Politics and policy

The bitter truth about sugar

April 14, 2013 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

Back in the early 1970s, before Boulder decided that such things were too gauche for the older parts of town, an old and somewhat cranky Greek American man named George had a gas station at Broadway and Kalmia Avenue.

I couldn’t tell you how much gas he sold, but he sure sold a ton of candy to the stream of kids leaving Foothill School. I’m sure I was a sugar freak much further than that, but pondering how to spend my scarce resources was a high in itself. It was my first hard-core addiction, and George was my dealer.

That may sound melodramatic, but for millions of Americans consumption of sugar and simple carbohydrates — think white bread — is an addiction that stimulates certain biochemical reactions in the brain and body.

“Because the feelings that come from low levels of serotonin and beta-endorphin are so hard to manage, sugar-sensitive people continue to be drawn to the substances that seem to make them feel better” — alcohol, drugs and sugar, writes Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D., author of “The Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery Program.”

Now studies are strongly suggesting that while obesity isn’t great for you, the real problem is consumption of sugar.

“It isn’t simply overeating that can make you sick; it’s overeating sugar,” columnist Marc Bittman wrote in the New York Times last week. “We finally have the proof we need for a verdict: sugar is toxic.”

Sugar is, of course, just one of the culprits in a complex problem that’s making Americans less healthy and driving up the cost of health care. Fat and salt are tasty contributors — as is free market capitalism.

According to free-market purists, markets will naturally meet and sate the desires of consumers. True. Problem is, what we want — indeed, what biology is screaming at our bodies to want — isn’t always good for us. Industry hires food scientists and keeps super-secret food laboratories whose sole function is to find out what we like, what we want more of — and how to make us want still more.

And that usually means sugar, fat and salt.

The goal of Big Gulp-sized processed food manufacturers has long been “to make … the foods we all hate to love that, you know, with those formulas and that marketing creates a situation where we buy more, we eat more, and the companies make more profits. And these are companies that are profit-driven. They are addicted to profits as much as we are addicted to salt, sugar and fat,” Michael Moss said on a Feb. 26 broadcast of NPR’S Fresh Air. Moss is a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist and author of the new book, “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.”

In a free market, we get to make all kinds of really bad choices about food, whether it’s allowing the torture of millions of sentient beings in factory farms or stuffing ourselves with food so far removed from nature that they contain hundreds of ingredients.

Processed food manufacturers — not to mention agri-giants and factory farming conglomerates — must answer to Wall Street and the desires of shareholders, Moss says, which makes it incredibly hard for them to shift out of sugar-fat-salt-additive mode. Some companies, most notably Kraft, have actually tried to ease up on the goodies, only to find they were losing market share to competitors who had no such compunctions. So Oreos went back to their original fat- and sugar-loaded, irresistible selves.

“I think what you’re looking at is a total inability on (the part of the processed food industry) to collectively decide to do the right thing by consumers on the health profile of their products,” Moss says a former CEO of Philip Morris, the tobacco giant that also owns such enormous food manufacturers as General Foods and Kraft, told him. The former executive, “no friend of government and no friend of government regulations,” went on to say, “in this case I can see how you might need government regulation, if nothing else, to give the companies cover from the pressure of Wall Street.”

Are more regulations the answer? No, answer free-market purists. Americans are living longer despite massive injections of sugar, salt and fat, so what business does the government have telling anyone what or how to eat, or trying to distort the marketplace?

That would be fine, so long as those who develop diabetes or need knee replacements because they are obese don’t expect American taxpayers to foot the bill for their eating choices.

I’m always surprised by the obesity defenders — what else to call them? — who loudly protest that hauling extra weight around is nobody’s business. I’m likewise baffled by those who seem to think life expectancy is the final measure of a good life.

How about feeling good today? Michael Pollan, author of the remarkable book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” argues “the diet we have invented for ourselves is making us sick.” His advice? “Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants. And avoid edible, food-like substances.”

To which I respond, Does Bit-o-Honey count as a plant?

Boulder’s ‘sequestration’ bomb

April 14, 2013 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

Do you hear that rumbling? That’s the sound of the next manufactured “fiscal crisis” from Washington, D.C. and it will start rising to crescendo over the next three weeks. You will soon hate the word “sequestration.”

Don’t know the term? I found the following succinct explanation from Paul M. Johnson of the Auburn University Department of Political Science (isn’t the Internet swell?):

“Under sequestration, an amount of money equal to the difference between the cap set in the Budget Resolution and the amount actually appropriated is ‘sequestered’ by the Treasury and not handed over to the agencies to which it was originally appropriated by Congress. In theory, every agency has the same percentage of its appropriation withheld in order to take back the excessive spending on an ‘across the board’ basis. However, Congress has chosen to exempt certain very large programs from the sequestration process (for example, Social Security and certain parts of the Defense budget), and the number of exempted programs has tended to increase over time — which means that sequestration would have to take back gigantic shares of the budgets of the remaining programs.”

And as Charlie Brennan reported in the Feb. 10 Daily Camera, Boulder is poised to take a massive economic hit if Congress and President Obama can’t come together to prevent sequestration. Brennan focused on cuts that would affect Rocky Mountain National Park, but also noted that the city is heavily dependent on federal money that supports its peerless scientific labs. To boot, because only a paltry 4.6 percent of its funding comes from state government, the University of Colorado Boulder leans more heavily on federal funding than many universities.

As Johnson explains above, politically protected programs like “defense” and Social Security would probably come out OK. Which means that everything else would take deeper cuts. Boulder could be headed for a budget apocalypse.

(Aside: Isn’t it curious that Republicans who insist government spending doesn’t create jobs freak out at the prospect of lost military jobs?)

I have friends who would revel in such a result. After all, they say, we’re only talking about “dead wood” bureaucrats, people who need a slap in the face and who will, in time, take their rightful place in the private sector. Perhaps as Walmart greeters, but hey, it’s a job.

The schadenfreude — German for taking pleasure in another’s misfortune — some Americans seem to feel about their fellows is not just distasteful, but also short-sighted. Whether you own a yogurt shop or a motorcycle dealership, you are a Realtor or a massage therapist, all those newly unemployed people won’t be spending as much on your business. You are going to suffer, too, if the sequestration bomb hits Boulder. (Believe me, state and local government officials are taking this threat very seriously.)

We hear from some quarters that refusing to raise the debt ceiling is smart policy, that it will force a much-needed reduction in the size of government.

But here’s another way to look at it: We’re all scofflaws. The debt is high due to money we borrowed to buy the “stuff” we Americans wanted — or didn’t.

The current national debt has reached an astounding $14 trillion. Here are the biggest contributors, according to figures collated by The New York Times from the Congressional Budget Office in 2012:

The Bush-era tax cuts: $1.8 trillion.

Iraq-Afghanistan wars and new military spending: $1.4 trillion.

Bush-era stimulus and TARP bailout: $997 billion.

Obama-era stimulus spending: $711 billion.

Bush-era non-defense spending: $608 billion.

Obama-era stimulus tax cuts (yes, Virginia…): $425 billion.

Bush-era Medicare Part D: $180 billion.

Obama-era health reform: $152 billion.

That doesn’t include the massive influence of the recession(s), which vastly reduced tax revenue.

With the possible exception of some true-blue libertarian-types, most of us probably supported some of that spending and opposed some. But guess what? It’s our debt. Not the government’s. Yours. Mine. And now we have to pay for it.

We can try to do that through draconian cuts to non-defense discretionary programs such as social services and scientific research. Problem is, we can’t get there from here, since such spending represents only a thin 15 percent of the federal budget (compared to about 20 percent for military/defense, 70 percent combined for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and about 5 percent for interest).

Under the rule of schadenfreude, we may think it better to have somebody else lose his or her job, especially a “lazy bureaucrat.” But I’ve worked in the private sector, the nonprofit world and more recently, in a public role, and guess what? There are lazy, incompetent people in all three, but most are hard working and honest.

We could share the load and pay higher taxes for the stuff we bought. That, too, has an impact, since every dollar of taxes won’t be spent, saved, invested or given to charity. But it’s far more equitable. Fat chance.

Endlessly putting off hard choices is not a sound approach. But there is a strong argument that now is not the time to drop the austerity axe; just ask Ireland or Britain. And if sequestration hits, we’re all going to pay anyway.

Let’s burn our ‘man cards’ and start again

January 1, 2013 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

Ben Fountain’s bleakly hilarious “Billy Lynne’s Long Halftime Walk” is one of the best novels published in 2012. It’s the acid-etched story of the members of Bravo Company, caught on camera by Fox News during three minutes of a chaotic firefight in Iraq. The administration sends the boys on a cynical “Victory Tour” to inflate sagging support for its dubious war.

And so the Bravos are in Dallas on Thanksgiving for a halftime show alongside Destiny’s Child. Wined, dined and fawned over, the men are not fooled. They are deeply cynical about their nation’s hollow gestures of support — yellow ribbons, hero talk, the clapping in airports. In one scene, as they are being ushered from the hallowed ground of the Cowboys’ locker room, a group of millionaire Sunday gladiators sidles up for an offline conversation.

“‘Lissen, we wanna know…’ (Cowboys player) Octavian’s voice is barely a murmur. ‘We, like, we wanna do somethin’ like you. Extreme, you know, cap some Muslim freaks, you think they let us do that? Like we ride wit yall for a week, couple weeks, help out. Help yalls bust some raghead ass, we up for that.’

“Billy sees that they are, up. They’re up for it. He tries to imagine the world inside their heads, and can’t. ‘I don’t think it works that way. … I don’t think the Army’s gonna be too interested in that.’

“‘Huhn. Sheee-uh. … (Y)alls sayin’ you doan need the help?’ …

“‘Sure we could use the help. But — look, you wanna do extreme things, join the Army. They’ll be more than happy to send you to Iraq.’

“The players snort, mutter, cast pitying glances his way. … ‘We got jobs.'”

I recalled the scene after seeing the now infamous advertisement for the Bushmaster .223 semi-automatic rifle, used by Adam Lanza to destroy so many lives in Newtown, Conn. on

Dec. 14. “CONSIDER YOUR MAN CARD REISSUED,” reads the ad next to an image of the unmistakably upturned phallic weapon.

Just like those would-be raghead-wastin’ Cowboys, men susceptible to such a marketing pitch must, at some level, feel that their “man card” had been revoked. But how? Why? And by whom?

After each new shattering incident of armed mayhem the national conversation swiftly divides between those (leaning conservative) who want to talk about “mental illness” and those (leaning liberal) who want to talk about easy access to guns. But here’s the hairy mammoth stomping around every American living room: Men. When it comes to mass slaughter, men are the problem. (Ditto for child molesting: well over 90 percent of molesters are male.)

So how is it that this glaring fact receives almost no attention in the mainstream media? But perhaps the problem is not so much men — most of us are pretty decent — as it is a deficit of mature masculinity.

The late 1980s and early 1990s were a short-lived heyday for the so-called “men’s movement” inspired by men like poet Robert Bly and writer Sam Keen. The label, alas, was swiftly tainted by everything from throngs of anti-feminist Christian men to embittered losers of child custody battles. It also was reflexively trashed in some feminist circles for the unspeakable crime of arguing that, whatever social advantages men might possess, they also face problems and deserve compassion in a changing world.

I like to say that men were once relied upon to kill mammoths — and most were in turn stomped by mammoths (or eaten by lions, etc.) before they had a chance to feel unneeded. Today we have no “mammoths,” few rites of passage, hordes of fatherless boys and few opportunities to become “warriors” in the spiritual sense.

Instead we have surrogates in the form of preening professional athletes, millions of grown men addicted to first-person shooter video games, absurd firepower (and the laughably elaborate technology to help kill docile game; somehow thousands of previous generations managed to do that without all the fancy gear) or diesel-guzzling behemoths with beds that never haul anything more than a cooler full of Bud.

Is it, as some utopian feminists have argued, the case that testosterone-fueled men cannot ever be truly redeemed (or trusted)? There are plenty of science-fiction scenarios in which women have organized societies that exile men to their barbaric ways, except insofar as they are needed to propagate the species. And some now argue that boys raised by strong single mothers or lesbians are better off than boys with present fathers. Is masculinity unneeded — a hindrance, a pathology — in a technological world?

On the contrary. In a technological world that has permanently altered what it means to be a man, we need healthy masculinity more than ever. Too many grown men are grounded on shoals of immaturity. Too many more have bought the lie that violence and domination define masculinity. Too many boys have no positive male role models in their lives.

It’s time we all protested by burning those old, distorted “man cards” and started talking about what it means — or rather, what it should mean — to be a man.

Email: claybonnyman@gmail.com

Mr. Romney, meet the least of these among us

September 26, 2012 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. … Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.

— Jesus, in Matthew 25:38 and 45

I swear on a stack of Bibles, Korans, Books of Mormon, Baghavad Gitas, L. Ron Hubbard tomes or Christopher Hitchens essays — pick your text — that I planned to write this column before GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney saw his mission complicated by the release of video footage in which he labels nearly half of all Americans lazy bums, gleefully smirks at the plight of mistreated Chinese workers and unilaterally declares a two-state Israeli-Palestinian solution dead in the water.

Dang. That’s a lot of damage for one puny $50,000-a-plate fundraiser.

I’m not going to repeat his remarks. If you haven’t heard them by now please email me the name of the anti-anxiety meds your doc has you on.

Even before Mitt’s-big-mouth-gate, I was aghast at some of the spittle-flecked anti-poor, anti-downtrodden, anti-unlucky rhetoric pouring from the mouths of certain enraged Republicans. In their version of reality, the less you have, the more responsible you are for the alleged collapse of the nation.

Examples:

You’ll recall the lusty cries of “yes” during one GOP debate when someone asked if a sick person without insurance should be allowed to die.

Then there was the critic of the idea of government intervention in the housing debacle as “subsidizing losers’ mortgages” (thank you, CNBC Business News Network editor Rick Santelli for this oft-repeated quote, which some say was the “rant heard round the world” that gave birth to the Tea Party).

And then we have the ever popular “makers vs. takers,” moochers and leeches on society, the subject of Romney’s blithe claim that 47 percent of Americans (Obama voters all) are suckling at the public teat and have no intention of loosing their lips. A cluster of lazy bums who don’t deserve the time of day, much less freebie handouts from the virtuous 53 percent of noble, god-fearing job creators.

Well, here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to take Romney and like-minded people on a tour of a Boulder care facility where I do volunteer work. Few people even know it’s there, tucked away where it does not afflict the comfortable. I genuinely love being there.

I’d like to walk the halls of this institution and have the Romney-ites meet the hundreds of residents, most of whom are disabled, ill, suffering dementia or elderly and require focused care. Many, perhaps most, of these “losers” and “mooches” receive federal assistance in the form of Medicaid. They are, in most cases, “the least of these” that have come in for such political thrashing of late.

To the glib reply that their families should care for them, many require literally round-the-clock care (which they receive; I am always impressed with the people who work there, many of whom make little more than minimum wage). It’s easy to judge until we have been there; shall we drop the stones?

I’d also like to introduce Romney and friends to my friend Brian (not his real name). He struggles with a serious mental illness that prevents him from working full time. He gratefully accepts the gift of public housing, which keeps him off the streets, as well as medical care for his devastating illness.

I’d also like to take them to dinner at Pat and Candy’s house (again, made up names for privacy’s sake) to meet the couple and their two children. Pat lost his job not because he’s a “loser” or “lazy,” but because the economy collapsed (arguably because of the “haves” on Wall Street). He’s relieved to receive unemployment benefits to keep his family afloat while he continues to search for work and does some retraining in hopes of finding another job.

And, for a change of pace, I’d like to take anti-moocher crew to meet the two billionaires and one multi-multi-millionaire I’ve met in my life. The first two received their fortune via inheritance, and not a lick of work. Nothing wrong with that, but it was always fascinating to witness their dubious “morality” (and whining!) as compared to many a poor person I’ve met. And the multi-multi has frequently cost taxpayers through irresponsible behavior. Each clung to their enormous assets with palpable fear.

Are there able-bodied people who game the system? Of course. But not as many as the Angry Right would have us believe; follow-ups to Romney’s 47-percent claim show that many are likely Republicans. And it’s worth remembering that not all disabilities or disadvantages are visible.

So no, Mr. Romney, Mr. Ryan and your ilk: “Having not” does not incline one toward laziness or immorality any more than “having” makes one a virtuous asset to society, no matter what your neo-Calvinist beliefs tell you.

Mormonism: Post-Christian, maybe, but hardly Christian

September 2, 2012 by Clay Bonnyman Evans

If Mitt Romney is elected president in November, it will be an event of historic significance. Perhaps not quite as historic as in 2008 when Americans elected the first African-American president. Nonetheless, it will be striking: Romney will be the first arguably non-Christian — let’s say “post-Christian” — elected to the office.

Should it come to pass, this would be a significant sea change in a nation that heretofore could barely bring itself to elect a Catholic, i.e. a member of the oldest Christian faith extant.

Yes, I hear you. I hear all the objections, the furious renunciations. Let me just say that I do not make the argument lightly, I am far from the first, and I do not intend it as an insult in any way to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as Mormons.

First, let me acknowledge that most Mormons think of themselves as Christians. Many take offense at the notion that they are not and it’s widely agreed that Mormon culture squares neatly with that of conservative Christianity. But they do not get the final word.

Just as Barack Obama represented a kind of a transitional stage between black and white — his father was African, his mother Caucasian American — Romney’s Mormonism occupies a kind of nuanced in-between when it comes to religion. There is no doubt that Jesus, the indisputable center of the Christian faith, figures prominently in Mormonism. But it’s also true that the Mormon understanding of Jesus, God and other tenets varies significantly from those of traditional Christianity.

Mormonism is an evolution and outgrowth of Christianity, just as Christianity was an evolution and outgrowth of Judaism, as Buddhism evolved out of Hinduism. Many faiths that arrived after Christianity flowered give Jesus a role, even a central role, but no one would call them Christian. To say that Jesus is central to a faith is not to say that faith is Christian.

Take, for example, Islam.

Muslims consider Jesus to be a messenger of god and, indeed, the messiah. He is mentioned frequently in the Quran and while Muslims do not believe he was crucified, they do accept that he ascended into heaven to be with God. Some believe he will return on the Day of Judgment.

But there are critical differences. Because Jesus was not crucified, he did not die for the sins of humanity. There is no trinity in Islam and perhaps most importantly, he was a mortal, not the son of God.

Mormonism, founded in the 1840s is different from traditional Christianity in so many crucial ways it’s fair to say that it, like Islam, is an evolution from the earlier faith (making no value judgment on the evolution). Here are just a handful of key differences:

Mormonism disputes that the Bible is a completed work. As Islam added the Quran to the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament, the new American religion added the Book of Mormon.

Christianity holds that Jesus is God — inseparable, along with the Holy Spirit. Mormonism teaches that Jesus is a god, in fact, a mortal who achieved the status of a god (which is available to other mortals).

God, in Mormonism, “has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s” (from “Doctrine and Covenants, 130:22). He was at one time a human being and he has a wife, the Heavenly Mother.

Those are some pretty notable differences.

But I don’t make such a controversial argument simply to provoke. Rather, I make it to celebrate the ever-so gradual shedding of various “tests” we have imposed upon ourselves when it comes to electing presidents. If you aren’t male, white and (almost always) a demonstrative Protestant, you haven’t got a chance.

When it comes to religion, we have chugged happily along in spiritual violation of the Constitution, which reads, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

And frankly, the fact that no woman has ever come close to becoming president is evidence of deep-seated sexism, though I suppose Hillary Clinton in 2008 was progress. Meanwhile, around the world there’s been Thatcher, Gandhi, Merkel, Benazir Bhutto and Megawati Sukarnoputri — even Islamic nations are ahead of us — the list goes on.

Romney clearly feels a need to downplay or hide the religion of his birth, and unfortunately, his instincts are almost certainly right.

In a saner world, that wouldn’t matter. Neither would a candidate’s age, race, sexual identity, creed, class,religion, nor even lack of religion.

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