Two for a Tuesday

First, here's downer unless you are one of the world's wealthiest: the richest one percent will soon own more than all the rest of the world's population. Oh yeah, and the richest 80 individuals own more wealth than the bottom half of the world's population of 3.5 billion people.

On a more positive note, research on the benefits of expressive writing suggests that if you change your story you can change your life.

A tale of two counties

This New York Times story  has gone viral in these parts of West Virginia so you may have already seen it, Gentle Reader. It's about the gap in wealth and income--and longevity--between a rich county in Virginia and McDowell County, West Virginia. Sad but true. But I'll take folks from McDowell any day of the week.

"The defining challenge of our time"

President Obama's recent speech on economic inequality is certainly one of the strongest statements on that subject from a major bully pulpit for a long time, although it remains to be seen whether anything will come of it in this political climate. 

Here are three takes on the subject, from the NY Times, Oxfam, and The Nation.

One issue highlighted in the speech was the need to raise the minimum wage, which the president noted "right now is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office."

Meanwhile, at hundreds of locations around the country today, people took to the streets to protest low wages at actions targeting fast food restaurants. The one I attended featured the song in yesterday's post, which turned out to be quite a hit. More on the minimum wage drive from WV Metro News here.

Momentum is building.

Statement of intent

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was sidetracked from running for around three months with plantar fasciitis, an irritating condition which is the next best thing to having a nail in your heel. It seems to be slowly easing its grip on my foot and I've started to limp/jog again, even hitting the three mile point today (we will not discuss speed).

A while back, my daughter, La Cabrita, pointed out that there is a marathon in October in one of my favorite places, Harper's Ferry. Aptly named Freedom's Run, it coincides closely with the anniversary of John Brown's raid. And El Cabrero is all about John Brown.

It'll take me a long time to catch up to where I was this spring, running-wise, and even longer to get ready for a marathon, assuming I stay injury free. But in a year...

OK, so I've had some heart issues and two bad knees and can barely limp a few miles. Whatever. It is SOOO on.

This one's for the wild man with the beard.

THE OTHER GREAT DIVIDE. There's not only an economic gap between rich and poor. There's also an empathy gap.

SINCE I WAS ALREADY AT THE TIMES, I scooped up the latest Krugman here on the government shutdown.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. It looks like WV legislators are studying ways of promoting physical activity for kids.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A growing movement

It's really not all bad news these days. One encouraging trend is the growth of the local food movement, which can be a way to rethink our relationship to the basics and to revitalize our communities. An AFSC program run by my co-worker in Logan WV gets young people involved in a community garden. The kids are even becoming junior master gardeners.

Two recent items in the Charleston newspapers provide some other examples. The Daily Mail recently reported about the Growing Jobs Project of KISRA (Kanawha Institute for Social Research and Action), which teaches former prisoners gardening skills while also providing fresh and healthy produce for the community.

In an article from today's Gazette, there's a story about an ordnance moving to Charleston city council which would encourage urban farming. Among the features of the ordnance are provisions allowing city residents to own up to to six laying hens as well as backyard beehives. It also encourages community gardens.

It didn't, alas, make any provision for goats.

THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP just keeps getting bigger.

LOCKING THE BARN AFTER....retired US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor now seems to think the Supreme Court's decision to take up the Bush v. Gore case may not have been the best idea to roll down the pike. As the Spousal Unit likes to say in such cases, what was her first clue?

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This is what happens...

...when 20 odd turkeys sleep in a redbud tree.

(In case the picture is unclear, the horizontal tree used to be a good bit more vertical, no thanks to this guy and his buddies.)

CHILDREN IN AMERICA fare worse than those in most Western nations.

ON THIS DATE 101 YEARS AGO, members of the United Mine Workers began their historic Paint Creek/Cabin Creek strike that marked the beginning of the Mine Wars--and eventually inspired the writing of the song Solidarity Forever, which has become the international anthem of the labor movement. Too bad people don't know the verses better than the chorus...

CALLING OUT THE SENATE. This op-ed by Gabrielle Giffords is getting a lot of attention.

AND AGAIN, this time by WV native Michael Tomasky.

AYN RAND WOULD NOT BE AMUSED. According to a new poll, most Americans think the distribution of wealth is unfair and that the federal government should do something about it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

We recognize our own rejected thoughts

One of my favorite Dylan songs--and the list is long--is "Trust Yourself" from the underrated album Empire Burlesque. In it, Bob strikes the familiar American chord of self reliance.

That theme might have been most forcefully laid out in a much sunnier manner in  Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1841 essay of the same title. That essay and the vehemence with which it pushed its argument may have been in part a reaction to some of the hostile reviews and controversy that came in the wake of his controversial Harvard Divinity School Address (see previous posts).

It's easy to misunderstand what Emerson meant by self-reliance. The essay is not a paean to unregulated capitalism. Rather it is a call to intellectual and spiritual independence, as this selection from the opening power shows:

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his.

I'm not sure I'd go that far, at least with the thoughts that flit like bats around my head, but he does have a point. I have on more than one occasion read, heard, or seen something in print or in some work of art that had previously occurred to me but that I did nothing to capture. He puts it like this:

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

Ralph can be a bit out there sometimes, but passages like this make up for some of that. At the very least, they challenge the reader to not let some many ideas and inspirations get away.

PRISON REFORM is on the legislative agenda in WV, where a decent bill promoted by the governor sailed thorugh the state senate. I hope it succeeds in the house. These efforts got a boost in, of all places, the New York Times.

ECONOMIC INEQUALITY. Here are some snapshots from the growing divide.

THREE YEARS AND COUNTING. The Affordable Care Act had a birthday this weekend. The Spousal Unit and I actually attended a party in its honor (we didn't have to buy gifts anyhow). Here's a look at how it's working so far.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Unresolved

This summer, advocates for children and working families won a small victory when their combined bad noise prompted WV Governor Earl Ray Tomblin to delay major cuts in child care assistance, increases in co-pays and reduced eligibility. Alas, unless something is done, all those cuts go into effect on Jan. 1, which would be quite a lump of coal in the stocking. Here's a good op-ed on the subject.

UHHHHHH maybe if we weren't giving away the store with business tax incentives we might be able to pay for child care for working people.

ROBBER BARONS AND ROBOTS discussed here.

WORKING IT. Here are some cool pictures and videos of birds of paradise doing the courtship thing

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Has the worm turned?

Image by way of wikipedia.


I have lived most of my life in a time of widening economic inequality and have been making noise about it for a long time now. For years, it seemed like people were just getting used to it. As one of Dostoevsky's characters put it (I think it was in Crime and Punishment), "Man gets used to anything--the scoundrel."

But lately it seems like that may not be the case. More and more people are talking about it. It's front and center in political debates these days. Something weird must be up when predatory capitalism becomes an issue in the Republican presidential primary.

I think for all its quirks, the Occupy Wall Street movement deserves a lot of credit for surfacing the issue and getting it out there. The whole 99 percent/1 percent thing has become a bit of a meme, a term invented by Richard Dawkins to describe an idea or phrase that catches on.

It's still too soon to tell whether this is a sea change or a flash in the pan. But a turning worm would be nice.

THE MONEY/HAPPINESS THING discussed here.

NEED A DOSE OF ZEN? Click here.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN on politics.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Loud silence

Compared to happenings in other places, the Occupy movement in West Virginia so far has been pretty tame. Not that I'm complaining. In case you missed it, here's a news story plus two videos from Occupy UC Davis. The first video shows sitting protesters being pepper sprayed point blank a by campus police officer.

The second video is even more dramatic. It features the silent protest of UC Davis chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi as she walked by students after defending the spraying. As a friend of mine put it in an email, this would be an example of "nonviolence done right."

UNLIKELY MESSENGER DEPARTMENT. Here's an item from Business Week, a periodical not generally known for its Marxist leanings, about how inequality hurts the economy.

MORE ON "creative protest" here.

A WOMAN'S PLACE is in the union. Another friend who sent me this link observed that "Among the most progressive union leaders I have worked with over the years, the women, by in large, have held out a great deal of hope for the future."

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Napoleon again

Watching the WV legislature is an occasionally enjoyable spectator sport. Earlier today, which is almost yesterday at this point, I watched an interim committee meeting in which the staff person for an anti-gay "religious" group dug himself in deeper and deeper in a rambling speech.

A line from Napoleon which may well have appeared here before came to mind: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

(Of course El Cabrero has no enemies. He may, however, have any number of euphemisms.)

THIS IS GOING TO BE INTERESTING. The Supremes vs health care reform, that is.

EXTREME INEQUALITY makes for bad economics.

THE WHOLE REGULATIONS KILLING JOBS THING isn't all it's cracked up to be.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

To start off the week

Here's some disturbing news about the state of the economy: most of today's unemployed aren't eligible for unemployment insurance anymore. And before anybody opens a can of libertarian dreck, here's a reality check: there are four unemployed Americans for every one new job.

OCCUPATIONS. Here's Bill Moyers on the Occupy movement.

THE NEWEST GENERATION GAP is economic.

THAT "WAR ON COAL," assuming it exists, isn't going too well, hissy fits of the industry and its lackeys to the contrary.

URGENT SPERM WHALE UPDATE here.

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Mandatory jokes

There are certain jokes, not particularly funny, which have become mandatory in and around Goat Rope Farm. Many though not all have their origin in movies. Over time, these have acquired an almost ritualistic significance and are triggered by certain conversational cues.

I am passing them on in case people out there are running short of ways of messing with and otherwise irritating the people they encounter.

Here's a sample:

*When someone comes up with a steaming pot and says "Coffee?," the obligatory reply is "Yes, I know." (Source: Airplane and the Naked Gun movies)

*When someone says "Can I ask you a question?," the obligatory reply is "You just did."

*When someone says "I'm going to go change," the obligatory reply is "Don't you go changing."

*Finally, anytime someone asks what to do with something or where to put it, the obligatory response (from Five Easy Pieces) is "Hold it between your knees."

TAXING FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS sounds like a winner, but it faces an uphill climb in the US.

MORE ON THAT ONE PERCENT THING here.

URGENT CANNIBAL ANIMAL UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Windy city indeed

One of my favorite WV authors is Breece Pancake (1952-1979) who wrote short stories about my hometown under the fictional name of Rock Camp.

In the only remotely humorous story in his posthumous collection, "The Salvation of Me," a character dreams of escaping our corner of Appalachia and striking out for the big town of Chicago. He keeps saving up money to make the getaway but winds up blowing it on shooting pool.

Going to Chicago became an inside joke with some friends who knew and loved Pancake's work. It meant blowing this popsicle stand and hitting the big time.

I thought of Breece this week when I actually made it to Chicago for a few days of meetings. Generally, when I go on these things, the only part of the city I see is the inside of a meeting room.

This time I was a bit luckier and got to run a few miles along the lake, which helped me realized that "windy city" isn't just a clever nickname. It would be really easy one way and like jogging the wrong way through a wind tunnel on the way back.

It occurred to me that WV could use a great lake or some such massive body of water. Who knows, maybe with climate change it'll get one.

MORE ON THAT ONE PERCENT THING here and here.

TAXING MILLIONAIRES is something most millionaires support.

A WAR IS WINDING DOWN. How come people who opposed it aren't claiming success?

UPPER BIG BRANCH. Here's the latest fallout from criminal investigations of Massey's mine disaster.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Gratitude for bad things that didn't happen

Methinks the human race is kid of wired for ingratitude. We notice when things are bad more than when they're not. How many times does a typical person recognize when he or she doesn't have a toothache and be thankful?

El Cabrero is trying to do better in that department. Last week, for example, my foot suddenly swelled up like a balloon. It was hot and it hurt. I couldn't put a shoe on it. Until then, I was excited about having that knee surgery that allowed me to jog again. But I could barely limp with this.

After looking around on the web, I was convinced I had gout, which apparently isn't just for 18th century aristocrats anymore.

I was not happy.

Then it just went away. I'm jogging again. And gingerly kicking a heavy bag.

I'm grateful today for not having gout. And all the other bad things that aren't happening at the moment.


POLLUTION. The right wing jobs program.

INEQUALITY. Here's a quick look at why it matters.

SO NOW YOU KNOW. Some millipedes sing.

THAT WHOLE END OF THE WORLD THING apparently didn't happen.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Nice kitty

Image by way of wikipedia.

The holler in which Goat Rope Farm is situated is pretty rich in living things. Yesterday's post featured a giant puffball, just one representative of its happy fungus population.

When we first moved here 8 years ago, there were no squirrels. Now they're all over the place. Deer are plentiful--so plentiful I'm hopeful that Artemis, goddess of wild things and the hunt, will spare one for me this fall. Wild turkeys are everywhere too. Coyotes often howl at night, which puts Arpad, our Great Pyrenees on high alert. Blue and green herons show up from time to time when the creek is full of minnows. The other day we saw a red fox on a walk.

But this weekend, we had a special treat when we spotted a bobcat. From various signs, we thought there were some around here, but it was quite a thrill to get a look at one. Of course, bobcats are masterful predators and we have chickens and such. I hope it finds other food but would somehow begrudge a big kitty less for a chicken or two than a neighbor's dog or a possom or raccoon.

Next up: maybe a bear?

DOING THE NUMBERS. This series of charts shows what the Wall Street occupiers are so upset about. If you click on the link, you will find a picture of a protester with a sign containing profanity, but the bulk of the article is about statistics on economic inequality.

NOTE: THE LINK TRUCK BROKE DOWN TODAY. That's all we've got.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Thought for the day

A friend of mine raised an interesting point the other day. What if they repossessed wars when people couldn't pay for them anymore?

ECONOMIC BLOODLETTING. Krugman came up with a good analogy.

THE REAL CLASS WAR. Here's a quick look at the wealth gap.

THE SCIENCE OF STUBBORNNESS is discussed here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Water wars

There have been many great naval battles in history that shaped the future of the world...

from the Greek defeat of the Persian fleet at Salamis in 480 BC...

to the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 when European forces defeated the Ottoman Empire...

to the Battle of Midway in 1942 that was a turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II.

This aquatic encounter between Little Edith Ann and a box turtle probably won't make the cut. The engagement was indecisive.

AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL. Here's an appeal from a labor lawyer and writer not to "save" Social Security but to actually raise it.

THERE IS A GREAT GULF BETWEEN US. Here's a look at the growing economic divide in the US.

AN INCONVENIENT UNTRUTH. Here's a look at the political denial of climate change and how it has impacted public opinion.

PLAYING CHICKEN. Economist Dean Baker calls for a tough line on a clean vote to raise the federal debt ceiling.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Coping. Or not.

In Robert Reich's Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, the author makes some interesting points. He sees the static or dwindling share of income for middle class and low income Americans to be a driving force behind the nation's economic problems. Since the late 1970s, incomes have been pretty much stuck for all but the wealthiest Americans.

Those outside of that happy circle had to cope as best they could with a changed reality that included a minimum wage that didn't keep up with the cost of living; assaults on unions; tax cuts for the wealthiest; shifting budget priorities; etc.

People coped as best they could as they tried to make up for stagnant incomes. Coping mechanisms included:

*more women entering the paid workforce. That's been pretty much maxed out.

*working longer hours. By the early years of this century, the average American family worked 350 hours more than the average European--and they worked 500 hours more than they did in 1979. You can max out there pretty easily too, assuming you can find work.

*drawing down savings and borrowing heavily. That didn't work out too well and isn't much of an option now.

Given the skewed priorities of those driving the agenda in Washington, things are likely to get worse, minus the coping mechanisms.

There's more about the book here.

GOVERNMENT BY PEOPLE WHO HATE YOU, CONTINUED. The House Republican plan to block grant Medicaid and related proposals (including the budget cap supported by WV's Joe Manchin) is going to hit seniors hardest of all. Seventy percent of people in nursing homes rely on Medicaid since even middle class families run through savings and assets quickly in such circumstances.

DENY THIS. Floods and extreme weather events keep piling up, even while politicians continue to deny climate change and/or block actions to deal with it.

DEFINITELY DENY THIS. From Coal Tattoo, here's info on yet another study of the health effects associated with mountaintop removal mining.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

It's hard not to cuss these days

From the AFLCIO:

While 25 million unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers are drowning, CEO pay skyrocketed by 23 percent, for an average salary of $11.4 million in 2010, according to the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch. Released today, data compiled at PayWatch also show CEOs have done little to create badly-needed jobs, instead sitting on a record $1.93 trillion in cash on their balance sheets.

The 2011 Executive PayWatch features the compensation of 299 S&P 500 company CEOs and provides direct comparisons between those CEOs and the median pay of nurses, teachers, firefighters and others. For instance, while a secretary makes a median annual salary of $29,980, someone like Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf rakes in $18,973,722 million—632 times the secretary’s salary. The pay gap between Wall Street and Main Street has widened egregiously—as recently as 1980, CEOs made 42 times that of blue-collar workers.

There's more here and the full report is here.

And let's not forget the fact that the very wealthy are paying less in taxes. And there's a bit more here and especially here on the same subject.While we're at it, this article provides a good account of how things got to be this way.

El Cabrero grew up in a cussing family and I know a thing or two about obscenity. Trust me, it's obscene to talk about gutting Medicare and Medicaid and other programs that help low income and working people in the name of deficit reduction while continuing to cut taxes on the wealthy in a time of growing inequality.

OFF TOPIC BUT INTERESTING. I missed this Washington Post item when it first came out. It's an interesting take on how Glenn Beck kind of lost it.

TALKING SENSE. WV Senator Jay Rockefeller suggest that the US needs to get out of the current wars.

INTERESTING QUESTION. Ken Ward asks in Coal Tattoo whether WV's political leaders believe in science.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED