Potpourri: Local School Lunch, Gluttony, Tea Party Civil War

Too many browser tabs: time to clear the queue!

1. Cool news from Flying Tomato: the Vermillion School District is looking to add locally grown food to its fall and spring lunch menus. Hooray! Vermillion's food service is run by Lunchtime Solutions, Inc., the same privateers that Madison contracts with for burgers and fries. The company has previously bought local foods in Mission Hill, Sioux City, and Springfield. Maybe they can look into feeding kids some garden surplus right here in Madison.
2. But don't eat too much: Pastor Shel points to this Ryan Andrews article to remind us that gluttony—not just overeating, but all overconsumption—is a sin.
3. Sounds like gluttony for power may be breaking up South Dakota's noisiest Tea Party. Gordon Howie handed presidency of the Citizens for Liberty over to septic-tank crusader Barb Lindberg so he could run for governor. Left with nothing better to do after his fourth-place primary finish, Howie noe wants his presidency back. Citizens for Liberty is thus embroiled in a power struggle hilarious for its contradictions and small potatoes. The group demands open government, but then club agitator Shad Olson criticizes Lindberg for speaking to the press. They demand adherence to the Constitution, then conduct board votes unsupported by any published by-laws. Conservative Michael Sanborn gives Citizens for Liberty the what-for they deserve.
   

Use Less Oil: Bring Your Own Bag

Some morning numbers to consider before you head to JubiShine for your weekly provisions:

1. Oil spilled so far by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil wreck: over two million barrels.
2. Conservative estimate of oil that would gush out of that well in one year: 13 million barrels.
   
3. Oil necessary to produce the 380 billion plastic shopping bags Americans use each year: 39 million barrels.
   

Consider: if we all took our cloth bags and backpacks to the grocery store and eliminated single-use plastic bags, we would wipe out demand for three Gulf oil wells. Or if you just told the kid bagging your groceries that it's o.k. to put your bread and your soap in the same bag, the resulting one-third reduction in plastic bags could completely offset one Deepwater Horizon gusher. Plus, cloth bags hold a lot more stuff!

Of course, no technology comes without a cost. Reusable cloth bags been shown to carry bacteria, yeast, and mold. (I dread what might lurk at the bottom of my 15-year-old backpack). That particular study was funded by the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, but it still can't hurt to toss your cloth shopping bags in the wash every now and then.

My neighbor Bonnie Funk makes some nice cloth shopping bags. Look her up, give her a call, see if she can stitch one up for you.

Or you could get creative and order this humdinger from Japan....

Ho Ho Hope! Christmas Gift-Giving Slipping

There may be hope in the fight against Christmas consumerism:

...there are indicators that Christmas revelry in general may be slipping among the population at large. The Christmas Spirit Foundation, a charity that provides holiday assistance to needy children and sends Christmas trees to military families, has been examining people’s plans for the holidays for the last five years. This year’s survey, conducted by the polling firm Harris Interactive, found that while 95 percent of households plan to celebrate Christmas (about the same as every year), the percentage of families who plan to exchange gifts is dropping: 77 percent this year, down from 85 percent in 2005. Slightly fewer people said they were going to attend parties or listen to Christmas music, too [Hilary Stout, "Saying No, No, No to the Ho-Ho-Ho," New York Times, 2009.12.23].

Now I'm all for some winter revelry. But buying less and saving more could be a great gift for ourselves and future generations. Keep the faith, Reverend Billy!

Advent Conspiracy: Fight "War on Christmas" by Shopping Less

The folks at the Advent Conspiracy (which I've been promoting here in the sidebar!) would have made a better choice for Time's Person(s) of the Year than Ben Bernanke. But hey, at least Time gives some well-deserved coverage to the Advent Conspiracy's efforts to fight the real "war on Christmas":

...[T]o a growing group of Christians, the focus on the commercial aspect of Christmas is the greatest threat to one of Christianity's holiest days. "It's the shopping, the going into debt, the worrying that 'If I don't spend enough money, someone will think I don't love them,' " says Portland, Ore., pastor Rick McKinley. "Christians get all bent out of shape over the fact that someone didn't say 'Merry Christmas' when I walked into the store. But why are we expecting the store to tell our story? That's just ridiculous."

McKinley is one of the leaders of an effort to do away with the frenzied activity and extravagant gift-giving of a commercial Christmas. Through a savvy viral video and marketing effort, the so-called Advent Conspiracy movement has exploded. Hundreds of churches on four continents and in at least 17 countries have signed up to participate. The Advent Conspiracy video has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube, and the movement boasts nearly 45,000 fans on Facebook. Baseball superstar Albert Pujols is a supporter — he spoke at a church event in St. Louis, Mo., to endorse the effort.

Over the past four years, churches that support Advent Conspiracy have donated millions of dollars to dig wells in developing countries through Living Water International and other organizations. McKinley likes to point out that a fraction of the money Americans spend at retailers in the month of December could supply the entire world with clean water. If more Christians changed how they thought about giving at Christmas, he says, the holiday could be transformative in a religious and practical sense [Amy Sullivan, "Church Group Attacks Christmas Commercialism," Time, 2009.12.15].

Need a justification not to go to the mall this weekend for that last round of shopping? There you go. Do Christmas right: skip Wal-Mart. Stay home from the commercial war on Christmas. Donate online to the Advent Conspiracy.

Brighten Black Friday: Buy Less, Give More!

Mr. Gebhart picks up the theme of fighting Black Friday with some great suggestions for local giving. Instead of contributing to the bottom line at the Empire Mall, that Progressive on the Prairie plans to celebrate Reverend Billy's Buy Nothing Day by opening his wallet to the Community Food Banks of South Dakota and the Children’s Home Society.

Mr. Gebhart casts his avid reader's eye around the globe and plans an additional contribution to Words Without Borders, a group on a mission to bring more international writers into English translation to enrich culture for everyone... an interesting and admirable charitable choice.

His post also duly reminds us of the culture-jamming efforts of Adbusters, who continue to campaign to make the psot-turkey Friday Buy Nothing Day. Heck of an idea! Consumption is not your patriotic or religious duty. The people you love don't need more crap. If the people you love are Americans, they already have a hundred times more wealth than the typical Indian, Indonesian, or millions of other fellow men.

Skip the mall and Wal-Mart Friday. Spend time, not money.

Save Money, Save Lives: Skip Black Friday for Advent Conspiracy

What would Jesus do on Black Friday? I doubt he'd be clipping coupons.



It's consumer frenzy time again. Gorge yourself at the table Thursday, gorge your shopping cart at the mall Friday. I feel ill already.

KELO runs the usual "buy buy buy!" propaganda under the guise of sage advice for shoppers. "Especially with the economy absolutely, you have to get out there and get the most for your little bit of money and hopefully it will stretch further," shopper Joyce Plastrow tells KELO's Courtney Zieller. Coupon clipper Amanda Roth gets her second plug in a month for her blog efforts to help consumers buy-more-save-more.

So why not do something a little more Christmas-y: buy nothing. Give your money to someone other than Wal-Mart. Give your money to build water wells in Africa. Give to the Advent Conspiracy, which says $10 buys clean water for one child for life.

According to Living Water International, every 15 seconds, another child dies because of lack of clean drinking water. Run that countdown while you wait for an open cash register at Best Buy.

This Friday, do something that will matter more and last longer than any of the plastic junk you're thinking about buying from China. Do Reverend Billy proud. Stay home Friday. Donate online. Do the Lord's work, not the economy's.

Recession Thanksgiving: Upsides of the Downturn

You know me, always looking for the silver lining!

As Thanksgiving approaches, here are some more reasons that the recession may actually be doing some good for the country:

1. AAA says South Dakotans will travel 2.6% less this year for Turkey Day. That's less fuel burned up, less pollution. Travel will be up slightly nationwide... but it almost has to be up from last year's amazing 25.2% drop in Thanksgiving travel.
   
2. From the same report, air travel for Thanksgiving has dropped an "astounding" 62% over the past decade. Thank high prices... but also thank the Patriot Act: AAA cites "stricter airport security" as one of the factors in less air travel (so, the terrorists are winning?).
3. Urban sprawl has been knocked on its can. Bedroom communities that relied on long-distance commutes to coax residents to join their housing booms now are looking for ways to develop rail lines, denser and more efficient housing, and local business.
4. More folks are shopping at Goodwill, Salvation Army, and other thrift stores. The National Association of Resale and Thrist Shops (yes, there is one) reports a 35% increase in resales. Of course, the recession has also cut back donations at some stores, as folks hang on to their old clothes to get as much use as possible from them... although NARTS counters that almost 70% of their members report increases in incoming inventory volume. Good thrift business is good news for the town of Wilmot, South Dakota, which holds the grand opening of its new a community thrift store tomorrow. The Replay Thrift Store is a product of the Whetstone Valley Horizons community revitalization project.

So darn that President Obama, trying to end the recession. Doesn't he see all the good this recession is doing for the country?

We're still far from the hard suffering of the Great Depression that made our grandparents such tough characters. But even the relatively small lemons of this recession may produce some cultural lemonade.

Obama Destination Figuring out Need for Economic Diversification?

I notice the news coverage of President Obama's trip to Indiana today refers to economically beleaguered Elkhart County as the "RV Capital of the World." Perhaps the economic downturn has made that tagline fall out of favor in Elkhart: their county website shows no sign of that moniker. The county also appears to be focusing its image building on smaller, greener forms of transportation:

Well, those horsies still emit methane... but so do I after a good long bike ride....

I've said before that the decline in RV sales is really one of the silver linings of this recession. The ginormous McMansions-on-wheels clogging our campgrounds and highways are symbolic of the bloated consumption that helped get us into this economic mess in the first place. Build your local economy on products that rely on cheap energy, and you're asking for trouble.

An RV dealer in Elkhart sees sales starting to pick up again. I won't begrudge a town its economic recovery—those folks building and selling RVs are real people, with families and bills, just like the rest of us. But let's hope Elkhart—and much of the rest of the country—recognizes that it must diversify its economic strategy and pursue policies that don't make our economic stability contingent on unsustainable overconsumption.

Maybe the President can stop by a nice tent and backpack shop in Elkhart... or the bike shop over in Granger.

One small oops: President Obama is speaking at the Monaco-Navistar RV plant, but somehow his press people missed the opportunity to invite the owners of Electric Motors Corp., a new Elkhart County outfit looking to build electric and hybrid vehicles.

Lunch Notes: Income Up, Spending Down, Johnson Undecided

Miss K and I are sharing yogurt and applesauce for lunch. Here are some news notes for you to snack on over your lunch break:

• Personal income rose 3% in South Dakota in Q4 2008. It rose faster in Minnesota (3.6%), Iowa (3.8%), and North Dakota (6.7%)... all of which have income taxes. Tell me again how income tax stifles a state's economy?
• South Dakota's per capita personal income in 2008 was $37,375. I'm below average! Yahoo! How about you? And how about your high school English teacher?
• Maybe we're making more, but we're spending less. Retail sales dropped 0.4% in April. I still say less consumer spending is a good thing... keep on saving, America! Buy less, live more: it's the Christian thing to do!
  
• Senator Tim Johnson says he's not sure how he'll vote on new consumer protection legislation that would tighten rules on credit card usurers (HR 627). Prediction: Dems know they have the votes to pass this necessary legislation. They'll probably get half of the Senate Republicans to come along, just as they did in the House. Johnson will be free to cast a "Nay" to placate the Sioux Falls usury industry.

Now if you'll excuse me, my lunch date and I need more yogurt.

Consumer Spending Up, Everything Else Down

6.1%: That's the amount by which the U.S. GDP shrank and China's GDP grew in Q1 2009. Economists consider neither number good (remember, China scored double-digit growth for much of this decade, and they need high GDP growth to keep their burgeoning population employed and content enough to not remember Tiananmen Square).

There's an odd twist in the numbers. I keep seeing a silver lining in the recession as a healthy retreat from excessive consumption. But consumer spending actually rose 2.2% during Q1: We evidently all went out and bought more stuff this winter, but exports dropped even more (30%!), as did business spending and (check this out, tea partiers) government spending.

Come on: if the recession is going to last, I'd like to at least see the benefits of folks buying less and saving more.

Father Gallagher Back in South Dakota, May Sabotage Stimulus

Father Cathal Gallagher was the subject of great to-do in the South Dakota media last spring, when government foul-ups led to the Irish priest's uprooting from a happy congregation in DeSmet and near deportation before people power got Washington to wake up and issue the good father a green card.

Now that Sioux Falls paper reports Father Gallagher will be spending some time in South Dakota, filling a role that seems to suit him well, filling in from parish to parish, helping out wherever and whenever he's needed. Father Gallagher does seem to have a little circuit rider in him. He says he's used to traveling so much so that he still hearkens to his missionary days in Japan, "where the unwritten rules was to never accumulate more belongings than one could carry" [Josh Verges, "Irish Priest Returns to South Dakota," that Sioux Falls paper, 2009.02.20].

Now you know why the government wanted to deport him: it wasn't his nationality, but his anti-consumerism. Go around preaching against materialism like that, and who knows what would happen to the economy and sales tax revenues!

The Recession We Need: Toward a New Economy

AP economics writer Martin Crutsinger reports that Americans are doing exactly what I hoped they would: buying less and saving more. Even as jobs disappear and wages remain stagnant, we Americans are putting more money in the bank. The bunch of us socked away 2.9% of our after-tax incomes in the last quarter of 2008. That's up from under 1% a year ago and two straight years of negative savings rates in 2005 and 2006.

From the tone of Crutsinger's opening lines, you might think such saving is a bad thing:

Americans are hunkering down and saving more. For a recession-battered economy, it couldn't be happening at a worse time.

Economists call it the "paradox of thrift." What's good for individuals - spending less, saving more - is bad for the economy when everyone does it [Martin Crutsinger, "Americans Save Just When Economy Needs Their Money," AP via Forbes, 2009.02.01].

Did you catch that headline? "...Just When Economy Needs...."

Tell me, please, who is this "Economy" you speak of?

I've discussed this paradox of thrift here previously: if we all act sensibly, pay our debts, and save our money, we drive an economy that depends on ever-increasing spending into the tank. Act like a good American, destroy the American economy. Uh oh.

If our economy can only be sustained by such wild spending and "harvesting cash out of... home equity," which Cornell economist Robert Frank calls an "illusion," then maybe that economy needs destroying.

Thomas Friedman discusses the unpleasant sense at Davos that no one has the answer, the "magic bailout package," to pull us out of this recession and make the economy all warm and fuzzy like we thought it was:

A broker friend told me it reminded him of when he was a teenager and his doctor first diagnosed him as unable to digest wheat products. He said to the doctor, “Well, just give me a pill.” And the doctor told him: there is no pill. “You mean I’m just going to have to live with this?” he asked. That’s us. There is no pill — not for this mess [Thomas Friedman, "Elvis Has Left the Mountain," New York Times, 2009.01.31].

Friedman gets it: fixing the economy is about "getting our fundamentals right again." The "economy" can't rely on absurdly easy credit, negative savings rates, and hyperconsumerism. Frugality is a virtue, and the economy—business, labor, and government—will have to adjust. If we stick with this new frugality (and Crutsinger cites experts who think "consumers have been so shaken by how fast their wealth has shrunk, so burned by credit card debt, that they might not resume their robust spending for years, if ever"), we will need to build a new business model, based not on frenzied marketing to ever-inflating desires, but on the slow, steady production of goods and services people need.

Oh yeah: people. The economy is about what people need. Let's try to remember that as we rebuild the new economy.

Advent Conspiracy: Make Christmas Meaningful

Hat-tip to fellow conspirator BartBlog!

Americans spend $450 billion each year on Christmas, says this video from the Advent Conspiracy. That money could bail out an awful lot of automakers. It could also do a lot of the Lord's work, like saving the lives of 1.4 million children a year with clean water.



Some Christians conspire to sneak creationism into high school science books. Some Christians conspire to "worship fully, spend less, give more," and spread the basic, practical, live-saving love that Jesus actually talked about. Take your pick; I say the latter is Good News I'm happy to spread. Share the link!

Some fishers of red herrings think I don't like arguments that bring people closer to God. Har har. To the contrary: I agree with the Advent Conspiracy that the world would be better off if more people spent Christmas getting closer to God than to Gordmans.

Black Friday Indeed: Consumerism Kills

Reverend Billy, this is serious: we need you now more than ever.

On the Black Friday death by consumer frenzy of Wal-Mart employee Jdimytai Damour, Mr. Epp's RSS feed list points me to neighbor Dale at SW Minnesota's Corner House Comments, who says exactly what I was thinking on the long grey drive home yesterday.

The facts: about 2000 bargain hunters lined up at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart on Long Island in the wee hours Friday morning. They started pushing, busted the doors open a few minutes early, and trampled Mr. Damour to death. The sale-crazed shoppers put four other people in the hospital, including a pregnant woman. The rushing crowd also pushed aside workers who tried to assist Damour and others. Minutes later, when the store announced everyone had to leave due to the death and injuries, shoppers complained that they had been in line since Thursday morning and kept shopping.

The meaning: this is what unbridled consumerism gets us. 2,000 people participated in mass murder... or murder by the savage masses. 2,000 people killed a man, not for justice, not in some understandable (excusable?) panic from fire or flood, but for greed. It is sufficiently idiotic that in their burning desire to accumulate more cheap plastic junk from China, these Long Islanders—these fellow Americans—sacrificed sleep, family time, and even in some cases the entire Thanksgiving holiday. But Friday morning, they sacrificed a life, and their own humanity.

The consequences: Here's what should happen:

--Every identifiable shopper on the surveillance cameras who ran through those doors at 4:55 a.m. should be charged as an accessory to murder, arrested, booked, and scheduled for trial... on Friday, November 27, 2009. Hold the trial at Shea Stadium, require every defendant to check in by 5 a.m. Require each one testify publicly, on the Jumbotron, just what consumer product was so important that they had to kill a man to get it. No one leaves until every defendant has testified. Then dismiss the charges. We probably cannot gather sufficient evidence to establish the direct culpability of any one person, and our legal system isn't built to punish crowds. This public shaming and the denial of their precious shopping privileges next Black Friday is perhaps the best we can manage.

--Shut down Wal-Mart... for one day. Wal-Mart should close every one of its stores on Friday, November 27, 2009, to remind itself and the rest of us of the crime in which our shared avarice makes us all complicit. If Wal-Mart wants to continue that tradition and remain closed on every Black Friday, that's fine by me. But Wal-Mart needs at least once to say, "Our policies, our advertising, our pursuit of profit led to the death of an employee. People are more important than profit. We will sacrifice the profit of the biggest shopping day of the year, because it's not worth people dying."

--Require the networks to broadcast What Would Jesus Buy? every year on Thanksgiving. During the Thanksgiving football games and other programming that day, impose a modified Fairness Doctrine: for every five minutes of Black Friday sales ads, give Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping 30 seconds of PSA time.

--And the rest of us? Enjoy Thanksgiving. Sleep in. Refuse to roll out of bed at 2 a.m. for something as meaningless as cheap DVDs. Reject the hype of all those ads for door-buster sales—false urgency is a bedrock of marketing... but you can bet this junk will all be discounted again and again. And for Christ's sake (and this atheist uses phrase literally), remember what the holiday season is supposed to be about.

Update 14:00 CST: More on this story:

• Michael Daly, "Tension Simmers Beneath the Kindness at Death Store," New York Daily News, 2008.11.30
• Matthew Chayes, "Stores Need to Better Plan for Crowds, Police Say," Newsday.com, 2008.11.30
• Bob Schieffer, "The Blackest of Black Fridays," CBSNews.com, 2008.11.30
• Yael T. Abouhalkah, "Lessons from a Black Friday Death at Wal-Mart," Kansas City Star: Midwest Voices, 2008.11.30
• Steve Flamisch, "Psychiatrist: Stampeding Shoppers Had 'Mass Hysteria,'" CBS6-WRGB, 2008.11.29
• Al Norman, "Wal-Mart Shoppers Are Trained to Be 'Savages,'" Huffington Post, 2008.11.30
  

Got Junk? Canadian Company Cashing in on SF Consumerism

Now in the department of unnecessary commercialism: KELO reports the expansion of a Canadian company into the South Dakota garbage market. 1-800-Got-Junk, a Vancouver, B.C.-based company, has found a couple guys to start a franchise in Sioux Falls. The company's business model: take advantage of lazy urbanites who don't have easy access to a pickup truck and who just can't be bothered to dirty their hands tidying the garage or the basement themselves.

I know this company well: I worked in their continental call center for three dreary months in Vancouver in 2004. That call center is a key part of the business model: when you call 1-800-Got-Junk (it's the company name and the number—good branding!), you talk to some young marketer in Vancouver. That young marketer will use every manipulative marketing trick she or he can to get you to make a junk appointment—that's how we got our commissions. Unless they've changed since I worked there, you never talk to someone local, and you never get a firm price. You never talk to the person who picks up your junk until that person arrives on your property. Then they tell you the price, and even if you don't like it, well, gee whiz, they've driven out to your house, and you hate to say no to someone's face... ah, marketing.

I also recognize the marketing/propaganda strategy in the Sioux Falls franchisers' interview with Don Jorgensen. Get the local media to mask an advertisement as journalism, get some nice video of the cute little blue mini-dumptruck and the clean blue uniforms. Talk about how easy it is ("You point to it, we take it out"—straight from the training script), emphasize how much the company recycles (even though lots still goes straight to the dump)... yadda yadda yadda.

1-800-Got-Junk markets itself as something better than "Bubba in a pickup truck." That elitism was one thing that bugged me about working for 1-800-Got-Junk. My dad is Bubba with a pick-up truck. A lot of the fellas I grew up with around here are Bubba with a pickup truck. If we have junk to get rid of—assuming we can bring ourselves to part with our precious scrap lumber and metal and other treasures that might still come in handy someday—we get the truck, hook up the trailer, and haul it out ourselves.

1-800-Got-Junk builds its business model on denigrating that do-it-yourself spirit. When I worked for them, I was always bothered by the tension of selling a service that my dad would never pay for. I thought there might be fun in starting a franchise and hauling junk myself when I got back home to South Dakota, but I figured such an enterprise would never fly here, given South Dakota's high pickup-to-people ratio, not to mention the prevalence of rough and ready neighbors with all the rakes, chain saws, and other equipment you would ever need to borrow to bust up and haul away the junk in your yard. Alas, Sioux Falls is growing, and that means more elite consumers who just don't have the time or the work gloves to handle disposing their own junk... maybe enough to provide the critical market mass to sustain the 1-800-Got-Junk business model.

What worries me most about 1-800-Got-Junk's business model is not the elitism, but its basis on consumerism. For the franchise to fly, there have to be folks in Sioux Falls buying, using, and throwing out more junk than the city garbage service can handle. If people stop filling up their garages and basements with useless junk, the boys in blue dump trucks don't have a job. Once again, we see our economy relying on buying more than we need... and getting someone else to clean up our mess.

Burma Cyclone Deaths Part of Our Eco-Footprint

What business does a South Dakota blog have talking about the deaths of thousands in the cyclone in Burma/Myanmar?

Ask my wife. She's all about focusing on local community and local issues. But in her latest post on Prairie Roots, she notes that our own consumerism has stomped our ecological footprint on Burma in a way that increased the death toll from the cyclone. We demand tourism and cheap shrimp; Asian developers clear out coastal mangrove forests; cyclones and tsunamis are able to do that much more damage.

It sounds Rube Goldberg, but that's how the world works: you buy cheap shrimp, more people die in a cyclone. Enjoy your lunch.

So is my wife just another raving tree-hugger trying to destroy America? Come on, you folks know better than that:

Do I say all this to make us feel guilty? No, not really. Mostly it’s to expose more of us to information that I hope will inspire us, mature us to consider how our ways of life affect others. As a Christian who takes her theology seriously, that’s tremendously important to me. One of the questions I’m called by God to ask on a daily basis is, “How does this affect my neighbor?” [Erin Heidelberger, "Others Are What We Eat," Prairie Roots, 2008.05.08].

That's my wife, always thinking about her theology and choosing information over ignorance. (She's another one of those intellectuals... another reason there's a ring on my finger.)

But Erin's not just griping. She tells us what we, the United States, the wealthiest and most influential nation in the world, can and should do. Erin says we can "share more of our wealth with thoe who needlessly suffer," a radical notion that she offers not from Marx but from those other well-known radicals, the ELCA. Erin also points us toward an organization that helps restore mangrove forests.

Read the whole post here... preferably over lunch, so you can think about what you're eating and where it came from.

* * *

And just a conversation starter for you foreign policy hawks: with the Burma junta seizing U.N. aid and refusing to let the U.S. send more than one cargo plane to help the cyclone victims, is it time for a humanitarian invasion (and is that term an oxymoron)?

KJAM Polls: From Guns to Roses

With the guns-on-campus bill now dead (mostly dead -- the session ain't over 'til it's over), KJAM has switched its online poll. Final numbers on KJAM's guns-on-campus poll:

Do you think allowing guns on College Campuses makes them safer?

• 95--NO
  
• 32--Yes
• 4-undecided
  

The new KJAM poll -- "How much do you plan to spend on that special someone?" -- actually excludes some voters by not providing a "Zero" option. As I wrote to interim KJAM news director Matt Groce, "some of us radicals reject the commercialization of love and spend $0 on the designated day of heart-shaped-pizza, blood-diamond, guilt-absolved-through-consumerism madness." The Groce household reports plans for a relatively cost-free Valentine's festivities of Bible study and passionate Nerf baseball with the little one.

And hey, all you last-minute shoppers, don't forget: nookie is still free. Vive l'amour! ;-)

Stimulus Package -- Borrowing from Our Kids for Our Comfort

The more I think about it, the more the anti-recession stimulus package feels like a bad idea. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts economic growth of under 2% this year. If I recall HS economics correctly*, a recession is when the economy shrinks, not when it grows less than what some stock brokers might want. University of Michigan professor Mark Perry puts together a chart on unemployment claims that suggest we are nowhere near a recession. And Harvard's Prof. Mankiw posts a list of eleven columnists comprising what he calls "The Coalition Against Fiscal Stimulus," including George Will and Robert Samuelson. In agreement with the likes of those two conservatives that the stimulus package won't work is Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's labor secretary, now UC Berkeley prof.

Count me in with the stimulus package naysayers. Even if our economy is in the crapper, it is in large part because a lot of people borrowed more money than they should have, and because banks and subprime lenders let them borrow. While I cringe at the thought of taking away people's homes, it may be time for some economic tough love. We as a nation have borrowed irresponsibly; we are lucky the economy isn't in worse shape. Instead of borrowing $140 billion dollars from our children so we can continue to live beyond our means, maybe we should finally accept responsibility for our greed and overspending.

I'm not eager to give up $1500 in free money from Uncle Sam. I certainly don't want the Powers clan to go shoeless for want of its expected $3300 tax rebate. But if there's not really a recession, and if a stimulus package won't do much to stop one, then why throw $140 billion of our children's money down the consumer spending drain now?

We won't like it, but maybe we need to just weather this economic storm (if it even rises to that level), pay our debts (federal and household), and start putting the economy on a more stable footing for our kids. Hmm, sounds like a much more doable plan for building a legacy than bringing peace to the Middle East....

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*I do remember my high school econ and govt teacher, Ken Reitzel. Sad news for my Madison readers: Mr. Retizel passed away last week at age 77. The MDL obit says he served in the Army in Japan during the Korean War. Mr. Reitzel then taught in Estelline, served as principal in Hurley and Willow Lake and superintendent Colman, then came to Madison, where he taught social studies for 26 years. Condolences may be sent to the family through Weiland Funeral Chapel.

Saturday Econ Notes: Fighting the Recession Through Consumerism

Forget Islamo-fascists or secular humanists: the biggest threat to America is cheapskates, regular Americans who don't buy enough stuff. Or so one might think from all the talk from the President and Congress about needing a stimulus package -- that's the modern translation of "bread and circuses" -- to stave off a recession. The U.S. economy grew 3.8% in the second quarter of 2007 and 4.9% in the third quarter, people bought more computers and cars and who knows what else, but apparently that's not enough. President Bush, who wasn't willing to let funding for children's health care increase any more than $5 billion, wants to pour $150 billion out of government coffers to encourage shopping.

Now Mrs. Madville Times and I certainly won't burn our $1600 rebate check from Uncle Sam in protest. But when we think about what we would do with the money, we find our priorities leaning toward some distinctly unpatriotic uses. I'd love to use the rebate to pay down our medical debt. Otherwise, it would be nice to just sock the money away and add a little cushion to our pretty lean budget.

We're not the only folks with such unpatriotic thoughts: some of the economists in the street -- actually, folks at the mall -- KELO interviews say they'd put a rebate check in the bank as well for future expenses, like a wedding or kids' college tuition.

Such anti-American thinking! If Congress and the President enact a tax rebate, they'll be expecting us to let those handouts burn holes in our pockets. Pay down your credit card debt? Knock a couple payments off your mortgage? Save the money? Blasphemy! If we don't buy more iPods and TVs and plastic junk from China, we're not helping the economy!

It seems the whole economy is based on our indulging in a constant orgy of ever increasing spending. Responsible, conservative financial behavior -- the frugality that got Grandma and Grandpa through the Depression and paid for World War II -- would ruin the nation... or at least the wealthy corporations that depend on our mindless overconsumption.

Is that why no one talks about energy conservation? Is that why Bob Ellis speaks so insultingly of the poor? If everyone tightened their belts and started putting money in the bank, the U.S. economy would collapse. Responsible -- dare I say moral -- behavior would lead to serious economic harms. That suggests something profoundly wrong in the values underpinning our economic system.

The dependence of our economy on overconsumption is a moral failing more destructive than any of the faux family values that Bill Napoli or Jim Dobson preach. This is why I'm so much more concerned about economic issues than abortion, gay marriage, or any of those popular social issues. We need to figure out how to get everyone off the treadmill of "buy, buy, buy!" and put our economy on a practically sustainable and morally defensible foundation.

Gassman Goes After Gift Cards

Representative Dave Gassman (D-Canova) is first out of the District 8 gate with legislation for the new session. KJAM reports this morning that Rep. Gassman is out to clamp down on the abusive fees and other trickery engaged in by the plastic money industry.

No, Gassman isn't going kamikaze on Denny Sanford and the other big usurers South Dakota loves. Gassman's bill targets the gift card industry, not the credit card industry. Evidently nine states have legislation banning gift cards that "expire, carry fees, or decline in value over time" ["Gassman Has Plans for Session," KJAMRadio.com, 2008.01.02]. Gassman's bill isn't up on the LRC website yet, but if you're really interested, you can look at summaries of comparable statutes around the rest of the country at the National Conference of State Legislatures website. Arkansas, for instance, prohibits retailers from setting expiration dates less than two years from purchase. Arizona simply requires disclosure of the expiration date and any fee structure.

No response yet from the South Dakota Retailers, who might have a nanny-state argument, if they think this small-potatoes legislation is worth the effort. And no word yet on the terms and conditions of gift cards from the Central Farmers Co-op in Canova.

With just 357 shopping days left until Christmas (it's a leap year, so you get an extra day to shop), the Madville Times reminds its loved ones that if you aren't sure what gift to buy, just cut out the middle man completely and give cash... or homemade cookies.