Please, vegan restaurants, no more fake meat!

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of eating at an all-vegan restaurant within walking distance of my apartment. It bills itself as "organic!", "homemade!", and "chef-made!", while cranking out reasonably priced food in a quick service model. And for the most part, the restaurant delivered. There were loads of fresh vegetables, cooked just right, and an emphasis on whole grains, concepts that are foreign to most quick-service restaurants I've visited.

And yet, there was something deeply amiss. Among the party of six I dined with, all of us had a soy-based meat analogue on our plate. While I appreciate the desire to accommodate meat-eaters in order to broaden one's potential customer base, I couldn't help but feel frustrated as I picked over my soy chicken.

This oblong piece of textured tofu wasn't fooling anyone, least of all me. As a principled meat-eater, I know in my heart of hearts that this "fried chicken" would pass muster with very few of my fellow carnivores. And this is a shame, because as long as purveyors of vegan food lead their charm offensive with soy-based meat analogues, they're setting themselves up to fail. It will be a cold day in hell when I wake in the middle of the night to find myself craving soy meatballs. And I bet that's true of a lot vegans, too.

It is certainly possible to produce flavorful, healthful vegan food without leaning on soy-based pseudo-meat products. While soy is a crucial protein source for many vegans, vegan chefs and restaurateurs do their cause more good by showcasing the intricacies and possibilities of tofu or seitan as a centerpiece and not as a replicant.

It seems backward to have a vegan restaurant that constantly reminds its base demographic of what they're giving up by being vegan. And it seems equally backward to show skeptical meat-eaters that vegan food is dominated by merely second-rate approximations.

Also puzzling, many people turn to a vegan or vegetarian diet with a desire to eat more whole foods (not the grocery store) and eat fewer processed foods. Many textured pseudo-meat soy products, however, are heavily processed though, with dozens of ingredients.

Vegan chefs have a wide array of meatless, dairy-free, and egg-free recipes from cultures all around the world. And of those myriad cultures, only Americans are so obsessed with meat replacement. I'm sure there must be vegan restaurants that have jettisoned textured soy, but they seem few and far between. Until you take soy chicken off the menu, I'm going to steer clear.

#hashtagsthataretoolongfortwitter

#thingsidsayifiwereactuallyamilitantsocialist

Dear rich people, we're coming for you. We see the opulence you live in since we built your house, clean your pool, make your sushi, drive your Town Car, polish your Porsche, cut your lawn, clean your solarium, and when we come home, we can watch people like you flaunt their wealth on stupid reality shows. We're coming to take it all and spread it evenly among us. Be afraid! Love, the coming poor people revolution

Supreme Court Upholds PPACA!

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Obamacare.

Chief Justice John Roberts provided the fifth and decisive vote to uphold almost all provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including the pivotal individual mandate. And he penned the majority decision! And now, Fox News can't stop showing stock footage of Roberts walking down the Supreme Court steps with Justice Kagan. Mon dieu!

*

I wandered into the conservative opinionsphere after the court delivered its decision and was not surprised to find that they had shifted into "Obama lied about taxes" mode. I came across this blog post by an aspiring sixteen-year old conservative blogger decrying the coming tax increase. She, like many other conservatives, recognized that the court's decision, while abhorrent to her, was the right one, a heartening admission. But, she, like so many other talking point-fixated ideologues, misses the forest for the trees.

This is what I posted in her comments in full:

“No one should be forced to buy anything, and they certainly should not be forced to pay for someone else’s health insurance.”

In principle, you and I agree. Government should not be empowered to compel people to undertake commerce that would not otherwise engage in. However, under the pre-Obamacare system, American taxpayers in large part pay for the care received by those who currently do not have health insurance. Tax money does pay for uninsured people to use publicly funded clinics and hospitals everyday. The uninsured also drive up the cost of health insurance premiums, as the insured subsidize the care of the uninsured.

The individual mandate is a fundamentally conservative construct; it impels people to take personal responsibility for their own health. Indeed, Fox News reports today (link at the bottom) that the idea for the individual mandate was conceived by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 1989 and advanced as an alternative to President Clinton’s health care reform legislation by Republicans in 1993. Several Republican Senators and the current Republican presidential nominee have supported legislation like this in the recent past.

As to your assertion that taxes are going to fly; that is a disingenuous claim. For the majority of Americans, Obamacare taking effect means no such tax increase. A tax penalty will only be levied on those who elect to forego the purchase of health insurance when the law is fully implemented in 2014.

So it turns out that after a year of legislative wrangling and a year and a half of legal challenges, that Democrats were fighting for a Republican idea all along? Forget about Roberts being a stealth liberal, the Democrats have a stealth Republican agenda!

More soon!

Decision Dump 2012: Campaign Finance

It's the final week of the Supreme Court's 2011-2012 term and a number of decisions are pending, including one for the suite of cases dealing with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As we await what now appears to be impending invalidation of the individual mandate of Obamacare, several noteworthy decisions have already come down the pike.

In today's decision in American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, the conservative majority reasserted their ruling from the 2010 Citizens United case by invalidating a Montana state law prohibiting corporations from funding state and local electoral campaigns. The Court majority ruled that the holding in the Citizens United case also applies to applicable state laws. This decision, as with the decision in the Citizens United case, fell strictly on ideological lines.

The implications? Where states and municipalities like Montana once had restrictions on campaign contributions, state legislature and city council races are now open to unlimited corporate funding. Super PACs with substantial corporate backing are now allowed to flood even low level elections with cash, enlarging further the role of money in campaigns down to the lowest level.

A major refrain from conservatives on campaign finance is that corporate contributions do not effect congressional voting habits. A recent paper from the conservative policy think tank, Manhattan Institute, carries this opinion, while noting that corporate and lobbyist contributions do impact policy making.

The argument goes that there is so much money at the federal level that it would be extremely difficult to unduly influence a single congressman, let alone the entire Congress. But what happens unlimited corporate donations trickle down to the state legislature or the municipal level? The potential for corruption is enormous.

The current state of play under Citizens United seems absurd. While rich donors have always held significant and outsized influence in the political process, the advent of the Super PAC makes money the undisputed king in elections while simultaneously reducing campaign transparency.

There are some holes in this analogy, but bear with me. Imagine a speaker with a clear partisan leaning is giving a talk at a nearby auditorium. You oppose his viewpoints, and you are very wealthy. You decide to buy up most of the tickets to the event, and proceed to distribute the tickets to your co-partisans.

When the speaker takes the stage, you and your compatriots continually shout him down. As you and your friends have a right to free speech, but not a right to silence others, the speaker summons security to remove the offending parties. But, as so many of the attendees are prone to drowning him out, the speaker's right to speech is infringed. He might get in a few words edgewise, but his speech is lost in the din.

This is close to the system we have now. When Super PACs dump money on the side of a particular issue or candidate, they can effectively drown out the other side. This American Life reported on this phenomenon during the 2010 midterm elections, in the race between Dan Lungren and Ami Bera in California's third Congressional district. While federal candidates from both political parties will marshal substantial Super PAC support in November's election, at the lower levels, large infusions of cash could in many cases buy elections. It's easy to imagine an election for county supervisor or the campaign for a ballot initiative being overwhelmed by a influx of corporate cash.

For once, could the next logical step not be escalation? Not under the regime created by Citizens United and reaffirmed today. Big money is here to stay.

(belated) Saturday Music Blogging: One Direction, What Makes You Beautiful

That's it, you say. The Piper's gone mad! Isn't the point of Saturday Music Blogging to share good music?

Well, yes. Most of the time. But sometimes it's to point out how nasty a pop culture phenomenon truly is. And dear reader, One Direction is truly heinous. There are no redeeming qualities to this over-produced noise; the boys don't play their own instruments, they don't write the songs or the choreography, and they don't sound good without studio magic.

But, these things are true of boy bands throughout history; from The Monkees to 'NSYNC to Menudo to New Kids on the Block, almost all boy bands have been mildly-talented, mass marketed fluff. What makes One Direction and those of its ilk so insidious compared to their musical forebears? One need only look to the lyrics.

There is a disturbing trend pervading popular culture: the naked exploitation of  teenage insecurity, particularly the insecurities of teenage girls. In the Twilight series, Stephenie Meyer draws her lead female protagonist so thinly that any potential reader could imagine herself as the painfully personality-free Bella, being pursued by two comely, supernatural lads. One Direction, or more accurately, their corporate handlers, take this one step further.

In fact, the second word of this particular track is "insecure"! You see, the boys just can't understand why a girl like you doubts that she could be beautiful. You think you're ugly and you have no self-esteem, and that's why they think you're beautiful, plain teenage girl from the suburbs!

While there's nothing new about saccharin sweetness in a pop song, this song is really beyond the pale. I could only hope that One Direction's target demographic would see through this shallow manipulation. (After all, the lyrics suggest the boys only like you for your looks.) Suffice to say, as this music video has almost 170 million views, that's sadly not the case.

The Disappearance of the Summer Job

We've added a new information box to the right hand navigation bar, highlighting unemployment and labor force participation rates among relevant demographic groups. It's not really aesthetically pleasing, but our web design skills consist mostly of rudimentary tinkering with HTML. It's still a work in progress.

A cursory glance at the data suggests that younger people continue to struggle to enter the workforce, especially relative to older people who were established in the workforce prior to the onset of the Great Recession.

After the jump, there be economic wonkery! And graphs! Beware!

No FUTURE taxation without representation!

"This is exactly why kids need a union!"
--Bart Simpson, The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror XXII"

As a twenty-something ne'er-do-well, I'm prone to quoting The Simpsons a lot. After more than twenty years on the air and hundreds of episodes, there is a choice quote from The Simpsons for nearly every situation. So last October, when Bart uttered those words during the ever-funny, always topical Treehouse of Horror episode, I nearly hugged my television.

Why? Because it's true! Kids do need a union!

During the 1980s and 1990s, conservative organizations like the Family Research Council led the charge against the coarsening of American culture and the erosion of traditional family values. The writers of The Simpsons replied with an incisive and mocking riposte to the culture warriors, squalled by Helen Lovejoy.

Won't someone please think of the children when school districts are forced to lay off teachers? Or when tuition costs for the nation's largest public university system more than triple over ten years? How about when legislators threaten to cut food aid or health insurance benefits to poor children? Helen Lovejoy's wail for the children is indicative of the hollowness of the culture warrior's campaign, all style, no substance.

There is no single organization with enough clout to address these issues and others, and that needs to change.

More after the jump!