The Goat Rope

Four freedoms

2009-07-10T05:00:00.000-04:00

"The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:

Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.

Jobs for those who can work.

Security for those who need it.

The ending of special privilege for the few.

The preservation of civil liberties for all.

The enjoyment -- The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.

These are the simple, the basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.

Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate improvement. As examples:

We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.

We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.

We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it.

I have called for personal sacrifice, and I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call. A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my budget message I will recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying for today. No person should try, or be allowed to get rich out of the program, and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.

If the Congress maintains these principles the voters, putting patriotism ahead pocketbooks, will give you their applause.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called “new order” of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception -- the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history we have been engaged in change, in a perpetual, peaceful revolution, a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly, adjusting itself to changing conditions without the concentration camp or the quicklime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory."

--excerpt from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, State of the Union Message to Congress, Jan. 6, 1941

ALMOST BACK but not quite. El Cabrero is still off. This post was scheduled in advance and does not reflect any breaking news. I hope things are just peachy.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: MISUNDERESTIMATED

The test of our progress

2009-07-09T05:00:00.001-04:00

"But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

But it is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1937

SOLID GONE. El Cabrero is still playing hookie, so there are no links or comments about current events. This post was scheduled in advance and won't reflect breaking news.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: INCOMMUNICABLE

The books of human fortitude

2009-07-08T05:00:00.001-04:00

"An old English judge once said: "Necessitous men are not free men." Liberty requires opportunity to make a living—a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

...

We are poor indeed if this Nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world. We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude.

In the place of the palace of privilege we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity.

It is a sobering thing, my friends, to be a servant of this great cause. We try in our daily work to remember that the cause belongs not to us, but to the people. The standard is not in the hands of you and me alone. It is carried by America. We seek daily to profit from experience, to learn to do better as our task proceeds.

Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales.

Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, excerpt from the Acceptance Speech, June 27, 1936

STILL GONE. El Cabrero is hiding out at an undisclosed location this week so there will be no links and comments. This post was scheduled in advance and won't reflect breaking news. Well may the world go.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: CLASSIFIED

Restoring the temple

2009-07-07T05:00:00.001-04:00

“The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live."--Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

OFF THE GRID. El Cabrero is taking this week off so there will be no links and comments. Posts were scheduled in advance and won't reflect any breaking news.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: UNKNOWN

Nothing to fear but fear itself

2009-07-06T05:00:00.001-04:00

The week before last, I visited Washington along with hundreds of fellow West Virginians and thousands of people around the country to rampage around about health care reform.

We rolled in at about 8 in the morning and had some free time, so three of us decided to walk over to the FDR Memorial. We were unaware at the time of the distance between Union Station and FDR. It turned out to be a few miles away, but it was a pilgrimage after all.

I have often referred here to my lifelong fascination with President Roosevelt and the New Deal. My parents grew up in the Depression and were ardent New Deal supporters. And New Deal programs built much of the infrastructure of my state. Growing up, it was less risky for me to make a sacrilegious joke than to dis the Roosevelts.

Recently, I've gone on another FDR reading jag, including Jerry Bruce Thomas' An Appalachian New Deal: West Virginia in the Great Depression and Jean Edward Smith's FDR. Thomas grew up in southern WV and Smith is a history professor at El Cabrero's alma mater Marshall University. I'm in the middle of a bio of Frances Perkins.

Over the next few days, I'm going to be posting on related topics.

NO LINKS THIS WEEK. El Cabrero is taking a week off. There will be regular posts this week but no links.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: UNKNOWN

Independence Day

2009-07-04T05:00:00.001-04:00

AMERICA

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.

--Walt Whitman

Happy 4th of July!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: UP THERE WITH THE FIREWORKS

Up and down

2009-07-03T06:50:00.000-04:00

El Cabrero is a big fan of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. His books have a dreamlike quality, often seamlessly blending the ordinary and the surreal. My favorite of his is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. If you haven't read it, I'd suggest dropping everything and grabbing it.

One quote from that book has stuck in my mind for several years. It's a good summary of the Taoist view of adapting to life's ups and downs. Here it is:

"It's not a question of better or worse. The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there is no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness. 'I am he and/ He is me:/ Spring nightfall.' Abandon the self, and there you are."

It's all about water.

MASS LAYOFFS are at their highest point since the mid-1990s, according to the Economic Policy Institute's latest snapshot.

ON THAT NOTE, here is Dean Baker's analysis of the latest depressing unemployment report.

WHICH IS WHY Paul Krugman and others are calling for a second stimulus.

FOOT IN MOUTH SYNDROME. Here's an article about why it's hard to keep the former out of the latter.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The fullness of time

2009-07-02T06:15:00.003-04:00

There seems to be an irregular but natural rhythm in working for social justice. Certain periods of time are more full of crisis, opportunity, and chances for movement than others. The ancient Greeks referred to these critical moments as kairos, in contrast with more ordinary times which were called chronos.

In the Bible, for example, the word kairos is used for important moments and in such phrases as "the fullness of time" or "the time is at hand."

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), periods of kairos don’t last forever. Many people interested in social change have been shaped by such periods but were often not able to cope well with the more common periods of relative calm. And, like a record that is stuck, they may become inflexible in terms of tactics and analysis. Recognizing the inevitable rhythm of life and change and adapting to it requires a continual need for renewal or shedding one’s skin.

West Virginia author Denise Giardina captures well what kairos feels like (and the difficulty in surviving its passing) in Storming Heaven, her novel about the mine wars:

I loved that phrase, ‘the fullness of time.’ I shivered to whisper it to myself, for I sensed I was living in it, right then. Nothing afterward would be so important…We are put on earth for the fullness of time, we spend our days reaching it, and then we pass on. Some people die right then, with the passing of the fullness, and others breathe on, grieving all their lives that time is being strangled and they are not yet dead. I didn’t fret about this last. I couldn’t imagine it for myself.

The Tao Te Ching, an ancient book of Chinese philosophy often discussed here, contains a phrase which has become a proverb in many parts of the world: “Returning is the motion of the Tao.” Everything changes. To become rigid in a changing world is to die. Or, as Dylan said, “he not busy being born is busy dying.”

Periods of kairos demand all one’s attention, but probably the most important work is done during periods of chronos (when the time isn’t full, so to speak). These activities would better place one in position to take advantage of the situation when the next period of kairos rolls around.

I'd say right now is a time of kairos.

HEALTH CARE. The president of the American Medical Association said that the organization is open to a government-funded health care program for the uninsured.

LOSING YOUR JOB can be bad for your health.

PRISONS. A governor's commission in WV just released a study about prison overcrowding in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. Some of the measures called for include reduced and alternative sentencing for offenders not believed to be a danger to the public, treatment for addictions, and help with re-entry...in addition to the inevitable call to build a new prison. Meanwhile, at a public meeting sponsored by the WV Council of Churches, participants preferred other measures to prison construction.

EMPATHY ON THE BRAIN. Research suggests people feel more of it for those in the same social group.

URGENT GIANT EARTHWORM UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Against purity

2009-07-01T07:28:00.000-04:00

Frances Perkins, U.S. Secretary of Labor under FDR.

One of the many things El Cabrero likes about Jesus was his general disregard for the purity codes of his day. In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), he always seems to be making someone mad for transgressing this or that rule of apparent righteousness by hanging out with the wrong people, doing things at the wrong time or not doing things the "right" way.

I've found that purity codes were not limited to first century Palestine but can be found amongst almost any group. They can be particularly prevalent amongst people working for social justice.

It often happens that people will refuse to work with this or that group because they aren't pure enough or will oppose this or that reform because it doesn't go far enough--even though nothing else is on the table. Sometimes, people even oppose a positive measure because it isn't done with the "proper" motivation.

Whatever. This may be my Scotch-Irish talking, but I believe in playing the cards you're dealt, with the understanding that you try to improve your hand as much as possible. I tend to regard moral perfectionism as the unforgivable sin.

This chain of thought was triggered by reading Kirstin Downey's The Woman Behind the New Deal, a biography of Frances Perkins. Perkins served as secretary of labor under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and had an amazing record as an effective reformer way before that.

One of the things that contributed to her success was her ability to deal with people as they were, including corrupt old school Tammany Hall politicians. As Downey put it,

Her ability to accept human foibles, to see both failings and strengths was becoming a core personality trait, bolstering her effectiveness. She found that making deals with imperfect people and focusing on their strengths provided a pathway to actually achieving social change.

As the saying goes, "God is a potter, he works in mud."

HOT AIR. Dean Baker takes on lies about the climate change bill here.

ME TOO. Research suggests that community norms and peer pressure influence how people relate to conservation and environmental efforts.

STRANGE DAYS. The giant retailer Wal-Mart has embraced a mandate for major employers to provide health insurance for workers, a major plank in overall health care reform legislation.

AGUA...the new oil.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A matter of scale

2009-06-30T05:40:00.000-04:00

The long view. A Hubble image of deep space by way of wikipedia.

El Cabrero is a big fan of lecture series produced by The Teaching Company (and the libraries that buy them). At the moment, I'm in the midst of one about "Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity" by Dr. David Christian.

I enjoy light subjects...

Anyhow, he had some interesting ideas about getting a handle on the age of the universe (over 13 billion according to recent estimates). To make it easier to picture, he shrinks the scale a billion times.

If the universe was 13 years old,

*earth would have been formed five years ago;

*the first multi-celled organisms showed up seven months ago;

*after a successful run of several weeks, dinosaurs would have gotten wiped out three weeks ago;

*the first hominids appeared 53 minutes ago;

*agriculture started five minutes ago;

*the first agrarian civilizations got going three minutes ago; and

*industrial societies would have been around for six seconds.

Our part of the show is just getting started....or maybe it's just a short feature.

TIME is one of the themes of the Rev. Jim Lewis' latest edition of Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

THE PRICE OF HAPPINESS. The scientific quest to understand consumer behavior continues.

A CURIOUS CONNECTION seems to exist between marriage and obesity.

NOT HIS BEST. The late writer Michael Harrington may have helped inspire the 1960s War on Poverty, but some of his ideas about the "culture of poverty" did some harm.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

How's this for randomness?

2009-06-29T05:35:00.000-04:00

Random mushroom picture.

A nearby city's newspaper has a feature whereby people can call in and vent about various topics. Many of these are mini-rants on particular topics or personal messages to some offender, as in "to the person who stole my dog, I hope you rot in hell."

Occasionally, however, there are cryptic messages of a truly transcendental character which could even serve as Zen koans upon which to meditate.

(Did you guys notice the elegant way in which I avoided ending that sentence with a preposition?)

Here's one the Spousal Unit cut out for the refrigerator which could serve either as financial advice or a means of attaining satori:

I have been playing the lottery faithfully for years in West Virginia, but I figured out there is no way to win here. You have to go to North Carolina. I have a friend in North Carolina, and I have been letting him buy my tickets for me.

GETTING IT RIGHT. Here's another item urging the Obama administration not to cave in on health care reform. And, from the same source, here's another on the climate change vote.

NONVIOLENCE. Gene Sharp, a major theorist of nonviolent action, has been getting major media attention lately.

URGENT WHALE INTELLIGENCE UPDATE here.

HIGH IMPACT. From Coal Tattoo, here's a post with multiple links about the impact of mountaintop removal mining.

THE FINE POINTS OF APPALACHIAN CUISINE are discussed here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The wheels on the bus

2009-06-26T10:51:00.008-04:00

From earliest infancy, it has been the height of my ambition to spend the better part of two summer nights on an extremely uncomfortable bus seat in pursuit of a good cause. Imagine my delight when the opportunity came along this week!

Somewhere between Wednesday night and Thursday morning I joined a few hundred fellow West Virginians and thousands of Americans on a bus ride to DC to support health care for all Americans. The trip, lunch and tee shirts were provided by a WV local of the Communication Workers of America.

Thousands of people attended the rally in the Upper Senate Park. Speakers included several members of the House and Senate, labor leaders, actress Edie Falco, Howard Dean and more.

After the rally, state delegations held town hall-type meetings with congressional staff and elected officials. West Virginia's was packed and attended by the staff of senators Byrd and Rockefeller and representatives Rahall and Mollohan. Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito did not attend or send staff.

The main event was the appearance of Senator Jay Rockefeller, long a leader in health care reform, who is playing a key role in health care reform efforts. Rockefeller is the author of one health care plan which emphasizes a public option to compete with private plans, a key element in any effective reform.

All and all a good time was had by all.

Here's some coverage by the Charleston Gazette and here's one of several posts on the AFLCIO blog.

Has anybody seen my spine?

Me tired. See y'all Monday

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Road Trip!

2009-06-25T05:00:00.000-04:00

El Cabrero is not the world's biggest fans of marches or rallies in Washington. It's not that they're a bad idea; it's just that any tactic repeated too often tends to diminish in value.

Having said that, I'm in the process of spending a long hot day and a minimum of 16 hours of bus time attending what participants hope will be a decent-sized health care rally up that way. At last word, five buses were going from West Virginia alone.

Among the messages that I hope get delivered loud and clear are 1. that it's unacceptable that more than 45 million Americans lack health care and that many who do have some kind of insurance can't afford the coverage they have; and 2. if we're serious about health care reform, there needs to be a public option to compete with private plans.

This is a critical time for real health care reform in this country and it could be a long time before it rolls around again on the guitar if this chance is missed. As the saying goes, (no pun intended), this would be one of those times to leave it all on the road.

(Note: This post was scheduled to be published several hours after the bus left at midnight, so it may not have links to anything really good or bad that happened after Wednesday evening. In such cases, please accept congratulations or condolences as appropriate.)

((Final comment: if anyone starts singing "100 Bottles of Beer" on the bus, I may wind up doing jail time.))

I HOPE HE MEANS IT. Obama discusses the public option among other things here.

POLICY MATTERS. Some countries use labor market policies to reduce unemployment. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute looks at the example of Germany.

PLAIN TALK. By way of Coal Tattoo, the United Mine Workers of America takes aim at Massey CEO Don Blankenship.

WHALE CULTURE. Some of them may have it. What would Melville say?

IN ONE EAR BUT NOT THE OTHER. You are more likely to get what you want if you whisper in someone's right ear than the left.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Why we need health care reform

2009-06-24T07:15:00.000-04:00

WV, like most of the US is swamped with health care problems.

Here are some state specific factoids about the state of health care (or the lack of it) in West Virginia from Health Care for American Now:

*Health insurance premiums for West Virginia working families have skyrocketed, increasing 75 percent from 2000 to 2007.

*For family health coverage in West Virginia during that time, the average annual combined premium for employers and employees rose from $6,844 to $11,970.

*The combined cost to employers and workers of health insurance for a West Virginia family of four is equal to 30 percent of the state’s median family income. Given current trends, that share will grow to 53 percent in 2016.

*The cost of employer-sponsored health insurance in West Virginia is growing at an annual rate of 8.5 percent, compared with a 1.8 percent growth rate for income.

*About 140,000 non-elderly adults in West Virginia hold jobs that don’t offer health insurance benefits. That comprises 61 percent of all non-elderly uninsured
people.

*In West Virginia 13.8 percent of working adults reported spending 20 percent or more of their income on out-of-pocket health care expenses in 2004, a 48.4 percent increase from three years earlier.

*Between 2000 and 2007, the median earnings of West Virginia workers increased 19 percent, from $19,876 to $23,599. During that time health insurance premiums for West Virginia working families rose four times faster than median earnings.

*In West Virginia 249,384 were uninsured in 2007.

*The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 7.5 percent of West Virginia’s labor force was unemployed in April 2009.

*A recent report estimated that 62 percent of bankruptcies were directly related to medical bills; in West Virginia there were 5,133 non-business bankruptcies in 2008.

(Note: footnotes removed from the original document.)

Those are admittedly just WV numbers, but while things may be a little different here it's pretty much the same story all over the country.

Houston, we have a problem...

ON THAT NOTE, here's more on the strong support Americans have shown for a public option in health care reform.

GETTING ON THE BUS. El Cabrero and amigos will be attending what we hope will be a major rally for health care in DC that leaves at midnight. I hear that five buses will be going from WV alone.

GREEN JOBS are a growing sector of the economy.

"SYNTHETIC TREES" may be a way of capturing atmospheric carbon.

FAMILY FRIENDLY? Mother's Day and Father's Day have come and gone while the US lags behind other industrialized nations in paid family leave for parents.

A GREEK IDEA: call no one happy until they have died.

STRANGE DAYS in the coalfields.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN on junk food.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Mediscare

2009-06-23T05:25:00.000-04:00

This is what can happen when you don't have health care.

Opponents of a pubic option for health coverage have been trying to scare people with the prospect of a government run health care system. As noted in yesterday's post, it isn't working.

There are any number of reasons for this but here's a big one: millions of Americans already receive health coverage from one form or another of public insurance. Consider:

Medicaid in 2006 covered almost 59 million Americans, mostly those with low incomes and/or disabilities.

Medicare in 2008 covered almost 45 million Americans, mostly the elderly.

TRICARE, a health program for military personnel and retirees, covers more than 9 million Americans.

And this doesn't count the many other kinds of health coverage directly or indirectly provided by federal, state, and local governments. What the country needs is a public insurance option to compete with private plans for those not eligible for the programs listed above.

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's Paul Krugman again on health care. He's worried that some senators want to party like it's 1993.

COAL'S COSTS outweigh its benefits, according to a new study. Here's Ken Ward's story from the Sunday Gazette-Mail and more from Coal Tattoo.

STATES FEEL THE PAIN of the recession as they make painful cuts or look for ways to raise revenue.

SOCIAL COMPETITION in early humans may made our brains get so big.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. El Cabrero has been busted more than once for yesterday's post which made a play on words about ducks when in fact geese were pictured. As one correspondent put suggested, a better caption might have been “We’re tired of getting goosed on health care.”

HAS ANYBODY NOTICED that I've managed to go four days without posting anything about Greek tragedy? It's really tough.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Health scare

2009-06-22T07:07:00.003-04:00

This is no time to duck the issue of real health care reform.

Right wingers in Congress and elsewhere have been trying to scare people lately with dark rumors of a "Washington takeover" of the nation's health care system. They are referring to the creation of a public option for health coverage for those who aren't covered adequately by private insurance plans. However, they seem to be way out of step with the American people.

Here are some of the findings from a New York Times/CBS poll:

Across a number of questions, the poll detected substantial support for a greater government role in health care, a position generally identified with the Democratic Party. When asked which party was more likely to improve health care, only 18 percent of respondents said the Republicans, compared with 57 percent who picked the Democrats. Even one of four Republicans said the Democrats would do better.

The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered insurance plan — something like Medicare for those under 65 — that would compete for customers with private insurers. Twenty percent said they were opposed.

In addition, 64 percent believed the government should guarantee coverage and nearly 60 percent would be willing to pay higher taxes to make sure everyone was covered. Support for a government option was strong across the political spectrum, with support from half of self-identified Republicans, around three-fourths of independents and nearly nine out of ten Democrats.

In El Cabrero's humble opinion, if any health care reform plan does not include a public option, they might as well leave things as they are--which is unacceptable. I hope this survey fortifies the will of the Obama administration as well as congressional leaders not to trade away the public option in a search for what Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne has called "the bipartisanship of fools."

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Fowl play

2009-06-20T05:00:00.001-04:00

It is with sadness that we announce the passing of The Little Hopper, the first baby turkey born on Goat Rope Farm. He seems to have met his end in an encounter with an owl (we deduced this from the fact that parts of him were found hanging from a tree). He apparently escaped the the safe house at dusk and tried to roost, which attracted the predator's attention.

Arpad, the canid charged with protecting the other animals (when he's not hanging out with his girlfriend up the holler) was initially chagrined. However, in his defense, his job description does not include flight.

Hopper, we hardly knew ye.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: UP IN THE TREES

Suffering into truth

2009-06-19T05:45:00.000-04:00

"Zeus has led us on to know,
the Helmsmen lays it down as law
that we must suffer, suffer into truth."--Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Lately the theme at Goat Rope has been Greek tragedy, with a particular focus on the work of Aeschylus, the earliest and for my money the greatest tragic poet. For the last two weeks, the focus has been on the Oresteia, the only surviving tragic trilogy.

Its theme is huge and one that I find myself returning to again and again. It's nothing less than the emergence of democracy and social justice after and in spite of generations of violence and excess. The take home message seems to me to be that no matter how awful the past has been, we can do better.

Aeschylus has a very dynamic view of the universe and of human life. For all the terrible things that have happened in the past and continue to happen, we do have the possibility of moving to a higher level of social life. History is not destiny. In his plays, even the gods are capable of evolving and learning and moving to a higher plane.

For Aeschylus--poet, democrat, and veteran of the Persian wars--we can learn from past mistakes and break they cycle of violence and tyranny. It won't be easy, but we can, as he said, suffer into truth.

SPEAKING OF MOVING TO A HIGHER LEVEL, here's a good one about the possibilities of health care reform.

URGENT BIRDLIKE DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY West Virginia. El Cabrero's beloved state turns 146 today. Here's a state history quiz from the Daily Mail.

MY BAD. Email subscribers to this blog may have gotten an accidental early edition. Sorry about that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Worship the Mean

2009-06-18T05:35:00.000-04:00

"The Remorse of Orestes" by William Adolphe Bougereau, by way of wikipedia.

Welcome to Goat Rope's series on Greek tragedy. You'll also find links and comments about current events if you scroll down. Right now we're finishing up Aeschylus with the last play of the only surviving trilogy, The Eumenides.

"Neither anarchy nor tyranny, my people.
Worship the Mean, I urge you..."--spoken by Athena

This play brings to a close the terrible saga of the house of Atreus, which has been plagued with violence, excess and outrage for five generations. For more on the back story or the preceding plays, please click on earlier posts.

Brief recap: in The Agamemnon, first play in the series, the title character who led the Greeks to Troy returns home and is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. For Clytemnestra, this was in revenge for his sacrificing of their daughter Iphigenia ten years earlier at the command of Artemis to gain fair winds for Troy. For Aegisthus, it's about avenging an outrage Agamemnon's father perpetrated on his side of the family.

In the second play, The Libation Bearers, Agamemnon's son Orestes returns from exile and kills Aegisthus and his mother to avenge his father at the command of Apollo and then is struck mad and haunted by the avenging Furies, dark underworld goddesses who punish those who kill blood relations.

In The Eumenides, Orestes seeks sanctuary at the shrine of Apollo at Delphi, who puts the Furies to sleep. He is told to go to the city of Athena and seek mercy at her shrine. Once there, the goddess determines to end the cycle once and for all by appointing a jury of 12 citizens of the city to hear the case and judge between Orestes and the Furies. When the jury reaches a tie, she casts the deciding vote and acquits Orestes, who is free to return to Argos.

The Furies are outraged and threaten to strike Athens with plague but are placated by being given a special place of honor in the city. Their name is changed to "the kindly ones," which is the English translation of the title.

The great theme is the triumph of democracy and the rule of law over generations of bloodshed and violence. The trilogy has been called The Divine Comedy of ancient Greece. Like Dante's classic, it is a journey through hell and purgatory not to an unworldly paradise but rather to a state of human justice.

As Robert Fagles and W.B. Stanford put it, "The Oresteia is our rite of passage from savagery to civilization."

GAME ON for health care reform.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, hundreds of state legislators have sent a message to Congress in support of a public option in any reform package.

ANOTHER GOOD FIGHT in the pipeline is the TRADE Act, which will be introduced in Congress any day now. It would revamp our approach to trade deals and make sure they include more protections for workers, the environment and consumers.

CLIMATE CHANGE, right here right now.

NUTS! are what this newly discovered dinosaur ate.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

No arrow from a bow

2009-06-17T05:06:00.001-04:00

The murder of Aegisthus by Orestes. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Greek tragedies are about as far removed as you can get from the standard modern fare of action movies, where good guys fight bad guys and usually win. In tragedies, the good guys are often flawed and the bad ones often have their reasons.

In tragedies, people are sometimes just overwhelmed and destroyed by circumstances or are caught up in a chain of events they don't understand or control. Sometimes, the harder protagonists try to avoid some awful outcome the more surely they bring it about.

And sometimes they are forced to do things they don't want to do or are caught up in situations where they are confronted with competing ethical and religious claims that can't possibly be reconciled.

That kind of dilemma characterizes the plays Goat Rope is looking at these days, the Orestes trilogy of Aeschylus. Agamemnon in the play of the same name has a sacred duty to lead an army to Troy to punish the sacrilege of Paris in violating xenia or hospitality by abducting Helen of Troy. All the leaders of Greece had sworn a holy oath to uphold the marriage and punish anyone who defiled it. If he doesn't fulfill this sacred duty, he and everyone else will suffer terribly.

But the goddess Artemis, protectress of defenseless things, foresees the slaughter of the innocent when Troy is destroyed. She withholds winds unless and until Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia. As Martha Nussbaum summarizes, "If Agamemnon does not fulfill Artemis's condition, everyone, including Iphigenia, will die." No easy way out. He does and seals his fate.

In the second part of the trilogy, The Libation Bearers, his son Orestes is under an oracle by the god Apollo that requires him to slay his mother and her lover Aegisthus in revenge for their murder of Agamemnon. If he refused, "no arrow from a bow could touch such peaks of agony" that he would undergo. No easy way out.

While most of us in a normal week are not required by deities to sacrifice or murder family members, that kind of tragic conflict between competing valid but irreconcilable claims--usually on a less gory scale--is all too common in public and private life.

Most of us don't like to think about that kind of thing or imagine that there's always some easy escape. The ancient Athenians had the courage to make it the cornerstone of their greatest public works of art.

WHO'DA THUNK IT? Urban farming might become a career path.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, cooperation is growing between the labor and environmental movements.

WHAT HE SAID. Here's Dean Baker on health care reform and the return of Harry and Louise.

A NOVEL WAY TO COPE WITH THE RECESSION: professional wrestling!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

No easy way out

2009-06-16T05:20:00.000-04:00

Iphigenia by Anselm Feuerbach (1862), by way of wikipedia.

One of the things that makes Greek tragedy so compelling is its stark realism. For all the gods, heroes and mythological elements upon which it draws, its basic themes of inherent and unavoidable conflicts are all too common.

In the words of Martha Nussbaum, writing in The Fragility of Goodness,

Greek tragedy shows good people being ruined because of things that just happen to them, things that they do not control. This is certainly sad; but it is an ordinary fact of human life, and no one would deny that it happens...Tragedy also shows something more deeply disturbing: it shows good people doing bad things, things otherwise repugnant to their ethical character and commitments, because of circumstances whose origin does not lie with them.

Even more disturbing, however is the fact that tragedies

also show us, and dwell upon, another more intractable sort of case--one which has come to be called, as a result, the situation of 'tragic conflict'. In such cases we see a wrong action committed without any direct physical compulsion and in full knowledge of its nature, by a person whose ethical character or commitments would otherwise dispose him to reject the act. The constraint comes from the presence of circumstances that prevent the adequate fulfillment of two valid ethical claims. Tragedy tends, on the whole, to take such situations very seriously.

In popular parlance, it looks at situations in which you're "damned if you do and damned if you don't." If you've never been in one, may your luck hold out.

WHAT ABOUT THE ALREADY POOR? Here's an opinion piece by Barbara Ehrenreich about a group left out of much recent media coverage of the recession.

MORE FALLOUT. Here's the Boston Globe on the recent US Supreme Court decision on a judicial travesty in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

INTERESTING IDEA. High altitude wind machines could generate a lot of clean energy.

BEGINNINGS. Here's an interesting item on the origin of life.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"One sorrow for today, another for tomorrow"

2009-06-15T06:37:00.005-04:00

The reunion of Orestes and Electra. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

"What human soul can pass through life
untouched by suffering to the end?
Oh, no, there's none.
One sorrow for today, another for tomorrow, comes."

Goat Rope's series on Greek tragedy continues. You'll also find links and comments about current events below. At this point, we're on The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus, the second part of the only surviving tragic trilogy. the theme of the trilogy is the emergence of democracy and the rule of law after a long series of violent events.

The first part of the trilogy, the Agamemnon, was discussed last week. In it, the title character who led Greek forces in the Trojan war is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus on his return. This is an act of vengeance for Agamemnon's sacrificing of his daughter Iphigenia ten years earlier at the command of Artemis to gain winds for the Trojan expedition. The couple then establish a tyranny in Argos.

The Libation Bearers is the next chapter in a long series of acts of violence. In it, Orestes, son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, returns in secret after years of exile. He has come with his friend Plyades at the command of the god Apollo, who has ordered him to kill Agamemnon's murderers or face terrible punishments himself.

He places a lock of his hair on the grave of Agamemnon then hides as a group of women approaches. They are led by his sister Electra, who was ordered by her mother to offer libations at the grave placate the spirit of Agamemnon. Clytemnestra has been suffering from bad dreams and an uneasy conscience since the murder.

Electra, who has suffered mistreatment at the hands of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, is reunited with Orestes at the graveside. Together they plot revenge, with the eager support of the chorus. He pretends to be a pilgrim coming with news of his own death and knocks at the door of the palace.

Orestes asks to see Aegisthus to bring the news and quickly kills him. The climax of the play is the confrontation of Orestes and Clytemnestra, who has dreamed of giving birth to a serpent who kills her. The serpent was Orestes.

As soon as the deed is done, Orestes is haunted and driven to madness by the Furies, dark underworld goddesses who punish blood guilt. As the play closes, there seems to be no end in sight for the curse upon this family. The last words of the chorus are:

Oh, when shall it finish, when shall it sate--
lie down to sleep--this fury bound hate?

KEEP IT UP. Voices are already calling for the Obama administration to cease recovery efforts. Paul Krugman thinks that would be a very bad idea.

THEN AND NOW. Here's an op-ed/book review by yours truly from yesterday's Sunday Gazette-Mail.

HEALTH CARE. Here's why we need a public option.

GREEN JOBS. Here's Ken Ward in Coal Tattoo discussing green jobs for the coalfields.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Joy as it flies

2009-06-13T05:00:00.000-04:00

He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy.
He who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in eternity's sunrise.--William Blake

A stroke of the wet sponge

2009-06-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

Cassandra by Evelyn De Morgan, courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero has any number of superstitions, none of which are rationally justifiable but all of which persist nonetheless. One of these has to do with lucky and unlucky names. There is a part of me that believes that it is bad luck to name someone after a person or character who had extraordinarily bad luck.

One name that I really like but would never name a child is Cassandra, who is a major character in Aeschylus' tragedy Agamemnon, which has been the theme this week. To recap, she was a daughter of King Priam of Troy. Apollo fell in love with her and promised the gift of prophecy in return for intimacy. When she refused consent at the last moment, she was cursed by the god to have a accurate vision of the future but one that no one would believe.

I hate it when that happens.

Anyhow, she returned with King Agamemnon after the fall of Troy as a trophy and a slave. She knew that death awaited both of them at the hands of Clytemnestra but was powerless to avert it.

She gets the last word this week. Her last works speak volumes about a key theme of tragedy and express what Martha Nussbaum called "the fragility of goodness." Here goes (from the translation of Robert Fagles):

Oh men, your destiny.
When all is well a shadow can overturn it.
When trouble comes a stroke of the wet sponge,
and the picture's blotted out. And that,
I think that breaks the heart.

THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM, American style, is the subject of this article by Joseph Stiglitz.

HATE is alive and well. Here is Paul Krugman on the right wing media's role in stoking it

TOUGH TIMES FOR RECENT GRADUATES. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute shows how tough it is for many to find jobs. I guess "Plastics" isn't quite getting it these days.

GREEN JOBS are here. According to Wired Science, 770,000 Americans already have one.

NOT SO GREEN JOBS. The Obama administration reveal more of its approach to mountaintop removal mining yesterday.

SLEEP ON IT. Research suggests that deep sleep with REM (not the band, although they are pretty cool) enhances creative problem solving.

THIS IS WEIRD, but the economy of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia actually grew by 2.5 percent in 2008, way outpacing the national economy.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"A jangled symphony of ill"

2009-06-11T06:25:00.001-04:00

Clytemnestra emerges after murdering Agamemnon in this 1882 painting by artist John Collier. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope's ongoing series on Greek tragedy continues, with the focus at the moment on Aeschylus' Agamemnon. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts. If you don't, you can scroll down for links and comments about current events.

"There arises from these halls in a single voice
A perpetual choir,
A jangled symphony of ill,
With ill its theme."-Spoken by Cassandra

This play is the first in the only surviving Greek tragic trilogy. Its great theme is the emergence of democracy and the rule of law after a long and horrendous series of crimes and outrages. This play, though, is all about crimes and outrages.

The Agamemnon begins with the complaints of a watchman whose duty it is to gaze from the roof of the palace at Argos for a signal fire that will announce the fall of Troy. The event is expected due to oracles that say this will happen in the tenth year of the war. At last, the flame is spotted.

Meanwhile, a chorus of the old men of Argos ponder past events about the war with a growing sense of foreboding. They recall King Agamemnon sacrificing his own daughter Iphigenia at the command of Artemis to gain fair winds for Troy and appease her wrath as well as the family's long violent history. Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, emerges from the palace to announce the event, which is also confirmed by a messenger.

Agamemnon arrives with Cassandra, daughter of Priam of Troy. Cassandra was a prophetess cursed by the god Apollo for refusing his advances. Her punishment is that she will have true knowledge of the future but would not be believed. She was Agamemnon's prize and is now his slave.

Clytemnestra pretends to welcome him and urges him to walk on a fabulously expensive carpet of purple or scarlet. This may have been the original red carpet treatment. He initially refuses because to do so would be an act of hubris, but she harasses him until he does. Cassandra stays outside briefly, speaking incoherently to the chorus of past crimes and impending doom, then she goes within.

The chorus outside hears the dying screams of Agamemnon, who is trapped in a net and murdered by Clytemnestra. Cassandra soon suffers the same fate. When the doors of the place open, Clytemnestra emerges, triumphant in avenging the death of her daughter. She is joined by her illicit lover Aegisthus, whose brothers were killed and served to their unknowing father by Agamemnon's father Atreus. For him too this is an act of vengeance.

The chorus is horrified and makes noise of resistance, but troops loyal to the bloodstained couple disperse the crowd. A new tyranny rules over Argos. So ends the first part of the trilogy.

The violence of a foreign war spills over into violence at home. Golly, it's a good thing that doesn't happen any more...

SUPREME COURT. Here's a Washington Post editorial on the recent US Supreme Court decision about justice for sale in WV. And here is a NY Times article on its legal implications. This is a take from the McClatchy papers. And, while we're at it, this AP article interviews Massey CEO Don Blankenship about the decision.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH, Massey won a different round on the WV Supreme Court in a decision about a controversial coal processing facility near an elementary school. Here's a summary with multiple links from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo.

NOT COOL. The American Medical Association has come out opposing a public health care option, preferring to allow "the market" to do the job. How's that coming?

RUST BELT BLUES. Here's a postcard from Detroit about work and hard times.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT, in which case we may be in trouble, according to a new film on the food industry.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED