Why Are Poor People Sometimes Really Fat?

It's an unfortunate habit, but whenever I'm in line at the grocery store, when I happen to be standing behind someone paying for their goods with an Ohio EBT card (the modern equivalent of food stamps) - I can't help but notice the groceries in their cart. After years of such observations I can conclude that with alarming frequency the people who receive government assistance also don't seem to be eating very healthy food.

Little Debbie, Hostess, and Frito Lay, as well as full-sugar carbonated beverages and some of the fattiest cuts of meat seem to predominate in these grocery carts. Vegetables and fruit, whole grains, and fresh food don't seem to be very popular. And then ... sometimes I notice the girth of the EBT-card user and I can't help but wonder if being poor in America often seems to correlate with being unbelievably overweight and unhealthy.

Admittedly, this is my direct experience. Direct data points may exist on this phenomena - and if anyone sends me something that refutes this observation I will certainly amend my post. But for now, it certainly seems like the "classical" image of the poor in America no longer applies. Those famous, black-and-white pictures of skeletal faces in dust-bowl era - this seems like an outdated picture, in many cases.

It leads to a cascade of questions. Could poverty on our society (not worldwide, to be sure) be explained by behavioral factors? Whose fault is it when people on public assistance are obese? The government has ostensibly decided to take care of the nutritional needs of folks in those circumstances, shouldn't they also be responsible for increased rates of heart disease and adult-onset diabetes? Most importantly, why aren't proponents of social programs suggesting that these trans-fatty, junk food groceries be on the "denied" list for assistance?

Web searches yield a lot of discussion on this topic - suggestions and studies by various panels - and rants like mine about how the ostensibly impoverished seem to be, paradoxically, stocked up on body-fat reserves. Maybe they are overeating terrible food because of some Barbara Ehrenreich-like structural injustice. Some folks respond by quoting the old bible verse about "judging others" - a phrase that , I've noticed, is wildly popular among folks who do not attend church or synagogue, folks who often have open contempt for religion ... a topic for another post.

The harsh reality is simply that you will annoy other people if you ask for help - or demand it - but also demand to be entirely unaccountable, and beyond the constraints of responsibility to others. Sometimes getting "help" should entail facing up to some lousy behavioral problems that may have landed people in terrible situations in the first place. Self-restraint, discipline, and the deferral of immediate gratification are time-tested ways to achieve success by any measure - economic, emotional - even in terms of basic health.

This is a hard truth for everyone.

This Is No Longer A Conservative Town

And in this one case that's a good thing, in my humble estimation.

Ten years ago it might have caused a ruckus, the fact that the University of Cincinnati will be extending benefits to same-sex partners. But the old Cincinnati that once went haywire over things like the Mapplethorpe exhibit seems to have greeted this news with barely an eye blink. Where are the protests? Where are the thundering bloggers denouncing the decline in morality signified by the fact that Larry and Jim now receive public dollars for dental cleanings? Isn't this some ultra-conservative city?

The short answer is no. The portion of the Cincinnati population most faithful to across-the-board Red State values has relocated to the exurbs, where they won't be afflicted, one presumes, by fatherless youngsters in baggy clothes, inept city councils, or lesbian professors. Mark Twain's old quip about Cincinnati might be updated for the donut neighborhoods - "if the world ever ends, move to Butler County - they won't know it for twenty years".

Many people see and understand this trend locally - although some far-leftists still thunder away against the local status quo like it's 1982. But it may take years for the national perception of Cincinnati as a racist, homophobic old town to be revised, when the last thing that entered the public consciousness was a race riot back in '02.

But equally important for the purposes of electoral strategy and political prognostication - this is not an ultra-liberal city either. The Queen City did not turn into Portland, Oregon overnight, handing out $15 tickets for weed possession and offering the homeless population vegan dinner options. These types of demographic changes happen at an almost glacial pace, and any attempt to slam things too far to the Left (or Right) in terms of policy will likely be met with resistance. Plenty of people want law and order, a tough national defense, a good economy, low taxes - and much less fuss over social issues - including our everyday, gay friends, family and neighbors.

That - I have a sneaking suspicion - is the center of American politics, but it doesn't fit the template used by the more bombastic fringes.

Tags: Cincinnati, Conservatism, Benefits, UC

The Cincinnati Enquirer In Autumn

This morning - unlike most days - I happened to point my trusty web browser at the homepage for the Cincinnati Enquirer, our local newspaper that, like many old-guard publications, is struggling to transform itself and stay relevant in the new media world. The display that issued forth from my computer screen is so disorganized and unattractive that I couldn't help but take a screen capture:



Where to begin? Expected news items such as headlines and the traffic report are jumbled together with advertising, featurettes, user functionality (such as web feeds) and a long list of indeterminate content like forums and special pseudo-advertising sections (Cars.com). There are several navigational toolbars with links grouped together at random. Information is splayed everywhere with no governing principles of organization or design sense.

What message does this hideous jumble send to the user? Because the user with this type of media is always grandma. Designers cater to the least Internet-savvy first - on the assumption that if they are well-served then everyone else can figure it out. And the message to the user seems to be sheer contempt or indifference. They have been shoveled a big heap of confusing information. My guess is that most enquirer.com viewers click down one level to their destination (sports, the weather report) - and never "go sideways" to other content areas because the navigation is so jumbled and asinine.

And while I'm hardly offended by advertising, you notice that many national sites afford their advertisers a sense of dignity by separating it cleanly but prominently from the other content, implicitly sending the message that "we are proud to advertise these goods and services" - not "here's a few banner ads we jammed in wherever possible" or "hey user, this content is sponsored by a commercial interest with an obvious interest in brand promotion, feel free to click through with a certain sense of unease". Either sell or inform - you're entirely encouraged to do both tasks well. But don't bungle them together.

The could be a place, I tell myself half-heartedly, for local papers in the grand scheme of things once things shake out. But people do not have the time for information delivery that isn't tailored efficiently to their needs - and this homepage fails the test with flying colors. It makes me wonder how much longer these types of publications can possibly stagger along.

Tags: Cincinnati Enquirer, Tom Callinan

Karma Chameleon Hillary

From The Politico.com:

Last week at a YWCA in Manchester, N.H., she recounted the struggle to balance her law career with motherhood. “Late one night, [Chelsea] was crying inconsolably. I said, ‘Chelsea, you’ve never been a baby before, and I’ve never been a mother before; we’re just going to have to work and figure this out,’” Clinton recalled.

Adherants to the world's third largest religion would disagree. Hinduism contends that both Hillary and Chelsea have indeed been daughters and mothers before - and for that matter, sons and fathers - as they've looped through the cycle of samsara in previous iterations while trying to assuage the inconsolable crying that is the byproduct of our disharmony with the phenomenal world.

But Hillary wasn't speaking to a crowd full of Hindu voters, so the message wasn't calibrated accordingly. It's all in the name of locking down a sizable swath of the electorate, by swapping back and forth between the simpatico mom who "gets it" on certain issues and the strong, independent woman who (not really) blazed a trail to the halls of power. The article cites Sue Faludi:

“My sense of [Clinton] is that she is, before everything else, a supreme pragmatist,” Faludi said. “She is certainly careful to avoid spouting women’s lib rhetoric, and that goes back to her being a realist, and that goes back to where the culture is.”

Everyone agrees that this transparent philandering will impress some voters and leave others ready to vomit. But nobody agrees yet on how those proportions will shake out going into the general election.

And whoever the Republicans nominate, they are going to have to plan their response to her candidacy with grace and good humor. Even the most substantial policy disagreement, if framed in forceful terms, will be counter-framed as a mean-spirited attack by Hillary and her handlers. And any response to that strategy will be distorted accordingly as defensiveness or a tacit acknowledgment that GOP tactics are not merely hardball politics but an intemperate incivility directed at one who only wants to "help people".

Tags: Hillary, Death, Rebirth

Redmond's Mobile Device Play

In the few months that I've owned it, I've really started to appreciate my Blackberry. Email and calendar at a glance - yes, it turns a person into a mindless cyborg, but at least I will be one of those who quietly acquiesce when our robot overlords decide to snap off my power supply.

But like all successful technologies, sooner or later, the Blackberry has become the target of me-too Microsoft. According to Information Week, the folks from Redmond are jumping into the market with both big, clumsy feet with a product named (with typical MS panache) System Center Mobile Device Manager:

The new server software will allow mobile devices to be managed and provisioned remotely much like PCs. It will also allow mobile professionals to connect to corporate VPNs using their mobile devices.

"The IT folks, the same as it was in the PC environment, don't want to roll out 10,000 devices. They want to roll out one device 10,000 times," Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg told Reuters. "Microsoft is hoping to replicate the success and the model of the PC."

Whee.

So instead of trying to improve the feature set and functionality of mobile devices, Microsoft has ceded that territory to companies that obviously put it to shame (RIM, Apple) - and instead they are attempting to deliver a toolset to the IT cops of the business world, the systems administration folks - for whom command-and-control uniformity is often the line of least resistance when the technology proves somewhat turbulent.

Not all network people have that mindset, of course - and if there's ever a group that gets a free beer courtesy of Mr. Spacetropic during the corporate happy hour it's the sysadmins - but everyone might reasonably agree that some of the most innovative uses of technology occur when the hardware isn't entirely "locked down" by the Ministry of You Can't Do That. Yes it involves risk, yes there are bonehead users that still need to be contained, and yes there's more work to do when the whole company isn't eating from the same trough.

But the world of mobile technology is changing, and - I would argue - having a very useful impact on the economy. Many forward-minded businesses should invest in a good mix of technologies, with the understanding that support can become a bigger challenge.

Tags: Microsoft, Mobile Devices, Blackberry

Crank That Loose, Jock

A local high school has banned a popular rap song, thanks to lyrics that are said to refer to women in a profane and disrespectful manner. (I know, it's hard to believe.) From the article:

A popular rap song has spawned more than a dance craze in Mason. The song "Crank Dat" by teen rapper Soulja Boy, was banned from the school?s homecoming dance this weekend.

School officials said students may still perform the dance, which turns up in video clips posted all over the Internet, but they'll have to make their moves to another song.

Imagine trying to do the "electric slide" to another dance-floor standard like the Commodores' Brick House - or performing "the hustle" to Parliament's Flash Light. It would be complete pandemonium - and certainly there are liability issues to consider, as feet and limbs risk injury while attempting movement in directions that do not conform to the appropriate beat.

Adding insult to injury, the youngsters in charge of the school newspaper had recently published a special section, with diagrams, that explained exactly how "dat" could be most effectively "cranked". (Take that, Tom Friedman - trying to claim that Generation Q lacks organization and motivation.) More enlightened school administrators might have been pleased with this responsible approach to dance-floor groovage.

The situation is not unprecedented. If memory serves me correctly, the youngsters in Elmore City, Oklahoma had this problem a few years back. They'd been yearning, yearning, for somebody to tell them that life wasn't passing them by, and yet they were able to get up from their knees and turn things around. The youth of Mason, Ohio should follow that example.

Tags: Kevin Bacon, Tom Friedman, Soulja Boy, Grover Norquist

Babies and Forgetfulness

For the past several weeks our local media has been consumed with stories about babies forgotten in automobiles. The frenzy began when a local assistant principal, Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby, changed her routine on the way to work at the beginning of the school year and left her infant daughter inside her vehicle during a sweltering late-summer day. The child died.

Now the stories are constant. First there has been a great fuss about whether or not Nesselroad-Slaby should be prosecuted (she wasn't), and another great fuss about whether she should lose her job (she was placed on leave). Meanwhile the media interviewed all of the witnesses, reconstructed the timeline, and obtained video of the mother's discussion with police.

And it's the endless subject of daily office patter and conversation. Person A suggests that Nesselroad-Slaby should be publicly executed, person B suggests that you can see how such accidents happen with tired, over-extended parents - and the two perspectives aren't mutually exclusive. Such a situation is inexcusable, but every adult has had the experience of almost falling asleep while driving, for example. You would never permit that to occur, especially with kids in the car. But you are especially vigilant because you can see how easily it could happen.

Now two more stories - the first one about Epifano Lopez, a Kentucky father who left his daughter in the car in 90-degree weather while he bought groceries - and the other, an unnamed woman, who likewise forgot her baby on a trip to the supermarket. Both babies in these cases were unhurt, thank God.

In the second case, prosecutors haven't yet decided if they will file charges. In the case of Mr. Lopez, there's one telling detail - he admitted he left the child in the car intentionally while he embarked upon a short shopping trip. The moms apparently spaced out. During his stay in jail he may wish he had lied and claimed he forgot and broke down weeping and screaming for the benefit of the police and the people gathered in the parking lot.

The law, I suppose, provides for "intent" - despite the fact that it seems like either all of these parents or none of them should be prosecuted. And to be honest, my preference would be some kind of punishment, since forgetfulness is the same as neglect when it comes to children - as anyone with a grabby, curious and exploration-minded toddler knows.

Now, like it or not, we have reached the point where roving gangs of people are wandering parking lots peering into backseats, looking for occupied car seats. And I'm sure there are many parents like myself - I handle the morning dropoff with our 10-month-old, and I'd sooner have my arm hacked off with a rusty saw than forget her - but I find myself possessed with an even greater degree of parental paranoia (with which I was afflicted even before these news stories) every time I climb into and out of the family sedan, regardless of whether or not shorty had ever been in the car.

Fact is, our baby is a helluva lot of fun in a grocery store anyway. She giggles, we fly down the aisles checking out stuff, daddy makes foolish faces and sounds. There's different schools of thought, I suppose - but I think, if you're going to have a baby, bring it along, and convert everything into teachable interactive time. No child left behind, so to speak.

Updated: In the original version of this post I had given an incorrect name for the woman in the most recent case.

The Republic of Vermont

Here's the quote of the day, folks. It's from Russell Wheeler, constitutional law expert at the Brookings Institute, on why the plan to have Vermont secede from America - put forward by a group of academics, naturally - might not be very plausible:

"If Vermont had a powerful enough army and said, `We're leaving the union,' and the national government said, `No, you're not,' and they fought a war over it and Vermont won, then you could say Vermont proved the point. But that's not going to happen," he said.

That's from an old article. But the notion is in the news again and gaining some traction apparently, since the Vermont folks are meeting with some die-hard Southern secessionists to try and hammer up a plan that we'll serve both parties' interests.

You say potato, I say gay marriage. Let's call the whole thing off.

What a great country we live in - home to all manner of nutcase. And it's nice to see the tradition of self-determination endures, among crackpot Green and hoary old confederate alike. Even in their desire to break away and start all over again they are proving themselves to be posesses of such time-honored American traits.

Amatuer Hour for Iran Speculations

People of all political stripes are jabbering about Iran. The general consensus is vague – something is probably happening – nobody knows exactly what.

One of the people scratching their heads is Michael Earl Patton, an indie media type who appears to be involved in some capacity with the Cincinnati Beacon, our local bastion of leftward thought and ad hominem anonymous commentary. In a post that highlights the joys of sort-kinda-maybe speculative blogging, Mike sees three things that seem to suggest trouble’s a brewing:

1. Oil prices are rising – but gas prices are not.
2. Vague reports that the Russians have packed up and left some site in Iran – all of a sudden.
3. The United States Senate voted 92 to 3 to continue funding the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite the purported public mandate for immediate troop withdrawal.

The first item is explained in the article to which Patton links – refineries are switching to “winter blend” fuel, ramping up for home heating oil, and they have recently seen the end of the summer driving season. Price as a function of supply and demand is the simplest explanation for many, many, things - but who wants to fiddle about with tedious old microeconomics when there are conspiracies that explain everything?

To be fair, Patton didn’t specifically haul out the petro-military cabal bogeyman in his post – I suppose I’ll need to root around at antiwar.com or Democracy Now to have those dots connected. But he did punt everything downfield with an open-ended insinuation that will really help the tin-foil brigade take everything home.

As to the vamoosing Ruskies … well, who knows? It’s entirely possible that they tipped off through diplomatic channels that it’s a bad idea to stay in-country. Or it could be possible that they simply haven’t been paid lately. Or the story – which isn’t exactly from an authoritative news source – is simply wrong. The moral equivalency crowd likes to pretend that it’s equally hard to know the truth in America and places like Iran – but the stubborn fact is that our society is free, and theirs isn’t (a fact that is underscored by the mere existence of outfits like Patton's Beacon).

The last item – ho, ho. Isn’t that funny. You mean to tell me the United States Senate – which is, according to the Constitution, up to speed on 99% of all goings-on when it comes to behind the scenes international intelligence – you mean they’re still voting to fund the war despite the loud rhetoric from Democrats who want to satisfy George Soros? Isn’t that curious. And, what’s more, the Democrat front-runners steadfastly won’t commit to a complete withdrawal from Iraq before 2013?

Could it be possible that our politicians know something we don’t? Let me jump on the bandwagon of insinuation: Something may indeed be happening behind the scenes, and our political leaders (Republican and Democrat alike) have indeed read the tea leaves, and they’re afraid that despite everything, despite how you feel about Iraq or Bush. Maybe we are actually in a very dangerous position relative to world threats, and we are truly war, and those who have sworn to lead and defend this country have some sobering obligations and immediate challenges.