Interesting numbers

This came out a few days back, but I'm just getting around to it. According to the feds, mountaintop removal mining has dropped by over 60 percent since 2008. Here's more from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo. Ironically, I think the market more than anything else has led to this outcome.

Wow

Every so often something truly wild and unexpected occurs that can remind us that we live in an open universe where all kinds of wild and cool *** can go down. Here's the latest example, by way of the Gazette's Ken Ward:

The Tomblin administration said Tuesday that it would initiate an evaluation of the growing body of studies that have found residents living near mountaintop removal coal-mining operations face increases risks of serious illnesses and premature death.

Bureau for Public Health Commissioner Dr. Rahul Gupta said that his agency would work with the state Department of Environmental Protection to examine the issue and to seek help from various federal scientific and regulatory agencies to review existing research on the subject.

“The analysis is something that is needed going forward,” Gupta said in an interview. “The bottom line here is to let science speak for itself. It’s time that we attempt to do that.”

Read the rest here.

 

A day of surprises

I have been a terribly inconsistent blogger this week mostly due to the fact that A. I forgot to take my computer on an extended road trip; and B. while I brought the Precious (aka the iPhone), I have not mastered the art of composing on thumbs.

I had all kinds of things to write about but instead was as shocked as many people in WV were to find that the state board of education voted 5-2 to fire state school superintendent Jorea Marple, who is is widely respected as an extremely dedicated and competent educator. Most people see this as a power grab by the Manchin faction (as if it needed more). All of those who voted to fire Dr. Marple were appointed by former governor and now senator Joe Manchin and one of the five is his wife. It looks like this may be the opening shot in a brewing battle over the future of education in West Virginia. Marple's husband Darrell McGraw, longtime progressive state attorney general, was defeated in the recent election by an outsider who rode to office on a tidal wave out outsider money.

Far be it from El Cabrero to wish any ill on anybody, but this was vile and I hope that those who did this gain absolutely nothing from it. For what it's worth, I'd also like to express my support for Dr. Marple and best wishes for her future. I know that many, many people here feel the same way.

ANOTHER WV BOMBSHELL went off today as well in the announcement that Patriot Coal intends to phase out mountaintop removal operations. Here are some of the reactions by way of Coal Tattoo. I'd say keep checking that blog for ongoing developments. It's not clear what this means for the future of that kind of mining. Patriot, while a major actor in this area, has been more in the news lately for its bankruptcy and this agreement isn't binding on other companies.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A win, a loss, a rant and such

I love a bill signing--especially when it's a good bill that people fought long and hard to pass. Monday was such a day. As pictured above, WV House Speaker Rick Thompson, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, and Senate President Jeff Kessler ceremonially signed a bill creating the Herbert Henderson Office of Minority Affairs, which is charged to address issues of racial, ethnic and gender equity. It will be directed by Dr. Carolyn Stuart. The room was packed for the signing.

I spent a good chunk of the past two and a half years pushing for this and it was nice to see the day when the office was up and running. I especially liked seeing the above sign right across the hall from the Governor's Office. That was about as tangible as you can get.

A WEST VIRGINIA ORIGINAL. Many people in WV and beyond were shocked by the sudden death of Larry Gibson, a vocal and active opponent of mountaintop removal mining. He was absolutely fearless and relentless in pursuit of what he believed. Here's Ken Ward on his passing.

THE LATEST RANT. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on the state of working West Virginians.

ARPAD UPDATE. I'd like to thank those who sent messages of concern about the travails of our Great Pyrenees Arpad who is suffering from the after effects of a broken leg. The latest is that he is back at the vets for a day or two for observation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Courthouse blues

I have visited more courthouses this spring and summer than the average career criminal whilst roaming the state to drum up support for a Future Fund for West Virginia (aka a natural resources trust fund). One thing I noticed up north is the way swarms of abstractors and gas company agents are combing through property records looking for suckers to exploit  land owners willing to engage in mutually beneficial natural gas transactions.

The wheels of commerce and all that. But it kind of gave me the creeps. Anyhow, here's a good article from the Daily Mail about the rush on courthouses in Marcellus Shale country.

ON THAT NOTE, Stephen Colbert tweeted this today:

I hope they find water on Mars. That means we'll be able to frack there.

OLYMPIC MOMENT. A hearty Goat Rope congratulations goes out to Kayla Harrison, who became the first American athlete ever to win an Olympic gold medal in judo. The martial art has been an Olympic sport since the 1964 Tokyo games. By way of background, judo grew out of ju jitsu, the samurai's art of weaponless fighting. Judo's founder, Dr. Jigoro Kano, studied various ju jitsu styles, took out the nasty stuff and came up with a sport that was safe to practice while also retaining its effectiveness.

I HAVEN'T READ THIS YET, but you can do it and tell me about it. It's a report from the Congressional Research Service on mountaintop removal mining.

URGENT CANNIBALISTIC SPIDER UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Watching the show

One of my favorite West Virginia spectator sports is watching our ruling class throw hissy fits. They're really good at it. In fact, they are now starting year four of a protracted hissy fit aimed at the Obama administration's "war on coal."

Short summary: the Bush administration let the industry do pretty much anything it wanted to all the time. The Obama administration has sought to mitigate some of the negative impacts of mountaintop removal mining and to take steps to deal with carbon emissions and climate change.

No self-respecting WV politician would admit willingly to either the possibility that mountaintop removal isn't the best thing since sliced bread or that climate change is real and caused by human activity. That's just not where the money is.

So, anytime a mountaintop removal permit is challenged or denied or the EPA takes steps to cut down on carbon, it's on.

One favorite tactic of the hissy fit is to accuse the administration of killing coal jobs, as the above billboard on I-64 illustrates.

The only problem is that coal jobs here have actually increased by 1,500 or 7.4 percent since 2009, the highest level since 1995.

Now, I wouldn't expect these facts to get in the way of a good hissy fit. In fact, the rhetoric is only likely to be amped up at a series of taxpayer funded coal pep rallies that will take place this week. Everybody who is anybody, politically speaking, is sure to be there.

My favorite part of the whole thing is a comment by a coal association official about the job numbers: "We're glad to provide gainful employment."

Just in case anybody missed it, let me unpack that a bit: if coal jobs numbers are up, it's because of the benevolence of the industry. BUT if they go down (even when they don't--in fact, even when we pretend they go down when in fact they really go up) it has nothing to do with automation, competition from other areas, with plentiful and cheap natural gas or with market conditions. Rather, it's the black guy's fault.

Everybody got it?

The sad part is that it seems to be working.

Looking for love in the coalfields

In one of my favorite books, to wit The Prince, Machiavelli ponders such questions as whether it is better for a ruler to be feared or loved. If memory serves, he came down on the side of fear.

The coal industry is pretty good at using fear to protect its interests, but it seems to want to be loved as well. Here's an interesting look at how the industry is reacting to a recent poll that suggested broad opposition to mountaintop removal mining from Ken Ward's uber-blog Coal Tattoo.

Meanwhile, Goat Rope officially extends wishes for a good weekend to one and all.

Faded glory

One sure sign of the waning of summer is the waning of the romantic ardor, not to mention feather supply, of Woodstock, our male peacock. In a week or so, he's gone from this...

To this. Sic transit gloria mundi.

There seems to be a lot of that (the whole faded glory thing) going round these days.

AUSTERITY is over-rated in times like these.

CORPORATE PERSONHOOD CAN BE FUN. Here's an amusing take on the whole corporations are people thing.

SOMETHING ELSE FOR WEST VIRGINIA'S RULING CLASS TO DENY. To wit, the whole Greenland ice melting thing.

MIXED REACTIONS. Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo blog does a great job of weighing responses to CNN's recent feature on mountaintop removal mining.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A literary disagreement resolved

According to a widely told story (which didn't happen exactly as told), back in the last century the American writers Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were said to have a disagreement about the nature of the very wealthy.

Fitzgerald was said to hold to the view that "the rich are different from you and me." Hemingway supposedly said, "yes, they have more money."

Scientifically speaking, the results are in. And the winner is...Fitzgerald. The very wealthy, taken as a group, do tend to be a bit different from most folks--and not in a good way. Read more about it here.

I always thought Fitzgerald was the better writer of the two...

THE NEGLECTED CRISIS is the jobs crisis.

FOOD INSECURITY affects nearly one in four American households with children.

LOW RESERVES. Three out of five Americans say they don't have the savings for a $1000 emergency expense.

MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL. It appears that most Americans are against it. I wonder if this CNN poll will trigger yet another industry hissy fit? Or will they just blame the EPA?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

To strip or not to strip

One of the bombs dropped on miners by planes friendly to coal operators at the Battle of Blair Mountain. Fortunately, this one didn't go off. Image by way of wikipedia.

If you've been following events in West Virginia lately, you will be aware that environmentalists protesting mountaintop removal mining recently retraced the historic 1921 miner's march to Blair Mountain, which was the largest workers' insurrection in American history (so far, he added wistfully).

Labor groups for the most part didn't take part in this march but plan activities of their own to preserve this historic site.

I've made several trips to Blair myself, mostly before the surrounding area was heavily stripped. I was particularly fond of an old abandoned fire tower up on top. It was rickety and scary as hell to climb, which didn't deter me from going up several times. What can I say? Us hillbillies like to climb things.

It reminded me of the mountain the devil was said to have taken Jesus to during his temptation.

The tower is, alas, long gone. It's unclear how long the mountain will remain, although an article in the Wall Street Journal reported that

Alpha Natural Resources Inc. of Abingdon, Va., said it doesn't intend to conduct mountain-top removal in the historic battleground area, but acquired one active operation outside the 1,600-acre boundary when it bought Massey Energy.

"We agree that Blair Mountain is an area of historical significance, and an appropriate commemoration of the 1921 events ought to be considered," said Alpha spokesman Ted Pile. But, he added, a commemoration shouldn't "abrogate the legal rights of the many property owners and leaseholders in the area."

I'm not sure how to interpret that. I like the first part of the statement, although it might have been undone by the latter part.

Once again, let me remind the Gentle Reader that the best place to keep up on all things coal is Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo blog.

THE LATEST BAD IDEA. An unbalanced Balanced Budget Amendment under consideration in the US House would push through deeper cuts than even the Ryan plan.

YOU ALREADY KNEW THIS. Aside from a weak job market, wages are pretty stagnant too.

CREATING JOBS. A new study suggests that workforce training is more effective than cutting business taxes.

URGENT WEIRD ANIMAL SOUNDS UPDATE here.

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

Slouching towards Ragnarok

Recent political events have made me think of Naomi Klein's 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In it, she argues that economic elites and their political allies have a pattern of taking advantage of natural or human-made disasters to push through an extreme agenda that would never fly in normal times.

We're seeing that unroll right before our eyes as extremists in Congress are taking advantage of deficit hysteria to push through a radical budget bill developed by Congressman Paul Ryan. Short version: it would gut Medicaid, dismantle Medicare and dramatically spending on programs that benefit ordinary Americans--while extending tax cuts for the wealthy.

Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said in a webinar yesterday (I'm paraphrasing but it was pretty close to this) that when you look at the details, the Ryan plan is more about redistributing wealth upwards than reducing the deficit.

If this goes through, it would basically be closing time for the middle class.

However, there is something you can do. The Coalition on Human Needs is urging people to call their representatives toll free at:

1-888-245-0215

and deliver a message something like this:

I am a constituent and I strongly urge you to vote NO on the House Budget Committee's Budget Resolution. It would slash Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, education... in fact, all the investments that help Americans to be economically secure. It denies vital help for low-income and middle class people while giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to millionaires and big corporations. Please reject these extreme proposals - they would weaken federal protections in a recession and stall economic growth for us all.

The House is likely to vote on the measure this week so now is the time.

OBAMA'S PLAN. Here are reactions to the president's deficit reduction proposals from Dean Baker with the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

WEST VIRGINIA AND THE CIVIL WAR. Here's an item about our progressive past from the Washington Post.

ON THE OTHER HAND, here's an item from the New York Times about our not-so-progressive present.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

To wind and tide

OK. Or Hwaet if you want to get Anglo-Saxon about it. Let it be duly noted that when I pass over to the Great Perhaps, I don't want a fancy funeral. I'll settle for one just like that given to Scyld Scefing, the ruler of the Spear-Danes in the early part of Beowulf.

In lieu of flowers, here's how it should be done, by way of Seamus Heaney's translation. First, take me out to a Viking ship like this:

they shouldered him out to the sea's flood,
the chief they revered who had long ruled them.
A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour,
ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince.
They stretched their beloved lord in his boat,
laid out by the mast, amidships,
the great ring-giver. .

But make sure it's decked out like this:

Far-fetched treasures
were piled upon him, and precious gear
I never heard before of a ship so well furbished
with battle tackle, bladed weapons
and coats of mail.

Then pile it on:

The massed treasure
was loaded on top of him: it would travel far
on out into the ocean's sway.

And deck me out:

They decked his body no less bountifully
with offerings than those first ones did
who cast him away when he was a child
and launched him alone out over the waves.

Then raise a standard and shove me off:

And they set a gold standard up
high above his head and let him drift
to wind and tide, bewailing him
and mourning their loss. No man can tell,
no wise man in hall or weathered veteran
knows for certain who salvaged that load

Any questions?

ON THE AGENDA. WV advocates for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault highlighted their public policy agenda yesterday. One of these priorities is modernizing unemployment to cover people who have lost employment due to domestic violence, stalking and sexual assault when they are again available for and seeking work.

FOR FOR THOUGHT and for the future.

NOT IF SOME PEOPLE I KNOW CAN HELP IT. It is suggested here that clean energy sources could meet most of our needs by 2050.

SPEAKING OF ENERGY, a draft study by the Department of the Interior on the future of mountaintop removal mining is stirring up predictable controversy here. Here's Ken Ward on the topic in the Gazette and in Coal Tattoo.

THIS COULD REALLY HAPPEN. For your amusement from The Onion.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Coal kabuki

We finally got around to watching Avatar on Netflix. The story about a corporation mercilessly exploiting mineral resources sure made me glad nothing like that ever happened in Appalachia.

Meanwhile, other mining dramas are unfolding here. First on my list is yesterday's report by MSHA on the causes of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, which appear to be a lethal mix of methane, failed equipment, excessive coal dust and noncompliance with safety regulations.

Second is the predictable theater that followed in the wake of the EPA's veto of Arch Coal's Spruce Mine mountaintop removal permit. Many state politicians and the coal industry are calling for a rally for coal for today.

As Ken Ward pointed out in Coal Tattoo, the Friends of Coal website actually referred to the event as "a call to arms," although that was taken off the web when word got out.

The use of such obviously incendiary language so soon in the wake of the Arizona massacre seems to be a bit....ill chosen, to say the least.

Even before the Arizona tragedy, quite a few people I know in West Virginia have been concerned that overheated rhetoric is going to lead to violence here sooner or later. I hope that won't happen today.

Meanwhile, here's what I'm pretty sure is the real deal:

1. During the Bush years, the industry could do pretty much whatever it wanted.

2. Those years are over. While the Obama administration has no intention of abolishing coal mining or even mountaintop removal, it does take the law more seriously and will push to reduce the environmental and other impacts.

3. If the permit would be revised to limit the impact, it would probably be approved. This kind of thing has already happened before. And, as Ken Ward noted here, an engineering study by Morgan Worldwide found that an alternative plan would have reduced environmental impacts while still allowing substantial mining to take place.

But, given the choice between throwing a hissy fit and problem solving, the smart money around here still seems to be on hissy fit.

At times like these, I miss the voice and vision of Senator Byrd.

This could happen to anybody

Goats could drive anybody to drink.

Okay. Every so often a news story will catch the eye. This week I ran across one from Poland about a farmer who was arrested for drunk driving while taking his lonely goat out on a date.

Lest there be any confusion, he was not dating the goat himself, but rather escorting it on a visit to a female companion. Apparently the goat was riding in the back seat. It is a truth universally acknowledged that goats dislike riding shotgun.

Apparently, when he got to the farm of his friend, whereat the female goat resided, the humans pounded back some vodka while the goats engaged in that delicate form of courtship for which they are so famed.

Actually, I've been in similar situations, minus the vodka. We don't have a buck (an un-neutered male for you goat civilians) so whenever our lady goats are in the mood to enjoy the converse of a caprine gentleman we put them in the back of the Spousal Unit's Matrix and haul them off.

Perhaps one reason we haven't indulged in vodka on these quadrupedal booty calls is because they don't take that long...

(For some reason, our lady goats tend to crave male companionship at awkward times and are often particularly demanding about such visits on or about Christmas Day, which kind of puts a damper on the whole manger story for me.)
While El Cabrero is officially opposed to drunk driving, the thing that really stuck in my mind is the idea of putting a randy male goat in one's car. They are odoriferous beasts and the odor clings to anything they come into contact with for a long time to come. Whatever happens to the driver, I hope there's a good stockpile of car air fresheners in the European Union. And, it goes without saying, I hope that the date was a felicitous one.

THE GREAT DIVIDE. Here's another call for debate without destruction.

THE LEGACY OF NONVIOLENCE. From the WV News Service, here's a story featuring a friend of mine and an associate of the Revs. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sr. on violent and nonviolent communication.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS. Conservative activist Grover Norquist wants public debate on the costs of the war in Afghanistan.

DENIED. In a move sure to generate coalfield controversy, the EPA vetoed Arch Coal's Spruce Mine permit, which would have been the largest mountaintop removal mine in WV history.

CUTE LITTLE DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Fences

Robert Frost somewhere wrote that "good fences make good neighbors." Anyone who has a problem with that idea probably hasn't spent a lot of times around farm animals--especially goats--and gardens.

Farming is, after all, a kind of a game in which the farmers win if they keep critters from going where they don't want them to go and the critters win if the get there. Which is where the fencing comes in.

A few years back, we broke down and installed a five strand electric fence around our goat pasture. For a while, the goats didn't recognize its legitimacy and challenged it, shocks and all. Then they just got used to it. We hardly ever have it on now, unless Honeysuckle, the ornery kid goat, gets too frisky.

It occurred to me that the effectiveness of fences isn't really a function of how hard they are to get over or through. Fences are often more about appearance than reality. It reminds me of the famous lines from Sun Tzu's Art of War: "All warfare is based on deception." So, I'd wager, is most fencing.

Most of the time, most animals don't really make a detailed study of the fence and its weak points or even probe for weaknesses. If they did, they'd have a good chance of getting where they wanted to go.

It also occurs to me that the same is true of people. We don't challenge a lot of the "fences" that hold us in, even though it's likely they have places that are not nearly as strong as they seem to be.

ONE NATION WORKING TOGETHER. This Saturday, thousands of progressives will converge on Washington in support of a positive agenda to move the country forward. Yours truly will be among them, after boarding a bus at 3:00 AM Saturday morning (yuk). My back is hurting already.

SIGN OF THE TIMES. NPR reports that more families are "doubling up" in the wake of the Great Recession.

SOMETHING ELSE FOR THE COAL INDUSTRY TO DENY can be found here.

NO SURPRISE. The latest WV Kids Count report finds that children in the southern coalfield counties are poorer than those in the rest of the state.

MONKEY IN THE MIRROR. It looks like they see themselves, which raises questions about primate self-awareness.

WHAT MAKES A GROUP SMART? Apparently not smart individuals.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The struggle for existence

Thomas Malthus, 1766-1834.

I've been musing off and on here lately about Charles Darwin and the legacy of his thought. If you like that kind of thing, check out some of last week's posts.

As Darwin began to build his theory of evolution, he struggled for some time with finding the mechanism that might drive it. He found a clue in reading Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population, which incidentally became very popular amongst Victorian era reactionaries who opposed any improvement in the condition of the working classes.

Malthus' basic idea was that production of food and other necessities could only increase arithmetically (think 2+2+2...), whereas population tended to increase geometrically (think 2*2*2...). As he put it,

I think I may fairly make two postulata. First, That food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state. These two laws, ever since we have had any knowledge of mankind, appear to have been fixed laws of our nature, and, as we have not hitherto seen any alteration in them, we have no right to conclude that they will ever cease to be what they now are...

Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.

(Malthus' ideas caused all kinds of political mischief, but I'll leave that for another day.)

For Darwin, the basic dynamic Malthus discussed was useful in looking at the evolution of species. The tendency of plants and animals to produce more offspring than could possibly be supported led to a "struggle for existence" with which natural selection could work. Given that struggle, those organisms best adapted to environmental challenges would be more likely to live to maturity and produce offspring.

As the saying goes, even a wild hog can dig up something useful sometimes. More on Malthus to come.

INTOLERANCE. Here's a photo essay on intolerance in America by way of Time Magazine.

SOLAR ENERGY might be getting more affordable soon.

CRY, CRY, CRY. It seems to serve an evolutionary purpose.

MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL is the topic of this NY Times editorial. I don't think they're for it.

THE GROWING GAP. America's widening class divide is the subject of this Gazette rant.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

That's us in the spot light

Back in the proverbial day, it was a big deal--and usually a bad one--for West Virginia to get any attention in the national media. Usually that happened during one of those recurring periods when the nation "rediscovered" Appalachia.

Now it's a common occurrence for us to be in the national spotlight. There may be several reasons for this, including the following:

*The world is, if not flat, at least smaller;

*Political margins are smaller now as well so that even small states can tip the balance;

*West Virginia and other places in Appalachia are, in my grandmother's words, right smack dab in the middle of major issues like climate change and energy; and

*You couldn't make up the **** that happens here.

I'm thinking maybe the last is the biggie.

BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, here's the New York Times on one of many coal controversies going on.

COOL RANT. Here's Ken Ward in Coal Tattoo taking on one of the legion of climate change science deniers.

HERE WE GO AGAIN. Krugman is not amused by the latest attacks on Social Security.

RETHINKING THE ECONOMY. Here are 10 suggestions.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Git r done

It's still too soon to tell whether there will be enough support to move health care reform forward in the US House, but a vote could happen by Sunday.

Here's more on one of yesterday's surprise switches from no to yes.

One drawback of the current bill is that the perceived political risks are immediate, but most of the benefits--such as the expansion of Medicaid and subsidies to help people buy insurance--will take a few years to reach people. However, here are some positive features that would take effect within the first year of passage.

For a full breakdown of how many people will benefit from the fully enacted program by congressional district, click here.

Meanwhile, this cartoon says it all.

URBAN HARVESTERS. This idea makes as much sense in good economic times as bad ones.

COAL. From Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo, here is a post on a recent study of mountaintop removal mining's effects.

URGENT CANINE HISTORY UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Out Heroding Herod

Herod "the Great."

Lately the theme at Goat Rope is Shakespeare's Hamlet, but you'll also find links and comments about current events.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the Elizabethan theater was a direct descendant of the miracle and mystery plays of the Middle Ages. These were examples of art-from-below and featured amateurs performing about biblical themes. In these plays, there were often stock characters as well as stock villains, which helps explain on odd expression from Hamlet.

In Act 3, there is an amusing scene in which [an actor playing] Hamlet gives acting instructions to [an actor playing] the First Player of the theater troupe that showed up in Elsinore who are about to present the play-within-the-play.

Here's the whole passage:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier
spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with
your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of
passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance
that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the
soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear
a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the
groundlings, who for the most part are capable of
nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would
have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant;
it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

(The term Termagant, by the way, in medieval European folklore was a deity that some erroneously supposed Muslims to worship. By the Renaissance, it came to mean a bully or even a "shrewish" woman.)

In the medieval miracle plays, the Herod family provided two great stock villains, Herod the Great (circa 74-4 BC) and his son Herod Antipas (circa 20 BC-39 AD). The former, according to the Gospel of Matthew, was the ruler of Judea who ordered the slaughter of the innocents after hearing of the birth of the Messiah.

The synoptic gospels portray Antipas as the one who arrested John the Baptist and was tricked into a promise that involved serving up John's head on a platter. In Luke's Gospel, Pilate sent Jesus to Antipas after his arrest. According to Luke 23:

When Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly pleased, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, having heard a great deal about him; and he was hoping to see some sign given by him. So he questioned him at some length, but Jesus made no reply.

Meanwhile the chief priests and the teachers of the law stood by and vehemently accused him. And Herod, with his soldiers, treated Jesus with scorn; he mocked him by throwing a gorgeous robe round him, and then sent him back to Pilate.

Anyhow, medieval actors who got to play either Herod tended to really ham it up. That is part of the fun of playing a bad guy after all. That tradition survived well into the 20th century, as is shown by King Herod's Song in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar.

AND LOSE THE NAME OF ACTION? Health care reform is no longer a "rush" item in the US Congress.

COURTING DISASTER. Here's Dean Baker on the recent US Supreme Court goat rope.

MORE ON THAT from E.J. Dionne here.

UNEMPLOYMENT would have been much worse--1.2 million jobs worse--without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to a USA Today survey of economists, but most agree more needs to be done.

MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL. Here's a link to the Science magazine article about the effects of this kind of mining.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE WV CAPITOL, the rush is on to pledge allegiance to coal and oppose climate change legislation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED