How Planned Parenthood Prevents Abortions and Why Robert Dear is Not Unlike a Jihadi

Reading about the recent violence at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado, and noting that one of the three people killed was a mother of two children (the other two were a female Iraq War vet and a male police officer), and remembering that this is one of many attacks, some physical/martial, many political, against this non-profit organization, I have been thinking about what Planned Parenthood really does and what it has done for me during my reproductive years.

Before Obamacare, healthcare was even less affordable and obtainable than it is now, when I find myself in my second month of no coverage despite being enrolled in Medicaid. From the time I turned 18 in 2000 until ACA was passed, birth control generally cost around $50 a month, and not all types were fully or even partially covered by all health insurance plans, to say nothing of buying the pills (and obtaining the prescription as well as the required pap test) without insurance, which could easily run towards $1000 a year. That all health insurance plans must cover birth control under the Affordable Care Act is a very good thing: it is not easy to budget for even an extra $15 a month let alone $50, and certainly no one with health insurance (which has such incentive to keep health costs down, and pregnancy is hugely expensive) should be choosing between birth control and any other necessity.

I have used a non-Planned Parenthood gynecologist only a few times in my life, and the expense has always driven me back to Planned Parenthood, where I knew I would never be denied care or a birth control prescription, and where I knew my privacy would be respected. Staying not pregnant is time-consuming and expensive. I am not sure how many men realize that to obtain a BCP script, a woman needs a yearly pelvic exam and pap smear, which take time, are rather invasive (I think a lot of women find it mainly humiliating, actually, and having it performed by a man can feel quite psychologically uncomfortable), and even with insurance can have a copay of a hundred dollars or more. If this exam turns up any question of HPV, and up to 75% of people of reproductive age have it at some point in their lives, follow-up exams, often involving biopsy, cryocautery and other procedures can be involved. All of these have co-pays (or out-of-pocket) and require time (usually off work), can cause pain and require some recovery, and this can happen far more than once. Not that I am opposed to these procedures; they can save lives that otherwise would be lost to cervical cancer (which is caused by some strains of HPV but does not result from most cases of HPV), and prior to the introduction of Gardisil in 2006 was the only way of preventing cervical cancer. But the fact remains that in most heterosexual, committed relationships the burden of preventing pregnancy is on women, and it is a disproportional burden indeed. That is before you consider women who are abandoned by their partners to deal with pregnancy and STD prevention or treatment alone. So when I think of men, whether they be politicians or men teetering on the edge of mental health (if there is a difference) who have the temerity to pass judgment on how women pursue reproductive health, and to call non-profit organizations, 80% of whose business is administering birth control, to testify before Congress to defend themselves against falsified and partisan accusations, it makes me sick with contempt for the bullying attitude that it is all too acceptable in our society to take against any group you aren't a part of and don't understand.

What do the other 20% of services administered by Planned Parenthood represent? 3% are abortions and the rest are mostly STD testing and treatment, cancer screenings like the pelvic exams I have had and the mammograms (or mammogram referrals) I will one day no doubt get there, since referrals, like appointments with gynecologists, psychiatrists, and increasingly any private practice doctors, take a ruinously long time to obtain, and of course it is often the costliest doctors, or those who accept the fewest, or no, forms of insurance, who have the earliest availability.

So I have used Planned Parenthood for what 97% of all its services represent, and that is why I have never had to be  a part of the 3% statistic that represents the abortions they perform. During times in my life (like now) when I have had no health coverage, and even times when getting an appointment with a gynecologist would take too long or my prescription simply cost too much, Planned Parenthood was there to subsidize my care and make it possible for me to not only prevent pregnancy before I was ready for it, but screen for cancer and other reproductive dangers while they were still treatable. The fact is that the vast majority of women go to Planned Parenthood to avoid having abortions, not to have them. Personally, I do not believe that women who themselves judge that they cannot care for a child should be forced to carry that child to term or go through the torment of giving their children up for adoption, and I believe safe abortions should be legal as a measure that protects women's health and which promotes the care of children who already exist: 61% of all women terminating a pregnancy already have at least one child. The fact is, nobody, not even me, despite my very-high-indeed horse, knows what is going on for any individual that belongs to a given group, but we are all too eager to recommend, support, and in some cases take drastic, dreadful, hypocritical action to force prohibitions on groups we don't belong too. We see this in Donald Trump's comments about immigration policy, which many Americans agree with (as do Europeans!), and we see it in the discourse on abortion. This has become not only so nasty, but so much the purview of abstract political debate, that it is now regular, no matter who you are, how uninformed you are, or how distant your life experience is from that of most people the conversation is about and affects, to not only take rigid political stances on this "issue," but to position it as the single issue that will decide your vote.

I think one of the great false premises of the abortion debate is that there is some group, let's call it pro-choice, which approves of abortion. I don't think there are many people who really approve of abortion as a form of birth control to be embraced, and I'm certainly not one. But to act like there are no circumstances that women can find themselves in when an abortion is the best outcome they can hope for is, unfortunately, wrong. We do not have a society in which poor families and single mothers are supported; it is not possible to raise healthy kids by yourself when you have to work for $7.50 an hour at more than one job so your employer isn't obligated to give you health benefits. Many people do not have computers, internet access, or even public libraries to figure out how to apply for insurance through the state-run health exchanges, where they might discover they qualify for Medicaid. Women who seek abortions are, at least most of the time, some of the most vulnerable members of our incredibly unequal society, and as so often happens to victims of an unequal system, it is the most powerful who control not only their access to abortion, but also to birth control, health care, and benefits for their children. Behind all of this we see, yet again, that the rich and powerful take an attitude of moral superiority towards the poor and vulnerable: the discourse frames abortion as a moral outrage whose perpetrators must be fought. These are the same terms that Islamic fundamentalists use to rouse vulnerable, poor, often mentally unstable young people to violence against unknown individuals that form part of a group they can easily vilify from the outside: Westerners, Christians, Parisians. Belonging to one or more of those groups, or moving in them freely, it's obvious to us that those individuals, now dead or wounded, were innocent, but it's so easy, and feels so good, to vilify, and there's a heavy dose of endorphins spilled in pulling triggers. If you want to eliminate abortion, immigration, or terrorism, you're just going to have to make the world a better place, and that will mean loosening a lot of tightly-closed fists.

Berning CVA

Canvassing in Culpeper VA Sat, Nov 14: Charlottesville Bernie troops provide reinforcements for the local Bernie outpost!

So the blog's been a bit moribund recently, alas!  Why?  Basically, because we've been so busy!  Jasmine & I both applying for lots of part-time work--looks like I'll be an Adjunct Prof of Economics for Piedmont Virginia Community College in the spring semester . . . unless something more compelling comes up before my background check clears.

But much more than professional activities, we've been busy with Bernie volunteering!  Apart from diving into organizational work of the Charlottesville & Central VA for Bernie volunteer group, we've been getting out the word collecting signatures for Bernie to get on the VA ballot.  The state actually has one of the higher bars to getting on the primary ballot (in fact, in 2012 Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum & other Republicans failed to make it on the ballot, leaving the Republican field to just Mitt Romney & Ron Paul).

On Election Day here in VA, when the entire state senate was up for re-election (and where Democrats put up the feeblest of efforts against Republican gerrymandering), Jasmine & I trolled our local polling places with Rachel, another Bernie volunteer, collecting well over a hundred signatures. We also collected a few nasty comments about Mao Zedong as well as accusations of the purveyance of male bovine excrement, due in part to a deficit of wisdom owing to our failure to have been born when Barry Goldwater was running for president.  We later learned that the precinct where we were (Baker-Butler elementary school, our own polling place, though we became Virginia residents too late to vote in the election) is the most conservative in Albemarle County (where Democrats swept the County board of Commissioners elections).  In other precincts around the city & county, our colleagues found lots of people willing to sign for Bernie: over 1,150 just from our Charlottesville group (Bernie apparently needs 5,000 for the whole state).

And even in our precinct we gathered over a hundred signatures and even got about half a dozen names of people local to this part of the county who want to join the offshoot Bernie group we're trying to start: Albemarle North for Bernie.  We have our second meeting this week at a volunteer's house in the beautiful town of Barboursville, where the pretty terrific and famous wine is made.

And we've found other outlets for our enthusiasm for the political revolution--such as the Charlottesville Raise Up for $15 minimum wage rally, where we showed up in Bernie paraphernalia and got to speak to the crowd, and even made it onto local TV, NBC 29 (about 20 seconds in)

and into the local paper, the Daily Progress, where Jasmine was quoted extensively, following her comments at the rally about the insecurity of non-benefit, temporary work, like the adjuncting she did at Colgate.

In general, it's exciting how vibrant a community we've found around here, and how much people like us seem to be accepted into at least certain quite politically active sectors--like the county Democratic party, one of whose vice chairs wanted to have coffee with me after meeting at the polls and invited me to their monthly meeting.

The abundance of dynamic grassroots political and social activism that we've found in Virginia could be due to many factors.  That Virginia is a purple state in flux, where Democrats and others on the left perceive chances to change things in the coming years, may inspire the openness to new actors & allies that they know such change will require.  This itself undoubtedly stems from a huge difference with Central New York: Central Virginia (and the whole state, really) is an area that is growing, on the upswing, and as new people arrive, looking for new opportunities, the ferment only feeds upon itself.  Central New York, by contrast, is decades into a demographic & economic decline, with young people, activists, and entrepreneurs (political, business, or otherwise) often needing to go afield for opportunities if they don't already have a secure place in the region's economic, political, or social structure.  Hamilton, NY has been lucky to attract a notable exception in the past several years in Good Nature Brewing, and its success and planned expansion do incite hope that more people will buck the trend by investing in Central New York, which those who have managed to make a solvent life there know has much to offer.

Of course, Charlottesville is exceptional in many ways, too: one of the wealthiest and most liberal areas of "non"-Northern Virginia, it's a hotbed for all kind of social, artistic, and political activities (and with the persistent delight of Southern courtesy that sets it apart from a Cambridge, MA or Brooklyn).

Culpeper, Virginia, by comparison, an hour up the road towards DC, is neither as prosperous nor as liberal.  Jasmine & I got to experience it yesterday when we drove there with some other local Charlottesville Bernie-supporters to join the lone member of the Culpeper for Bernie group, Earl (see the photo above), in collecting signatures at the farmers' market.  Culpeper is in Virginia's 7th Congressional District (one that's gerrymandered even more Republican than our 5th District) and no surprise it was the most in need of more signatures to be collected for the campaign.  The farmers' market was not nearly as active as what we've seen in Charlottesville, or in Hamilton (even though Culpeper has about 5x the population of the latter!), and it was a scrabble to get many signatures.

Interestingly, we got a bunch of signatures from people who said they're hardly regular Democratic voters, but want "anybody but Hillary" to be the next president.  Depending on which of the current occupants of the Republican clown-car gets nominated for president next summer, a Democratic nomination of Bernie Sanders could well generate a curious new phenomena: the Bernie Republican, foil of the famous Reagan Democrat.  We'll see.

But yesterday's jaunt was important for reasons besides just the signatures: one was helping Earl (and a couple of people who came out of the woodwork as potential Bernie volunteers) shore up his own sense of a movement for Bernie.  If there really is to be major political change in this country, a movement, then it's going to take people moving, at least for a few hours, a day, or a weekend: going physically to places where the movement is not as strong, and spreading the word, wearing the T-shirt, putting a human face to the concept of "Democratic Socialism" (which, after going over it with the chair of economics at PVCC, we decided is really just a brand of Keynesiansm).

And that's why we're here in Virginia, with no jobs, trying to get something started.  I was really excited this weekend by the people we met--vendors in the Farmers' Market who donated parmesan bread to the Bernie volunteers, an African American lady from a local church who's really excited for Bernie (and told us that she thinks her community might be holding its collective nose if Hillary is the name next to "D" on the ballot next fall), several Spanish-speakers who were  not registered to vote, but had clearly never been approached before in this country as members of a civic polity, and even some of the anti-Bernie people who were interested to mix it up a bit.  People like us--not just me & Jasmine, but everybody in the picture above--getting out there, talking to strangers, believing that there's more on offer for America than dynasties, elites who "know better," and apathy of the masses, and putting themselves on the line for something are what it will take to give the lie to the easy rationalization that Bernie can't win (which is in many cases = "we're stuck with the mediocrity we've got").  We can do it--not for Bernie, but for the sake of this country, and a people that need to wake up and realize that they can take back their own democracy.

Labor Mobility in America -or- the Cost of Becoming Virginia Jews

In my CRV, I'm apparently Virginia Jew #5159

Anyone who knows me knows that as a Jew, I could be considered a disappointment.  I wasn't bar mitzvahed, have never practiced the religion, can barely get past "baruch atah adonai . . ." and by the rules of the Mishnah, probably couldn't even count as a Jew unless I converted (my mom was born "Woods").  

But with a name like Daniel Jacob Epstein . . . well?  The Virginia DMV seems to have seen me coming and acknowledged us as members of the tribe (in her Camry, Jasmine Epstein is #5158).  I guess I'd like to think that I'm about as Jewish as Bernie Sanders, and perhaps that's good enough for government work.

Religion is not the topic of this blog post, though: it's about the cost of moving around the country.  

In theories of free market capitalism, resources (capital, labor, land, etc) are put to the most efficient (read: profitable) use when there are as few impediments as possible to their being deployed wherever they will fetch the highest prices.  In the case of capital, we have all kinds of laws, judicial infrastructure, and entire administrative divisions of government (SEC, FDIC, Federal Reserve, etc) devoted to smoothing out the functioning of markets so that the process of moving capital around is easy and cheap.

What about opportunities for labor to fetch the highest prices?  Especially in a country the size of the United States, for people to get the best jobs (which could be the highest paid, or the job for which the enjoyment of the job + the salary & benefits = the best return on the time & effort they put in), they often have to move somewhere else.

Of course, this explains why every ten years, states like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan get apportioned fewer Congressional reps, and states like Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and California get more.  Indeed, driving through some of the cities of upstate NY (Utica, Oneida, Amsterdam), it's clear that people have been voting with their feet (or U-Hauls) for any number of reasons as the rust belt empties of inhabitants, but better employment opportunity is a big one.

But moving can be expensive--it's a big investment to pull up stakes in search of better opportunity.  Nonetheless, it's the American way: "Westward the wagons" and all that.  And if you're poor, or unemployed, it's not only a good way to improve your economic lot, but it's the key way that free market capitalist economics would prescribe.  And indeed, if a "flexible labor market" (minimizing barriers to people finding the jobs where their labor is deployed most efficiently, whether by facilitating businesses' ability to fire workers whose labor they are unable to deploy efficiently, or by facilitating workers' capacity to leave one situation for another where their labor fetches a better price) works they way that free market economics claims it does, then this process also should promote people getting out of poverty ("up by the bootstraps") and indeed reducing government expenditures on things like unemployment, foodstamps, and other means-tested benefits.

But while making easier to move about the country should have every advantage in a free-market economy, the United States have made it rather costly in a number of ways.

The Commonwealth of Virginia's legislature, for example, has mandated a number of fees for operating a vehicle in the state, here see the ones we paid to become VJW 5158 & 5159:

Title Fees for titling car in VA $10 x 2 cars =	$20
Minimum sales tax on $500 intra-family car sale =	$75
Safety Inspection $16 x 2 cars =	$32
Vehicle Registration 2yrs (w/discount) $79.50 x 2 cars =	$159
Out of State License conversion $32 x 2 drivers =	$64
Grand Total fees extracted from us by the Commonwealth of Virginia DMV =	$350

Now, for me & Jasmine, these fees are affordable, an expected cost of moving to this state in search of better ways to employ ourselves, and one of the reasons we saved up money before making this move.  And in truth, part of the reason we have to pay as much as we did is how privileged we are: a two-car couple (though with teenagers--the CRV is 12 y.o. and the Camry 18--we're hardly the most privileged of car owners), and in fact our second car is Jasmine's old one that we got from her parents for a nominal price (our good fortune).  Titling it under a new name, we had to pay a sales tax of $75 on the $500 purchase price (the tax rate is 4.1%, but there is a minimum payment amount that effectively meant we paid 15%!); had we not had the good fortune for Richard & Linda to let the Camry go for a song, we wouldn't be paying the fees for a second car at all!  And we could have registered our cars for only one year, instead of two, though the multi-year discount meant that latter was more economical, in the long run.

In the end, we could afford all of these fees, but imagine the situation of people with less means, who weren't lucky enough have a job that enabled them to save up like we could.  A family with two working parents might easily need two cars if they each had to work; the fees for operating vehicles in Virginia would be pretty steep for a family with an income of $2,500/mo (the SNAP cut-off--which two minimum wage jobs barely add up to, before taxes).  And why should there be a minimum payment for auto sales tax: if a someone can only afford to buy a car that costs $500 or $1,000, why are they paying the same sales tax as a car that costs nearly $2,000 (this applies even to Virginians who never cross state lines when buying cars).

If Virginia needs more resources to fix its roads and run its Motor Vehicle bureaucracy (where, I have to note, all the people we ran across were kind, helpful, and extremely efficient), why not take them out of income tax dollars paid mostly by people not in poverty, instead of multiplying "fees" that, while they apply to everyone, hit the poor and those who are moving house much more heavily than the wealthy and the comfortable?

As with Jasmine's non-transferable New York Medicaid, the United States are (plural) a pain for poor people: the "federal" system that empowers states to each set up their own special bureaucracies, redundant inspections (the Camry had to be re-inspected for Virginia, even though New Jersey had given it a clean bill of health 'til 2017 just a couple of months ago), and other powers that state governments claim a "right" to makes labor mobility in this country a costly prospect, especially for those in most want of economic opportunity.  Proportionately to income, this is the hardest for the poorest Americans--another way in which the system we have in our country today makes pulling oneself or one's family "up by the bootstraps" most difficult for those at the very bottom of the ladder.

Democracy in America: Civil Society, Academic department meetings, and Insurgent political campaigns

With apologies to U Chicago Press, whose image I am using.

So, after a long series of over-loaded trips for two aging Japanese stalwarts (a '97 Toyota Camry, to be rewarded with some expensive exhaust work; and an '03 Honda CRV), Jasmine & I arrived at our cabin, on the outskirts of Charlottesville over a week ago.  Since Virginia isn't into profusions of municipal governing bodies (the opposite of New York!), we live in no town or city, but Albemarle County is our only governing entity under the level of the Commonwealth of Virginia.  I'll have to rhapsodize about the idylls of county living in another post, though (as well as tell other news): this one is about organizing for Bernie.

So I was involved in CNY for Bernie, based in Hamilton, in the couple of months before leaving, although peripherally, since I knew I was leaving.  I was also in touch with a group in Baldwinsville, NY, and like to think I helped inspire them to get their group off the ground.  

Volunteering for Bernie, it turns out, is do-it-yourself, at least at this point in the campaign.  Nobody from the campaign (still thinly staffed outside IA & NH) will tell you what to do, organize events, or lead.  You have to be the change you've been waiting for, and lead yourself.

Arriving in CVA (as I've gathered the Charlottesville region is known), Jasmine & I attended our first Bernie event just three days later, a Happy Hour at the local bar Firefly.  We met a number of enthusiastic Bernie supporters, including some students half our (my) age or younger, and a number of other enthusiasts from local activists to entrepreneurial pet-sitters to old-hands of VA politics known to chew the fat with the likes of Bob Goodlatte.

One fascinating dynamic, though, common to both groups, is how hard it is to run a meeting.  In fact, as an outsider trying to participate without elbowing my way in, it was clear that these group, full of goodwill and energy, and a lot of fellow-feeling, have as many impediments to administrative accomplishment & efficiency as any department or program at Colgate University!

Having cogitated at length upon (not to mention contributed to) the function & dysfunction of multiple such committees at Colgate, I often thought to myself, "Well, this must be so dysfunctional because we're a bunch of professors; how can we hope to achieve administrative functionality and positive group dynamics when they are the very things that are dis-incentivized by academia."  But if this is true, then a sample of academics should perform much worse administratively than any randomly-met group of individuals.  But two such (in CNY & CVA) randomly drawn groups (selected purely on being pro-Bernie) seem to evince the same difficulties, of getting hung-up on the short term, or even terminologies, sidetracked by emotional commitments, failure to listen to each other, tendency to speak out of a feeling of needing to speak, rather than to move the group towards a goal, and oversensitivitiy to "authoritarian" leadership tendencies in running a meeting, among others.

This presents a dangerous power imbalance in society: if groups of citizens met for bringing change to a politics that serves the status quo; groups of academics who devote themselves to wisdom & expertise in fields that could serve society; or other collections of individuals not already part of the power-structure of the managerial class (which extends from government through private business, higher education, and even established NGOs and non-profits) cannot get their act together and organize themselves, then the organizations of that power-structure will never face the kind of challenge that can hold them accountable.

This is true of university administrations vis-à-vis faculties, workers vis-à-vis employers, union members vis-à-vis union leaders, HOA or Condo Association members vis-à-vis their boards, and of course, citizens vis-à-vis their governments, not to mention a plethora of other cases where the advantages of the already-empowered are amplified by their fewness in number and honed administrative experience.  

But in the words of E. E. Schattschneider, "The only defense against organization is counterorganization" (Party Government, 1942; p. 44).  In truth, this is no more or less than a call for Americans (or anybody) dissatisfied with a status quo that seems not serve the common good to return to the roots that Tocqueville found when criss-crossing this country in the early 19th century:

Tocqueville found that everywhere in America, groups of citizens were always organizing and learning how to run a meeting, how to work together in a group over time, how to act collectively.  Even the most Rugged Individualists in what were then the "western" states would get together and discuss, work in groups, solve problems, and advance collective goals.  The only cure for not knowing how to run a meeting is to keep holding meetings and try to learn how to run them better--or identify someone with the knack for it, and help them learn.

Unfortunately for Democracy in America, today in this country so many of us are so busy with our own individual or family demands, desires, and responsibilities, that hardly anybody wants to join groups that hold regular meetings anymore.  We're happy to send checks (or simply donate online) to the social causes or political campaigns we support, but this does not teach us the skills to actually enact democracy--it is not participation.

Tocqueville worried that democracy in any country might lead to tyranny and violence, as it had in Revolutionary France.  The rare genius of America that he found was that so many citizens were involved in enacting democracy, practicing citizenship, so that those who made it to the top could be restrained by masses of educated, activist, and administratively well-versed citizens who themselves committed to holding the powerful accountable.  These were not the masses of Europe who transformed into mobs bringing a bloody dictator like Napoleon Bonaparte to power (Vladimir Lenin?  Mao Zedong?).

Today, we have dissatisfaction with leadership in both our political parties, and in other spheres of the society, as well.  But how much of it inspires the patience and self-sacrifice of . . . going to meetings?  It seems all too little--much more goes into the shouting, posturing, and anger that could bring an American Napoleon to power--perhaps Donald Trump?

Is It a State's Right Whether I Get Pregnant?

In truth, the title of this post should be, Is It a State's Right to Decide How and How Much it Costs for Me to Not Get Pregnant? A good subtitle might be: Make BCP OTC. Something I didn't know about Medicaid until I was on it for a second year is that because it is administered by states, a person's Medicaid benefits are only good in the state in which they applied for and were awarded them. That means that, because I recently moved from New York to Virginia, I am unable to use my health insurance to pay for my birth control pill prescription, which runs $35-50 retail, if I fill the prescription outside of New York State. And because we did not have the foresight to apply for insurance through the VA exchange earlier (we would have had to do it by Sept. 15th, 30 days before moving, in order for me to be covered in VA now) I will have no usable insurance (EMT driver, can you get on 81 N?) until December 1st.

To ice them cookies, pharmacies are not allowed to mail prescriptions being paid for with Medicaid out-of -state, presumably to prevent fraudulent purchases of the birth control pill by Virginians, Marylanders, Blue Hens, etc. from the good pharmacies of New York. The choice I have, then, is to pester people I'm not that close to in New York to pick up and mail me my prescription, pay retail in VA (have I mentioned we're on a budget?), or use condoms, which are not that cheap, and certainly not that fun, but they are over-the-counter. All those other miracle drugs for not getting pregnant, such as the patch, the injection, the implants, are all prescription-only. Short of that it's rhythm method and rubbers.

We've discussed the moral double-standards that exist in this country for poor people, and to be on Medicaid, you have to be poor. I have qualified for it for the last year and a half, during which I was adjuncting at Colgate and thus poor. As a nation, we do seem to be comfortable with the government adjudicating how women go about not getting pregnant: anyone (who has the money) can use condoms, and anyone who has access to a doctor to give a prescription can use the pill and other hormonal birth control options that are more desirable, practical, and far more effective than condoms for a number of reasons you have probably already worked out yourself. 

Since the Affordable Care Act passed, a person on Medicaid can get a doctor’s appointment, prescription for BCP and have it filled with no out of pocket expenses--but with considerable bureaucratic and practical hoops to jump through. And even those of us on Medicaid who are most adept at navigating those hoops can get caught in a predicament that amounts to embarrassing yourself just to rely upon the kindness of acquaintances, paying more money than you can afford, or going without. This can happen because we allow these programs, deemed constitutional and essential by three branches of the federal government, to be administered by states as a prerequisite to states accepting them, and the result is that a person availing themselves of a federal program is extremely limited in care not only by what providers will see them (another horror story for another post) or how long they have to wait for that care, but by where they find themselves when that care is required.

All of this leads to a default conservative outcome, and as ultra-conservative as can be: the only way to have sex for free is to have it unprotected. Every other way you need a dollar in your pocket and/or a primary care physician. The implication of such a state of affairs is that those with more access to money and resources deserve more choice in their reproductive health than those who have less. Dan, who already buys his health insurance through the NY State exchange, was able to get a free flu shot while we were at Walgreens figuring out another thing we're going to have to make lemonade out of for the next three months, but as a Medicaid patient I would have had to pay for that too. And as we know, as a man Dan cannot get the pill; it's all on me, as it is for many women when they so understandably fail, even once, to make sure they are medically infertile when they end up having sex under any circumstances and find themselves where so many politicians seem to believe, if you follow the logical outcomes of the policies they support, is where they belong: pregnant and taking responsibility.

Birth Control Pill Over-the-Counter and federally-administered Medicaid are women's rights and social justice issues. The cheaper, preferably free, and easier to obtain reproductive health needs are, the better for some of our most vulnerable populations.

Living in Virginia: Our Nature Walk to Target

One thing that Google can ruin for you is the mystery of the woods. How, for example, would the Blair Witch Project have worked if the characters had had iPhones? As my Dad pointed out, since it took place in Maryland, they could have just walked ten miles in one direction and exhausted the hypotenuse of any wooded area in that state, but an instant birds-eye image plus satellite-sourced globally-positioned directions for how to get out? We don't have iPhones, but after three days and a lengthy Sunday visit from a Comcast guy, we did manage to get wifi in our new house.

Dan and I just moved to a cabin about eight miles north of Charlottesville, VA, near the virtual and physical "community" of Forest Lakes. Mainly, this seems to be a housing development and a Nextdoor website, but that's what often stands in for the more ineffable forms of community these days, particularly for the affluent. We are living in the same cabin I lived in my third year in grad school, and one thing I valued about it, besides its seclusion in the woods despite proximity to town, was the trails in the woods right behind the house for convenient, idyllic (light) exercise. I knew there was a housing development not far beyond the woods on my landlords' property, but in my year of living here I never went there, partly because why go there? and mainly because I wanted to feel that the woods were vaster, denser, and even more dangerous than they were, that getting lost was possible. Dan did not seem to have that orientation, because the first thing he did was to Google Map the trails behind the cabin and create a route by which we walked through them to cross a small stream to the housing complex, walk through it to a shopping center, cross 29 and end up at Target.

So we did it, equipped with backpacks to carry the cat food, kitty litter and groceries we planned to buy at Target, and not wearing the stylish workout clothes that we quickly realized are the uniform of people off in the day in and around Forest Lakes. The part of the trip that went through the woods was mercilessly short. Before ten minutes were out, we were climbing up a little hill to the housing complex and passing through its maze of streets named nonsense combinations of real but unrelated nouns like "Waterhill" and "Valleycross" and lined with pumpkin lanterns to indicate who would be offering candy on Halloween (most of them...second trip?). Pacing the housing complex was the longest and weirdest part of the to and fro journeys, and several women we passed (though for as many houses as we walked by we saw very few, perhaps five, people total) were inspired to say hello to us in a high, paranoid tone that seemed to indicate surveillance and (passive) aggression. Wearing our sweats, crappy sneakers, and backpacks, we must have looked like the contemporary suburban answer to the hobo.

After passing the swim and tennis club, two fast food restaurants, a bank and the entrance to a Food Lion, we got to 29, a divided highway (General Lee Highway) that's pretty busy as the main route into and out of Charlottesville. Here's where Dan lost his nerve, suggesting that we cross at a light where there would be no crosswalk anyway because people don't walk here. You're immediately suspicious to everyone if you do, so you might was well lean into it. What would Lee have done? The right move seemed to be to "dash" across 29, which was pretty easy, and then to climb up Target's landscaping to the back of the store, which conspicuously does not have an entrance. In fact it has several doors warning "no entrance." Once we were on the sidewalk again, I found out that we were not alone: three men with sacks and old sneakers were climbing up too, and I wondered, did these men also dash across 29? Are they also modern-day vagrants?

Actually they were Target's landscapers, but they seemed mildly inspired by our presence in Target's hindquarters, even if they had not figured out the details of how we came to be there, which would be a hard thing to guess. I've personally never met anyone with ideas like Dan's, so how could they guess his reasoning? I can barely figure it out even now. Inside, we cut about the most eccentric figures probably ever seen in the Hollymead Target at an hour on Monday indisputably owned by the affluent white stay-at-home mother. Buying 31 pounds of cat supplies did not seem to diminish this impression.

After that long walk with the strange interactions, the dashing across a highway, and the heavy backpacks, it was nice to have wild-caught tuna sandwiches with arugula and white wine and watch Columbo streaming before our first Charlottesville Bernie meeting that afternoon. The woods were emptied of a great deal of their mystery, but that was a tenuous mystery from the beginning, and the mysteries of suburbia are robust and I think only on the ascent.

We are Delivered: Reflections on the Food Stamp Challenge (post written by Dan)

Dan enjoying a dinner Republicans would be irate about (if paid for with SNAP benefits)
Steak, potatoes, green beans, and of course, alcohol!

It's now been a while since the end of our Foodstamp Challenge, and you see here the celebratory mood that attended our first meal "off of Foodstamps".  I'd like to say that the reason we haven't been heard from for days was the alcohol- and red meat-fueled three-day bender that we went on once we were released (and we did feel like it was a release!), but that's not exactly accurate (though after our martinis & a bottle of wine, we did forget to feed the cat his wet food before we went to bed.

Gorky is not amused.

The truth is we've been packing up for our move.  We leave town in just two days, and have been hemming and hawing over what books we should put in storage, and which ones to bring to Charlottesville (will I really get around to going all the way through The Brothers Karamazov in Virginia?  Or am I just kidding myself?).

I want to reflect on our experience of the Foostamp challenge, but it will probably take a few posts to really think seriously about it.

The one thing I'll say now is that being on Foodstamps, that is limiting all of our consumption the way we did, really did feel like a kind of culinary imprisonment.  Now, we could have drunk wine or beer, and had a cocktail or two throughout the Foodstamp challenge; there is no regulation or oversight of SNAP that actually prohibits these or any other kinds of treats while on Foodstamps, if you have some cash to pay for them, not just your EBT card.

But a lot of voices on the right exhort the moral wrongness of anybody on SNAP affording themselves any physical or emotional comforts beyond the basic needs of human survival.  There are arguments about using "taxpayer dollars" to pay not just for the virtuous consumption of the four foodgroups, but the unvirtuous consumption that extends beyond them.  Some forms of consumption are moral, and others deserve opprobrium.

Of course, there is little complaint from the right when the wealthy buy alcohol, tattoos, cigarettes, or other morally problematic products (and indeed, there's even a double-standard for the poor & the rich on illegal drugs).  But somehow, wealthy people's consumption decisions are morally unassailable.  Personal freedom of choice somehow entitles people to any choices they want--if they are wealthy.

An argument for the justification of policing poor people's consumption choices goes like this: "it's not their money; it's taxpayer money!  So we should get to exert control over, or at least pass moral judgment on what people on Foodstamps buy."

But poor people pay taxes, too!  15.2% payroll taxes from the first dollar of employment, plus income taxes, plus sales taxes that often add up to far higher percentages of their income than the wealthy investor classes (they mostly get to pay just 15% on investment income, even if it runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, or 20% once it gets to half a million or more).  So that "taxpayer money" is poor people's money, too!

Moreover, where is the outrage at other morally problematic expenditures, of far larger amounts of "taxpayer money"?  Somehow it cannot be found--at least not on the right.  There exists a great desire in certain halls of conservatism to morally judge and control poor people's behavior--and that desire has found increasing expression in American government policy for a long time in a way that privileged people like me & Jasmine rarely feel.

Well, we got a feel for it while we did the Foodstamp challenge, and it feels terrible.  It does not feel like freedom; it does not feel like opportunity; it does not feel like America.  The minuscule taste we got showed me that to be poor in this country is to be unfree, to be watched, judged, controlled, and bereft of true choice in one's life, much as life is for people who live under totalitarian or theocratic dictatorships.

We're glad to be done with the Foodstamp challenge.  It feels like we live back in America again.

Evidence of how our Jasmine makes our home excellent, every day

Unpaid Household Labor, of which I (Dan) am the great (and grateful) beneficiary (= "taker"):

Note the third (and most important) member of our household, or at least his grandest appendage.  According to Mitt Romney, he's actually a maker.

I wonder how many Republican politicians are actually "takers" of their spouses unpaid household labor in the same way I am?

How to Make Sardine Pasta

                                                        How to make Sardine Pasta:

I made this in its simplest iteration last night, our final dinner of the Foodstamp Challenge, with four ingredients: sardines (with their oil/liquid), pasta, onion and dill.

Step 1)

Brown as many onions as you have in the oil and liquid from a can (or 2) of sardines packed in olive oil. I used 1/2 lb pasta to 2 cans. You can alter the proportions as you like. Add salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Other nice, but unnecessary additions: fennel seed, fennel bulb, garlic.

Step 1-1/2)

No, brown them.

Step 2)

Add partly-cooked pasta while it's pretty stiff and a cup or so of pasta water. Scrape the bottom of the pan, soften the pasta, and cook until the liquid's gooey and almost gone.

Step 3)

Toss in sardines and any green herbs (we like dill best) at the last minute.

Step 4)

Enjoy with a big glass of water and copious self-congratulation on your personal virtue.

Unrelated, but to come back to an earlier comment:

Dan, who tightened his belt (literally!) on butter intake, showing he managed to leave a little bit left after the last breakfast of the week.

Bernie turning a corner? Young voter turnout Oct '15 => Nov '16

Since last week's release of fundraising numbers, and Bernie's huge rallies in Massachusetts, I think perceptions of his campaign are starting to take an important turn, with some who've dismissed him, even to the degree they are positively exploring how Bernie might change the terms of political expectations for Democrats in unlikely places.  This extends beyond potential cheerleaders or the putatively neutral to the likes of ultra-conservative Howard Kurtz, whose newfound engagement could be some kind of strategic bomb-throwing, or an attempt to be the right's canary in the coal mine.

An additional early (and potentially faulty) sign of a change in momentum is the first "defection" of a member of the Democratic establishment, AZ Congressman Raúl Grijalva (though, as head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on the fringe of establishment) who's become the first federally elected official to endorse Bernie for president (if NYC mayor Bill de Blasio follows through on rumors, this would be an even bigger indicator of establishment "melt" from Hillary)

Interestingly, this (perceived-by-me) shift in tone in the media has come at a time when poll numbers among the Democratic primary contenders have not budged nationally, or in early primary states (and in fact, while IA or NH have not budged, and a slew of more newly-polled states (links as of 10/8/2015) show Hillary with a commanding lead, and Bernie often in third place.  Why the change, then?

One answer explains why pundits are changing their tunes: Bernie is now polling better than Hillary in head-to-head match-ups with potential Republican nominees in the two swing states he's been most active.  Also, as Philip Bump of the Fix has shown cleverly, Hillary's flood of campaign-funds may well run dry before the year is out, while Bernie can go back to the well with his large number of small donors--650,000 at last count.  The Clinton campaign "did not disclose" (doesn't that phrase just sound like it was invented for Hillary?) its total number of donors.  And finally, Hillary's persistently negative net favorability ratings increasingly render her claim to better to being more electable than Bernie Sanders increasingly dubious.

But beyond the kind of short-term factoids like these which pundits attend to, there's a greater reason why they (and everybody!) should recognize the realistic chances of Bernie winning the nomination--and the general election (and hoping he does, unless you'd rather see a Republican).

It's buried inside the first national poll that shows Bernie in the lead over Hillary.  Now, before those in favor of Bernie get too excited about this poll, conducted for the Independent Journal (which seems to be a kind of conservative outlet), it should be noted that you won't see this on any poll-average aggregator, because it's an internet poll.

Why look askance at an internet poll?  The answer to this question is actually the reason why Bernie is the future Democrats should look to.  Traditionally, many internet polls depend on who shows up at a certain web-site, and as a result, their results are highly biased because liberals go to certain web-sites, conservatives go to others, etc.  However, examining the methods of Google, which carried out the poll, it looks like their Consumer Surveys division may have really solved this--and indeed with a sample of over 1000 likely Democratic voters (screened according plans to watch the debate next week), more than double that of any of the RCP-averaged polls, this looks like a very unbiased measure of likely-to-vote Democrats' preferences for Bernie vs Hillary . . . as long as they use the internet, that is.

And here is the bias that necessitates throwing this poll out of the averages: the population of the country that surfs the internet in this country is probably skewed in many ways, and definitely skewed young.  Thus, in a poll where Bernie beats Hillary 60%-28% among 18-24 yo, and 48%-32% among 25-34 yo, it's no surprise that we get a hugely different result from  most national polls, most of which still put Hillary out in front by 20%.

Indeed, the sample for this poll bears little resemblance to the electorate, in terms of age: estimating categories (Google breaks them up a little differently), see the skew in this poll compared to the Exit Polls from the 2014 Election:

Age Group	18-29	30-44	45-65	65
Google Poll	23%	27%	34%	17%
2014 Exit Poll	13%	22%	43%	22%

Clearly, this national survey of Democrats that would give Bernie a slight edge in October of 2015 looks nothing like the electorate that showed up to the polls at the last federal election.  That electorate, where Hillary runs well ahead in the last two age-groups, would give Hillary the win over Bernie easily.

But here is the key question: what do Democrats want the age-profile of the electorate on November 8, 2016 to look like?  If we want (and work) to make it look like one that would give Hillary the win over Bernie, then we will get an electorate that will likely give them the same result as the 2014 midterm elections.  

This is perhaps the strongest point in favor of Bernie's electability: a Bernie campaign and a Bernie nomination would be far more likely to give an age profile that looks like the bottom row here:

Age Group	18-29	30-44	45-65	65
Google Poll	23%	27%	34%	17%
2014 Exit Poll	13%	22%	43%	22%
2008 Exit Poll	18%	29%	37%	16%

That gave Democrats the best presidential election result since 1964.  

If we want something like that again, then we should look to and work for a similar electorate, for the good of our country.  We should not cling out of fear to the kind of presidential campaign (from the perspective of electoral age-profile) that must be at the heart of Hillary Clinton's campaign strategy. That is a recipe for de-mobilization, apathy, and disenchantment of the very youth voters Democrats need to win.

Even if you don't mind Hillary Clinton's policy stances, Democrats should back Bernie, because "We can win" beats "We're afraid to lose".

Badmouthing a Saint: We Find Fault with Brown Rice

Dinner Night 5: Aloo Gobi, Dal, Flatbread, Raita and...brown rice!

Dinner Night 6: We were riced-out so we had this roasted tofu and butternut squash with soy drizzle and a cilantro shower on its own. It's great that way.

As Dan and I round the bend into our final four meals, and mercifully, last evening without alcohol, which, as we've discussed, has been our greatest challenge, there have been a few notes and impressions thus far worthy of sharing. 

We ran out of butter. I roughly calculated butter under the $3 I budgeted for olive oil (which we still have lots of), but we only had about a stick of it going into the week, and there is about 3/4" of it being carefully maintained for tomorrow's breakfast. Why did we miscalculate butter? Partly because I always think we have it (file this under the assumptions of a person with a well-stocked pantry that need to be rethought to live on food stamps). Partly because when you are eating plain, low-calorie foods like plain oatmeal, brown rice, and bread with one egg, butter is a way of making the meal taste better, satisfy more, and get you to lunch/the next meal. When I have two eggs, I hardly need butter, but with just one, that second piece of toast is dry and the calorie content of the whole breakfast is down, so it comes in to the rescue. And the days when I work, I simply cannot make it from 7 am to almost 2 pm on a half a cup of oatmeal. I become homicidal in the lifeguard chair. I had thought I would be using a little pat of butter here and there to enrich pastas, soup, and dal this week, but I realized shortly in that we would run out, and my have we missed having as much of it as we want. In a week of circumscribed food, you notice the importance of things you took for granted before.

Cooking on food stamps is not as much fun. You may have noticed I am not against planning meals. In regular life, I rather obsess over it, and it's one of my favorite topics for contemplation when I'm up in my lifeguard chair making the big money. I have a rough idea of several meals I want to make over the course of a week, but I change it continually based on what we get from the farm share, what I have a craving for, and if I am inspired by a recipe I happen upon in my endless cooking-oriented procrastinations. Needless to say, when you live on this budget you struggle to come up with a plan to feed everyone for this amount of money, and there is nothing left over. At the beginning I noticed there were no sweets or tea. On day 2 I noticed there was no snack food (unless you want to eat an extra bowl of rice [see below]), and by day 3 I was painfully aware that the spontaneity had gone out of cooking, where I was compelled to execute the simple meals I had planned with the limited ingredients I could afford. I couldn't make an impromptu dessert or appetizer of spring rolls: I simply didn't have the ingredients or couldn't spare them. I couldn't change my mind and make something on a whim. The only wiggle room I had this week was a giant cauliflower I hadn't planned out which became aloo gobi on Indian night. Everything else was a limited-joy execution. Cooking seemed more like work to me this week than it ever has before.

"Fancy" or "fun" foods seem less appealing when I know I have to eat them with water. Dan articulated this first, and he is really right: there's been a sort of reversal in what foods we find it nicest to eat based on the fact that we can't have a glass of wine with them. The foods we see as the least celebratory (last night's roasted tofu and butternut squash being among them, although not because it isn't delicious!) are more pleasant to eat because we notice the absence of a glass of wine (or beer) less. We both agree that our last meal, sardine pasta, is bumming us out because it really deserves a glass of white wine. Normally, the meals we look forward to most are ones that have meat in them, because we eat it rarely. Typically, sausage or sardines at dinner would be a celebrated and special meal for us, but we've found they're sort of depressing when you can't complete the meal with a nice drink. For the record, I did consider buying sparkling water, but it wasn't in the budget, and it probably would have been even more disappointing than just leaning into the tap.

Thank you Asia, for all your wonderful, affordable dishes, but we have arsenic poisoning. It's no news flash that so-called "ethnic" cuisines (it would take not another post but a whole other blog to exhaust my problems with this term) are low in meat and make the most out of grains, vegetables, soy and a perilously-balanced egg on top. And while I think the notion of a "pantry" as a universal concept hides huge disparities in real people's kitchens (one bottle of maple syrup can be worth two or three families' worth of ketchup, mustard, mayo and margarine, to say nothing of the health differences in what people buy: pancake syrup versus maple, olive oil versus corn, etc.), Asian pantry items tend to be eminently affordable. Fish sauce, that old pubic sock juice I can't live without, is practically free. Soy sauce, sriracha, curry paste and even miso paste can generally be gotten for three dollars or so. The better the quality, the higher the price, but that's true even of things there are no cheap versions of. And that's just East Asian cuisines. Once you create an Indian spice cabinet (and if you can find an Indian store you can get massive quantities of spices for very cheap; Wegmans also carries some under the "Lakshmi" brand) you can make any legume or month-old vegetable amazing for a tablespoon of vegetable oil and some time. Any vegetable with garlic in yogurt makes fabulous raita. We've eaten almost exclusively Asian food this week (well I forgot the black beans, which you could call Latin American, I suppose, but which still fit, conveniently, into the "ethnic" category, which I guess means, "not French, not awful" or "may contain cilantro") and there's been lots of variety, terrific tastes, and all of it healthy. What's the catch?

Rice has too much damn arsenic. It's an exceptionally absorbent grass, and is often planted to clean up toxic sites where it absorbs whatever is in the soil. The problem of high arsenic levels in rice has been known long enough that the FDA has considered issuing recommendations on upper limits for rice consumption. Brown rice, which has the highest ratio of healthfulness-to-price of any food widely available, may be even worse than white rice because it has the outer shell of the grain intact. Growing rice organically doesn't address soil absorption, (check out the FDA's circumlocutions on the subject here) and at any rate, organic rice isn't affordable on the SNAP budget. This week, we've eaten almost two pounds of brown rice between us, and even if it weren't getting a little monotonous, it seems that's simply too frequent to eat rice to avoid dangerous levels of arsenic exposure. What this means is that one of the few ways we've found to eat whole grains on a SNAP budget exposes us frequently to a known carcinogen, which, if prolonged indefinitely, could have serious consequences. 

Only one more night of forced smiles ahead.

Value a major secret to living well: unpaid household work

If some people have been following our blog and been attracted to and impressed by what we've been eating--from Fried Rice to Dal & Aloo Gobi, or even just sausages with peppers & onions and mashed peas, you've hopefully realized that the reason we eat so well is all the cooking Jasmine does, how well she does it, and perhaps most importantly (especially for the SNAP challenge), that she cooks from scratch.

This last means that not only are our meals more healthy, because they don't have a lot of processing or preserving chemicals in them, but also that the cost of food is quite low, compared to pre-prepared or partly-prepared foods that I used to eat (like jarred spaghetti sauce, Trader Joe's Mandarin Orange Chicken, etc) before Jasmine was in my life.

But we can eat this way only because we, as a unit, have the time, energy, and willingness to invest in this unpaid household labor.  And by "we," I mean Jasmine, who does almost all of it in our house. We've been able to afford mostly because, until I quit Colgate, I was making a lot more money than she, as she was teaching part-time, on an adjunct basis, and not put upon with any (in truth, I should say "as many") extra administrative responsibilities as I was.  So she has had time & energy to spare for unpaid household labor.

This rather traditional (but not un-progressive) arrangement seemed to come rather naturally to us, partly because for Jasmine to achieve greatness as a poet doesn't necessarily depend on slogging through the trenches of typical academia, whereas for me to achieve . . . well greatness is not exactly the right word . . . as a political scientist, does require it.  But also because Jasmine has a knack and a penchant for performing such household labor excellently.  While I would be slogging at the office, Jasmine has always been willing to slog through the trenches of baking no-knead bread, perfecting new recipes, taking charge of nutrition & shopping, not to mention other important aspects of unpaid household work, like doing laundry, cleaning, doing the dishes.

We were lucky, though, because of how much money I earned: in fact, it put us in the top 25% of households according to income.  My salary alone was only around $15k less than couples where both work.

But this is not most people's experience: in 2008, the median income for (heterosexual) couples where only the husband worked was about $30k less than if they both worked; among couples where only the wife worked, it was $40k less.  Those differences of $30k-$40k of annual income in America makes the difference between a secure place in the upper-middle class (the median income of a family where both parents work would place them above about 85% of households in our country), and a struggle to pay for even some of the many accoutrements of middle-class life: nice house, two cars, vacations, sports or lessons for kids, family vacations, ample retirement funds & college funds, a TV or two, cable, smartphones etc.

And indeed, all this is aside from the constantly hard-pressed situation of single-parent families, whom the combination of government + consumption demands expect to work at least one full-time job, and often more, and who also get almost no help paying for child-care.  The idea that a single-parent ought to stay home most of the day and perform the kind of unpaid labor that Jasmine does to make our lives excellent, much less to provide care, and solid parenting, self esteem, and life-lessons for his (or, as well all know is far more frequently the case, her) own children would be anathema to most of the political & budgetary establishment of this country, who would never countenance the idea of such "takers" getting any outside support for the task of raising the next generation of Americans instead of working multiple low-wage jobs and paying through the nose for childcare.

Why do we live in a society where so many of the things that make family life rich, delicious, and a good environment for raising children are considered "luxuries" that ought to give place to retirement & college savings, and other "normal" middle-class consumption expectations (unless you're really rich)?

It's a tough question, and it's not all about politics or policy, but there are ways that policy can support people bucking the trends of our society, and does, in other countries, like Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, which Bernie wants to emulate.  In America, it will take a revolution to change these kinds of things--the political revolution that Bernie is calling us to is not the whole solution (just as getting Bernie elected president is not the whole of the political revolution this country needs; we need big change in Congress, too!).  But a political revolution is a good beginning to get people thinking about how lots of things need to be different in this country, including the how we value (and how our government encourages us to value) to value family & labor (both unpaid in the house, as well as outside the home).  That's one big reason why we're for Bernie.

Day 3 & Day 4 dinners, plus extra pics of Dan's most recent salon experience

Black Beans and fixins.

The best thing about leftover rice: Tamar Adler's Thai Fried Rice. Just don't expect to poach an egg that perfectly every time.

Another method of economizing that we've been employing for a year or so: I'm not great at cutting hair, but I'm as good as a lot of the people in Boston Dan paid $15 to do it. So I do it.

Comfort as Privilege

One impression I carry with me from childhood is of Cybill Shepherd swiveling around in a futuristic egg chair offering a defiant answer to a question that may or may not have been articulated in the hair color commercial: "Because I'm worth it." I would say that statement irritated me as a kid, probably because, without realizing it as such, I did not feel included in it. And I was underage for the target audience. To kids we market via basic, nearly primal desires for things like power, speed and sugar. To adults are added more esoteric and engineered desires curated by lifetimes of receiving all kinds of messages to the point where they feel unartificial and ineluctible. One that has been on my mind is the notion that to treat yourself by buying something is a virtuous act. Consider the pride with which a working mother might announce that she had her nails done, or how a college-age child might lecture a parent on how they need to work less and golf more, or how a department or office might tell its administrative assistant that she needed to take a day off to spend the gift certificate they pooled for at the spa. Work is the premise, or thesis, and the spa is the antithesis. The synthesis is robust capitalism in which workers self-medicate with consumption. I like the spa as much as the next person, but I'm very aware that I can't afford to go to one unless I'm working enough to make it seem much more necessary.

But I've been thinking less about how work necessitates consumption than about what kinds of consumption are open to what kinds of people. Plenty of people work long hours, but not all of them are well-remunerated for it. A family of four with two parents working 40-hour a week at minimum-wage jobs would earn about $2,550 a month, qualifying them for food stamps (the monthly cut-off is $2,668).  Yet I know many people, including Dan and me, who are able between them to work less than two full-time jobs and still exceed the SNAP threshold by a large margin. Those people can not only afford to pay for food from their income, but they can afford a much broader array of "treats" to add a certain level of comfort to their lives. Dan and I live pretty frugally, and there are many non-necessities we forego, such as tobacco, dining out frequently, driving new or expensive cars, clothes, or shoes, or living in a big apartment. If we become more affluent in the future, we will no doubt partake of more of those non-necessities, beginning with a living space that has two bathrooms and a dishwasher. Some of the non-necessities we do afford ourselves we would consider treats, like going out to dinner occasionally, or international vacations; others, like purchasing a farm share and more sustainably-raised meats, don't really confer any special treat sensation, but they are consumption choices we make to gratify our sense of justice and stewardship of animals and the environment. Then there's alcohol.

Alcohol is definitely something we'd call a treat, but it's also a basic part of our diet and our social lives. To me, it's impossible to think about good food without the beverages that go with it because I expect to have them together and I enjoy them so much more together. Like a salad of beets, goat cheese, and walnuts, it's hard to say which of the two would be best without the third, and that's how I feel about most foods without wine or beer. Alcohol also is an ingredient in much of our entertainment: our favorite thing to do together is to mix a cocktail and enjoy it together while we talk or cook or both. It's difficult to write about this and feel that many readers will appreciate my attitude towards alcohol for what it is and not write me off as an alcoholic or an apologist for my own self-indulgence. I'm keenly aware that the prevailing attitudes towards alcohol in our culture are fraught in many different directions. This is a country of bingers and abstainers, and I'm not a registered dietitian telling you cheerily to have one glass of wine with dinner for the bioflavanoids. I'm saying that across the world and throughout history alcohol has been at once a more casual and more indispensible part of human culture than it is presently in the US, and I really appreciate having it as a part of my life to be infrequently, although sometimes, eschewed or overconsumed, but for the most part used the same way people have used that even less-likely demon, bread, as a basic and beloved part of each day.

Being without alcohol this week has me thinking about the notion of comfort. With all alcohol off the table, I feel distinctly bereft of this comfort, and without the option for comfort. Some of this comes from the lack of other things that foodstamps could buy: I can't have a candy or an extra apple if I feel peckish, or just to make the fun of the evening seem to "last" a little past dinner. I can't make tea in the afternoon or an extra pot of coffee if we want it. But it's mainly that the light has been going out of our dinners and their preparation because they're forced into what feels like an excessive deprivation. Thus, the biggest thing I have learned so far about what it feels like to be poor is that the poorer you are the more limited the scope of comforts you can afford is. Booze is expensive, folks, although it hasn't always been that way and it isn't that way everywhere in the world. In the fruit stores in southern Italy where I bought food for many of our blustery picnics, they sold wine from kegs decanted into reused water bottles that were cheaper than Coke. Why can I have a coke this week, or any kind of candy, but no rotgut nero d'avola?

Consider that comfortable is a euphemism for rich: why do we consider comfort so much the province of the affluent, and ridicule the poor for the imagined sushi and lobster they are all eating, but congratulate the wealthy for taking themselves out for a sixty-dollar steak that will be cooked by someone making minimum wage? Why are we forcing the poor to comfort themselves, who for damned sure need comfort no less than the affluent, with tobacco and sugar while we enjoy the heart benefits of nice wines and wild-caught fish?

I have been dubious for some time, probably since September 11, of the weird and inflated status that safety seems to hold in our society. As the country dashed off to war against unknown enemies, I felt that the most abstract conception of our own safety (the victims were already dead, as were the perpetrators [not counting the people who would develop respiratory ailments as a result of their roles in the rescue and clean up who have found it hard to get their care paid for]) was used to justify actions that seemed reckless and unjust. And whose safety did those wars promote? When you look not only at the numbers, but at who died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is hard not to see them as the willful sacrifice of a poorer, less well-advocated-for sector of the society for the future safety of who knows whom? Safety was important in that historical moment, but not the safety of the soldiers. In an interview she did for the New York Times, Marilynn Robinson articulated very well this dubiousness I had long felt about how safety was functioning in our society: “What it comes down to — and I think this has become prominent in our culture recently — is that fear is an excuse: ‘I would like to have done something, but of course I couldn’t.’ Fear is so opportunistic that people can call on it under the slightest provocations: ‘He looked at me funny. So I shot him.’” Fear has been used as an excuse for instituting new policies and upholding others, but I would argue that it is the fear for the safety of the already safest members of our society that has motivated politics in recent years, while the least safe grow only more vulnerable in our gun-ridden world of widening income inequality. The poor are poorer, the rich more scared, and everyone has greater access to guns, especially children. We know, too, that the poor are not only the most likely to encounter physical violence, but to live in the areas most prone to noise, air and land pollution, the most susceptible to the ravages of natural disasters, and with the least access to quality education and decently-priced, well-stocked grocery stores.
The bottom line is that the amount of money we have is not related to our virtue, our worthiness as human beings, or how much right we have to the basics of human survival or to the unnecessary "treats" that make life livable, whether they be the wine that makes a meal really good, the martini at the end of the work week, or a well-founded sense of personal security when we eat our meals, breathe our air, leave our homes, or do our jobs. I'll be thinking of that during the next debate in which rich and thickly-sponsored politicians debate what the poor deserve.