This post gets its title from a TV show a few years ago produced by Ice Cube. In the show, some very talented makeup people allow a white family and a black family to change places and live as each other for a few weeks. To me, the most interesting part of the show was when the black man and the white-man-in-black-makeup both experienced the same things: walking down the street and shopping in a store. In one case, a pedestrian walking towards them moves to the edge of the sidewalk to let them pass. The black man thought the pedestrian got out of their way because of race, and the white man thought the pedestrian got out of their way just because she was being a nice person and ceding the path to oncoming traffic. The black man thought they were being stereotyped by the pedestrian as violent, and he couldn’t believe that the white man couldn’t see this. The white man thought the black man was seeing things that simply weren’t there and told him that he was looking for problems that didn’t exist.

You can find some of this here (the whole clip is good, but this part starts at the 4:25 mark and the discussion gets really good at 6:00 in).

I thought of that show when I was watching ABC World News Tonight and they showed an interview with Attorney General Eric Holder. In the piece, the reporter first brought up the Prof. Gates controversy and said that while Holder would not take sides in the situation, he ”acknowledged that he too has been racially profiled.”

For the record, the woman who called 911 when she saw Skip Gates’ front door being broken into never mentioned that the person entering the home was black. She said she didn’t know the race of one of the men and the other one might have been Hispanic but she wasn’t sure. She even said that maybe they lived there and she wasn’t sure what was going on, but it looked weird and maybe the cops should check it out. Mind you, this was in the daytime in a neighborhood that had had a dozen or so daytime break-ins in the previous week, so neighbors were on the lookout for anything suspicious. In my opinion, for anybody to say that a police officer coming to the home and checking things out and asking for identification is racial profiling is absurd. What happened after that is still up for debate.

More to the point of this post, here’s what Holder said about his experience being “racially profiled”:

“I was a young college student driving from New York to Washington, stopped on a highway and told to open the trunk of my car. The police officer told me he wanted to search me for weapons. And I remember, as I got back in my car and continued on my journey, um, how humiliated I felt, um, how angry it got.”

It reminded me of an experience of mine. When I was in grad school in St. Louis, I’d come home at least once a year to visit my mom and stepdad in Phoenix and then on to visit my dad and brother in L.A. The drive from STL to PHX is a good 1,500 miles, and  Albuquerque is the halfway marker on a two-day drive. On one of my trips, I had gone from Phoenix to Albuquerque on day one and woke up early the next day to set out for St. Louis. The sun was rising in the east as I took off driving in that direction and it was not easy to see the road. I was tired and didn’t sleep well, as I had stayed in a Motel 6 (because I was a cheap grad student and had a dog, which every Motel 6 will take for no additional fee). So I was groggy when I set out, and the horrible Motel 6 coffee wasn’t helping any. About a half hour into the trip, I was pulled over by a state trooper. I was doing maybe 70 and the speed limit was 65. I was a bit surprised he pulled me over because I wasn’t going really that fast.

The cop was nice to me, even though Jake was barking at him (of course). He asked me to get out of the car. He asked if I had any marijuana in the car. I said no. He asked what was in the trunk. I said, “Clothes and dog food.” He asked if he could search the trunk. I said, “Absolutely.” While his partner searched the trunk, he talked to me about where I was headed and why. I told him I was going back to grad school and going to be an economics professor some day. He wished me luck in my efforts. After a few minutes, his partner came back and said the trunk was clean. He said I was free to go and told me to make sure not to drive too fast.

When I got back in the car, I thought for a minute or two and ultimately came to a conclusion as to why he pulled me over and searched my car for marijuana: it was my U.C. Berkeley license plate frame. He figured I went to Berkeley, so I must have weed in the car. He was fishing for something, and the fact that I was 5 miles over the speed limit (never enough to get you a ticket, but enough to let them cops pull you over) was his opening. I didn’t feel humiliated. I didn’t get angry. Sure, I was a little annoyed at having been pulled over, but mostly I was relieved that I didn’t get a ticket for speeding.

If I were a black man, I probably would have attributed being stopped and having my car searched for marijuana to my race, just as Eric Holder did in a similar situation, and been upset about it. But I’m not black and neither were the cops, so I attributed it to my U.C. Berkeley license plate. But maybe he just thought I was swerving a bit so he thought he’d check things out to make sure I was okay to drive. And when he pulled me over, maybe he saw that my eyes were a little red because I didn’t sleep well the night before. Who knows, other than the cop that stopped me? I don’t KNOW that it was the license plate frame, but that’s my best guess.

Our experiences color the way we perceive everything that happens to us. Race is still such a dominant factor in society that it’s impossible for people to NOT attribute some things to race. As part of the racial sensitivity program that faculty at SCSU are required to attend when hired, I was told by the people running the workshop that my being white meant that I was a racist –whether I was aware of it or not. I was told then (and reminded by one faculty member in an e-mail sent out today to faculty and staff who subscribe to our announce listserv) that even if you try to be colorblind and treat people equally regardless of race, that task is impossible. It’s apparently naive to think you can treat everybody equally. On the contrary, the person sending that e-mail and the workshop leaders said that the only way to achieve a post-racial society is to actively take race into account. It reminds me of Bush saying that he had to abandon capitalist principles in order to save capitalism — that explanation didn’t make much sense to me, and neither does this.

I wonder how many incidents of “racial profiling” or discrimination are simply a  matter of perception. If Eric Holder has been white and had been stopped by a black polic officer, would he have attributed it to his race? Would Eric Holder have been stopped at all if he were white?

We are told in a speech given by Eric Holder himself that, when it comes to race, America is a nation of cowards. He says that we are afraid to talk about race — and I would argue that it is with good reason. If you are white and talk about race in a way that offends anybody, you will quickly be labeled a racist by some. For example, when some Republican governors said they did not want to take some parts of the stimulus money, Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) said it insulted African-Americans. If you are black and talk about race, some white people will consider you as “injecting” race into a situation that had nothing to do with race. Some would say that’s exactly what Skip Gates has done here. But I hope my example shows that Gates’ life experiences affect the way he perceived that entire situation, so he attributes at least part of what happened to his being black. Did his being handcuffed have anything to do with his race? Only Sgt. Crowley knows. But I think the presumption of innocence, as it held for Skip Gates, should hold for Crowley as well.

I think it says a lot for our society when the worst insult you can hurl at someone is to call them a racist. It shows that we are a society that is conscious of race, that is trying to treat people equally, and that shuns those that would treat people of one race as less than people of another.  Sadly, this is abused by some, who label any discussion of race as “racism,” thereby stifling potentially worthwhile discussion about racial issues. I don’t know if we’ll ever get away from some of the racial issues we have, since our race influences the way we see things. I do know that we have come a long way in the last forty years, and I hope that forty years from now, a police stop will simply be a police stop — and race won’t matter for either the cop or the suspect.

(Updated 12:10am, 7/21)

ABC World News Tonight had a story about the Steamin’ Bean coffee shop in Blue Springs, Missouri. Here’s a link to a UPI article from a few days ago which says basically the same thing the ABC story documented. To spare you from having to read the story, here are the basics:

On Monday, July 6, a customer in the drive-thru window paid for her drink and then paid for the person’s drink behind her in line — she called it her good deed for the day. Well, that person accepted the free drink and was so struck by the generosity of their benefactor that they decided to do the same, paying for the person in line behind them. The chain continues to this day, with over 1,300 drinks being bought.

When there is nobody behind them in the drive-thru line, people donate however much they want and, if that person orders a drink costing less than the donation they make, the difference goes into a charity fund. This “pay it forward” concept has made its way into the coffee shop itself, with people inside just paying money into the charity fund and then getting a free drink out of that fund from money that was supposedly contributed by someone else. The store has even posted signs describing the process. Proceeds from the fund will be used to pay for drinks in the event some jerkoff breaks the chain and doesn’t buy another coffee for someone else. On the ABC News broadcast, the owner said that he hopes the fund proceeds might someday be used to help buy someone’s groceries for a week, or some other helpful act.

ABC News touted this entire process as charity, but is it really? Sure, the first person was being charitable, no question about it. But for everybody else continuing the chain, I’m not sure that it is – especially now that this is a national story and the company itself actually has signs telling customers about the program and basically guilt-tripping them into not breaking the chain. For all of the people going into the Steamin’ Bean today, they get a free drink from someone else and they pay for some other person’s drink. They’re getting a drink and paying for one — how is that any different than the status quo? If they pay $5 and only ask for a $4 coffee drink, sure the $1 difference might be considered charity. But not the entire $5, which is basically the way the story is being presented. And if you donate the same amount of money as your coffee costs, you’re “keeping the chain alive” — yet you haven’t contributed to anything but this story.

The story I link to explains that as of July 15, the chain had reached 1,000 people and the coffee shop had a total of $160 in the charity fund. (They keep track by writing down a bunch of numbers in sequence and crossing them off as they go — one more thing your barista has to do while you wait for your coffee.) Think about those numbers. They’ve served 1,000 drinks and the chain hasn’t been broken, so 1,000 people have taken part in this system — and they’ve only collected $160. The average person is donating 16 cents per drink, and the store is collecting $16 per day in charitable contributions. Most coffee shops make several times that in their tip jar on an average day. But the whole “pay it forward” idea is cute — although it’s been done countless times before and even turned into a bad movie (Kevin Spacey, why have you forsaken us!?). So this story gets nationwide press. If the headline of the story were “Coffee Shop collects $16 per day for charity” I doubt it would get the same publicity.

On a different note, shouldn’t these charitable people actually want the chain to be broken? That would mean that somebody who really, desperately needs a $4 half-caff no-whip soy caramel latte but doesn’t have any money can get one. Only when the chain is broken will the original person’s charitable contribution of a free coffee actually be realized.

This form of incentive system creates some obvious problems. Knowing there’s a slush fund that is used to make up the difference whenever somebody doesn’t have enough money, I have an incentive to order an expensive drink and pay for the next customer’s inexpensive drink.* But with all the publicity and the signs in the coffee shop, people will think I’m a real jerk if I do that. (See the next paragraph.) To avoid that, especially if I’m a local customer, perhaps I contribute as much as the drink would have cost anyway. In that case, there’s nothing charitable about it. And it appears that most people are doing just that, since they’re only collecting $16 per day. But why all the needless complication of buying someone else’s drink instead of your own?

The owner, in a different story, says of this system, “We don’t want anybody to abuse it. The simple fact is that if someone does abuse it, it’ll be gobbled up and go away on its own. It’s the honor system and it can simply vanish if people abuse it.” Ah, now I see. So it’s charity, but don’t abuse it! It was designed to help people pay for coffee as a goodwill gesture, but by God nobody better actually use it for what it was intended for or it will go away! Maybe I’m too cynical, but I don’t think this is charity at all. This is an unnecessarily complicated scheme designed to guilt people into giving money to the coffee shop owner (Garin Bledsoe) so he can donate it to any cause he sees fit. From the story linked in this paragraph:

With a vision “to impact as many as possible from the simple act of goodwill,” Bledsoe contributed some of the pay-it-forward fund to Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea in Chicago during a vacation this past weekend. The Intelligentsia manager nodded along, Bledsoe said, and thought it sounded like a nice concept. Then, Bledsoe pulled out $40 in cash and handed it over.

The owner collects money from people in the town of Blue Springs, Missouri, a satellite city just outside Kansas City. But instead of using it to help people in that community, he gives it to people at a fancy “coffeebar” in Chicago that has its own barista classes, roasting facilities, and a New York City “Training Lab.” Do you think the people in Blue Springs who are donating this money were doing it to help people in Chicago? Doubtful. Yet the national news media are jumping on the story and praising this guy like he just donated both of his kidneys to a pair of albino orphans.

This story reminds me of a practice they use in Petsmart and Petco to get “donations.” After they ring up your order, they ask, “Would you like to donate $1.00 to help homeless animals?” Many grocery stores also set up donation programs like this, but the system is purely voluntary. They have slips of paper at the register you can scan that will add $1, $5 or $10 to your grocery bill, and the money goes to food banks and homeless shelters. But in that case, you just put one of them on the conveyor belt if you feel like being generous. Nobody waves the slips in your face and asks you if you would like to donate $1, $5 or $10 to help starving orphans. The pet stores are more confrontational about it, asking you the question directly. It is the second half of the question that hangs in the air, unspoken. The implied full question is: ”Would you like to donate a dollar to help homeless pets… or are you a cruel, heartless, selfish bastard who can afford to spend $15 on a new chew toy for your precious dog while you allow other dogs to go hungry?”

Now don’t get me wrong — I love animals (some of them are absolutely delicious). I plan on donating to the Humane Society when Jake passes, since that’s where I got him and I think that would be a good way to honor him. But I never donate the dollar at Petsmart because if you’re going to try to coerce a contribution out of me by making me feel guilty about it, I’m not going to donate, plain and simple. In my mind, coerced charity is not charity, and I take a stand on that — partially based on principle, and partially because I simply don’t respond well to guilt trips, as most of my ex-girlfriends would likely confirm. One time at a clothing store, right before I was going to pay, I was asked if I wanted to donate $1.00 to help homeless children. My response: “Nah, screw the kids.”

 When you donate money to a worthwhile cause or help a neighbor because you want to out of the goodness of your heart, that is charity. But when you donate money because you feel compelled to by peer pressure, that is not charity. When you are instructed to donate by signs in the store telling you that it is basically expected of you or by an owner that says it is “abusing the system” if you don’t play along, that is not charity. The “pay it forward” thing might be catchy, but it’s only generating $16 per day, and it’s doing so in an unnecessarily inefficient manner.

My advice to Mr. Bledsoe: just get a tip jar. Let your customers know all the good causes their donations will support. You won’t get the same national coverage, of course. But you’ll probably have more money at the end of the day, and it won’t take as long for your customers to get their drinks.

*And if you know me, you know this is probably what I would do. Actually, if I’m being completely honest, I’d probably just get the free drink and break the chain. It’s not that I’m not charitable. But if this is considered charity, then so is paying my taxes. After all, I put more into the tax system than I take out of it, and my money is used to help other people — ergo, paying my taxes is making a charitable contribution. Yay me.

(Note: the original title of this post was “Debating Dishonestly with Bernie Sanders” but was changed the focus of the post was an interview, not an actual debate.)

I’m not even sure why Bernie Sanders shows up on Fox News if he’s going to act like he did in today’s interview with Megyn Kelly. He’s listed as an Independent but is a self-proclaimed Socialist, as is abundantly clear in this interview. Here’s a link to the video from Fox. Normally I would just include some parts of this interview, but I did the whole thing here because Fox’s “automatically generated transcript” on the web page linked above is junk. They warn that it “may not be 100% accurate.” But when ”fair tax system”  in the interview becomes “theft tax Muslim” in the transcript, the transcript is worthless.

To make it interesting, I’m keeping track of the lies, non-answers, and evasive answers Sanders gives in the interview.

To start off, Kelly plays a clip of the Director of the (non-partisan) Congressional Budget Office stating that the federal responsibility for health care costs will increase if any of the new proposed health care bills pass, despite claims by some Democrats that it will actually bring costs down.

Kelly: The Washington Post calls that a “devastating assessment” for the Democrats who want to overhaul health care. How do you respond, sir?

Sanders: Well, I respond in a couple of ways. I think the CBO does not necessarily (and by definition cannot) take into its calculations the role of disease prevention. We spend a huge amount of money treating chronic disease. We do not do a good job in keeping people healthy. And the effort so far in Congress is to try to do that, and it’s hard to calculate what that will be.

Also, we have a disaster in terms of primary health care, Megyn. We have 60 million Americans who have no doctor at all right now. They end up in the emergency room. They end up in hospital much sicker than they should have been. This legislation puts a great deal of emphasis in getting more doctors out into primary health care and I think we save substantial sums of money in that area as well. And it’s hard to calculate what that will mean in the future.

But the last point that I would make in terms of where I think the CBO Director makes a point. Right now, as a nation, as you know, we spend twice as much — almost twice as much — as any other country on earth in terms of our per capita cost of health care. Why is that? Why do the French in general — they’ve generally got a better system than we do — spending half of what we do? And the answer is that they have, as most countries around the world, industrialized countries, have a single-payer Medicare program for all, which eliminates in our country some $400 billion in waste and inefficiencies, in bureaucracies, that occur when we have 1,300 private health insurance, thousands of different health care programs, millions of bureaucrats.

Some of Sanders’ points have validity. If we reduce health care costs by reducing chronic disease, that’s great. But the CBO report does in fact consider the impact of preventative health care. It’s just that the people pushing the health care bills, like Dick Durbin, think it  has underestimated those savings. (Note in the link Christopher Dodd also admits the bill won’t actually decrease costs; he says it will “bend the curve” and slow the rate of growth of costs — those are two entirely different things.) So that’s the first lie for Sanders: he says the CBO doesn’t consider the savings at all, when in fact they do make an effort to account for them. His second lie is that we spend almost twice as much as any other country. We’re at 15% and there are 6 other countries over 10%. We spend about 40% more than the number two country, Switzerland. Facts, shmacts, eh Bernie?

Score: Lies: 2, Non-answers: 0, Evasive Answers: 0

Kelly: Alright, but let me just steer you back on point, Senator, because I know — just for now, anyway, for now I know we’re not talking about one universal health care system that’s being proposed, although many people think that’s where the President wants to take us. I know you’ve said in the past that’s where you think we should be. Despite your criticism of the CBO, they have said — I mean, this is their job, is to crunch the numbers — they’re the ones who said it’s going to cost about a trillion dollars. Now they come out and say this whole thing, not only is it not going to help these skyrocketing costs in the health care system, but it’s going to make them worse, and suggesting that the financial crisis we are in right now is going to be worsened by all of these plans that the Democrats are proposing on Capital Hill. [Note: the "financial crisis" of which she speaks is the federal budget deficit specifically, not the larger economy as a whole.]

Sanders: Well, two responses, Megyn. Again, I think that the nature of the CBO is not to be able, because it’s very difficult… I mean, if we have, we allow people to go to the doctor before they get very sick and end up in the hospital, could you make a prediction of what kind of savings that would incur? But the second point that we have to address is, what happens if we do nothing? If we continue the disaster by which 46 million Americans have no health insurance and costs go up 10, 15, 20% every year? What studies tell us is that in 10 years, the average American will be paying double what he or she is paying today. Is that sustainable? And the answer, it’s not.

Note that Sanders is now saying that it’s impossible to account for the savings we’ll get by improving patient care and reducing chronic health problems. He already implied that we would save a lot of money, but now he says it’s impossible to know how much. So if you don’t know how much, how do you know that the decrease in spending on chronic care is going to offset the increase in other costs? Does Sanders make any effort to estimate the savings that might result? No, he doesn’t. The CBO actually did, whether Sanders acknowledges it or not. He argues that it’s impossible to get an accurate number without addressing the methodology they used at all. We learn quickly in economics that if you think a model is incorrect, your responsibility is to put forth a better model. Sanders doesn’t even try that here.

Kelly: I think there’s some debate on those numbers, Senator, because I know that that’s the number from the administration: 46-47 million Americans uninsured. But that includes illegals, who will not be covered by this bill, 11 or 12 million of them. That also includes people who have just chosen not to insure themselves because the so-called “invincibles,” people in their 20’s and so on.

Sanders: That may be, but those people…

Kelly: But listen, I want to get to this other point before we run out of time, and that’s this tax hike that’s been proposed by the House, that would now place the so-called high earners, the so-called wealthy, in a tax bracket that is really astronomical, Senator. We’re talking about people, in New York City for example, who would be facing almost 60% of their income going away in taxes.

First, Kelly reduces her credibility as an objective journalist here by throwing in the term “so-called” in front of high earners and wealthy. This plan would impact the top 1% of earners. They’re not the “so-called” high-earners — they’re wealthy, plain and simple. In muddying that, she does a disservice to herself. Second, Kelly is making the argument based on federal income tax, the new health care surtax, state income taxes and city income taxes. But she makes a mistake here by saying that “60% of their income” would go away. She should have said that it was the marginal rate on additional income (above a half million or a million dollars, depending on the bill). The rate at lower levels is obviously lower, so the percentage of the income paid in taxes would be less than 60%. Unless you include sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, alcohol taxes, cell phone taxes, cigarette taxes, cable television taxes… come to think of it, Megyn might be close on this one after all.

Sanders: And who are those people? Those are the people, Megyn, those may be the people at Goldman Sachs who just got their compensation at seven hundred…

Kelly: No, sir. It’s not just the Goldman Sachs people.

Sanders: No, well, I don’t agree with you.

In Bernie Sanders’ world, all rich people are Wall Street bankers. You just heard him say it. I have to create a new statistic for this.

Score: Lies: 2, Non-answers: 0, Evasive Answers: 0, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: Oh, yes it is.

Sanders: It’s a graduated, it’s a graduated tax.

Now Sanders is reminding Megyn that this is about marginal tax rates, but that has nothing to do with the point at hand which was about who these people are. He’s trying to change the subject, which I’m not keeping track of, but that’s also a cheap debate tactic. Megyn’s not having any of it, and continues.

Kelly: Listen, don’t take my word for it. Take Steve Forbes’ word for it, who was just on our air about two hours ago explaining how these are small business owners.

Sanders: Well, I might not take Steve Forbes’ word for it either. But the bottom line is, if you look at what’s going on right now, our friends in Wall Street who caused the most significant financial crisis since the Great Depression are now being paid $700,000 a year after being bailed out by the taxpayers of this country.

Megyn: Sir, it’s easy to blame the Wall Street fatcats, but I’m talking about — you know that it’s not all Wall Street fatcats that are going to get hit by this. People who are making $500,000 a year include small business who get taxed as individuals, and they are saying jobs are gonna go away.

Sanders: Well, what I am saying is that if we do not do something, whatever it may be, you’re gonna see a doubling of health care costs, which will be destructive to small businesses and every American. We’ve got to do something. To the degree we have to pay for it, it should not be the middle class, but upper-income people.

Score: Lies: 2, Non-answers: 0, Evasive Answers: 1, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Sanders avoids the Wall Street fatcats question by saying basically, “Well, we have to do something.” Now at this point, if you’ve been reading my blog faithfully, you should know my head is about to explode. I wrote about this back in February: using the “we have to do something” excuse to justify a program regardless of how bad it might be. That led us to the ARRA (aka the Stimulus bill), which we all can see now is not really a stimulus bill at all — which is why unemployment is still rising. And one more reason I love Megyn Kelly: she can read my mind.

Kelly: Something! So now we’re on the same page about something. So let’s accept that something must be done. The question is whether taxing…

Sanders: Well, the Republican party does not accept that, by the way.

First, he’s rude and interrupting her here. Second, he’s lying again. All this “Republicans don’t suggest anything” nonsense is getting old. Democrats come out with a plan. Republicans counter with something else. Then Democrats ignore the plan and say “Republicans don’t have any alternatives.” Just because you don’t like an alternate plan does not mean it’s not a plan.

Score: Lies: 3, Non-answers: 0, Evasive Answers: 1, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: …whether more taxing. Let me finish my question. The question is whether more taxes, in a recession in particular, on the people who create jobs is the answer, as your colleague in the House, Nancy Pelosi, thinks.

Sanders: If you don’t do anything about health care and costs double in 10 years, that will be destructive not only to people but to the economy as well. The top 1% today earn more income than the bottom 50. I am not going to raise taxes on the middle class or working families. Our friends on Wall Street can in fact afford to pay more in taxes.

In case you’re wondering, Sanders’ statistic is actually true. The top 1% of income tax returns account for 22% of total income, while the bottom 50% only account for 12% of total income. However, this part of the interview is about taxes and how much the rich can afford to pay, so here are some more facts: the top 1% of income tax returns paid 40% of the income taxes, while the bottom 50% paid just 3%. The average tax rate paid by the bottom 50% is 3% of income, while the average tax rate paid by the top 1% is 23%. The rich pay a lot in taxes, but the question is: how much would Sanders have them pay?

Kelly: It’s not just Wall Street, sir. At what point do you draw the line? 70% income tax okay with you? 80% income tax okay with you?

Sanders: Well, as you know, under Bush the taxes for the very wealthy went substantially down and the gap between the rich and everybody else grew wider.

Score: Lies: 3, Non-answers: 1, Evasive Answers: 1, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: Well, but you’re fixing that.

Sanders: I do not stay up nights worrying for our friends on Wall Street, as some people may.

Kelly: But really, I’m wondering, where do you draw the line? Does 60% not shock the conscience?

Sanders: Well that’s, we can discuss… Well, again, Bush lowered taxes to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars for the top 1%.

Score: Lies: 3, Non-answers: 2, Evasive Answers: 1, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: But answer my question. Does 60% not shock the conscience?

Sanders: Well, next time around we can talk about a fair tax system. How’s that?

Score: Lies: 3, Non-answers: 3, Evasive Answers: 1, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: No, no. This is, sir, you’re about to have to vote on this. This thing may pass in the House. It’s gonna come over to you in the Senate…

Sanders: (interrupting yet again) If you’re asking me if I will vote…

Kelly: …and I’m asking you if this is okay with you.

Sanders: Well, it certainly is okay for me to tell my friends on Wall Street who just got a bonus of $600,000 they’re gonna pay more in taxes so that we can lower health care costs in America. Yeah, that’s okay with me.

Something tells me he doesn’t really have friends on Wall Street. If he does, he might not after this interview.

Kelly: So you want our viewers to believe that everybody who is going to be affected is a Wall Street fatcat.

Sanders: I want your viewers to believe that if we do nothing right now, this country’s gonna be in very serious trouble.

Score: Lies: 3, Non-answers: 3, Evasive Answers: 2, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Kelly: Okay, but sir, you’re not answering my question.

Sanders: Well, I did my best.

Score: Lies: 4, Non-answers: 3, Evasive Answers: 2, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

Yes, I scored that one as a lie. If this is truly his best, he’s too stupid to be a U.S. Senator. (Or maybe not – we did just get Al Franken.) Regardless, I choose to believe that he’s lying about giving his best.

Kelly: You and I both know it’s not all Wall Street fatcats. You won’t answer the question about how much is too much. You know, our viewers want answers to these questions, sir.

Sanders: Well, I will answer the question. When the top 1% earn more than the bottom 50%, I’m not gonna ask the bottom 50% to pay more.

Score: Lies: 4, Non-answers: 3, Evasive Answers: 3, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

No, Senator, you did not answer the question. Maybe some of the people who vote for you are too stupid to know when you’re answering a different question than the one you were actually asked, but some of us are not.

Kelly: All right. So I guess 60, 70, 80% is all right for now.

Sanders: No, that’s not what I said, Megyn. Don’t put words in my mouth.

Kelly: Well, you won’t answer one way or the other, sir, so I can only assume the answer’s yes.

Beautiful work, Megyn. He actually thinks that not answering the question when it was asked 3 times means we don’t know what he really thinks. At this point, I don’t know if Sanders is an idiot or if he just thinks everyone watching the interview is.

Sanders: Well, we’re gonna go after the top 1 or 2%. I think that that’s appropriate if we need to raise revenue rather than going after the middle class.

Score: Lies: 4, Non-answers: 4, Evasive Answers: 3, Unwillingness to Accept Reality: 1.

I do love his use of the phrase “go after” here. It is so revealing.

Kelly: Alright. Senator Bernie Sanders, thanks for coming on.  We appreciate you being here.

Sanders: Thank you.

There you have it. In a 7-minute interview, Bernie Sanders either lies, evades a question, or simply doesn’t answer a straightforward question a total of 11 times. Shouldn’t we expect better from the people who represent us and are so willing to spend our money?

I am so sick of people debating dishonestly, which is what Sanders does here. Don’t like a question? Don’t answer it. Don’t have an answer for something, or think your true answer might shock the people who are watching? Don’t answer it, or change the subject and hope we’re too stupid to notice. Don’t like the results other people find in their study? Lie about their methodology, or say it’s impossible to know what the right answer is.

I see a lot of this happening now with the health care debate. People pick one statistic that helps their argument (U.S. pays more per capita than other countries), while ignoring another that hurts it (our cancer survival rates are better than practically every other country). When a statistic runs contrary to their position, they pick it apart and argue that it is not accurate. When the statistic supports their argument, they believe it is the gospel truth and don’t care to learn more about what’s behind it. For example, people who want health care reform often cite the statistic that our life expectancy is lower than other countries. It’s 100% true but totally misleading if your goal is discussing the efficacy of different health care systems. When you account for our rate of violent crime death and fatal accidents, our life expectancy is actually higher than almost every other country. This is because a larger percentage of our population dies due to crime than most other developed countries, and we drive more miles per person than any other country on the planet, so we have more fatal accidents. These people don’t die because of our health care system — if you get shot in the head or are in a head-on collision without a seatbelt, you’re going to die whether you’re in the U.S., Canada, or Cuba. Life expectancy depends on more than just the health care system, so it’s misleading to use that one statistic as a barometer for our entire health care system. Yet people do it all the time.

The sad part is that Sanders thinks he’s a brilliant man. He likely thinks he did great in that interview. But by not answering the questions he didn’t like, or trying so hard to change the topic, his true views are crystal clear. We’re not as stupid as you think we are, Bernie.

Day 3 of the Sotomayor confirmations was mostly the same-old same-old. But there was one exchange that I found particularly thought-provoking between Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I wasn’t sure where Coburn was going with it at first, but you see where he ends up.

Coburn: Does a state legislature have the right, under the Constitution, to determine what is death? Have we statutorily defined, and we have, all 50 states and most of the territories, what is the definition of death. Do you think that’s within the realm of the Constitution, that states can do that?

Sotomayor: It depends on what they’re applying that definition to, and so there are situations in which they might and situations where that definition would or would not have applicability to the dispute before the court. All state action is looked at within the context of what the state is attempting to do and what liabilities it’s imposing.

Coburn: But you would not deny the fact that states do have the right to set up statutes that define, to give guidance to their citizens, what constitutes death.

Sotomayor: As I said, it depends on in what context they are attempting to do that.

Coburn: They’re doing it so they limit the liability of others with regard to that decision, which would inherently be the right of a state legislature as I read the Constitution. You may have a different response to that. Which brings me back to technology again. As recently as six months ago, we now record fetal heartbeats at fourteen days post-conception. We record fetal brainwaves at 39 days post-conception. And I don’t expect you to answer this, but I do expect you to pay attention to it as you contemplate these big issues, is we have this schizophrenic rule of the law where we have defined death as the absence of those but refuse to define life as the presence of those. And all of us are dependent at different levels on other people during all stages of our development from the very early in the womb, to outside of the womb, to the very late. And it concerns me that we are so inaccurate — inaccurate’s an improper term — inconsistent in our application of the logic.

Coburn’s argument is simple: if death means the absence of brainwaves and heartbeats, shouldn’t life mean the presence of brainwaves and heartbeats. This struck me because there are so many inconsistencies in the law, so many competing rights and principles. It is in all of this conflict that judges make decisions and settle what the prevailing rule will be. When laws are clear, a judge’s work is easy and even unnecessary. It is when two different laws are at odds with each other that real legal precedent is made, and where different judicial philosophies lead to different outcomes. I was also a Legal Studies major in college, so I find discussions like this fascinating.

And it’s not just the courts that are inconsistent in how they apply logic. I think we’re all guilty of it. I know I am. A few years back there was a story about a woman who delivered a baby in the hospital and when they were doing her blood tests, they found cocaine in her system. After she gave birth, the police took her into custody and placed her under arrest for child endangerment — apparently it’s illegal to do cocaine when you’re pregnant…or at least more illegal than just doing it on your own. I remember thinking that was the just thing to do — there has to be some punishment for a woman knowingly harming the baby inside her womb, possibly causing it to have developmental difficulties that will require taxpayer money. But I consider myself to be pro-choice. I would obviously rather a woman bring a child to term and let a loving family adopt it, but it’s her body and as long as she makes the decision early on and we’re not talking late-term or partial-birth abortion (when the fetus would be viable outside the womb anyway), I would not choose to take away a woman’s right to an abortion.

So consider those two positions and you get this: I have no problem with a woman killing a fetus, but if she just harms it by doing a little drugs instead of killing it completely, then there should be a punishment for her. It sounds perverse, I know, but it’s just another example of the competing principles we have that sometimes butt up against each other. There is also tension between the guarantee of equal protection for all people under the law regardless of race and gender and the sanctioning of affirmative action. There is tension between the first amendment’s right to say anything you want and the right to privacy of others — illustrated quite well by the jackasses who protest funerals of soldiers yelling god-awful things at the family of the deceased. It is hard to have a set of strong principles that don’t at some point conflict with each other.

I know these hearings have been boring at times. There’s no doubt about that. When you get to the fifth Republican senator asking yet again about the “wise Latina woman” comment or the tenth Democrat senator talking about how simply wonderful this woman is (I seriously think Feinstein wants to adopt her), you can’t help but want to just turn it off. But I keep watching anyway because you never know when a discussion like this is going to come up.

Today is the first day of the confirmation hearing for potential Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomajor. The morning and afternoon so far has consisted of Senators on the Judiciary Committee giving 10-minute speeches. For the most part, Democrats talked about how amazing her life story is, while Republicans mostly talked about her “wise Latina” statement and the questions it raises about her potential to be an objective judge. Others used it as a chance to discuss not only their judicial philosophy, but their overall vision of government. While boring at times, it was very enlightening. I recommend everyone pay as much attention to these hearings as you can. You will learn a lot about what our government representatives think, and it will force you to refine your own views.

In a nutshell, based on today’s speeches, Republicans seem to think that judges should read the letter of the law and simply be robots. Democrats seem to think that judges are supposed to have empathy for the underdog in a legal case. I don’t think either of these two views fits my idea of what a Supreme Court judge is supposed to do, since laws are not always clear in their scope or language, but rules should be as clearly defined as possible so that people can make important decisions about their lives knowing what to expect, whether they are rich or poor.

I most closely line up with Lindsay Graham based on his speech this morning. He said that while he wants to question her statement that she is a “better” judge because she is a Latina woman, his basic view is this: Obama won, he got to pick his nominee, and unless there is something glaringly wrong with her, she should be approved. A lot of Democrats, including Obama himself, seem to think that now too. However they did not think that when they voted to filibuster Alito and voted against Alito and Roberts. Obama himself said that Roberts was without question extremely competent and qualified to sit on the court — but he voted against him anyway, purely because of his political beliefs. For him to expect Republicans to do otherwise with Sotomayor would be hypocritical (but since when do we expect anything else from politicians?). Graham mentioned in his speech that Scalia was approved almost unanimously despite the fact that his conservative view of the law was widely acknowledged by everyone in the Senate. Back then, Senators seemed to believe that if someone was competent, their political philosophy was irrelevant. In the last few decades, the Supreme Court has become yet one more area in which our politicians have increasingly polarized the country, divided people instead of uniting them.

I am not sure what Dianne Feinstein was trying to accomplish with her speech, but she makes a convincing argument for Republicans to vote against Sotomayor. Instead of talking about Sotomayor, Feinstein used much of her 10 minutes to blast Chief Justice Roberts. She argued that Senators can’t just look at someone’s previous rulings or listen to what she tells them in these hearings — if you did, then how do you explain Roberts’ rulings, some of which overturned legal precedents? While Feinstein may have a very good point, her argument directly implies that Republicans should not look at Sotomayor’s previous rulings at all (which Democrats are hailing as mainstream and not the least bit controversial, and they have a valid point here), and should look at the controversial things she has said and her political beliefs instead, as a way of gauging what she is likely to do once she is on the Supreme Court and not subject to review by any higher court. Feinstein has given Republicans a great excuse to vote against confirming Sotomayor despite her substantive record. Oops.

While I have learned a lot by watching the hearings today, this whole ordeal seems like so much unnecessary theater. Republicans grill her, while Democrats glowingly praise her. When she takes the stage, she will repeat the refrain that she will uphold the rule of law above all else (“fidelity to the law” was her catchphrase today). In the end, she will be approved. And none of the questions anybody asks her, nor any of the statements any of these Senators make, will factor into the decisions she makes once she is on the Court.

One thing upon which I hope we can all agree: it’s fun to say the word Sotomayor.

A friend of mine called me today wanting to talk about my politics. He said that one of the few things he can count on every day is that my Facebook status will include some sarcastic comment about the Obama administration, which is pretty close to the truth. His problem was that in our previous conversations about politics, I had always described myself as neither Democrat nor Republican. He thought perhaps I wasn’t being honest about that, and am now really just a closet Republican.

We disagree on a lot of things politically, but he’s still one of my best friends. You don’t have to agree with someone’s political beliefs to still think they’re a great person that you want in your life – far too many people dismiss people right off the bat because of their political differences, and that’s just sad. At some point, you may simply have to understand that you may both have different priorities, at which point you agree to disagree and talk about something else. We both understand that, so we don’t take political arguments personally and it doesn’t affect our friendship in the slightest. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I explained my lack of Bush-bashing on Facebook on two things. The first is that I didn’t use Facebook anywhere near as much a year or two ago, so the forum for my discontent with government has changed. I didn’t have this blog until January of this year, or I would have called Bush out on a bunch of things here too. The second and more important thing is that while I care about both economics and social issues, as an economist, I tend to care about economic policies (and most importantly about not intervening in markets) a whole lot more than I care about whether terrorists should be entitled to Geneva convention protections or whether abortion should be left up to the states or guaranteed by the federal government. Sure, those things are important, but they’re smaller blips on my radar. I’m an economist who is strongly in favor of free markets. (They’re not perfect, but in my opinion they tend to work a whole lot better than some unelected czar in D.C. making decisions that affect every American.) If I were a doctor, I would likely care much more about the effect of a new health care bill on patient care than I would about the effect it might have on the unemployment rate or the national debt. I think about economics and our system overwhelmingly more than I think about the consequences of other important issues, like global warming climate change and gay marriage. When I see someone doing something I think is bad for free market capitalism and the growth that often comes with it, I obviously have no problem calling attention to it.

But I do understand his point, and there’s some validity to it. I can see how one might come to the conclusion that I hate Democrats from some of the things I have on Facebook and on this blog. (I think my posts are just a reaction to the unprecedented size and scope of government intervention under the Obama administration and the last year of Bush’s term, and the fact that Congress passes these massive bills without reading them. Everything is rushed through before anybody can even begin to think through the unintended consequences of their actions, and to me that’s sheer madness. I don’t hate Democrats – I hate big government that is unaccountable to the people. Right now, that just happens to be something in which most Democrat politicians appear to believe.) So in the sense of equal time for both sides, I thought I’d use this post to discuss some of the things I didn’t like about the Bush administration. Consistent with what I criticize the Obama administration for, they’re mostly things that were done to the detriment of free markets.

When he ran for president in 2000, Bush made a big deal about how he was in favor of free trade. Then one of the first things he did when in office was to sign an executive order imposing tariffs on foreign steel. Every principles class I teach knows this because I use it as an example of what happens when you put a tax on a product whose demand is elastic. There is a great substitute for foreign steel (domestic steel) so consumers of foreign steel can be very price-sensitive. Tariffs on foreign steel raise the price of both kinds of steel, with steel consumers purchasing more domestic steel than foreign steel. They hurt foreign steel manufacturers and hurt domestic manufacturers who use steel, like the automobile industry. Years later, several European countries said that if Bush didn’t eliminate the tariffs, they were going to impose retaliatory tariffs on a lot of American-made products. Their threats worked and eventually Bush caved and let go of the steel tariffs. But he won Ohio in 2004, with a lot of support from the steel industry. Coincidence?

When he ran for president in 2000, he promised Americans a tax cut. With budget surpluses under the last few years of the Clinton administration, Bush said he was going to give us a refund because it was our money and we had basically overpaid. (Nevermind that we still had a pretty sizeable national debt, so we could have used those budget surpluses to pay down the debt.) Leading up to 2000, the economy had been growing for 6 straight years but with incredibly low inflation and low growth in wages, which surprised many economists. At the beginning of 2000, wages were starting to rise. While that might sound like a good thing for workers, it’s bad for firms and it’s a sign of impending inflation: eventually firms are going to have to start increasing prices to offset the increase in wages, and then you get inflation. Very low unemployment and the signs of rising wages are two signs that the economy is operating at or above potential output, the level of output we expect to be producing at in the long run. The last thing you want to do in that situation is stimulate demand in the economy by giving people tax refunds, as their increased consumption is just going to lead to even faster-accelerating inflation. Many economists, including myself, thought this was an irresponsible policy. I was in grad school at the time and was teaching courses at a nearby community college and I used this as a way of talking about when certain economic policies may or may not be appropriate. I said at the time that while I would certainly love a $600 check in the mail, I thought it was not the right policy for the economy at that time. As it turns out, the economy slowed in the summer of 2000 as California got hit with an electricity crisis, and later as the NASDAQ stock market lost 70% of its value when the tech bubble popped. Coming into 2001, what was previously thought of as an irresponsible policy ended up being something the economy needed. So I blame Bush for supporting an unnecessary and irresponsible tax cut. That it later turned out to be a more appropriate thing is his good fortune.

When Bush ran for office, he did so on a policy against nation-building in other countries. Then he proceeded to do just that in Iraq. I would like to cut him some slack since he presided over the country when almost 4,000 of its citizens were attacked by terrorists. That kind of responsibility can make one over-react, as I think he did by going into Iraq when he did. It might have been necessary eventually, but I don’t think it was at the time. It has cost us countless billions and, more importantly, the lives of thousands of American men and women far braver than myself.

I think TARP was a disaster. It was partially Congress’s fault for giving the Treasury a blank check and not specifying what how the money was to be used. It was also partially Bush’s and Paulson’s fault for totally changing how the money would be used. It’s called the “Troubled Asset Relief Program” and was designed to take the troubled mortgage assets out of the financial system, and nine months later we still haven’t done that. TARP has turned into a slush-fund for whatever random idea the Treasury comes up with this week. That kind of uncertainty has done damage to investor confidence and is part of why the economy is not recovering as fast as we all would want. Nobody knows who is going to be bailed out next week or who is going to get a new tax break or government subsidy, so a lot of people are just waiting until the future is more certain. Bush said he had to abandon the principles of the free market to save the free market. I’m still struggling to understand that one. That’s as stupid as Obama spending trillions and then saying he is fiscally responsible and deeply concerned about deficits. Logically inconsistent.

Have I been beating up on the economic policies of the Obama administration in the last few months? Of course I have. Here’s one more. Joe Biden says that “everybody guessed wrong” about the economy. That is a flat-out lie, but Joe Biden lying or saying something stupid and/or slightly racist is apparently just “Joe being Joe,” so the media doesn’t call him out on it. At the time the stimulus bill was being proposed, the Obama administration came out with their estimates of future unemployment rates and future output growth rates. Go back and compare those estimates to those of economic think-tanks and private research firms at the time and the administration’s view of the future was significantly rosier than everyone else’s. They had to use the most favorable numbers they could so that tax revenues would be higher and their deficit projections would be lower. The administration took the most optimistic estimates they could find so they could sell the stimulus bill, and now it’s starting to come back to haunt them. It makes it look like they don’t know what they’re doing, and it becomes harder to trust all of their estimates of the likely impact of their health care, environment, and energy proposals on our economy. So no, I have absolutely no problem calling attention to what I believe are the wrong economic policies for the country, given my staunch belief in free markets. But I hated McCain’s idea of using TARP money to bail out homeowners who were upside-down on their homes, and I’ll state that for the record — even though I might be upside-down on my home right now. And if McCain or any other Republican were in office doing the same stuff Obama is doing right now (destroying free markets, expanding government ownership of private businesses, regulating wages, scaring investors out of the stock market, and decreasing the incentives for businesses to hire labor at the time when we need them to hire people more than ever), rest assured I’d be making sarcastic Facebook status updates about him too.

For the flight to Vancouver last week, my girlfriend bought me the latest copy of Mens Health magazine. There was a lot of good stuff in it, including a few nutrition articles. In addition to a lot of tips about good foods and what not to eat, there was a nice little diet plan. Given your level of exercise during the week and your desired weight, you can easily determine how many calories you should be eating in a day. For me, that’s about 2,600. But in addition to that, it breaks down how many grams of protein, fat and carbs I should be eating.

It’s easy to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing, but keeping track of what you’re actually doing can be difficult. At least, it was until I downloaded a new application for my iPhone called Tap ‘n Track that keeps track of everything. It has a lot of foods already pre-programmed, including popular restaurant meals, and it’s easy to quickly add in something that’s not already on there. It stores your recent meals, so if there’s something you eat all the time, it’s easy to add it. The main feature that I like is that it gives you a current daily summary of the basic nutrition information so you can quickly look at how much protein, fat and carbs you’ve had and figure out where you need to fill in the gaps. Yesterday I was a little light on protein late in the day, so I had a protein shake.

(Update: The newest version of Lose It is, I think, a better calorie-tracking app than Tap ‘n Track. The previous version didn’t allow you to track carbs/protein/fat but now you can. It allows you to create recipes — create a ham sandwich by adding components so that in the future you can just add that one item instead of having to add bread, ham and cheese — and it is a little more visually appealing than Tap ‘n Track. And it’s free.)

I’ve been blessed with a fast metabolism. I remember when I was in junior high poking my dad’s gut and making fun of it and he’d say, “When I was your age, I looked just like you,” implying that my gut was just a matter of time. Now I’m 34, the same age my dad was when I was poking him, and that gut still hasn’t shown up for me. I owe a lot of that to my genetics, because I never really had to think about what I eat. (Thanks, Mom!)

Then I got Tap ‘n Track. I never realized how many calories are in a lot of things I was eating, and I’m not even wasting calories on soda and candy bars like I used to. (I cut out soda about two years ago and cut way back on the alcohol. Now I drink water with almost every meal instead.) I used to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a bedtime snack, and a few little snacks in between. I was thinking that with all the exercise I was doing, I needed more calories — I’ve been trying to gain weight (muscle), not lose it. For the last two days, I’ve had to cut out the bedtime snack because I had already hit my calories for the day. That really woke me up. Now I eat smarter and I eat less, trying to stay at my 2,600 calories and make sure not to have too many carbs. I’m sure I annoy my girlfriend a little with all the calorie- and protein-tracking I’ve been doing for the last few days, but I’m just trying to get an idea of what I normally eat and what I should eat. Once all of that is internalized, I won’t need to track it any more. (I promise!)

If you had asked me a week ago how many calories I took in every day, I would have thought it was around 2,200-2,300. After tracking what I actually eat for the last few days, I realize I was probably taking in about 2,900-3,000.

A lot of states are considering making restaurants put some basic nutritional information on the menus — in some cases it’s calories, and in others it also includes grams of fat. Most fast food restaurants already have brochures you can look at, and a lot of restaurants have the information on their website, but studies have shown that a very tiny percentage of people look at the information in fast food restaurants. (Nobody knows how many people look at the information online.) The newer laws being proposed would make fast food restaurants put the information right up on the big board, and make sit-down restaurants put it right on the menu. If that information were there, you would find that the large french fries at Five Guys weighs in at over 1,400 calories — as much as 37 Oreo cookies. Armed with that knowledge, I think the vast majority of people would order the regular fries instead.

Naturally, fast food restaurants are fighting these laws. As much as I am against most regulation, I think this one would be good — especially considering the health problems caused by obesity. In my ideal scenario, you could eat whatever you want but you’d have to pay for the consequences of those actions. But if we’re going to have Medicare, Medicaid, and some other form of nationalized health care, then we all have a financial interest in obesity being less common – and right now the obesity problem in America is only getting worse. Making restaurants put the calories on the menu would result in people switching what they eat, and then restaurants would reduce their portion sizes to something more reasonable so they could get their calorie count down. The cost of dining out would fall, people would have more disposable income for other things, less food would be wasted, and we’d save money on health care. I think those are all desirable outcomes.

I’m a Libertarian and that means keeping government out of my business as much as possible. I don’t like Big Brother telling me what I can and cannot eat (banning trans-fats in New York, for example). But I am in favor of making restaurants give us this information clearly and visibly so that I can make smarter decisions for myself.

Update 7/27/09: An article from the Wall Street Journal indicates that 9.1% of medical spending is a result of obesity. With more information, it would be easier for people to make simple choices to help prevent this.

Obama’s Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, does such a good job of laughing like a buffoon at serious questions posed of his administration, that you have to wonder if his days aren’t numbered. (Note to Gibbs: Helen Thomas takes every question she asks seriously, as crazy as some of them might be, so don’t laugh at her questions.) If he ever fires Gibbs, Obama better look to replace him with someone other than his Deputy Press Secretary, Bill Burton. Burton was on The O’Reilly Factor last night and did one of the worst interviews I’ve ever seen. Kudos to Juan Williams who, despite being a Democrat, was probably tougher on Burton than O’Reilly would have been. Despite the absurdity of his responses, it was hard to be mad at Burton because I had so much fun laughing at the inanity of virtually every answer he gave. Video finally available here (until it’s pulled, of course).

Burton actually said the Cap and Trade bill is “first and foremost a jobs bill,” despite estimates that the net effect will be that 3/4 of a million people would lose their jobs in the first decade because of it — either directly in some energy-producing areas, or indirectly as a result of higher prices paid by consumers on everything they buy until firms adapt better to the regulations. I’ve seen other people say the resulting unemployment could be several million people, but I can’t find any studies so I’ll stick with the Brookings Institute numbers. Still, to call it a jobs bill strains credulity. It would be like calling a bill that removes your right to a secret ballot when you vote on whether or not to join a union the “Employee Free Choice Act.” OK, bad analogy.

He said that Obama’s pledge that taxes won’t increase on anybody paying less than $250K/year still stands, despite the fact that Obama won’t rule out taxing health care benefits. Many are calling on Obama to take a firm stand and say he will veto any health care bill that taxes health care benefits for those earning under $250K (which some are saying is necessary to raise the money needed to pay for a more expanded public health plan). After all, Obama lambasted McCain for suggesting the idea during the campaign, making McCain look like Scrooge McDuck for wanting to tax your benefits. And again, Obama also said he wouldn’t raise “any taxes” (not just income taxes) on people who aren’t rich. But he still won’t make the pledge. According to Burton, you don’t bring people to the table by telilng them what you won’t accept. Obama would “prefer” not to tax health insurance, but he won’t rule it out just yet. Obama has promised the American people something and millions voted for him because of those promises. If he signs a bill that taxes health care benefits, it would be the same as George H.W. Bush signing a tax increase after his “Read my lips: no new taxes” pledge. After going back on that pledge, Papa Bush got booted out after one term. Obama might want to think about that. (Note: in my comment on Loonies and Toonies, I make it clear that I’m actually fine with taxing health care benefits as income if it’s part of a larger reform; I just hate the hypocrisy of bashing McCain for it because it’s a tax increase and then not ruling it out yourself when you specifically said you wouldn’t increase taxes.)

Burton also said that the Cap and Trade bill, which everyone says will have costs for consumers of all income ranges (the only difference is in the estimates of the size and distribution of those costs across income levels), does not violate Obama’s no-tax pledge. Burton called it a “bank-shot” to imply that higher taxes on almost every business, which will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices by every firm it affects (or put them out of business), was in effect a tax increase on consumers. I think most consumers would feel differently.

Considering that Obama gives the best speeches of any president in my lifetime, it’s a shame that the people who speak for him are so incredibly bad at what they do.

I had a great time in Vancouver — it was nice to be out of the country again and see how other people do things. A few things struck me:

1. The prevalence of hybrid cars. I’m not sure if this is a city thing or a Canadian thing, or perhaps it’s because gas was $1.11CAD/liter, which is almost $4USD/gallon at current exchange rates.

2. The lack of fat Canadian people. With all the talk of universal health care or a government option, it is very clear to me that the main reason we in the U.S. spend more on health care than any other country is because most of us eat way too much. In the fattest state in the union, Mississippi, 32.5% of people are obese. But even in the slimmest state in the union, Colorado, 18.9% of people are obese (source). In only 3 of the 50 states did the percentage of obese people decline this year.  Americans are increasingly becoming physically inactive self-indulgent fatties who end up needing drugs and operations because of it, when if everybody ate healthier and exercised, we could cut down much of this. And now that we’re in a recession, people are eating more McDonald’s than ever. Not good…

3. Apparent Canadian indifference in regards to America. We went to a comedy show on Saturday night and nobody said anything about America at all. Sure, there were the obligatory Michael Jackson jokes, but that was about him, not the U.S. I learned there’s apparently a bitter rivalry between people in Vancouver and those in Toronto, or at least the people of Vancouver seems to think so. I guess when you think of your country as the focus of the world, as so many of us do, you expect others to, well, focus on you more. It was kind of a relief that they just want to do their own thing. I wish we ran our foreign policy that way.

P.S. Sunee Dhaliwal, an up-and-coming Canadian comic, was the second act and was better than the headliner. Google him. You’ll laugh. SunDizzle003 is his YouTube channel.

4. Loonies and Toonies (Canadian $1 and $2 coins). The smallest Canadian bill is $5. On the one hand, the coins are cool — it’s nice to have a coin that is actually worth somthing – but in this country we’re so accustomed to thinking of change as being irrelevant that it seems weird to have $2 coins. Now I have to pay attention to change because I could easily have $10 in my pocket and not know it. We saw a few street performers and one of them said at the end of his show that he only wanted paper money. No coins. That was his way of saying he thinks his show is worth no less than $5. I was willing to give him a few bucks, but no way was I going to give him $5 — we came in at the end of his act and that was about all I thought it was worth for what we saw. If he said “give whatever you want, at least a buck or two if you showed up late” and some people give $1 and $2 coins, and people hear coins jingling, they might just give quarters and dimes and suddenly everybody’s a cheapskate. I don’t know if what he did was smart or stupid for having that policy – I just know he didn’t get any of my money because of it. And it felt weird tipping the bellboy or doorman with a coin. It just feels cheap, even though it’s still $2…

5. The lack of American stores. All of my other trips outside the country have been to the Caribbean or Mexico, and there are local stores and shops but always some American ones too. You see local stores, with signs in Spanish, and you understand — of course they have their own stores, they have their own culture and language too. For some reason, I thought that in Canada, since they’re mostly white and speak English, and we have so many multi-national companies, I’d see American companies all over the place. But their Blenz coffee companies were more prevalent than Starbucks. Tim Horton’s restaurants were more prevalent than McDonald’s from what I could tell. (Quick fact check: McDonald’s has 1400 stores in Canada, Horton’s has twice that.) It’s another realization that the U.S. is not the focal point of the world, and I like that. There were lots of 7-11s, which was nice, since there weren’t any in Marquette and aren’t any in St. Cloud. Typing this, I realize I forgot to get a Slurpee while I had the chance. Maybe next time.

As much as I enjoyed my time, it is nice to be back. Grabbing some Qdoba on the way home from the airport last night, I immediately felt home again. It’s nice to be back to my normal routine. I actually missed teaching my summer class, even though I was only gone for a few days. I used to wish I were one of those people who could travel all over the world, and I envied those that do. I still want to go to a few places, but I have no desire to be a global adventurer. As it turns out, I’m happiest just being at home with the best four-legged friend a guy could ask for, a wonderful woman who loves me despite the fact I can’t ever seem to just relax, and a job doing what I love most with fun colleagues that make me feel lucky to show up to work every day.