in addressing our ever escalating Climate Crisis.

“We’d like to recognize Senator Manchin’s leadership for co-sponsoring this legislation,” said Gary Zuckett, Executive Director of WV Citizen Action Group, “and for his efforts to advance these reforms even in the face of total Republican opposition, outright lies broadcast 24-7 by dark money groups over social and regular media, and intense lobbying from Big Pharma, oil companies and other corporate special interests. In these tough times, West Virginians have been waiting long enough for these common-sense improvements.” 

"Once enacted, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will help more West Virginians take control of where their energy comes from at a time when it’s needed most,” said Leah Barbor, West Virginia Program Director, Solar United Neighbors. “These clean energy investments will put us on track to reduce emissions, reduce energy bills, create good jobs and improve equity by expanding the opportunities to bring the benefits of solar to all West Virginians.”

“We want to thank Senator Manchin for ensuring the IRA passage. The IRA is truly a historical step forward,” said Lead West Virginia Veteran and Climate Justice Organizer Lakiesha Lloyd with Common Defense. “However, we must recognize that there is still much to do. We have a long way to go to ensure a renewable energy future where West Virginia veterans will not only survive but thrive. Thus, we’ll keep organizing–this bill is the step we need on our path to full climate justice.”  

“The Inflation Reduction Act is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invest in climate solutions that will help protect West Virginia from the impacts of the climate crisis for generations to come. The WV Environmental Council (WVEC) thanks Senator Manchin for supporting this legislation. West Virginia now has a chance to fight climate change, create jobs and be a part of a clean energy future. WVEC is committed to continuing our advocacy for solutions that promote environmental protection across the state and advance environmental justice,” said Linda Frame, President of the West Virginia Environmental Council.

“We thank Senator Manchin for his support and leadership on the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Lucia Valentine, West Virginia Organizer of Moms Clean Air Force. “This historic investment in our future comes at a crucial time in Appalachia, as devastating floods remind us of the urgency to act for the safety of our children and for future generations. The Inflation Reduction Act puts us on a path to a cleaner, safer, and healthier future.”

“This legislation includes a permanent extension of the Black Lung Excise Tax – an unprecedented investment in the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. This is a huge victory for every miner and mining family that is worried about how to pay for their bills and medication in light of the uncertainty around the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. In West Virginia alone, 4,423 miners and their families are currently receiving federal black lung compensation. The Black Lung Disability Trust Fund provided $38 million in black lung compensation to West Virginia miners in 2021, or nearly 25% of the total funds disbursed nationally,” said Dana Kuhnline, Campaign Director for ReImagine Appalachia.

“The Inflation Reduction Act is an important measure towards ensuring the livability of our planet.  For West Virginians who have been fighting for just transitions, economic diversity, and growth, we believe this to be a giant step in the right direction”, stated Kathy Ferguson, Interim Executive Director with Our Future West Virginia. “However, we must acknowledge the trade-offs and we lament that the MVP will be bolstered at the expense of the IRA passage.  We will certainly keep pushing for Sen. Manchin to go further in ensuring that people are prioritized over profits and that all our communities are protected and environmentally sound.”

“The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act puts our nation on the pathway toward unprecedented greenhouse gas emissions reduction,” said Autumn Crowe, Program Director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “While we celebrate this milestone, our work is not done. We recognize that some provisions within the IRA call for additional fossil fuel development which perpetuates the harm to frontline communities. We will continue to advocate for healthy communities and work toward 'net zero' greenhouse gas emissions.”

While the Climate Alliance is hopeful about this historic step forward in climate policy, much more is needed to be done. We will continue advocating for the advancement of climate solutions that focus on our three pillars of reform: climate justice for communities that have borne the brunt of our current fossil-fuel economy; a true transition for coal miners and other fossil fuel workers likely to be impacted by the transition to a low-carbon economy; and a significant reduction in greenhouse gasses in accordance with the findings of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

________________

FOUNDED in 2020, the WEST VIRGINIA CLIMATE ALLIANCE is a broad-based coalition of almost 20 environmental organizations, faith-based, civil rights and civic organizations, and other groups with a focus on climate change. Members of the Alliance work together to provide science-based education on climate change to West Virginia citizens and policymakers. 

FOR MORE ON THE CLIMATE ALLIANCE, VISIT: WVClimateAlliance.org

WV climate groups respond to the latest from Manchin

 Climate Alliance representing dozens of regional groups underscores the urgency of the climate crisis; rally at Manchin office planned for Monday

 

Charleston, W.Va.– Senator Joe Manchin announced today that he wants to delay a  plan to use the money that wealthy corporations owe to pay for desperately needed projects to help our climate and workers. 

In response, the West Virginia Climate Alliance submitted a letter to Senator Manchin (letter here). When the letter was sent, the Alliance requested an in person meeting with Senator Manchin, noting they had not been able to meet with the Senator in over a year to discuss grassroots concerns about climate impacts in the state.

“Every day that we delay taking action on the climate crisis makes our weather more extreme and the implementation of solutions even more challenging. The country, and indeed the planet, need Senator Manchin to negotiate in good faith on a bill addressing the climate crisis with the goal of keeping global warming below an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Passage of this bill should not be contingent on a one month inflation report,” said Perry Bryant, founder of the WV Climate Alliance.

Manchin’s move comes just one day after more than 100 homes, roads and bridges in McDowell County, WV were damaged from climate-related flooding. 

The Rev. Jeffrey Allen, executive director of the West Virginia Council of Churches, stated, “Climate change is a crisis of today. It’s flooding in West Virginia and Virginia; fires in the West; and drought here and abroad. There is an enormous cost that we already bear due to our lack of action and it’s a cost being borne by our neighbors. Passing climate change legislation is as local as it gets. This legislation is not only for our neighbors, but for all of those people who we care deeply about. For their sake, we cannot afford to delay any longer.”

As the letter to Senator Manchin notes: “The late Senator Byrd said many times that filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was his biggest regret; the decision troubled him for the rest of his life. We encourage you to deeply consider the broad implications of continued delays to act to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, for your own children and grandchildren, and for all the children and grandchildren in our beautiful mountain state and across the world.”

Karan May, Sr. Campaign Representative for theSierra Club said, “Folks in Appalachia are among the hardest hit by the effects of climate change. West Virginians are paying the price for poor health outcomes from pollution; here and in Kentucky and Southwest Virginia, year after year, we are paying the enormous price for catastrophic flooding. Senator Manchin has the opportunity to facilitate meaningful change for his constituents and, yet, is choosing to walk away from legislation that could help alleviate this suffering.

We will continue to fight for policy that will address the climate crisis, while also putting money back into our communities with investments in clean energy and sustainable economic development.”

Linda Frame, President of the WV Environmental Council, said “After a year of good-faith discussions with Senator Manchin and his team it’s hard not to be deflated by this latest delay. We continue to urge Senator Manchin to seize this opportunity to do the right thing for our state, our country, and our planet because the alternative is unthinkable.” 

“The overall cost of building climate change resilient infrastructure, as well as the transition to a clean energy economy, can be paid for now,” said Eve Marcum-Atkinson, Comms. Coord. fFor WV Citizen Action Group. “Tax minimums for millionaires and the elimination of zero-tax-paying loopholes for corporations are how we do this. They have financially benefited from our people’s labor, our nation’s infrastructure, and our economy. We need them to pay their fair share to help us all, as we continue to struggle with the effects of rising prices, increases in dangerous storms, record temperatures, drought, flooding, and more. We need Senator Manchin to fully embrace this now, as climate change is a now issue, a global issue. It’s not going away.”

“No matter our race or income, we want to live and raise our families in healthy and safe communities. Done right, the reconciliation bill is an opportunity to create bridges across our differences rather than making them deeper. Appalachia has been hit hard both by climate change impacts and global energy shifts – with Black and brown communities seeing disproportionate impacts. At the same time, we have an incredible opportunity to mitigate the climate crisis by investing in the communities hardest hit. Appalachian communities need action from Congress, this delay on key climate provisions not only hurts communities struggling with flooding and job loss due to the downturn of the coal industry, it pushes back other urgent actions we need to see from Congress,” said Dana Kuhnline, Campaign Manager for ReImagine Appalachia. 

“Promoting good energy legislation is part of Senator Manchin’s role as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. We call on him to not further delay action on the issues he proclaims to champion. It’s past time to listen to the science that shows a transformational clean energy transition will mitigate climate change while saving lives and creating new jobs,” said Morgan King, climate campaign coordinator of WV Rivers Coalition.

PRESS ARE INVITED TO A MONDAY RALLY AT SEN. MANCHIN’S CHARLESTON OFFICE:

WV Citizen Action and other groups are calling on everyone who is concerned about passing robust Climate Change policy, and paying for it by making millionaires and tax-dodging corporations pay what they owe, to show up at Sen Manchin’s office at 900 Pennsylvania Ave., Charleston, WV 25302, at 5PM on Monday July 18th. If you can’t make it, call his office at  304-342-5855 and tell him to quit stalling on Climate and Taxes! For more info contact info@wvcag.org  Gary Zuckett @ 304-437-3701 or check out events on https://www.facebook.com/WVCAG 

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FOUNDED in 2020, the WEST VIRGINIA CLIMATE ALLIANCE is a broad-based coalition of almost 20 environmental organizations, faith-based, civil rights and civic organizations, and other groups with a focus on climate change. Members of the Alliance work together to provide science-based education on climate change to West Virginia citizens and policymakers. 

FOR MORE ON THE CLIMATE ALLIANCE, VISIT: WVClimateAlliance.org

(The AFSC WV Economic justice Project is a proud member of the WV Climate Alliance)

Three things

If I had to name something that has changed for the better in WV since the elections of 2014, I'd have to say it was the writing of Gazette-Mail statehouse reporter Phil Kabler. His latest column on the state budget mess sums things up pretty well.

In a related topic, since quite a few things relate to coal in WV, here's something interesting from the Brookings Institution on the subject. Short version: unlike a simple regulatory approach to deal with greenhouse gas emissions--or simply ranting about a war on coal that is largely market driven--a carbon tax could actually bring much needed resources to the coalfields.

Off topic, in case you missed it, David Brooks had this to say about the Trump moment in American history and beyond.

Feel the noise

If you hear anything really loud next week, it just might be WV's ruling class throwing an epic hissy fit over the Obama administration's efforts to rein in carbon emissions and address climate change/global warming.

The hissy fit has been going on with peaks and valleys pretty much since 2009, but it's probably going to hit a new level.

Yesterday, I tweeted (@elcabrero) something like this:

World history WV style: the US entered WWII after Obama and the EPA bombed Pearl Harbor.

Sadly, that really isn't that much of an exaggeration.

Over at Coal Tattoo, my friend Ken Ward wonders when if ever folks here will actually deal with it. And Paul Krugman looks at the actual costs here.

At some point, I hope people here get around to facing a few facts. Like how the market, which some people worship as a god, is doing way more to coal than regulations. Or that maybe climate change/global warming is real (how bout the weather, by the way?). Or that however much coal has been and will be part of WV's economy, we're never going back to the WWII days when mines employed over 100,000 people. And that we need to have some rational, grown up discussions about what's next.

Meanwhile, apparently the nice folks at the WVU Bureau of Business and Economic Research didn't get the hissy fit memo. They recently released a report that forecast steady economic growth for WV over the next few years.. Here's some news coverage and here's the full report.

The voice of reason

I have a feeling that the waning days of coal are going to give some folks in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia the chance to show the world just how ugly they can be. And that would be pretty damn.

A case in point is found in the comment section of a recent Gazette editorial on the reality of climate change. The bright side, however, is to be found in the comic parodies of right wing ravings by some making comments.(The sad side is that it's hard to tell the parodies from the sincere comments.)

Here's one comical comment by ProudRight, a master of the form:

These storms and the high temperatures were all the result of our Kenyan born dictator Obama. Global warming is a lie used to attack WV. Coal is who we are. Without coal there won't be any jobs. We need to mine and burn as much coal as possible so we all can keep our high paying coal jobs. Who cares what some tree hugger thinks? I don't believe in this research stuff. Scientists are liars who want us all to go around using big words like we're stuck up. I see them driving around in their Priuses with the Obama stickers. I bet my Ford F150 can out run a Prius any day. Pollution doesn't hurt anyone. We lived next to a power plant and we're fine. They tell us not to eat fish out of the river, but we eat fish we catch all the time and nothings wrong with us.

 Rock on, ProudRight!

Cutting down trees on Easter Island

A while back, I listened to an unabridged recording of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail. It gave me a bit of a "Holy ****!" moment. For most of my adult life, I've tended to be more keyed in to fights over economic justice and policy and haven't been as attentive to environmental issues and particularly climate change.

Lately, I've gone back to Collapse in the print version and have been making my way through it. And sometimes I wonder whether we aren't headed towards a major climate catastrophe.

Such a fate is far from inevitable, given the political will. Alas, political will is the one thing that has been in short supply up to now and will probably be in even shorter supply for the next few years. And West Virgina, where the coal industry is a jealous idol, is ground zero of climate change denial.

Diamond gives examples of several societies that have undergone some kind of breakdown when the over-stressed local environments or faced other setbacks. The most compelling to me is that of Easter Island. I guess I'm not the only one. As Diamond put it,

The Easter Islanders’ isolation probably also explains why I have found that their collapse, more than the collapse of any other pre-industrial society, haunts my readers and students. The parallels between Easter Island and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalization, international trade, jet planes, and the Internet, all countries on Earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter’s dozen clans. Polynesian Easter Island was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the Earth is today in space. When the Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn to help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase. Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead for us in our own future.

NOTE: I'm taking this week off so there will be no links and comments until next week. Party on!

That's a relief

Chamber pots. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

A while back, I posted an item about how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was losing members due to its policy of denying climate change and opposing measures to address it. Last week, the Huntington WV Chamber held an event with a similar theme.

I guess that settles it.

On the other hand, I imagine they'd deny the Pythagorean theorem, the law of gravity, the War of 1812 and the virtue of their mothers if they thought it might inconvenience a corporation or two.

SICK DAYS. The fact that 40 percent of US workers lack paid sick days is contributing to spreading a pandemic.

GIRL POWER. Investing in them pays off for everybody.

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND statistics.

DID YOU HEAR THE LATEST about gossip?

IS IT A TANK or a dinosaur?

HUMMING. Bears do it when they're content. Speaking of which, a neighbor said he saw one on our road recently.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SERPENTS AND DOVES

This would be an interesting topic to research, but El Cabrero is willing to bet that most people who are active in the anti-war/"peace and justice" movement have little or no interest in the history of warfare and strategy, mostly because they think war is bad.

I suspect that this neglect isn't contributing a whole lot to their effectiveness.

I would agree that war is bad. It's one of many nasty things in human history, along with poverty, massive inequality, exploitation, domination, oppression, etc. Economic disparities alone cause many more deaths today than armed conflict (at a ratio of around 180:1, according to one estimate I found in the 1990s). But I don't think ignoring things one doesn't like is the best way to deal with them.

Can you imagine what the fields of medicine or public health would look like if people refused to study injuries and diseases because they were "bad?"

I think it's bad when people's houses burn down, which is why I'm glad that all firefighters have to study at least a little about the science of fire. Car wrecks are bad, which is why I'm glad EMTs, rescue services, and fire departments study first aid and auto extrication.

For that matter, even the most peaceful efforts to promote social change often involve dealing with opposition and power, both one's own and that of the opponent. Power is defined by sociologists as the ability to make something happen or keep it from happening even in the face of opposition. Any chance of improving things (victory) requires intelligent decision making (strategy).

In fact, a whole lot of the universe and the biosphere consists of things colliding with each other and if people want to make things better and more peaceful, I think we need to recognize that right off the bat.

I am reminded of a couple sayings of Jesus along this line. In Luke (16:8), he said "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." This, by the way, inspired the title of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's classic The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In Matthew (10:16), he advised his followers to "be wise as serpents and harmless as doves."

Musings such as these will be the theme of this week's Goat Rope. Tune in again if you want to get in touch with your inner reptile.

STUCK RECORD. As signs of a recession increase, a rational economic policy would involve some kind of stimulus that would help people who are struggling the most. But, as this NY Times editorial notes, for the Bush administration, the correct answer to any question is tax cuts. It seems to escape their notice that if cutting taxes for the rich was the road to the promised land, we'd have gotten there a while back.

WHO'S COUNTING? The Drum Major Institute, that's who. Here's their 2007 Injustice Index.

ICED OUT. From Sunday's Gazette-Mail, here's an item about a WV scientist's first hand evidence of global warming. The vested interests that run WV think denial is the answer, but I don't think that will help them much in the long run either.

WORD TRAVELS. Here's a review of a book about mountaintop removal in WV all the way from the LA Times.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

JINGLES AND BELLS

Caption: From a 1513 woodcut by Albrecht Duerer. Ride, boldly ride, if you seek El Dorado.

Welcome to Edgar Allan Poe Week at Goat Rope. In addition to comments and links about current events, it's all Poe all the time this week. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

As mentioned yesterday, Ralph Waldo Emerson once referred to Poe as "the jingle-man." He had a point. Poe's poems were kind of obsessed with meter and can have an effect somewhere between hypnotic and irritating.

While some, like say The Conqueror Worm, are just kind of weird and gross, others hold up pretty well.

Here's El Cabrero's selection of Poe's Greatest Poetic Hits:

*The Raven. A perennial favorite. Here's the first stanza for old time's sake:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."

Once, when I was bored at a meeting, I wrote a parody of it with a little help from a friend (you know who you are, E.D.) as it might have been performed by Snoop Dogg. Alas, the manuscript has been lost. As a consolation prize, here's a cool interactive Raven website.

*Eldorado. This poem about a knight so bold was published in 1849 and was probably inspired by the California gold rush. I still like these lines:

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

*Annabel Lee. Poe had a major thing for beautiful dead women. This one goes out to anyone who has ever loved with a love that was more than love.

*The Bells. This is the jingle man at his most jingly. The late folk singer Phil Ochs did a really good musical version of this if you can find it.

And here's a bonus feature. In 1846, Poe wrote an essay titled "The Philosophy of Composition," which was really about how he wrote The Raven. It's unintentionally funny since he attempts to present the poem as the work of simple deductive reasoning. As he explained it, melancholy and death are the ideal subjects for poetic beauty and nothing could be more melancholy than the death of a beautiful and beloved woman. QED.

Everybody got that?

THE RACE IS ON between wages and inflation, but it looks like inflation is coming out ahead, according to the latest Economic Policy Institute snapshot.

MORE ON THE MIDDLE CLASS SQUEEZE from Demos.

THAT'S A RELIEF...Rush Limbaugh, international science expert, says there's nothing to climate change.

NEW NOTES. Here's the latest edition of Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

PERSONALS. SS, thanks for the Poe action figure! RC from Milton, thanks for the raven--Poe forever!--and watch out for Mean the Shark!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A "GHOST" STORY?

Today is the last day of Haint Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

Haint, by the way, is Appalachian for that which haunts. In addition to comments on current events, posts this week have deal with the belief in ghosts, the allure of "haunted" or sacred places, the feeling of weirdness, and the Day of the Dead. It seemed a fitting theme for Halloween.

El Cabrero has refrained from taking a position on the existence or non-existence of such things but I will tell about something that happened to me.

A dear friend and co-worker of mine died a little over two years ago. We fought a lot of battles together and did pretty good for a while there. But what I most miss were our conversations. When not in predatory mode, we talked about all kinds of things: life, literature, philosophy, religion, science, you name it.

One thing we disagreed about was death and everything after. She tended to think it was the end and I was never able to convince myself that was the case. Not that I was particularly happy about that; at times, total extinction sounds pretty good to me.

A while after her death from a debilitating and cruel disease, I had a strange experience. I was not asleep but not completely awake, in a kind of liminal state between the two. I had the clear and unmistakable experience of her passing right through my core. It was like a very warm greeting. There was nothing visual or auditory about it, but as far as I'm concerned it was her and it was good.

Was it a sleeping or waking dream or an example of wish fulfillment? My official statement is the same as Hamlet's:

"O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound."

DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THE WEATHER. A powerful coalition of religious groups, including evangelicals, is pressing congress to take action on climate change.

HEALTH CARE. Here's a NY Times editorial stating the obvious: we need universal health care. Note: stating the obvious is a virtue these days.

MEGAN WILLIAMS MARCH UPDATE. The Student Government Association at WV State University plans an anti-hate rally for Nov. 17. The student group joined the NAACP, Black Ministerial Alliance, West Virginians United for Social and Economic Justice, the Logan County Improvement League and others in not endorsing a Nov. 3 march organized by out of state groups. Here's more.

Meanwhile, the Logan County prosecutor has urged Williams to refrain from making public statements as it may damage the case, as the AP reports.

Here's the latest on the march. And here's background on hate crimes law from the AP.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DAY OF THE DEAD

Welcome to Goat Rope's official Haint Week. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

"Haint" is Appalachian for that which haunts, which is a pretty good theme for Halloween week.

A Mexican custom of which El Cabrero is a big fan of is the Day of the Dead, which corresponds with All Saints Day in the Church calendar. Halloween, you recall, is All-Hallows-Eve or the day before. Similar customs are observed elsewhere, but it is the official Goat Rope verdict that this is the coolest.

The celebration likely has pre-Christian roots. During the Aztec month of Miccailhuitonli (say that 10 times while spinning around), there was a festival presided over by the "Lady of the Dead" which was dedicated both to children and the dead. Originally, this was celebrated in the summer, but there was an understandable post-colonial shift.

Now the festivities usually continue for the first two days of November and include acts that symbolically welcome the dead back into their homes and visiting family graves. There's special food including "pan de muerto" or bread of the dead. Family altars and gravesides are decorated with religious objects and symbolic offerings of food flowers and even alcohol and cigarettes.

I think the basic idea is right on, i.e. that the living and the dead are connected. That idea is enshrined in the ancient creeds of Christianity, which speak of "the communion of saints."

Maybe that's because the dead aren't quite as dead as we tend to think or the living aren't as alive as we tend to think. I'll leave that to the reader's discretion...

YOU DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN... Here's a sobering item on climate change and global warming.

NO FEAR? Consider reconsidering.

A FAIR DAY'S WORK FOR--WHAT? Here's a call for decent wages and conditions for all.

BOOK BATTLES. The recent efforts by some Kanawha County parents to ban Pat Conroy's novels from AP English classes reminds some folks of an epic book battle that took place more than 30 years ago.

MINE SAFETY LEGISLATION MOVES IN US HOUSE. A House panel approved stronger mine safety measures, a step that the industry and Bush administration will oppose.

MEGAN WILLIAMS MARCH UPDATE. Here's the Daily Mail interviewing the Rev. Matthew Watts, a member of the Charleston Ministerial Alliance, about a march planned for this Sunday by out of state groups. Several WV groups have declined to support the event.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

HAINTS!

Welcome to Haint Week at Goat Rope. Now some flatland readers--and maybe even some fellow hillbillies that ain't been raised right--may want to ask what, exactly is a haint?

Well, let's see. According to the Reflexive Property of Haintness, a haint is a haint, so if you see one, that's what it is. More precisely, a haint is that which haunts so if it's haunted, you got a haint.

It seems like an appropriate theme for Halloween Week.

El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia has more than its share of haints. There are some pretty good collections of local haint lore. One of the best is the late folklorist Ruth Ann Musick's The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales, which I devoured in elementary school.

I'm not sure what I'd say if asked point blank if I believe in haints. Some days, I don't even believe in the multiplication tables. But basically I think we live in a wild, open universe and that Hamlet was right about there being more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies, Horatio.

I will venture this much: I think the quality of hauntedness or even sacredness has more to do with places than with spectral beings. More about that tomorrow...

CHECK THIS OUT. It's a very interesting article from the NY Times Magazine about the current state of the religious right.

US LABOR MAKES INTERNATIONAL APPEAL. The AFLCIO has filed a complaint with the International Labor Organization over the anti-union bias of Bush's NLRB.

KISS THOSE POLAR BEARS GOODBYE. Here's a good but grim one on the future of coal.

MEDIA MADNESS. Here's an interview with Paul Krugman about the right wing media.

THE RACIST MIND. Is it different? Maybe. Note: Spinoza came up with basically the same answer in the 1600s.

UPDATE ON MEGAN WILLIAMS CASE. The Charleston Black Ministerial Alliance is the latest group which has decided not to support a march planned by out of state groups. Others include the state NAACP and the Logan County Improvement League.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SIGN ME UP, LADDIES

Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Welcome to Pirate Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries.

As mentioned previously, compared to the miserable lot of sailors on Royal Navy or merchant vessels, pirates of the Golden Age (1715-1725) did pretty good. They elected their leaders democratically, made decisions in councils, shared their loot fairly and even provided benefits for those injured in the line of...well, piracy. They were often viewed as folk heroes among the lower classes.

By contrast, "legitimate" sailors, military or commercial were typically viewed as little better than common criminals. Samuel Johnson once said that their lot was similar to that of a prisoner, with the added possibility of drowning.

The work was extremely dangerous. Falling from masts or sails, getting swept overboard, hernias or other injuries from straining with cargo were only a few of the possibilities. And don't forget constant exposure to the elements, overcrowding, filthy conditions, bad food, widespread diseases and floggings or beatings from tyrannical captains, and disappearing wages.

Colin Woodard, author of The Republic of Pirates describes conditions for sailors in merchant vessels thus:

They slept in densely packed rows of hammocks in this dark and poorly ventilated space, which reeked of bilge water and unwashed flesh. Lice, rats, and cockroaches swarmed the vessel, spreading diseases like typhus, typhoid, and the plague. Gottleib Mittleberger, who crossed the Atlantic in 1750, reported that the cabins were a place of "stench, fumes, horror, vomiting, many kinds of sea-sickness, fever, dysentery, headache, heat, consumption, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth rot and the like, all of which come from old and sharply salted food and meat, also from very bad and foul water, so that many die miserably."

You can see why the Jolly Roger looked pretty good.

A SMALLER ARK. According to this estimate, global climate change could result in mass extinctions.

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE STRIP MINE... Bush administration rule changes for mountaintop removal mining caused some controversy at a public hearing yesterday.

THE PLOT THICKENS. Out of state groups have plans for a protest regarding the Megan Williams case, a move some local organizations, such as the WV NAACP and the Logan County Improvement League, do not support. Things are already heating up.

MAUREEN DOWD ROCKS ON. Here's one of my favorite columnists on the Bush administration's race for yet another war. I love the lead:

Dick Cheney’s craziness used to influence foreign policy.

Now it is foreign policy.

HERE'S A SWITCH. Don Blankenship is dropping lawsuit against political opponents.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

PRESSED INTO SERVICE

Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

This is Pirate Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries.

As mentioned yesterday, pirates of the Golden Age (1715-1725) were folk heroes to many members of the lower classes--including sailors in the Royal Navy and in merchant vessels, many of whom would voluntarily join them given the chance. According to Colin Woodard, author of The Republic of Pirates,

They were sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves rebelling against their oppressors: captains, ship owners, and the autocrats of the great slave plantations of America and the West Indies.

Consider the lot of a sailor on a merchant vessel. In Woodard's words,

Merchants were compelled to adopt aggressive tactics to fill their crews. Some hired "spirits," or men who, in the words of sailor Edward Barlow, went about inns and taverns looking to "entice any who they think are country people or strangers...or any who they think are out of place and cannot get work and are walking idly about the streets."

The spirits promised good wages and cash in advance but wound up keeping several months of the sailor's wages as a commission. Some captains relied on "crimps" who took advantage of drunkards or indebted people or resorted to outright kidnapping. Once on board, the sailors were legally obliged to serve until the end of a voyage that could last for months or years.

The Royal Navy offered worse pay and harsher punishments and often resorted to press gangs that would round up any seaman or unfortunate soul they could find to meet the quote of men.

As we'll see tomorrow, the conditions aboard ship were pretty terrible.

I don't know about y'all, but I'm about ready to take the pirate oath...

MEGAN WILLIAMS SPEAKS. Here's an interview by AP with Megan Williams.

KANT WOULD CALL THIS "HETERONOMY." It appears some folks at the (WV) State Journal, a business paper sometimes more ideological than commercial, have adopted the position that because the coal industry might be inconvenienced if the human contribution to global warming was acknowledged it therefore isn't happening. Meanwhile, check this out.

IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN according to this Business Week article.

BAD MEDICINE. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the decline in family incomes will have serious health impacts in this country.

ALONG THOSE LINES, here's a briefing paper by the Economic Policy Institute on the impact of globalization in its current form on wages for US workers.

MORE ON BOOK BANNING. According to this Gazette piece, author Pat Conroy has responded to efforts to ban his books from AP classes in Kanawha County. Here's his letter to the editor.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE PLAGUE YEARS

Caption: The Tower Hill Sundial in London. Photo by wallyg via everystockphoto.

Welcome to Albert Camus Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

My favorite work by Camus is kind of a downer, unless you really like reading about massive lethal epidemics. It's his novel The Plague and I've gone back to it over and over again through the years.

Set in the still French Algerian city of Oran in the 1940s, it chronicles the outbreak of plague that begins with dying rats and spreads through the quarantined population. It's at least in part about how people bear up in an unbearable situation, some with quiet heroism and some without.

Obviously, there was a strong metaphorical factor involved given other world events in the 1940s. We seem to be living through a metaphorical plague of our own the last few years.

The part I go back to the most involves that character Tarrou, a stranger in town. His father was a magistrate who prosecuted criminal offenses. Tarrou once attended the execution by guillotine of someone his father had convicted and was repelled by what he saw.

He rebelled and joined a radical movement (obviously the Communist Party) and worked with it for years until he realized that there too he was complicit with murder:

And thus I came to understand that I, anyhow had had plague through all those long years in which, paradoxically enough, I'd believed with all my soul that I was fighting it. I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people; that I'd even brought about their deaths by approving of acts and principles that could only end that way...

...I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good. So that is why I resolved to have no truck with anything which, directly or indirectly, for good reasons or for bad, brings death to anyone or justifies others' putting him to death.

Here's the take home message:

All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, as far as possible not to join forces with the pestilences.

MEGAN WILLIAMS CASE UPDATE. Residents of Logan County, WV are calling for a positive public event in response to the kidnapping and torture of Megan Williams, an African American woman. The event, likely to be a candlelight vigil and prayer service, is planned for next week. Look for details here Monday.

HAVE NOT NATION. Here's a good column by Harold Meyerson from the Washington Post about why more Americans are identifying themselves as have-nots.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here's the latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute highlighting unequal--and sometimes negative--wage growth between 1979 and 2004.

FOOTPRINT MALFUNCTIONS. Our good friends at the conservative WV State Journal appear to be taking the heroic stand that global warming is a hoax or at least a totally natural thing. Somehow they managed to fit that in between paens to Unleashing Capitalism. To clear the palate, here's an op-ed by Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic.

ROLLING OUT THE PROGRAM. It looks like Unleashing Capitalism is the new holy writ of WV Republicans.

CHIP PASSES THE SENATE by a 67-29 margin.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. There has been positive action in Congress lately dealing with the high cost of higher education.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A CHALLENGE

Welcome to Albert Camus Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

El Cabrero just noticed by accident that 2007 is the 50th anniversary of Camus' Nobel Prize for literature.

Here's what he had to say about the challenges of his generation (which kinda sounds like the challenges of ours):

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself. Heir to a corrupt history, in which are mingled fallen revolutions, technology gone mad, dead gods, and worn-out ideologies, where mediocre powers can destroy all yet no longer know how to convince, where intelligence has debased itself to become the servant of hatred and oppression, this generation starting from its own negations has had to re-establish, both within and without, a little of that which constitutes the dignity of life and death.

Sound familiar? There's more:

In a world threatened by disintegration, in which our grand inquisitors run the risk of establishing forever the kingdom of death, it knows that it should, in an insane race against the clock, restore among the nations a peace that is not servitude, reconcile anew labour and culture, and remake with all men the Ark of the Covenant.

He believed, rightly or wrongly, that some people from his generation were up for the challenge:

It is not certain that this generation will ever be able to accomplish this immense task, but already it is rising everywhere in the world to the double challenge of truth and liberty and, if necessary, knows how to die for it without hate. Wherever it is found, it deserves to be saluted and encouraged, particularly where it is sacrificing itself. In any event, certain of your complete approval, it is to this generation that I should like to pass on the honour that you have just given me.

More to the point, are we?

SPEAKING OF (NOT) PREVENTING THE WORLD FROM DESTROYING ITSELF, click here.

CHIP UPDATE. The House passed a stopgap spending measure to keep funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program at its current rate through Nov.

DOES GLOBALIZATION MAKE FOR WAR OR PEACE? According to this analysis, it depends...

BANG FOR THEIR BUCK. It looks like the folks at Blackwater are a little trigger happy even by military contractor standards.

MEGAN WILLIAMS CASE. This is the latest legal news as of now. There have been rumors of outside groups coming to Logan County to protest but these have not materialized so far. Meanwhile, local residents have been discussing organizing some kind of positive community event in response to these crimes. More on that as plans develop.

TALKING SENSE. The Chicken Littles of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia are always talking about how we rank at or near the bottom in this or that (often spurious) business ranking list. This post a while back from abetterWestVirginia.com is a good response.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TAMING THE TIGER, A LITTLE GOOD NEWS, AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

Caption: These are good kitties.

Yesterday's post included a parable from the ancient Chinese Taoist sage Chuang Tzu. Here's another for good measure on the art of dealing with people...oh, yeah, and tigers too.

The basic idea is that if one takes into account the nature of those with whom one is interacting the outcomes will be better. The example is one of a trainer of tigers. Obviously, this can be a dangeous profession, particularly if one doesn't take their nature into consideration. Here's a suggestion on how to do it right:

Do you know how a tiger trainer works? He does not risk feeding the tigers live animals for fear of arousing their ferocity as they kill. He does not risk feeding them whole animals for fear of arousing their anger as they tear them apart. He knows when the tigers are hungry and when they are full; thereby he is in touch with their fierce nature. Tigers are a different species from man, yet by observing their ways, one can train them to be gentle. They will kill only when aroused.

Note to self: try not to feed the tigers live food...unless it really seems like the right thing to do at the time.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS FOR WV. The right wing noise machine in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia seems fixated on the idea that everything is bad here all the time. Perhaps they might wish to relocate?

Here's a little good news:

New data shows the average West Virginia worker earned nearly $1,400 more last year.

Workforce West Virginia says that 4.4 percent increase pushed the average worker's earnings above $32,700 last year.

George Hammond with West Virginia University's Bureau of Business and Economics says that's the state's fastest growth rate since 1990.

NO GLOBAL WARMING AROUND HERE, BOSS... Another canary in the old coal mine just went down:

Scientists on Tuesday blamed global warming for the disappearance of a glacial lake in remote southern Chile that faded away in just two months, leaving just a crater behind.

The disappearance of the lake in Bernardo O'Higgins National Park was discovered in late May by park rangers, who were stunned to find a 130-foot deep crater where a large lake had been.

After flying over the lake Monday scientists said they were able to draw preliminary conclusions that point to climate change as the leading culprit for the lake's disappearance.

MASSEY HIT BY SHAREHOLDER LAWSUIT. This should be fun to watch. Paragraph from the middle of Ken Ward's Gazette article:

The suit alleges a “conscious failure” by Massey management “to comply with applicable environmental and worker-safety laws and regulations.” It says failure has “caused and will continue to cause severe injury to the company by consciously ignoring Massey Energy’s legal obligations to comply with federal and state law, thereby exposing the company to a substantial threat of monetary liability for violations.”

Among other things, the suit cites a recent federal lawsuit over repeated water pollution violations, hefty fines for the deaths of two miners in the Aracoma Mine fire, and a nearly $2 million verdict against Massey for firing a worker who complained about safety problems.

GOATROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FREUD AND DOSTOEVSKY (AND WAL-MART, IRAQ AND GLOBAL WARMING)

Caption: This man is now portraying the devil that appeared to Ivan Karamazov while the latter was a little unhinged. Is it Ivan himself, a real devil, or just his fevered imagination?

El Cabrero begs the reader's forbearance while he attempts to get Dostoevsky out of his system. The last two posts didn't quite do it...

Sigmund Freud once called The Brothers Karamazov "the most magnificent novel ever written."

This is no doubt because the theme of the book is the murder of a father by a son and Sig never met a story about parricide he didn't like. After all, according to his theory of the Oedipus complex, that was something all sons unconsciously wanted to do.

I'm not sure how Dostoevsky would feel about that. He didn't have much use for what passed for psychology in his day, once saying "I am not a psychologist. I am a realist." His version of "realism," however is pretty out there, given his menagerie of characters, which includes intellectual axe murderers, saintly prostitutes, brooding nihilists, and holy fools and elders.

As William Hubben wrote,

All of Dostoevsky's stories belong to the literature of extreme situations. An ominous restlessness broods over the men and women in his novels. Frequently their reaction to seemingly small incidents is excessive, and events take a most unexpected turn.

The author would probably agree with that anyway. He once wrote "Always and in everything I go to the extreme limit." In his view, part of the human condition is the fact that we don't know our limits:

The ant knows the formula of its anthill; the bee the formula of its beehive...but man does not.

Ironically, it is said that in his later years, Freud couldn't abide reading Dostoevsky's novels in the evening because the characters were too much like the patients he dealt with during the day.

(OK, one more thought--how come nobody gets brain fevers any more like his characters got?)

TAX SUBSIDIES FOR WAL-MART. Good Jobs First is a policy resource center that promotes accountability for corporations and governments in economic development. They recently updated their Wal-Mart subsidy report. If you go to the site, you can click on your state to see how much the giant has gotten in corporate welfare. In El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, that number is around $9.7 million. Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs First executive director sums it up pretty well:

That a company with a predatory business model and a poverty-wage labor policy can even qualify for job subsidies suggests many public officials still don’t get it.

DISPLACED IRAQIS. This is from AP:

More than 4 million Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in the country, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday, warning that the figure will continue to rise.

The number of Iraqis who have fled the country as refugees has risen to 2.2 million, said Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. A further 2 million have been driven from their homes but remain within the country, increasingly in "impoverished shanty towns," she said.

THIS IS JUST GREAT. Remember the part about the Bush administration getting serious on global warming? Nevermind...

The Bush administration is drastically scaling back efforts to measure global warming from space, just as the president tries to convince the world the U.S. is ready to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MICRO AND/OR MACRO, PLUS STUFF ON BIG COAL AND WORKER SAFETY

The guiding thread through this week's Goat Rope is a series of musings on human knowledge and how we explain reality (whether the word/world fit works very well or not). Lots of other stuff is to be found herein as well.

If this is your first visit, please scroll down to earlier entries.

The human tendency to come up with stories and other explanations of reality on the fly has probably served our ancient ancestors well, although their reality may have been less complex than ours. It still can, with some limitations.

For an interesting look at human snap judgments, check out Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink.

Still, good information about social life or the world around us takes more than a quick storyline or a snap judgment. There are lots of ways both social scientists and ordinary people go about it, but I feel the urge to look at two complementary types today.

One looks at a specific situation in depth, while the other looks for overall patterns that cover large bodies of data.

The first kind is called idiographic, with the idio- meaning unique or specific events or situations. This is the approach most biographers and historians use, along with investigative reporters, detectives, etc. It looks at specific, unrepeatable events and tries to understand them in detail. An example would be the investigation of a specific mine disaster.

The other approach is called nomothetic, with the nomo- coming from the Greek word for law. As you might, expect, this approach looks for general conclusions that cover a large population or body of information. An example might be a study of the relationship between poverty and health outcomes or education and earnings.

Like every other way of looking at the world, both of these have limitations. An idiographic investigation might be very rich in detail but have little applicability to other situations. A nomothetic approach loses a lot of that richness--you can't unscramble an egg once it's been scrambled. And it could be prone to over generalizations.

Either way, it can be very hard to establish causality--the fact that A led directly to B--with a great deal of certainty. Real life in all its messiness doesn't permit the kinds of control one has in a laboratory experiment, not to mention repeatability.

Finally, to prove causation you need three things, two of which are easy to get and one of which ain't.

But that will keep until tomorrow.

BIG COAL, BIG TROUBLE. If you haven't done so yet, El Cabrero recommends Jeff Goodell's book Big Coal: The Dirty Secret behind America's Energy Future. Goodell has an article on The Dirty Rock and global climate change in the current issue of The Nation. I'll skip to the rousing conclusion:

By all means, let's praise innovative companies that take risks with new technology, and let's boost federal funding for carbon capture and storage research--the more we know about the costs and risks of burying CO2 the better.But let's not lose sight of the big picture here. Coal is the fuel of the past,not the future. The sooner we muster up the courage to admit that, the sooner the revolution can begin.

THE FOX/HENHOUSE THING. Here's a good one about how OSHA has come under industry control to the detriment of U.S. workers.

HALF MAST. I saw a news report recently in which U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, on lowering the flag in memory of those killed at Virginia Tech, wondered why it wasn't lowered for their own fatalities. With so many deaths lately, maybe we should lower them for all the fallen and leave them that way for a season.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WEEKEND SPECIAL: DENNY DIMWIT ON GLOBAL WARMING

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS: The item about Iraqi refugees from yesterday should have read "40-50 thousand" per month insead of "40-50 per month. " My bad. It got corrected on the web but not the email subscribers. Thanks to readers who pointed that out.

I just did it to see if yall was paying attention...

BACK TO THE REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM. For first time readers, it is the policy of this blog to cover fairly serious issues during the week. The gratuitous animal pictures are just kind of there.

During the weekend, however, the animals speak for themselves.

We are pleased to welcome back bantam rooster and noted free market economist Dr. Denton "Denny" Dimwit. Dr. Dimwit is director of the Goat Rope Farm Policy Foundation, a fellow of a number of conservative and libertarian think tanks, and is a senior economic advisor to the Bush administration.

We are convinced that Dr. Dimwit is by far the brightest and most intellectually distinguished representative of this school of thought.

It is our deepest wish that by providing space for (bio) diverse viewpoints, we are reducing the tragic polarization of our time, promoting civil discourse, and creating a climate of profound mutual respect.

THE DIMWIT DISPATCH

Crudawackapatootie! This blog must be on stupid steriods. You guys have been in to the goat pellets again, haven't you?

What's all this stupid stuff about global warming anyway? There's no such thing as global warming. And if there was, you couldn't do anything about it. And if you could, it would interfere with the market and the market is the one thing on this earth you don't want to mess with.

And besides, if global warming was REALLY happening, things would be getting hotter, right?

Well check out that picture. The little handsome guy is me. Pretty sharp, huh? And see what's beside me? That BIG hen? That's what I'm talking about. Yowza!

How can it get any hotter than that? And if it could, bring it on!

Oh yeah, and did I mention SHE'S WITH ME!!!

Yeah man...

That's the beauty of the market. And that's the truth. You bet your cloaca.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED