But shortly after being sworn in, Barack Obama will go from "the change we've been waiting for" to "the change we expect right now". Ed Glaeser has some wise words on what we can and should expect from the new president:
"Americans cannot afford to treat the president as their personal ideological champion, or to judge him on economic conditions that he cannot control. Let’s hope that this president is as competent as he seems, and let’s judge him on that competence."
There is a strong tendency to give presidents too much credit (or blame) for economic conditions. Glaeser cites research suggesting that people tend to base their votes on the economic growth performance of the president's first three years--I assume this refers to economic conditions in general, not that people are pouring over GDP data while waiting in line to vote.
Politicians promise more than they can deliver and people expect it. But there is real danger in that. One of President Bush's failings was being overly ambitious, taking on the democratization of the Middle East and overhauling Social Security at the same time, ultimately not accomplishing either. Hopefully the Obama administration will avoid this pitfall. Their task is to set a realistic and attainable agenda and look for the places where government action is the most effective.
Obama is a smart, thoughtful, and capable person. He has the chance to be a great president. But there's only so much even a great president can accomplish.
Schadenfreude Function: Noun Definition:enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others Example: Does it make me a bad person that news of Sarah Palin's ignorance and immaturity elicits such Schadenfreude?
I'm probably going to Hell, but I'm enjoying myself right now.
I suppose it goes without saying that Tuesday night was a profound and moving moment in American history. Several of the thousands gathered in Chicago's Grant Park carried posters proclaiming:
"Rosa sat, so Martin could march, so Barack could run, so our children could fly"
The New York Times provides a simple narrative for why Obama won:
"His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world."
Interestingly, exit polls paint a similarly straight forward picture of how Obama won. Paul Krugman summarizes the results:
"At the risk of being a party-pooper, I’ll second Andrew Gelman: there’s not much evidence in the vote for anything besides a broad shift to Democrats, almost the same (~8%) across all the states, and probably a reaction to the state of the economy, stupid. There were a few big anomalies in McCain’s direction — what’s the matter with Arkansas? — and a few in Obama’s, mainly Indiana.
But basically there was a national wave against Republicans, suggesting that we don’t need a complex narrative."
Definitely check out Gelman's exit poll analysis. There are some interesting trends, though not shocking: Obama won big among young voters and his largest gains were among ethnic minorities. We saw the usual trend that wealthier voters were more likely to vote Republican, but the relationship changed at the highest income levels:
Obama won 52% to 46% among people with incomes over $200,000. These are the people most at risk from Obama's "socialist" redistribution plans. Robert Frank over at the Wealth Report has some theories on this. It seems likely that given the current climate, wealthy voters placed more emphasis on the nation's financial stability than on their own. Of course, you can't discount the possibility that people are betting against Obama actually raising taxes in a recession.
Someone recently emailed me this video, with the subject "A Subtle Urging to Vote".
I am going to vote tomorrow, if for no other reason than because my fiance will kill me if I don't. It's not that I don't feel strongly about the election or that I think there are no differences between the candidates. But, as economist Gordon Tullock explains, voting makes little sense when you do the cost benefit analysis.
Consider the benefit side, for a minute. My vote will only count if the outcome of the election would have been different had I not voted. This means I have to cast the deciding vote; otherwise the outcome would have happened even if I had stayed at home. So what are the odds that I'll cast the deciding vote? It depends on where I live:
The states where a single vote is most likely to matter are New Mexico, Virginia, New Hampshire and Colorado, where your vote has an approximate 1 in 10 million chance of determining the national election outcome. On average, a voter in America has a 1 in 60 million chance of being decisive in the presidential election.
That's from research by Andrew Gelman, at Columbia University. So it's not that my vote doesn't count, it's just that it counts very, very little. And I'm not even lucky enough to live in a swing state.
So does this mean I think voting is a waste of time? Not really. While the benefit side is low (at least as far as expected payoff), the cost side is pretty low too, though perhaps not low enough. I'm lucky enough to live next door to my polling station. Others are not so lucky. Hopefully there will be more support for the idea of moving Election Day to the weekend so no one has to work it around their job.
We can't make the benefits any greater, but we can sure make voting less costly.
Yes, I know I've already covered this. But for some reason, it just won't go away:
About half way through the interview, Barbara West quotes Karl Marx and asks "how is Obama not being a Marxist?" when he calls for changes in US tax policy. Later on she worries that Obama envisions turning America into a socialist country like Sweden.
Maybe some people are content with Barbara West's understanding of the history of economic thought. But for the rest of us, it's worth checking out the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, a wonderful resource maintained by the Library of Economics and Liberty. According to them (and, well everyone else who actually knows what these terms mean), Socialism is "defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production". Examples of socialist countries throughout history include the Soviet Union, Cuba under Castro and China up to the mid to late 1970s. On the other hand, Social Welfare States like Sweden are not socialist, since they have private ownership of production.
This is not a minor technical issue. "Socialism" and "Marxism" are politically charged terms that evoke powerful images. Socialism failed as an economic model. Robert Heilbroner, himself a socialist for much of his life, was ultimately scathing in his appraisal of the idea:
"Socialism...was the tragic failure of the twentieth century. Born of a commitment to remedy the economic and moral defects of capitalism, it has far surpassed capitalism in both economic malfunction and moral cruelty."
Clearly, linking Obama to the failures of Socialism is a powerful political strategy. But we can get lost in the rhetoric. The following chart from the Wall Street Journal shows proposed tax rates by both McCain and Obama, as well as under current law:
There are clear differences between the two candidates on tax policy. But to put this into context, Obama favors increasing the top marginal tax rate to 41%, roughly the same as during the Clinton years and lower than under Ronald Regan.
Serious people can debate the merits of Obama's tax policy. Gregory Mankiw, for example, has raised some interesting concerns about the effect on work incentives. But unfortunately much of our national debate isn't conducted by serious people; it's conducted by people like Barbara West.
I know, I know. I need to spend less time writing about stuff Sarah Palin says. But I swear, I can quit any time I want.
Sarah Palin recently criticized Obama's tax plan, saying, "this is no time to experiment with socialism". But is a little more income redistribution really "socialism"? Economists for Obama weigh in:
The definition of socialism to which most economists, poli sci types, etc, adhere is that socialism is that form of economic organization in which the state controls the means of production.
While there are some examples of this sort of thing in just about any market-based economy (geez, the government controls the military!), the idea that redistribution per se implies socialism is ridiculous. Hell, the second welfare theorem states that in a perfectly competitive economy (I bet that got the attention of all those neoclassical macro fans!), you can get to any desired (Pareto) efficient allocation with laissez-faire marginal tax policy and the right set of lump-sum...wait for it...redistributions! I guess in current parlance you might call that socialism the Arrow-DeBreu complete-markets way.
Trade theory works the same way. The idea is that there are winners and losers, but the winners win more than the losers lose, so they can compensate them.
For those of you who don't know, the Arrow-DeBreu model is the foundation of neo-classical microeconomics. While people typically think of economists as advocates of completely unfettered markets, a stroll through standard economic theory paints a more complicated picture.
And while we're on the topic of redistribution, would Sarah Palin like to explain why Alaska receives more federal revenue than any other state?
Like both my parents, and 3 out of 4 of my grandparents, I was born in the United States. I pay taxes, watch baseball and vote. Plus, I've held a US passport for years. So I was a bit surprised when I found out that (according to Sarah Palin) I wasn't a "real American". At a recent rally, she remarked:
"We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C... We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans. Those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us. Those who are protecting us in uniform. Those who are protecting the virtues of freedom."
Now I have to assume that Palin was making an empirical statement and not reciting vague platitudes to stir up the Republican base. So I thought we could go through the charges*:
Small-town Americans fight our wars: This is a bit misleading. According to research at the conservative Heritage Foundation, rural areas are slightly overrepresented in the military. Specifically, as the rural concentration of an area rises, so does the proportion of military recruits. However, most Americans live in suburban/urban areas. As a result, 80% of military recruits come from areas where at least half the population is urbanized. This means that there are lots of soldiers from big towns and cities who ought to be offended by Palin's comments.
Tim Kane, the author of the study, has an interesting explanation for why this is. Since military recruits are actually slightly better** educated than the general population they have more to gain from the technical job training the military has to offer. This would be particularly attractive to rural recruits, as Kane explains:
Rural areas generally offer a less flexible, thinner job market. The military extends job opportunities into these areas, with technical training that is usually unavailable otherwise.
Small-town Americans run our factories: Again, this is a bit misleading.Research from John Quigley at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City looks at the differences between urban and rural employment. A higher proportion of rural workers are employed in the manufacturing sector (1 in 5 vs 1 in 8). However, since urban workers account for a much larger percentage of total employment in the US, there are more urban manufacturing workers than rural ones. People in small-towns are more virtuous: Most people buy this one. After all, small-town folk are decent and pure, and avoid the vice that's common in the big city, right? Fortunately Reason Magazine is there to set the record straight:
Illicit drugs are nearly as common out there as they are in cities and suburbs. In 2007, a survey of 8th graders by the Monitoring the Future project at the University of Michigan found that country kids were 26 percent more likely to experiment with drugs than middle-schoolers elsewhere. Overall methamphetamine consumption among adults and teens is more than 50 percent higher in the country.
The story with alcohol is worse still. "Relative to their urban counterparts, rural youth ages 12 to 17 are significantly more likely to report consuming alcohol," says a 2006 study by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. Excessive boozing among adults, it noted, appears to be no less widespread in Mayberry than in Metropolis.
Nor is the countryside exempt from social problems often associated with the inner city—such as, if you'll forgive me, out-of-wedlock births. The federal government apparently doesn't tabulate these births according to whether they occur in urban or rural areas. But it does break them down by state, and wide-open spaces are no guarantee of responsible sexual behavior.
The highest rates of births to unwed mothers are in Mississippi and New Mexico, both of which have high rural populations. The most urban states, New Jersey and California, do better than the average in out-of-wedlock births.
What about the unspoken charge leveled by Palin? Her comments clearly suggest that big-city "fake" Americans leach off of small-town folk who grow their food, protect them from hard, and manufacture their sex toys. Unfortunately for Palin, the data suggest otherwise. According to John Quigley, transfer payments (government payment such as tax rebates, welfare, etc) are a much larger proportion of total income in rural areas (19% in 1999 vs 12% in urban areas) and have been growing since 1983.
So yes, I was offended my Palin's remarks. But I wasn't the only one:
*Throughout this piece I will use the terms "urban" and "rural" according to the definitions used by the US Census department
**98 percent of all enlisted recruits who enter the military have an education level of high school graduate or higher, compared to the national average of 75 percent (see study link above)
Since being mentioned 2 dozen times at Wednesday's debate, "Joe the Plumber" has become an instant celebrity. But beyond the media craziness, his example illustrates some interesting points about policy and how it's portrayed in the campaigns.
Catherine Rampell at Economix points out the crucial distinction that was somehow missing from the debate: when Joe said he wanted to purchase a plumbing company that makes $250,000 per year, was he referring to revenue or profit? As she explains:
"If he was talking about revenue, then Senator Obama’s plans probably will not affect him. Taxes on corporations are based on profit, not on revenue, and so Senator Obama’s $250,000 threshold refers to profits above $250,000. (Which Joe’s company cannot be making if it is bringing in $250,000 in revenue but has even 1 cent in expenses.) Senator Obama’s reply bungled this point. He said, 'If your revenue is above 250, then from 250 down, your taxes are going to stay the same.'"
Assuming this is the case, then Joe's story is actually representative of the majority of American small businesses:
"...most small businesses earn much less [than $250,000] in profit. In 2009 about 35 million tax returns will report some income from small businesses, according to Roberton Williams, principal research associate at the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. Of these only about 660,000 tax units — or 1.9 percent — would see an increase under Senator Obama’s tax proposal.
Joe probably overstated how much his company makes, though. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean wage for a plumber is $47,930 per year. A plumber in the 90th percentile earns $73,500. (Joe’s company is apparently a two-person company; if we assume the employees each take half of the company’s profits basically in lieu of a salary, which is not necessarily the case, then the $250,000 to $280,000 profit figure means that the company is exceptionally successful.)"
So Joe really was an appropriate metaphor, though not the one McCain would have liked.
Joe's story became even more interesting after we learned that he is not a licensed plumber (See the first link in this post). This raises the issue of the wisdom of professional licensing, which is common in many fields. This practice was heavily criticized by Milton Friedman (the godfather of the free market) as an unnecessary barrier to entry into many fields, one that artificially raised the price of services by restricting the supply of workers. The standard argument is that inept plumbers, for example, would be driven out of the market by competition, rendering the licenses superfluous.
Certainly there's room for debate on a job-by-job basis. Inept doctors may lose repeat customers by killing them. Similarly, faulty construction can put people in serious risk. But Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution provides several examples of ludicrously unnecessary license regimes:
"In Alabama it is illegal to recommend shades of paint without a license. In Nevada it is illegal to move any large piece of furniture for purposes of design without a license. In fact, hundreds of people have been prosecuted in Alabama and Nevada for practicing "interiordesign" without a license. Getting a license is no easy task, typically requiring at least 4 years of education and 2 years of apprenticeship."
Which category does plumbing fall into? It's an issue that should perhaps be debated.
"Under Senator Obama's plan, the tax on income above $250,000 would increase by 3 percentage points from 33 percent to 36 percent. This means that [Joe the Plumber] could expect to see his tax bill rise by between $0-$900, assuming that this plumbing business would be his entire taxable income. If he has additional taxable income, then he would see a larger increase in his taxes."
American liberals need to acknowledge that increases in marginal tax rates* create a disincentive to work and to investment. But American conservatives need to get more realistic about the magnitude of the effect.
For a long time, the top marginal rate was over 90% and was 50% as recently as 1986. One can legitimately argue that such high rates were a strain on the economy. By contrast, the top rate is currently 35% and, under the Clinton administration, was almost 40%. There's not a whole lot of evidence to suggest that small changes in marginal rates have such dire consequences. Again, Baker illuminates this point:
"In response to a few notes, we have had far higher tax rates and much higher economic growth in years past. So, Joe might claim that he will shut his business and fire his workers if he has to pay another $900 a year in taxes, but the evidence suggests that there are plenty of other plumbers who would be happy to run the outfit even if the tax rate were somewhat higher."
Maybe we should calm down about this.
*Marginal tax rates are the rates on income earned above a certain point. For example someone filing individually in 2008 faces the following marginal tax schedule:
10% on income between $0 and $8,025
15% on the income between $8,025 and $32,550; plus $802.50
25% on the income between $32,550 and $78,850; plus $4,481.25
28% on the income between $78,850 and $164,550; plus $16,056.25
33% on the income between $164,550 and $357,700; plus $40,052.25
If Sarah Palin had one word to describe John McCain it would be "maverick":
In the actual debate (I know, it's hard to tell the difference), she used the word "maverick" 6 times. The message is that John McCain doesn't run with the herd; he ruffles feathers in both parties in order to get the job done. Is this reputation deserved? Fortunately, this is something that can be measured.
There are, to be sure, occasional mavericks in Congress... John McCain (R-AZ), normally one of the very most conservative members of the Senate, has been the worst fitting member of the Senate in each of his eight Senates, most notably the 103rd (2001-02), where he frequently voted with the Democrats, perhaps in pique over losing the race for the presidential nomination in 2000.
They go on to note, however, that McCain's "maverick-status" has changed over the years:
In our dynamic model, very rapid shifts are foreclosed by our imposition of the restriction that individual movement can only be linear in time. This restriction fails to capture a few cases. For example, John McCain (R-AZ) started as a conservative, became a moderate after losing the Republican nomination to George Bush in 2000, and recently reemerged as very conservative.
So according to the data, McCain (on average) is very conservative, but his voting is highly variable. Poole and Rosenthal accurately describe him as an "occasional maverick". More cynically, Bryan Caplan suggests that this has been a long-term strategic decision on McCain's part:
Is this just coincidence? Is being an outlier a smart way to get national attention? My guess is that being an outlier is just a high-variance strategy that happened to pay off.
So where does the term "maverick" come from, anyway? According to John Schwartz, writing in the New York Times:
In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.
What's more interesting is the Maverick family's legacy:
Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.
This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.
For roughly 400 years, the Maverick family name has been synonomous with American liberalism and progressive ideals. And unsurprisingly, Terrellita Maverick (Murry Maverick Jr.'s sister) is unhappy with her family's name being used to describe John McCain:
Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”
“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”
Your individual vote will never matter unless the election in your state is within one vote of a dead-even tie. (And even then, it will matter only if your state tips the balance in the electoral college.) What are the odds of that? Well, let's suppose you live in Florida and that Florida's 6 million voters are statistically evenly divided—meaning that each of them has (as far as you know) exactly a 50/50 chance of voting for either Bush or Kerry—the statistical equivalent of a coin toss. Then the probability you'll break a tie is equal to the probability that exactly 3 million out of 6 million tosses will turn up heads. That's about 1 in 3,100—roughly the same as the probability you'll be murdered by your mother.
Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) provides a similar explanation. Many people retort, "if everyone thought that way, then no one would vote". But, of course, many people do vote. The real question is, given the limited impact of any one vote, how seriously (or "rationally") do people take this opportunity? Bryan Caplan has many interesting thoughts on this issue.
But now voting-agnostics have another line of argument: voting can kill. According to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association:
On the eight election Tuesdays, a total of 1,265 people -- drivers, passengers or pedestrians -- were killed during the hours that polls were open, equivalent to 158 per day or 13 per hour. On the 16 Tuesdays a week before and a week after election day, 2,152 people were killed in the same time span -- equivalent to 134 per day or 11 per hour.
Obviously liberals were never going to like Sarah Palin. She's a feisty, devout Christian who hates reproductive rights almost as much as she hates polar bears. And looking a lot like Tina Fey only makes it easier to parody her:
But then again, she hasn't done herself any favors. Compare this SNL skit to the transcript from her actual interview with Katie Couric, which was cited in a scathing piece by Fareed Zakaria:
COURIC: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?
PALIN: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the--it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.
Wow. And this was after weeks of prepping from senior McCain advisors and consultants. You're better off asking Paris Hilton for policy analysis.
Unfortunately for Palin, the right-wing is also starting to notice her, let's say, "shortcomings". Writing in the conservative National Review, Kathleen Parker says:
"Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother...
It was fun while it lasted.
Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League...
If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself."
But before we're too hard on Palin (and trust me, no one has less respect for her intellect than me) Paul Krugman reminds us that John McCain isn't exactly a great mind himself, especially when it comes to the economy:
"We’ve known for a long time, of course, that Mr. McCain doesn’t know much about economics — he’s said so himself, although he’s also denied having said it. That wouldn’t matter too much if he had good taste in advisers — but he doesn’t."
This, of course, is the same John McCain who once said interest rates should always be set at 0%. So when McCain and Palin get together, it's not exactly a MENSA meeting.
In the interest of fairness, however, Don Boudreaux provides a uniquely libertarian perspective on the issue:
"Mr. Zakaria is incorrect to suppose that these traits separate Gov. Palin from other candidates for high political office. Calls by Senators McCain and Obama for cracking down on "speculators" are full of classic and wrongheaded catchphrases, as is Sen. Obama's vocal skepticism about free trade. Gov. Palin is merely less skilled in passing off inanities and claptrap as profundities."
This is true on some level. But Governor Palin is working really hard to distinguish herself.
"please, can we get over the idea that small towns in the heartland are the “real America”? A long time ago I complained when Bush said he went to Crawford to be with “real Americans”: I asked, “And what are those of us who live in New Jersey — chopped liver?”
Today’s America is an overwhelmingly urban/suburban nation, in which a majority of the population lives in metropolitan areas with more than a million people. It’s ethnically and culturally diverse. Mercer County — which is a lot more than Princeton, which I admit is a bit unreal — IS what America looks like today. And a fine nation it is."
Last I checked, 79% of Americans live in urban areas (the census data is here and the technical definition of "urban" is here). And yet no candidate (not in this election, not ever) has substantive urban policies, only rural ones.
On a related note, what is a "hockey mom"? Looking at the census data I couldn't find that category.
By now the news of John McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin for his running mate is well known and the Republican camp is touting it as an enlightened pick that furthers the cause of the feminist movement. I've hear several right-wing pundits declare that although Palin is pro-life and a former beauty queen, as the mother of five and a female governor, she is a role model on par with Hillary Clinton for the "average female voter."
So far, I have seen no record that Palin's history of leadership has supported women in America. Particularly not to the extent that Clinton's investments in Head Start, healthcare, prenatal care and sexual health education supported women for nearly two decades. Palin's views on the choice movement alone suggest she is intolerant of the rights of women who disagree with her views on reproduction and morality. In fact this nomination has also been criticized as an insult to women.
What I have seen in the media is in-depth coverage of Palin's personal life. Reports that her 17-year old daughter is expecting and will marry the father of her unborn child surfaced today. The choices that teens make about their sexuality and their fertility are often debated (I'm recalling the media circus that Jaime Lynn Spears faced recently) in American culture. However, speculation around how Palin handles her own daughter's pregnancy has no place in speculation on how she will lead and advise our country's political policy. One would hope that faced with this public scrutiny she would understand the need for privacy and personal choice in reproductive matters.
More importantly, this is a chance for pro-choice feminists to use the incident as a platform to judge Palin not as a mother or a soon-to be grandmother, but respect her right to choose and advice her own daughter privately --judging her own her own record as a politician, which up until now is fairly unimpressive.
Chris Voigt, executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission , has just wrapped up his experiment of eating only potatoes ...
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This is a place where current events and life's mundane trials are examined under an academic lens. In an attempt to celebrate free thought and detached analysis, we invite you to read, suggest, complain, contribute and most importantly - think.
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