The Goat Rope

100 years in the making

2009-12-01T05:36:00.001-05:00

Bully!

When it comes to public policy, it seems that windows of opportunity for action sometimes open--and sometimes they close. And if the boat is missed, it may not come back for a very long time.

Health care reform is a case in point. We now have one of those rare openings to significantly expand access to health care in this country. If we don't get it done soon, we may have to wait for years or decades to try to do this again...or maybe it will never happen.

The idea of providing some kind of system of universal care goes back in mainstream US politics to Republican president Theodore Roosevelt around 100 years ago. It was a plank on his 1912 bid for the presidency on the Progressive ticket.

It was part of his distant cousin Franklin's unfinished New Deal agenda from the 1930s. President Truman made a serious but unsuccessful push for it in the late 1940s, after which it lay dormant for decades.

The 1960s saw a significant expansion of health care with the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, which provided coverage for the elderly, the poor, and low income people with disabilities, although comprehensive reform remained elusive.

Another push for universal care began in the early 1970s and peaked briefly during the Carter administration before fading away again. It wasn’t until the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 that the issue again emerged, only to be torpedoed in 1994. Since then progress has been incremental at best, the most notable example being the creation and reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

The chance for reform has been nearly a century in the making--here's hoping we don't blow it this time.

THE BALANCING ACT between debt and recovery is discussed here.

MARKET FUNDAMENTALISM. Here's another whack at one of my favorite targets.

ANOTHER LOW RANKING. El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia doesn't usually do too well on state rankings for most topics. Here's the latest low grade.

GOOD-NATURED. Humans may have an innate urge to help, according to some researchers.

HERE ARE THE COOL PICTURES OF MICRO-ORGANISMS you ordered.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Weekend special--the untrustworthy reptile returns

2009-11-27T05:00:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: It is the policy of this blog on occasion to provide space for the contributions of several of the animals in and around Goat Rope Farm.

This holiday weekend we are not entirely pleased to note the return of one such commentator, a snapping turtle who declines to give his name and is known only as The Untrustworthy Reptile. We hesitate to take this step but feel compelled to do so given our strong commitment to the First Amendment, although the extent to which it applies to animals is unclear.

We must also once again remind the reader that the management of this blog assumes no liability for anyone who actually takes the advice of any such animal.

(Regular posts will resume Monday, Nov. 30 if the creek don't rise too high.)

THE UNTRUSTWORTHY REPTILE OFFERS CURE FOR HOLIDAY OVEREATING

Hey you there. Yeah, the one who looks like a blimp with feet. Jeez, you look like you're about to pop. Looks like somebody's had their snout in the trough a little too long.

Lucky for you I'm here. I have a simple remedy for overeating that'll take away that bloated feeling and make you look like a human again, not that that's any great shakes. It also fights aging and tooth decay and makes you irresistible to people you think are hot.

Let me see...where did I put that. Oh yeah, I remember now. It's in my mouth. Way back there. All you gotta do is put your fingers part way in just for a second or two. Come on, reach right in there just for a little second...

Hey! Where are you going! Come back here! I hope you do pop--I hate you!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

2009 Annual Thanksgiving Possum Recipe

2009-11-26T05:00:00.000-05:00

One of the great things about holidays are the enduring traditions that grow up around them. And there's one tradition at this blog that comes at this time of year. That's right--it's annual possum recipe time!

(We must remind the Gentle Reader that no self-respecting WV hillbilly would use the word "opossum.")

((We must also confess that no self-respecting WV hillbilly of my acquaintance actually EATS possums. However, as befits citizens of a state with the motto "Montani Semper Liberi" or "Mountaineers are always free," we will defend your right to do so.))

So, without further ado, here's a link to an interesting recipe for possum stew. Enjoy!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED BUT THANKFUL ANYWAY

A cosmic ATM?

2009-11-25T05:00:00.000-05:00

The last few days have been devoted, among other things, to giving a shout out to Barbara Ehrenreich's newest book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

While there's clearly nothing wrong with happiness, being cheerful and having a sense of one's ability to improve things, some versions of this kind of thinking view the universe or God as a kind of cosmic ATM or good fairy, one which has nothing more important to do than to grant the wisher a Hummer, MacMansion, or some other object of conspicuous consumption.

Further, this kind of thinking has permeated a corporate culture in which CEOs are viewed as charismatic visionaries who never allow themselves the luxury of a negative thought. In that climate, anyone a couple of years back, for example, who might have suggested that sub-prime mortgage securities might not be the ideal road to prosperity might well have been dismissed or discharged as a negative person.

Even worse is the kind of magical thinking which views the universe as a projection of one's own mental attitude. In that view, people who are wealthy and powerful are getting what they deserve. Those who are dying of poverty, drowned in a tsunami, languishing without health insurance, or are blown up as collateral damage in warfare are presumably only getting back from the universe the kind of energy they sent out.

I'll pass on that one.

On the other hand, one doesn't need delusional thinking to be grateful for the good things in life. So on that note, happy Thanksgiving!

NO LINKS TODAY. El Cabrero is on a long road trip so no links today other than this earlier post from one of Goat Rope Farm's talking animals, Self Help Guru Rooster.

If anything bad happens between the time this post is written and when it's posted, please accept my condolences.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: POSITIVELY ELEVATED

Shiny happy people

2009-11-24T06:30:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned yesterday, Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book, How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, is a real hoot. In it, she traces America's penchant for positive (and sometimes magical) thinking from roots in the 19th century, where it began as a reaction against the dour Calvinism that was such a strong ingredient of early American life.

In Calvinism, each soul has been predestined from the beginning of the world for either damnation or salvation, with most of us getting the former. There is nothing we can do about it, nor can one be totally sure one is among the elect. Believers were often urged to continually examine their consciences in fear and trembling.

That could be a bit of a downer. No wonder people sought for some kind of relief. One version that emerged in the late 1800s was called the "New Thought." According to this view, the universe was largely seen as a mental construct willing and waiting to come to our aid if we only got our minds right, to borrow a phrase from the classic movie Cool Hand Luke.

The first half of the twentieth century saw the popularity and commercial success of such enduring best-sellers as Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, which in turn inspired many similar efforts.

While the popularity of positivity is hardly new, modern Americans have consumed and have often been force fed a steady diet of motivational speeches, prosperity "theology," and magical thinking--even while living standards have gotten worse for millions.

Purveyors of this viewpoint sometimes promote the view that one's status and level of material success and health are primarily a matter of mental attitude, which means that people are getting pretty much what they deserve at any given time.

While clearly there's nothing wrong with having a cheerful outlook on the world, once an ideology dismisses other social factors that can hit us no matter how positive our attitude is, then it becomes just another justification for inequality.

If you buy all that, then the 10.2 percent of Americans who are jobless or the 47 million who lack health insurance or the 45,000 or so who die prematurely each year because they don't have it don't need better policies--they just need think positively.

As the saying goes, whatever.

FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH, here's an interview with Ehrenreich about the book.

STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS are facing shortfalls which could compound the recession, reduce jobs, and cut vital services in the absence of additional aid.

SAVING THE PLANET. Here are some weird ideas about how to do that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Smiley faces

2009-11-23T05:50:00.001-05:00

El Cabrero would like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. I just finished listening to an unabridged recording and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I haven't read all her books, but the ones I have tend to fall into two categories. Some, like Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy and Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War, are interesting and sometimes speculative investigations about human history, culture and evolution.

Others, like Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America and Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream are snarky investigations of current economic and political trends. Bright-Sided is the author at her snarky best.

More on this to come.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, the Rev. Jim Lewis also touches on this theme in the latest twilight edition of Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

WHO'D A THUNK IT, CONTINUED. Health care reform cleared another hurdle in the US Senate this weekend after having been declared DOA on more than one occasion. The lady with weight issues has not yet sung however.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, WV Senator Jay Rockefeller continues to be a champion of reform.

TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE? In responding to high unemployment, maybe the latter.

HOT AIR. Here's a Gazette op-ed by yours truly about climate change and WV's response to it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

There is a tide...

2009-11-23T05:40:00.001-05:00

El Cabrero spends a good bit of time working on public policy issues at the state and federal level. I find it fascinating that some issues seem to rise to the surface and get a lot of attention while others--often very important ones--don't.

Sometimes, when issues get "hot," the result can be the passage of significant legislation, but other times they fade from public view for years, decades or even for good.

Sometimes openings exist to get things done and other times they don't. When an opening occurs, one needs to be able to act swiftly and skillfully. And when there is no immediate opening to accomplish a particular goal, the best one can often do is lay the groundwork to take advantage of an opening when it eventually occurs.

It kind of reminds me of these lines spoken by Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Over the next few days, I'm going to try to follow that thread through the labyrinth. I just hope I don't get eaten by the Minotaur...

THE STIGMA IS FADING FAST about food stamp usage, as the NY Times reports. Nowadays, one in eight Americans and one in four children are depending on them.

JOBS! In this op-ed, Paul Krugman calls for direct public sector job creation.

DEFICIT DISORDER, REVISITED. Here's economist Dean Baker talking sense on the federal deficit.

STATUS AND US. This op-ed by yours truly on the social determinants of health came out in the Gazette and Common Dreams yesterday.

LABOR. This Gazette article looks at the future of the labor movement in WV.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A little weekend death poetry

2009-11-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

George Gordon, Lord Byron.

When coldness wraps this suffering clay,
Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?
It cannot die, it cannot stay,
But leaves its darken'd dust behind.
Then, unembodied, doth it trace
By steps each planet's heavenly way?
Or fill at once the realms of space,
A thing of eyes, that all survey?

Eternal, boundless, undecay'd
A thought unseen, but seeing all,
All, all in earth or skies display'd,
Shall it survey, shall it recall:
Each fainter trace that memory holds
So darkly of departed years,
In one broad glance the soul beholds,
And all, that was, at once appears.

Before Creation peopled earth,
Its eye shall roll through chaos back;
And where the farthest heaven had birth,
The spirit trace its rising track.
And where the future mars or makes,
Its glance dilate o'er all to be,
While sun is quench'd or system breaks,
Fix'd in its own eternity.

Above or Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear,
It lives all passionless and pure:
An age shall fleet like earthly year;
Its years as moments shall endure.
Away, away, without a wing,
O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly,
A nameless and eternal thing,
Forgetting what it was to die.

Marching on--updated

2009-11-20T14:50:00.000-05:00

Note to email subscribers: I apologize for flooding your mailbox, but a reader pointed out that some of the phrasing in the original needed some work.

Also, I like to encourage readers to contact their senators to support the health care vote scheduled for tomorrow which would bring the bill to the Senate floor. The bill itself is far from perfect, but there will be time to improve it later and doing nothing would be worse.

For contact information, click here. If you can't get through on the DC number, please consider calling their local office.)

Here's the original and edited post:

"Against an enemy. How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy!"--Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Health care reform faces a crucial vote in the Senate this weekend.

SQUANDERED TRUST. Being too nice to bad banks may have more than financial costs.

THIS COULD BE AMUSING. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is set to debate Robert Kennedy Jr. in January. My guess is that this won't be the only entertainment that night.

URGENT INDONESIAN HOBBIT UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Two bad ideas

2009-11-19T07:40:00.000-05:00

Two bad dogs.

It occurs to El Cabrero after reflecting on human history that two really bad ideas have shown up over and over and done lots of harm.

The first one is the belief that we can do X to Y and it will be over and there will be no consequences.

The second is that we can do whatever we want over here and it will have no effect anywhere else.

Does the Gentle Reader have any other suggestions?

IT'S ALIVE. There is movement on health care reform in the US Senate.

AND SO IS support for a public option in health care reform.

SPEAKING OF HEALTH, coal may not be all that good for it.

THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY may have been heart disease.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Stars

2009-11-18T05:00:00.001-05:00

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

(Editorial note: Apparently I got up so early yesterday morning that I thought I posted the following but didn't. My bad. On the bright side, this fact relieves me from having to think of something new for today. Just to be safe, I'm scheduling this in advance lest I sleepwalk again through the morning. If anything really bad happens between now and then please accept my condolences.)

A while back a friend visited Goat Rope Farm at night and commented on how bright the stars were. I guess one thing about living out is that you get kind of spoiled about certain things--like having bright starts. My friend, however, lived in a major city where light pollution makes the nightly light show dimmer if not invisible.

It reminds me of something Emerson said in his essay Nature:

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!

I guess we take things for granted.

IT CAN BE DONE. Student activists have just won a major fight against sweatshops.

HUNGER hit a 14 year high in the US.

JOBS. Here's a call to action for serious action on un- and under-employment.

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. Here's a look at 2012 hysteria.

RACIAL DISPARITIES. A new report found some major ones between whites and African Americans in Kanawha County, WV.

THOSE DARWIN FINCHES are at it again on the Galapagos Islands.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Another Dante moment

2009-11-16T05:35:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since El Cabrero has discussed his old pal Dante Alighieri, but I've been thinking about a passage from his Inferno recently in the context of current political controversies.

In Canto III, at the outskirts of hell, Dante and his guide Virgil pass a large number of condemned souls driven eternally in circles and tormented by gadflies and hornets. They had it so bad that "They are envious of every other fate," which in Dante's version of hell is really saying something.

These unfortunate creatures are those who didn't take a stand for either good or evil during their days on earth and are equally unwanted in either heaven or hell.

What is interesting to me about this is that Dante also includes in this group those people who considered themselves too pure to get down and dirty in the real human world. He singles out Celestine, who was elected pope in 1294 but abdicated, leaving the spot to be taken by someone he considered to be much worse:

I looked, and I beheld the shade of him
Who made through cowardice the great refusal.

The Catholic Church didn't see things that way--Celestine was later canonized--but I see Dante's point. Holding out for perfection in an inherently flawed world can amount to choosing uselessness and allowing even worse things to prevail.

CAIRNS 'R US. This item from yesterday's Gazette is about cairns or rock structures found on a nearby farm and believed to be the work of American Indians. (We have some at Goat Rope Farm but they're not as big and could just be more recent rock piles.) When asked to estimate their age, Roger Wise, an archaeologist friend of mine gave a great reply. As the article reported,

"It's probably somewhere between 1750 A.D. and 10,000 B.C.," he said with a grin.

And you know what--I'll bet he's right!

INEQUALITY AND HEALTH. The social determinants of health, as in things like status and inequality, have been a frequent theme here lately. Here's an op-ed by a friend of mine on an issue we're working on in WV.

THEATER OF WAR. Greek tragedy has also been a favorite theme here. Now, the Department of Defense is taking a look at what some of the plays of Sophocles (Philoctetes and Ajax) can say about the problems of combat veterans.

(Has anyone noticed that it's been a long time since my last ancient Greek jag? I'm feeling another one coming on.)

GAME THEORY. This item looks at auctions and the psychology of commitment.

DEFICITS AND DEFICITS. In a post from his blog, Paul Krugman observes the following about politicians:

many, if not most, are perfectly happy to incur huge unfunded liabilities for the wars they want to fight, and/or to eliminate inheritance taxes for the heirs of multimillionaires. It’s only deficits incurred to help working Americans that get them all moralistic.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

To sleep

2009-11-14T05:00:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you, Gentle Reader, but on weekdays El Cabrero gets up at 5:00 AM. One nice thing about weekends usually is the absence of an alarm clock, a satanic invention if ever there was one. To celebrate blessed Morpheus, here's a poem by Keats:

O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes.
Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.--John Keats

High horses

2009-11-13T05:21:00.003-05:00

The Tao Te Ching, for my money the wisest book ever written, has a line in it that has confused readers for 2000 years or so:

Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom,
And it will be a hundred times better for everyone.

I'm with Lao Tzu on that one. It seems to me that when members of an inherently flawed species adopt impossible standards of righteousness and purity, they can often wind up doing more harm than good. This is especially true in terms of public policy where, as the saying goes, the perfect can become the enemy of the good.

It is true that all legislation is messy and imperfect--but then so is every other human endeavor, including the criticism thereof.

Getting down to cases, it is probably true that any health care reform bill that passes Congress and makes it to the president's desk is going to have some serious flaws and will be subject to many unsavory compromises. That's the way the world works. But I would argue that this is no excuse for doing nothing.

Once a major measure like that passes, there will be all kinds of opportunities to improve it, but once it dies, it could be decades before the chance comes around again.

JOBS. New claims for unemployment insurance have recently dropped, but job growth seems far away. Economic growth, as in raising the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is often seen in the US as a panacea. The idea seems to be that if that goes on long enough, eventually people will benefit. In this op-ed, Paul Krugman makes the case that this is cold comfort without public policies that protect and create jobs, especially during a recession.

WHO SAID THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DID RUN SMOOTH? Actually, it was Shakespeare, but that's not the point right now. The WV Supreme Court's love affair with Massey Energy continues without a hitch.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Support these troops

2009-11-12T05:40:00.001-05:00

Fall view from the ridge.

Yesterday was Veteran's Day. No doubt many speeches were given extolling veterans for their service, which is only right. I wonder though if many of them dealt with problems such as this:

A research team at Harvard Medical School estimates 2,266 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they lacked health insurance and thus had reduced access to care. That figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001...

The Harvard group analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s March 2009 Current Population Survey, which surveyed Americans about their insurance coverage and veteran status, and found that 1,461,615 veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 were uninsured in 2008. Veterans were only classified as uninsured if they neither had health insurance nor received ongoing care at Veterans Health Administration (VA) hospitals or clinics.

Typically, veterans in this situation, like millions of other Americans, are too poor to buy private insurance and too "rich" to qualify for public programs such as Medicaid. One good thing about proposed health care reform in Congress is a massive expansion of the Medicaid program and subsidies to help people buy insurance, although that would still leave some people out.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE. Here's more on the scarring effects of the recession on children.

STATE AID. This paper by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calls on Congress to extend fiscal aid to states to avert major cuts in jobs and services.

SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE but not so much in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, according to a study that ranks several states using different criteria.

WORLD POVERTY. According to the United Nations, 2.7 billion people around the world survive on less than two dollars a day, while one billion live on less than a dollar a day. Here's more from Democracy Now.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH, DEPENDING ON WHAT YOU SAY. Here's a Gazette op-ed about how thuggery is suppressing free speech in coal controversies.

URGENT WOOD-EATING DEEP SEA CRAB UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Lions and tigers and...

2009-11-11T05:45:00.000-05:00

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

...bears--oh my! El Cabrero is not an overly superstitious person (aside from spilling salt, not rocking a chair with nobody sitting in it, knocking on wood, etc.). However, in the event that anything really weird happens around here involving our ursine friends, here are three odd things that have happened lately:

1. I had a dream about seeing a bear on a hill near the pond on Goat Rope Farm;

2. My daughter had a dream about a massive bear attack on the farm a week later; and

3. The next day, she read in a post on this blog that a neighbor told us he saw a bear on our road in the middle of the night.

(The record should also state that said daughter, La Cabrita, has all kinds of delusions about bears as incredibly malevolent creatures who plot at every opportunity to do harm to humankind. A Freudian might say bears in this case represent repressed aspects of the unconscious.)

My theory is that bears are pretty harmless creatures who couldn't be much worse than some of the dogs on this hollow--including ours.

But if anything really bearish happens around here, then yes, Virginia, there is a Twilight Zone.

VETERAN'S DAY. Here's a civilian salute to the veterans of past and present wars. And here's hoping there will be fewer veterans who have to serve in combat in the future.

HOW BAD IS IT? Here's an article about the collateral damage of the current recession, including an increase in suicides.

THE LABOR MOVEMENT is becoming more diverse, according to a new report. Women are getting closer to outnumbering men.

LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN. WV coal industry leaders and elected officials met yesterday about concerns of increased regulation of mining from the Obama administration. This could mark the beginning of another ruling class hissy fit.

PERCHANCE TO DREAM. Some researchers believe that dreaming is less a psychological event than the brain warming itself up for daily life.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Short rations again

2009-11-10T05:11:00.005-05:00

No time for rants today, other than a wish that the Good Fairy, pictured above, grants everyone a good day. In the meantime, these things struck my eyes:

WHAT'S IN THE HOUSE HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL for us? Click here.

UNLEASHING CAPITALISM? Unregulated capitalism didn't do too well in a recent global poll.

DOA? Some say climate change legislation isn't likely this year or next. Here's a summary of info from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo.

IT'S OFFICIAL. Not only are pigs smart, but they like mirrors.

NEED A SPIDER FIX? Click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

One mile at a time

2009-11-09T05:35:00.000-05:00

A random animal picture in which Arpad explores his feminine side.

The long-running fight over health care reform reached a milestone Saturday as the House of Representatives narrowly passed its version. It has a lot of good features, including a major expansion of Medicaid, a public option, regulations on the insurance industry and subsidies to help people purchase insurance.

I would have preferred that it would have left the Children's Health Insurance Program intact, something WV Senator Jay Rockefeller amended into the Senate bill, but maybe that will be resolved in conference after--if--the Senate passes its version.

This has been a long, tiring fight, with plenty of drama and melodrama--and we're far from done. A lot of effort will be required to get something through the Senate and to arrive at some kind of compromise between the houses.

It reminds me of running a marathon. Having completed a few of those (none too rapidly, let it be admitted), I've found it to be a good strategy not to focus on running the whole 26.2 miles. Instead, focus on the mile you're running. Once you finish that one, focus on the next.

We just passed another mile marker. Now let's focus on the next.

HEALTH CARE WHACKADOODLE-ISM. Here's a mini-encyclopedia of it.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's Krugman on the same.

STATE BUDGET WOES. West Virginia has its share, although so far it hasn't been as hard hit as many states.

ODYSSEUS LIVES! Long time readers of Goat Rope know that El Cabrero has a great deal of fondness for the epics of Homer and what they can still teach us today (search Iliad, Odyssey, Homer in the top left corner for earlier series on them). Here's an op-ed from the NY Times about the Odyssey and what it can teach us about the difficulties and dangers for veterans on their homecoming.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Keats' trifecta

2009-11-07T05:00:00.000-05:00

GIVE me women, wine, and snuff
Untill I cry out "hold, enough!"
You may do so sans objection
Till the day of resurrection
:
For, bless my beard, they aye shall be
My beloved Trinity.--John Keats, 1795-1821

Dying for a job

2009-11-06T05:50:00.000-05:00

Seventeenth century painting by Philippe de Champaigne.

An article in Wednesday's Washington Post highlighted the Obama administration's efforts to grapple with rising unemployment in the midst of signs of an expanding economy. Both the administration and congress are going to have try to balance the need for action with concern over federal deficits.

Based on some pretty hard social science, there's one thing we know about recession-related unemployment: some people are going to die earlier than they would have because of it.

As British epidemiologist Michael Marmot summed up research on unemployment in Britain in his book The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects our Health and Longevity, "people who became unemployed had 20 percent higher mortality than those who remained employed at the same social class level."

Obviously, lots of factors could be at work here, including greater stress and anxiety, which are known to have health consequences. Poverty could play a part, but Marmot argues that

it is useful to distinguish the two senses of poverty: a lack of basic material conditions for life; and insufficient resources, private or public, to participate in society. The first is unlikely to be the sole explanation, as unemployed professionals, who might be expected to have some saving,s have worse health than those still employed in the same occupational social class. This is not to say that financial problems are irrelevant. Far from it. Financial strain appears to be the complaint most associated with worse mental health in the unemployed. I would ague that this is consistent with poverty in the second sense--inability to participate fully in society. Whether initially well-off, or poorly off, deterioration in economic circumstances will cause real hardship.

Add to the mix another known factor related to health: being involuntarily unemployed also reduces one's sense of autonomy and control over one's life. Taken together, loss of control and inability to fully participate in society are a poisonous mix.

Economist John Maynard Keynes famously commented that "in the long run we are all dead." For some of the unemployed, the long run is getting shorter.

ON THAT SUBJECT, Congress approved an extension of unemployment benefits yesterday. And while we're at it, here's a call for public jobs creation along the lines of the New Deal.

RAMPAGE. It was a terrible day at Ft. Hood.

IS CLIMATE CHANGE happening in the Senate? Maybe, but we're not there yet. Here's Coal Tattoo on the subject.

EXERCISE AND WEIGHT LOSS. There is a connection, but it's not all that simple.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Either binary or not

2009-11-05T05:40:00.000-05:00

Portrait of the anthropologist as a young man. Claude Levi-Strauss in the 1930s. Image by way of wikipedia.

A few years back, and for reasons that now escape me, I went on a reading jag of books about anthropology, semiotics (the study of signs), structuralism, and literary theory.

I think I must have been really bored.

It was kind of amusing as long as I didn't take it too seriously. The Spousal Unit was probably right when she said to pretend like it was science fiction.

One person whose work I grappled with was French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who recently died at the age of 100. Not that I read all the way through his major tomes--even El Cabrero has his limits--but I read some snippets and several secondary works.

I probably missed a lot, but it seems to me like he was right about one of his major ideas (assuming I'm getting this right). The human mind seems to kind of like a fishing tackle box and we seem to be hardwired to classify things and put them in different compartments. Each culture seems to have its own classification system but the urge to classify remains the same.

The systems themselves are kind of arbitrary from the outside, with each part only having a meaning in relation to others within it. To use an example from linguistics, there is nothing about the symbols c-a-t that necessarily refer to a feline; it only does so within the context of the system of modern English.

We seem to be especially disposed towards binary categories: us/them, good/bad, raw/cooked, etc. Even when we try to break away from our cultural conditioning, we seem to substitute a different binary system for the old one.

As someone once said, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who break things into two major categories and those who don't. Like it or lump it...

DYING FOR HEALTH CARE. A new study from Johns Hopkins Children's Center found that uninsured children were 60 percent more likely to die after entering a hospital than those with insurance. This is probably because the uninsured typically don't receive preventive care and wait to seek treatment until there is a crisis.

TV NATION. Young children who watch a lot of television may be more disposed to aggressive behavior.

STATE BUDGET. West Virginia may be looking at budget shortfalls in excess of $100 million, although it is doing better than many other states. This highlights the need to make maximum use of funds available from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Houses and sniffles

2009-11-04T05:25:00.000-05:00

A Rhinovirus, courtesy of wikipedia. I think they magnified it a time or two.

There is a large and growing body of scientific research about how things like inequality, class and social status engrave themselves into our bodies. Generally speaking, people in higher social positions are less likely to develop conditions like heart disease or diabetes than those in lower positions. The same affect seems to apply to infectious diseases as well.

In a fascinating study, healthy adults first answered questions about their socio-economic status (SES) and that of their parents when they were growing up. They were then exposed to one of two forms of rhinovirus (aka common cold viruses) and kept in quarantine to monitor the symptoms.

Here's a surprising finding:

For both viruses, susceptibility to colds decreased with the number of childhood years during which their parents owned their home...This decreased risk was attributable to both lower risk of infection and lower risk of illness in infected subjects. Moreover, those whose parents did not own their home during their early life but did during adolescence were at the same increased risk as those whose parents never owned their home. These associations were independent of parent education level, adult education and home ownership, and personality characteristics.

The researchers concluded that "A marker of low income and wealth during early childhood is associated with decreased resistance to upper respiratory infections in adulthood. Higher risk is not ameliorated by higher SES during adolescence and is independent of adult SES."

In other words, poverty or relative deprivation during early childhood can have negative health affects throughout a lifetime. That's something to think about now, as the recession has driven more families on a downward economic spiral.

SIGN OF THE TIMES. Half of all US children and 90 percent of African American young people do or will receive food stamps, according to a new study.

THIS NEEDS FIXED. The House version of health care reform would phase out the Children's Health Insurance Program. Senator Rockefeller is not amused. Nor is El Cabrero. This needs to be fixed in conference.

A FAMOUS UNREADABLE (FOR ME ANYWAY) ANTHROPOLOGIST has died at the age of 100.

HOW SMART ARE DOGS anyway?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

That's a relief

2009-11-03T05:30:00.000-05:00

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

Ghosts

2009-11-02T05:19:00.004-05:00

I let Halloween come and go without picking up on the theme. Until, that is, I saw this article in the Gazette about ghosts and how people reconcile belief in them with more conventional religion.

I take no position on whether such things exist, but it seems that West Virginia has more than its share of if not ghosts then at least stories about them. I guess our history--what with the Civil War and other armed conflicts, feuds, industrial disasters, and other mayhem--is a good climate for generating them.

I think it's interesting that in most ghost stories that I know about, the apparitions don't tend to be free rangers. Rather, they seem to be tied to particular places where certain things happened.

Sometimes I do think that events can leave a mark on places. Some places I've been to seem to be more loaded than others. I'm thinking about places like Harpers Ferry, the old state mental hospital at Weston, the old state prison at Moundsville, and an old family farm in Tazewell, Virginia.

There are, after all, more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

NOT ENOUGH OF A GOOD THING. It looks like the stimulus helped pull the US economy back from the brink--up to a point. Here's another argument for another one.

SELF DESTRUCTIVE HABITS. Gazette columnist Perry Mann ponders unbridled capitalism here.

SEALING THE DEAL. Here's E.J. Dionne on the future of health care reform legislation.

SPEAKING OF HAUNTED PLACES. Here's an item about a scientist who artificially designed one.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Lines on ale

2009-10-31T05:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween!

Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain —
Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today.--Edgar Allan Poe