Living Liberally Blog

Inaugural Plans

Justin Krebs — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:30:13 -0500

Four years ago, Drinking Liberally threw an "Unaugural Ball" -- this year, we have happier plans. In New York City, we're hosting the Living Liberally Inaugural Ball on Sunday, Jan 18th...and check back to learn about other schemes developing around the country (or toss your own ideas in the comments thread).

Surviving a National Car Crash

Justin Krebs — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:01:29 -0500

In a car accident, you hope your seat belts are on.
In our current economy, we need to ensure
government support keeps Americans strapped in.

Just as airbags cushion riders in trouble,
we need unemployment insurance, healthcare,
& mortgage support to cushion our fellow travelers.

To avoid a pile-up, you may need to accelerate,
just as we now need to accelerate our economy
with jobs, infrastructure & green investment.

And no matter how bad the car's condition,
nobody's left stranded at the side of the road.

Detroit's difficulties are trouble for us all:
if America's auto industry crashes, we'll need
smart safety steps to survive a national car crash.

Join the discussion & share a drink
(and have a designated driver, if you do)
with like-minded lefties & liberal libations
at your local progressive social club.

DRINKING LIBERALLY
Find - or start - a chapter near you.

Let's Ask Marion: Shouldn't The FDA Keep Melamine Out Of Our Domestic Food Chain?

KAT — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:40:51 -0500

(With a click of her mouse, EatingLiberally’s kat corners Dr. Marion Nestle, NYU professor of nutrition and author of Pet Food Politics, What to Eat and Food Politics:)

Kat: The FDA announced last week that it was detaining a wide variety of milk-based Chinese products--everything from candy and baked goods to, once again, pet food--in order to verify that these foods aren't contaminated by melamine. But as an op-ed in Monday's New York Times revealed, melamine turns up in our own domestic food supply, too, and the FDA appears to be pretty blasé about it:

Fertilizer companies commonly add melamine to their products because it helps control the rate at which nitrogen seeps into soil, thereby allowing the farmer to get more nutrient bang for the fertilizer buck. But the government doesn't regulate how much melamine is applied to the soil. This melamine accumulates as salt crystals in the ground, tainting the soil...

...Regulations might be lax when it comes to animal feed and fertilizer in China, but take a closer look at similar regulations in the United States and it becomes clear that they're vague enough to allow industries to "recycle" much of their waste into fertilizer and other products that form the basis of our domestic food supply.

If melamine-tainted milk from China poses a potential hazard, why is the use of melamine in American agriculture acceptable?

Dr. Nestle: It is most emphatically not acceptable. The FDA says this quite clearly on its website:

...Melamine also has been used as a fertilizer in some parts of the world. It is not registered for use as a fertilizer in the United States.

This means that if farmers are using it as fertilizer, they are doing so illegally. And they are doing it stupidly. Melamine may be rich in nitrogen (67%), but bacteria in soil break it down very slowly so the nitrogen isn’t very available. It would just sit there for a long time. As I discovered during the research for my book Pet Food Politics, the main use of the nitrogen in melamine is to fool tests for protein into thinking that pet food, animal feed, and, for that matter, infant formula, has protein when it doesn’t. So any time you find melamine in pet food, animal food, human food, or fertilizer, it is there because some unscrupulous person has committed fraud. It is not supposed to be there at all, ever.

The FDA’s standard of 2.5 ppm as a “safe” level for melamine in food is a tacit admission that the situation is out of control. I agree that 2.5 ppm is unlikely to harm anyone, even babies. As I discussed in my book, the levels that caused crystals to form in the kidneys of sheep in the 1960s and cats and dogs last year were 100 times higher. But the kidney crystals are formed from melamine and its breakdown product, cyanuric acid. When both are present, crystals form at 32 ppm; the lowest level at which crystals form has not been defined.

Melamine should not be in American—or Chinese--food, feed, or fertilizer at any level whatsoever. If it is in our agricultural system, it’s time to put a stop to it before any more harm gets done.

As for human food: Last week, the FDA issued an import alert on a long list of Chinese foods ranging from milk to candy to pet food because of suspected contamination with melamine. This week, the FDA opened an office in Beijing. While waiting for all this to do some good, it’s probably a good idea to be careful about what you buy from China. Or, as the concerned designer Sokie Lee would say, don’t buy anything at all until China cleans up its food safety act. (see above illustration).

Keeping the Good Times Going

Justin Krebs — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:57:07 -0500

Thirteen days ago, an invigorating Tuesday night warmed our liberal hearts. Election Night brought the country to cheers and to tears, and as people applauded in the streets and shouted out windows and chanted in the subway in New York, I felt real hope and enthusiasm for our prospects.

Now, how long will that energy last?

Sure, the next day people were still sharing smiles during their morning commute...but in our over-saturated culture, will the emotions of our society really be swayed?

My experience on Saturday at the post office suggests the emotional impact wasn't just a one-day wonder.

I had to mail 75 boxes on Saturday. In NY, that means there's one post office I can go to: the main branch. And it's never fun carrying 75 boxes around a bustling city. So I wasn't in a great mood even before waiting for 40 minutes to get to the front of the line. And the guy at the counter wasn't thrilled by the 75 boxes either.

He opened a new window (so we wouldn't hold up the rest of the line) and got to work. He was fast (I actually always find the post office really efficient). And as we got to the final box, he asked me what all these packages were.

"It's for a political club I'm part of," I replied. I instinctively avoided details of my politics as this guy was at his job.

"Must've been a really busy time for you," he said. Then, he added, less tentatively than I'd been: "And a good time."

It wasn't that he was hunting for my political leanings; he just assumed them -- assumed that an American would have to have been excited by what had transpired.

I took the bait. "Well, these are celebratory gifts," I explained. And he smiled. I fished a button out of my pocket and handed it to him.

"Drinking Liberally!" he read out loud. "Now that's the change Barack Obama was talking about!"

He put the button on, becoming a newly-minted Drinking Liberally member right there at the post office. We chatted about where we'd been on Election Night, and saw each other off -- maybe not like good friends, but definitely like friendly neighbors.

A stranger and I made each other happy through our shared politics. More, he clearly just felt it a shared experience -- an American experience. He was proud of his country and there was no question in his mind that others would be to.

If that positive energy makes it back to Thanksgiving tables around the country next week, people will toast our President with their like-minded family members and will at least talk politics with their less agreeable family. That's a good thing for our country, it's a good ingredient to keeping the momentum going.

As we saw with marriage equality rallies last Saturday, politics is remaining central to many people's daily lives, not being shelved for 4 more years, or filed under "completed" on November 4th.

While it's the challenge of our Community-Organizer-in-Chief to turn this hope into a governing constituency, it's also all our jobs to keep talking politics...and maybe be a little less hesitant than I was at first.

Even 40 minutes at a post office isn't something that a little political joy can't cure.

Time To Mothball The Butterball!

KAT — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:46:52 -0500

Even our most progressive presidents can be addled by Agribiz propaganda. President-elect Obama--thanks to his corn-fed constituents, we presume--is regrettably fond of ethanol, unlike his rival, John McCain. And McCain's not the only Republican who slams the grain-for-gas scam. Arch conservative P.J. O'Rourke airs his aggravation with industrial ag in the current Weekly Standard:

Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants. But never, since the Mayflower knocked the rock in Plymouth, has anything as putrid as the Farm, Nutrition and Bioenergy Act of 2008 been spread upon the land. Just the name says it. There are no farms left. Not like the one grampa grew up on.

A "farm" today means 100,000 chickens in a space the size of a Motel 6 shower stall. If we cared anything about "nutrition" we would--to judge by the mountainous, jiggling flab of Americans--stop growing all food immediately. And "bioenergy" is a fraud of John Edwards-marital-fidelity proportions. Taxpayer money composted to produce a fuel made of alcohol that is more expensive than oil, more polluting than oil, and almost as bad as oil with vermouth and an olive.

But Obama wouldn't be the first liberal leader to be conned by Con Agra & co. Jed Bartlet, that wildly popular--though sadly fictitious--West Wing populist, once called the Butterball hotline seeking expert advice on how to cook a salmonella-free stuffing, and gushed "I think this is a wonderful service you provide."

And maybe it is, but there are some not-so-wonderful aspects to Butterball's signature product, America's top selling turkey for more than forty years. In a concession to our obsession with big breasts, American turkey breeders created an avian abomination. As Barbara Kingsolver noted in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:

Of the 400 million turkeys Americans consume each year, more than 99 percent of them are a single breed: the Broad-Breasted White, a quick-fattening monster bred specifically for the industrial-scale setting...If a Broad-Breasted White should escape slaughter, it likely wouldn't live to be a year old: they get so heavy, their legs collapse. In mature form they're incapable of flying, foraging, or mating...

...So how do we get more of them? Well you might ask. The sperm must be artificially extracted from live male turkeys by a person, a professional turkey sperm-wrangler if you will, and artificially introduced to the hens, and that is all I'm going to say about that.

Ah, but no such reluctance on the part of Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton and co-author of The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. Singer and his co-author Jim Mason actually got themselves hired to work for Butterball's artificial insemination crew in Carthage, Missouri, to experience first hand this foul method of poultry propagation.

Singer and Mason lasted exactly one day. Their description of what the job entailed, from extracting semen from the "toms" to working as "breakers"--i.e., grabbing panicked hens so the inseminator can inject them--is gruesome. A breaker has to wrestle with each hen to insert a tube, whereupon the inseminator releases a blast of compressed air, blowing the semen into the hen's oviduct. Singer and Mason describe this revolting ritual in fittingly coarse terms (sorry, Dad, but I'm just quoting an illustrious Princeton professor):

Routinely, methodically, the breakers and the inseminator did this over and over, bird by bird, 600 hens per hour, or ten a minute. Each breaker "breaks" five hens a minute, or one hen every 12 seconds. At this speed, the handling of birds has to be fast and rough. It was the hardest, fastest, dirtiest, most disgusting, worst-paid work we have ever done. For ten hours we grabbed and wrestled birds, jerking them upside down, facing their pushed-open assholes, dodging their spurting shit, while breathing air filled with dust and feathers stirred up by panicked birds.

On the bright side, this is one job that can't be outsourced to India. On the other hand, do you really want to make this miserably manufactured creature the centerpiece of your Thanksgiving feast?

But, you ask, what else is there, beside the ubiquitous Butterball?

Well, before the Broad-Breasted White came along and gobbled up the market, we relied on ordinary, normal-sized turkeys whose modest proportions enabled them to strut, fly, and, yes, engage in good old-fashioned turkey sex. These "Heritage" varieties were bred for flavor, not size, so while they're smaller, they're far tastier.

But, you say, that "Heritage" label sounds so hoity-toity. Surely, they're more expensive? And when so many of us are struggling with rising food costs, is it fair to urge folks to splurge on a fancy fowl?

Well, yes, it costs more to produce poultry in a sustainable and humane way. The small family farmers who raise these Heritage breeds don't benefit from the economies of scale enjoyed by the industrial turkey producers. You could argue--and many do--that factory farms are more efficient and give us cheaper food.

And sure, exploitation is more economical--just think of all the tax payer dollars we saved using slave labor to build The White House. Some things are just wrong. Factory farming abuses animals, workers, and the environment in the name of efficiency. It breeds disease, and depends on toxic pesticides and chemicals and hormones and antibiotics and genetically modified organisms--causing untold damage to our health, and that of the planet's.

That's why I'm asking you to please join the Thanksgiving Local and Organic Food Challenge co-sponsored by Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, and the Eat Well Guide, North America’s premier free online directory for finding local, sustainable food (and for whom I sometimes consult, in the interests of full disclosure.)

As challenges go, this one is modest but meaningful. The Local and Organic Food Challenge simply asks you to include one dish--or even just one ingredient-- that's fresh, local, and sustainably grown, in your holiday feast. And by partnering with The Eat Well Guide, Consumers Union makes it supremely easy for you to participate. There's no need to embark on a marathon foraging expedition to hunt down organic cranberries or locally grown squash, because the Eat Well Guide’s comprehensive online tool does the searching for you--you just have to do the gathering!

The Challenge invites you to share your locally-flavored recipes, and offers additional recipes and inspiration from legendary chefs Alice Waters, Mario Batali, and Dan Barber. Waters recommends that you "roast a delicious Heritage organic turkey. These birds are slow growing and spend a large part of their lives grazing and foraging which results in a deep and complex flavor. You will be supporting the poultry farmers who are raising special breeds, like Narragansett and Bourbon Red, in a sustainable way that cares for the land."

But what if you're on a budget, and you're not ready to bag the Butterball? Well, OK--you can still spring for some organic sweet potatoes, say, or whip up a sustainable stuffing with some Granny Smith apples from the farmers market, and maybe some locally milled cornmeal. As the Eat Well Guide's director, Destin Joy Layne, explains:

“The local food movement is about sustainability, broadly defined. This not only means consuming wholesome food that sustains our bodies and spirits, but supporting agricultural practices and distribution networks that sustain family farms and local economies–something that’s especially important in these economically uncertain times. Consuming local food also helps to preserve the soil, air and clean water that support life on Earth–something we can all be thankful for!”

If only President Bartlet had known about the Eat Well Guide. Instead of putting in a call to Butterball, he could have flipped open his laptap, logged on to the Eat Well Guide, and punched in his area code to find dozens of stores in his own neck of the woods where he could find a free-range Heritage turkey raised the old-fashioned way. And then he might have said, "I think this is a wonderful service you provide! My fellow Americans, say buh-bye to the Broad-Breasted White and bonjour to the Bourbon Red." Now, there's a slogan for us sustainable socialist types--better off red than overbred.

We Didn't Completely Break Our Democracy Yet

Justin Krebs — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:01:12 -0500

The lamest duck invites the coolest kid over to his house,
& though they've disagreed & even dissed one another,
the two play nice in the Oval Office.

In a time of two wars, a veteran loses an election,
to a man who promises change in military direction,
& nobody's worried we'll see tanks circling the Capitol.

From the economy to healthcare to global climate change,
America's making new choices, possibly a leftward swing,
& right-wingers snipe on TV...but no sniping in the streets.

Despite flawed elections, curtailed liberties, timid press,
corporate interference, corruption, incompetence & fear..
we didn't manage to completely break democracy yet.

Our democracy's a little stronger than that after all...

Raise a glass both to the results of the election
& that we had an election...now, that's worth toasting.

DRINKING LIBERALLY
Find - or start - a chapter near you.

The New New York Times

Justin Krebs — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:17:47 -0500

This morning, a bunch of people got punked, receiving forwarded articles pronouncing: "Ex-Secretary Apologized for WMD Scare."

Following a day in which Bush expressed regret over "Mission Accomplished" and "Dead or Alive," it seemed plausible that Condi Rice was trying to protect her legacy too.

But when, on my way into the subway, I get handed a paper copy of the New York Times declaring "Iraq War Ends," I knew it was a prank.

A prank...except that wasn't really tricking anybody (we generally knew the war wasn't over, universal healthcare hadn't yet happened and Bush wasn't standing trial for war crimes).

A satire...except it wasn't really funny. The reactions on the subway weren't laughter.

It was a parody...that elicited hope.

This project, which seemed to be dropped on the unsuspecting public by the Yes Men, got us thinking...you know, the war could be over in and troops could start coming home in 6 months...CEO wages could be capped (especially as part of the bailout)...NYC bike lanes could be widened...and The Times editorial page could properly apologize for their complicity in the great Iraq deception.

Unlike the Onion which pokes at the truth with absurd headlines, this parody wasn't so far-fetched. The articles suggest a world that hasn't come yet, and maybe isn't immediately within reach, but is a few steps away...if we keep progressive pressure on this administration.

I saw people reading this fake paper -- not because they were tricked, nor entertained...but because it invited them to dream of the world they would wanted to see.

And who doesn't like to imagine?

The New Gulf War Syndrome

Josh Bolotsky — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:58:11 -0500

Reading Liberally Page Turner
by Nora Eisenberg

(We're honored that Nora Eisenberg, longtime friend of Living Liberally, award-winning novelist, and author of the soon to be published When You Come Home (Curbstone Press), the first American novel about the 1991 Gulf War and Gulf War illness, has allowed us to publish this special Veteran's Day post.)

What does a war injury look like? In the case of Iraq, we tend to picture veterans bravely getting on with their lives with the help of steel legs or computerised limbs. Trauma injuries are certainly the most visible of health problems – the ones that grab our attention. A campaign ad for congressman Tom Udall featured an Iraq war veteran who had survived a shot to his head. Speaking through the computer that now substitutes for his voice, Sergeant Erik Schei extols the top-notch care that saved his life.

As politicians argue about healthcare for veterans, it is generally people like Sgt Schei that they have in mind, men and women torn apart by a bullet or bomb. And of course, these Iraq war veterans must receive the best care available for such complex and catastrophic injuries.

What's Your Favorite Progressive Business?

Justin Krebs — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:35:29 -0500

With the election over, the discussion turns to how to keep progressive momentum going outside of the campaign. We need to do this to move a liberal agenda in DC; to keep newly-energized activists engaged; and to overall shift the debate in this country.

Pushing progressive values with your vote is one step; funding those values with your wallet is another. And with the holiday season coming up, it seems like this is a good opportunity to promote -- and support -- progressive businesses.

What's your favorite progressive business? Your fair-trade coffee provider, or your bar that hosts political events? Your local alternative performance venue, or an environmentally-conscious gift shop?

Let us know in the comments thread. At Living Liberally, we're working on a project called The Liberal Card that, as among other goals, aims to promote these businesses. We remember what a good resource Buy Blue was after the last election, directing us to businesses that leaned our way and warning us against those that didn't (and are happy that Advomatic will be reviving that program in the future). What was a good idea in '04 is an even better idea now. So suggest a few businesses to us (or offer yourself up if you are one) -- as we get ready to buy blue this holidays season.

Food Fight Documents The Agri-Culture Wars

KAT — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:54:44 -0500

I'm just too immersed in the foodie activist world to be able to gauge how effective a film like Food Fight is at explaining the bizarre state of the American diet. This movie strives mightily to explain how we arrived at this sorry state in which our government's policies (i.e. your tax payer dollars) have managed to foster a system of agriculture that enables big food companies to make a killing while quite literally killing us with their disease-inducing "food" products.

I put "food" in quotes because food is defined as a "source of nutrients" or "solid nourishment," and much of the processed crap that fills the supermarket shelves not only doesn't meet this definition, it's so bad for you that it's practically poison.

That's why real food fanatics generally heed the advice of Michael Pollan, the dean of clean food and one of Food Fight's stars, to steer clear of conventional supermarkets. We prowl our farmers' markets instead, scooping up vegetables so fresh that the soil still clings to their roots. We buy our other basics at the local health food store or Whole Foods, or maybe Trader Joe's.

But, once in a while, we run out of toilet paper or cat food or some other staple and, in a pinch, we dash to the supermarket across the street. Whereupon we are confronted, aisle after aisle, with the reality of what the average American eats--and, quite frankly, it freaks us out.

That's not to say that you can't find healthy food in the supermarket. It's there, as Food Fight notes, on the periphery in the produce department, or in the "ethnic" aisle with the soba noodles and dried beans. But most of the stuff that's sold in supermarkets is of negligible nutritional value and loaded with salt, fat, sweeteners and all kinds of additives to make it taste better. For too many Americans, wholesome foods are hard to find, and even harder to pay for.

Food Fight rounds up all the usual suspects to decry this rotten food system; along with Pollan, there's Alice Waters, Dan Barber, Wolfgang Puck, Marion Nestle, etc. There are a few fresh faces, too--most notably Tom Philpott of Grist and Growing Power's Will and Erika Allen, the true foot soldiers in the battle to make real food available to all of us, regardless of income or region.

There's a lot of talk about how locally grown foods simply taste better, and are better for you. All well and good. But as the Ethicurean's Bonnie Powell noted in her excellent, even handed review, the film lingers a little too long at the altar of Alice Waters. Treehugger's Kelly Rossiter had a similar take, giving the film high marks overall but lamenting Food Fight's excessive "focus on the charismatic chefs and marveling at the array of beautiful vegetables at the farmers' market."

I would have liked to see a greater emphasis on the disastrous environmental consequences and inhumanity of factory farming, or even a passing reference to the link between meat consumption and climate change. I was troubled, too, that the film suggests that hunger is a thing of the past in our country. As Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, recently noted at a World Hunger Year forum in NYC, "there will be 40 million people going hungry in the richest country on earth by the end of the year". And don't forget the folks who, thanks to our toxic food chain, manage to be both obese and malnourished at the same time. I can't think of a more damning indictment of our agricultural policies.

To be fair, Food Fight gets a lot of things right; I was especially gratified that it hammers home the fact that Agribiz is wedded--or should I say welded--to the military industrial complex. And it's great to see my personal heroes like Tom Philpott and Will Allen getting their due--Allen's just received a much-deserved MacArthur genius grant, by the way, for the extraordinary work his foundation, Growing Power, has done to promote urban agriculture as a viable way to nourish our inner city communities.

So although I share my fellow foodie bloggers' reservations about this film, I think you should see it for yourself--and if you live in Los Angeles, you'll have your chance soon: Food Fight premieres this Saturday, November 8th, at a free 3:15 pm screening at the AFI (American Film Institute) festival in Los Angeles, at Mann's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.