TUNA: The Unsubstantiated Nasty Attack, and how to deal with it

Upon venturing into the world of blogging, one will inevitably stumble upon one of its significant downsides: The Unsubstantiated Nasty Attack (TUNA).  Regardless of what you write, and especially if its at all controversial, somebody who disagrees with you or feels left out of your blog post will make sure that you know about it. You know the culprit, usually goes by the name Anonymous. How does s/he get around to commenting so frequently and everywhere? The comments are usually short, don’t address the central theme, and are insulting to the author. Something along the lines of “Why don’t you take a long walk of a short pier, you dirty hippie” –by your dear friend Anonymous.    

So how does one deal with this. Everyone has heard, “Don’t listen to that, s/he is just bitter and mean.” Or, “You can’t take things on the internet personally.” Well, as with everything, it’s much easier said then done. Recently I wrote a relatively thorny post  that resulted in me getting TUNAed:

“Sam, you ignorant slot. Opps – my foreigness…
When unemployments is as high as it is, there are no jobs beneath people who are here legally.

Perhaps before you write your next article, you might want to do some research. Just a thought”             

I was angry for a while (about 5 minutes) and decided it was a great topic to write about. In the midst of me thinking about what I was going to write, I realized that I shouldn’t be upset because this guy is an idiot. First, he wrote something mean about me personally, which is juvenile and sophomoric. Secondly, he told me to do research, but made an unsubstantiated claim himself just a sentence earlier. Thirdly, I know that I did research (spent an hour looking for counter arguments) and even linked it into the article.  So, here are my suggestions avoid TUNA as well as coping with it:

1)      Do Your Research. There is nothing that brings out TUNA like having typos or factually incorrect information.

2)      Play Devil’s Advocate. You have to foresee where the attacks will come from, and defuse them in the post itself. If you put in a stereotype, make sure you preface it as such. Saying something like “I know this is not true for everyone, but Asian females are terrible drivers.” (Lame example, I know) But that preposition gets your point across without having your comments section ravaged by TUNA.

3)      Accept Blogging Limitations. With reader’s short attention span, blogs have to be succinct and to the point. It’s not possible to fit everything in, and if you did, probably nobody would read it. Let other people address it in the comments section, and you can agree with them there.

4)      Take the high road. If you think it was a TUNA, then so did everyone who read your post. They might even defend you. If not, dissect Anonymous’ argument and write well reasoned counter argument. It shouldn’t be hard. Obviously you can’t do it with all of them, but responding to some will make you feel better. 

5)      Eradicate TUNA. If you see it on someone else’s comment section, do something about it. Defend that person; it will make you and the writer feel better. S/he might even go and look at your blog and leave a comment.

6)      It will get easier. I suspect that the longer you’re in the business, the easier it becomes to shrug off these mean spirited attacks. So it’s ok to get worked up over the first few. However, I’m assuming that it will lose its charm eventually.

7)      Don’t be “That Guy”. If you have ever been a culprit, don’t do it again. It only makes you feel good for a few minutes, and you usually get ripped on by everyone else. If you have something to say, people will listen, just make it a sound argument like you would with your friends.

  

Debunking Republican Talking Points: They Took Our Jobs!

I often hear members of the right wing claim that illegal immigrants take jobs away from hard working Americans and put a strain on our economy. On the surface this seems like a sound argument. After all, they are getting paid, not paying taxes, and are more likely to be socio-economically disadvantaged with all the baggage that comes with that. Any reasonable person, regardless of party affiliation, will agree that this is a serious problem and that people should not enter this country illegally and once caught should be deported.

 However, the notion that these illegals are preventing Americans from getting employed is incorrect. The jobs these impoverished people have are hard, low paying, without benefits, and generally unappealing to any person who might have other options. I worked as a foreman for a moving company for 4 summers in college. Don’t ask why. The job starts every morning at 7 AM and sometimes goes past midnight. There are no days off and the starting pay is 9 per hour plus tips. So a typical week could have 60-90 hours of back breaking labor with the requisite carrying of couches up spiraling staircases or under the unforgiving rays of the summer sun. One could easily make 1000 bucks a week doing this job. Sounds like a job for “hard working American”? In reality, Americans are few and far between. At my particular company, it was mostly Guatemalan, El Salvadorian, and Mexican. I was the only one with legal status. Over the years, I have seen many Americans try this job on for size, but they typically didn’t last past the first day. More reputable companies, such as Gentle Giant, employ mostly Lithuanians, Romanians, and Pole kids who come to the States for summer jobs.

 So if for some reason all illegal immigrants stopped showing up for work, the employer would not be able to fill their positions. Obviously ever person has a price, and there are companies such as Casey and Hayes that are unionized and get time and a half for work after 5 PM and past 40 hours (I’m jealous). However, most companies would not be able to sustain those higher salary requirements and would close. This is just not an American job market. The same goes to the other unappealing jobs. I read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly book recently and he said that Americans just can’t hack it in a restaurant kitchen and that he would hire an Ecuadoran over an American any day.  You also can’t find 50 Americans to stand outside of Home Depot at the crack of every dawn in the hope of getting some roofing work. 

 You, the reader, might disqualify my and Mr. Bourdain’s experiences as anecdotes and a quick internet search might lead you to this detailed counter argument. While I agree with the premise, that there is nothing inherently anti-American in these manual labor jobs, I disagree with the conclusion. It is not the illegal worker that depresses the salary and thus making the jobs unappealing to Americans, but rather the employers that lowers pay by threatening workers with their illegal status. This argument was much more eloquently summarized in this New York Times Editorial. Its not that illegal immigrants took your jobs, it’s that employers are not giving them to you. So lay off the poor workers and go after the companies that employ them.   

Don’t Trust Reputable People

This Stimulus bill and subsequent squabbles over the economy has made one thing particular clear: just because someone claims to be an expert does not make them one. It is bewildering that people who are not economists by trade or by education are given an equal weight in these discussions. A perfect example of this is Amity Shlaes, a conservative pundit with a seemingly authoritative title senior fellow for economic history at CFR. With this title in tow she consistently writes in the Washington Post that FDR caused the Great Depression. I am not going to argue here with conservatives on whether she is correct or not, but I would like to point out one thing: She graduated with an English degree from Yale, and her position at CFR is one of Historian. While everyone is entitled to an opinion, not all opinions are of equal value, especially in a mathematical field like macroeconomics. So when prominent economists like Paul Krugman  and Brad DeLong point out that her math is incorrect, their opinion should be more authoritative.  

However, a regular reader would not know who to believe and given this ambiguity on who is more authoritative in this field, he or she will naturally side with whatever party affiliation he or she already had. This is how supply-side economics still lives on despite having very few actual prominent economists. There are plenty of economists who are Republican, but there is very few who claim that FDR caused the Great Depression. Side Note: George Will is not an economist either; he got his PhD in Politics. The same logic goes for Think Tanks.  A lot of them are partisan and one should do research on the specific organization before taking its report at face value.

This might come off as a partisan bashing, but it’s meant more of warning to readers that they should look critically at anything they read and not be impressed with the author’s laurels. The best way I found of doing this, is by listening or reading opposing views. I listen to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck etc… I read David Brooks, George Will, Amity Schlaes, Bill Kristol, The National Review, and the New Republic. Obviously not everyone is as obsessed with politics as me, or has as much free time, but just knowing that an author has an agenda should make any reader cautious of the analysis.

There are also websites like http://mediamatters.org/  which monitors conservative media. If you’re a person who gets your news from Fox, you might be surprised the extent to which you get manipulated. The front page story today, shows that only 5% of all experts invited to discussing the stimulus bill are actually economists! Therefore as a viewer, you should understand that an assertion made by a non-economist that tax cuts are more stimulative then “pork” should be heard as a political statement and not an economic one. The same goes for liberals who make unsubstantiated claims.

Lastly, there are plenty of people who cite their information using reputable sources and therefore don’t need to be experts themselves. However, as seen by this Keith Olbermann’s piece, the wording could be systematically cherry picked to make a partisan point rather then an unbiased analysis.  Another recent example is most news organizations and Republican congressmen using a fake Congressional Budge Office report to state that stimulus package will not create jobs right away.  So beware of who you trust and try to look for responses from sources you find reputable. 

A Guide to Unemployment

So, I got laid off on January 12^th. Every person I have mentioned this too always says “I’m Sorry”. I always reply “Don’t be”, because I want to focus on the future and not dwell in the past. I have gained valuable experience at a very good company that supported me in all of my endeavors and spent thousands of dollars on my professional education. They even recently gave me 500 dollars to study for the GMAT. So now I have lots of time on my hands that I am trying to actively fill. A person at a networking event asked how I spend my day, and if I had any advice that she could pass onto her recently laid off friends. I gave her a rundown of my daily activities and she seemed impressed and thought it was sound advice. So I thought I would share it.

 I have some basic rules that I try to abide by:

 1.      Time is the most valuable thing. Now that I’m unemployed, the last thing I want to do is waste this opportunity. I believe that if I’m not advancing my career professionally than I should definitely develop in other areas, if for no other reason then to have something to talk about at interviews and with friends. I know plenty of unemployed people who have done nothing with their time and it seems like they have lost that time.

2.      Go to bed early. This is key to having a productive day. Nothing kills your day like waking up at noon. I usually go to bed at Midnight and get up at 9-9:30.

3.      Don’t drink alcohol during the week. This is not a hard and fast rule, but unless there is a good reason i.e. people who are working are also drinking then you shouldn’t either. It saves money and time.

4.      Don’t watch TV during the day. There is nothing on anyway, and if you want to watch TV shows then just wait until your roommates show up and watch it with them. In the morning when I’m making breakfast and eating it, I listen to NPR instead of the usual Sportscenter. Now that I think about it, don’t sit on Facebook either. I don’t have this problem, but I know many who do.

5.      Come up with tasks to accomplish each day. My day is pretty much full, and not necessarily with impressive tasks. However, if you’re always doing things that are important enough to make it onto a mental task list then they will add up and you will end up with a productive week/month etc.

6.      Get hobbies and stick with them. They don’t have to be big or productive, but they should give you satisfaction. For example: I read the Op-ed page of the Times every day. It takes me ten minutes, but because I do it every day I feel very connected to the world.

7.      Work towards securing a new job. This means applying to jobs, going to fares, going to networking events, badgering your friends and family. Do not pass up an opportunity to get ahead. Try to get out of your comfort zone, it will help you expand that zone and maybe turn a weakness into a strength that you can leverage once you get a job. For example, I have a hard time talking about myself and therefore never went to social networking meetings with those stupid name tags and the repetitive “Hi, my name is so-and-so.” Now, I force myself to go and I’m getting better at it.

8.      Work out. This is the time to make that New Year’s resolution of losing weight actually come true. Now there is no excuse for not making it to the gym. If you can’t afford it, you can find workout regimes online and do it in your living room. If weight isn’t an issue for you, you should still work out. Being unemployed will inevitably weigh on your psyche and self-esteem. It could even cause you to be depressed. I heard on NPR that the top four most life shattering events in a person’s life are: loosing a loved one, marriage, birth of a child, and loosing your job. Working out will release endorphins and make you feel better about yourself and make you feel more productive on that particular day. 

 

I like to keep my rules simple so that I can actually follow them. I’m sure there are plenty of others out there

 

Careers in Virtually Anything

I Wish I Had Never Left the Couch.

By Christian Sherden

First, an anecdote: ten Italians walk into a bar, that is ten people from Italy, with Italian passports, walk into the bar where I work, and one of them who speaks perfect English asks me if the Rock Band Tournament is in progress.  I tell him sadly no, but that people are still playing if they want to check it out.  They all look excited and hurry off into the dark corridors of the small dive.  Within seconds, they have returned to me disappointed, and the man with perfect English says in condescension: “The whole time you meant Rock Band the video game?” and then they leave.

I assume what they thought they were going to find was ten to thirteen live bands battling back and forth, rocking out until the speakers exploded.  Instead, they stumbled on three people hacking plastic sticks against a rubber drum set, finger picking on five brightly colored buttons and a girl yelling into a microphone with a voice like a dying car alarm.  It would be an easy situation to confuse if you were slightly foreign because a sign that reads “Rock Band Tournament” could not be anymore straightforward if you happen to be looking for live music.

The point of the story is that the Italians were right to be baffled and disappointed: why should people show up to a bar to play music on a video game when they could have gone down the street to see people play real music?  The fact that no one did show up for the tournament is irrelevant (it was the first night we were holding it and no one really knew about it).  People today will opt to exchange real life experience for virtual reality, and I do not blame them.

At a random Rock Band Tournament in Alston, gamers have the chance to win money and concert tickets.  These same people, had they applied the same amount of time and energy to playing real instruments, might not have a chance at making any money or winning anything; they might just not be that talented.  In this scenario, Rock Band is far more worth the effort than the real experience.

Later, on ESPN mind you, I happened to catch some sort of Madden 2009 videogame extravaganza where the best football gamers from all over the country were transported around in one of those awesome, all included, super comfortable, mobile command unit, bus homes (you know, the kind that celebrities and politicians use), where they played each other for prizes, money and the chance to hang out with professional football players.  This to me is incredible.  There are so many fantastically talented college football players that will never make any money from all of the years of hard work, injuries and dedication they have to their sport and possibly some of them will never meet a professional all-star.  Yet these kids who have put in much less effort, risked so much less and could do it all from the comfort of their homes (or in this case the comfort of their gas powered estate) already have a leg up on their real world counterparts.

There are so many more examples.  My cousin’s friend makes a decent living off of playing Guitar Hero around the country.  A friend of mine from college was ranked number five in the world in Dance Dance Revolution and he still receives endorsement checks.  There are people who plug into Second Life that could be millionaires if they sold the businesses they own in a virtual world but instead they choose to live off of six figures a year just from the fake income.

So when my parents told me that I needed to get off of the couch, turn off the television and apply myself to the real world to get a good job one day, little did they realize that if I threw a few more passes to some polygons in a digital simulation, instead of playing ball with my friends, that I might be making more money and traveling the country, instead of working in a bar with angry Italians.

GMAT- a mixed bag (halfway through the course)

Having completed nearly half of the GMAT course, I feel like I have a little more insight into test and my issues with it. I just took a second diagnostic test and went up a mere 20 points to a 590. This is a little disheartening because I felt like I did better then on the first one and wanted to see a jump of 30-50 points. On the baseline test I felt like I was guessing most of the time and longing for being 17 years old when I remembered the quadratic equation and was a FOIL wiz. However, on the second test I felt a little better, I felt like I knew all the areas being tested and my guesses were at least educated…or so I thought.

 

After examining my results, I still have the same problems as before: I get lots of the easiest questions wrong. Despite my greater grasp of the concepts the second time around, I still made similar mistakes. The only difference is that now I was making logical deductions and before I was wildly rolling my eyes as I picked a random answer.

 

The greatest inference that can be made from this exercise is that the system preached at the classes really does work. I have been pretty diligent about doing my homework the way it is intended to be done; by following the instructor’s methodology. However once I got to the diagnostic, I just tried to apply the approach mentally without writing everything down. A lot of the advice is in the form of making tables and picking solutions to disprove the equations and such. With my bloated self-confidence, I resigned to tracking my results mentally. In hindsight this approach proved foolhardy.

 

Not to be dismayed, I am looking on the bright side. First, I improved by 20 points which is how much my friend increased her score by every time she took a diagnostic and she started around where I did and ultimately got to 700. Second, I improved solely on my math score and uncharacteristically did poorly on the verbal. Third, there is so much homework assigned that I can only finish it and not necessarily learn it. Because of this, I could only recognize the math rule I should know as apposed to actually knowing it. Once I finish the classes, I will be able to go back over all the materials and memorize them, make flashcards, identify my weaknesses, and overcome.      

Moral Hazard is Unaddressed in the Bailout

The bailout plan failed yesterday, and like everyone else I have been following it very closely. Yet I have not heard anyone mention what in my view is fundamentally wrong with the bailout plan, an inherent flaw that has doomed its success from the very beginning. The issue of moral hazard, referring to the destructive tendency people sometimes have of deliberately failing if they think it’s advantageous to do so which, is at the root of the crisis and still remains unaddressed.

 

Let me preface my reasoning with some general outlines of the situation as it is debated today. Regardless it these subsequent claims are valid, this is how the conversation is being structured.

1) There is a credit freeze due to toxic mortgage-backed assets on the books, making banks jittery about lending to institutions that might go belly up any minute. This could affect everyone’s personal paycheck as some companies rely on this credit to make payroll.

2) The plan had oversight, removed golden parachutes, and allowed for equity stakes and some mortgage relief to ‘main street’.   

3) Buying 700 billion dollars worth of bad assets in an attempt to shore the credit market and resell it later for a possible profit is essentially economic socialism.

4) Those who oppose the bailout argue that it will promote irresponsible behavior and help the very people who caused this mess instead of punishing them.

5) This plan was massively unpopular with the general population, and I cynically would add that a portion of the congressmen who voted against it did so solely for personal political gain. Obviously I haven’t done a comprehensive study, but Fox News said that the elder and retiring Republicans voted ‘yes’ while the younger Republicans voted ‘no’.

 

So, as we have been told over and over again by Bush and Paulson, buying back these bad assets will relieve moral hazard and let banks return to their usual way of business. However, I do not see how this could happen because it doesn’t actually remove the moral hazard. The conditions of this bill are unfavorable to the stressed institutions, as they should be since it’s the tax payer’s money. Therefore in an attempt to minimize losses these institutions will only sell the bare minimum to the Government. If they sell too much, the industry will have more confidence in them, but at the steep cost of giving the US government an equity stake and the CEO having to settle for the copper parachute instead. As a result, they will try to sell as little as possible and hope that that will be enough of a signal to the rest of the industry to lend to them. This will work and the credit will loosen up. But it doesn’t remove the moral hazard as companies will try to hide their bad assets in an effort to ride out the crisis and sell them at a higher price; just like the Fed. promised to do on behalf of the taxpayers.

 

Inevitably, however, some CEO will be too optimistic and not sell enough of the toxic debt and his company will have to file for chapter 7. Since the name of the game is market confidence this will scare the herd. Analysts will be screaming that the government bailout isn’t working and clamoring for better terms of the buyouts. Meanwhile, there will be another credit freeze because the essential issue of moral hazard is unresolved. Nobody knows how many bad assets are on other people’s books and unfavorable buyout conditions will not totally remove them as these companies will try to sell as little as possible.    

 

Proponents could argue that this bailout gives companies a last ditch valve distressed companies could use to unload their bad assets and therefore prevent from going under. However, the ploy of securing a loan under the false pretense of being a sound business and then selling the toxic assets to the government to secure enough cash to rebuild their tarnished brand is exactly the moral hazard that lenders want to avoid. 

My Journey Through GMAT: A Prelude

I have recently signed up for a GMAT class and decided that it would be interesting to keep a written record of my journey to the Holy Grail of a 700.

 

To put things in proper context, I’ll start at the very beginning. My roommate has been vigorously studying for the LSAT for the last 2 months. He has 3 hour classes on Mondays and Thursdays with about 10 hours of homework due for each class. He does most of it, which seems pretty insane. Also, he doesn’t go out on weekends anymore because…well that’s just how the number of hours in a week adds up for him.

 

This home-front situation coupled with my dislike for my current employment birthed a cockamamie idea that I should be more productive with my time. Having practically exhausted my new employment search, I started vigorously looking around for graduate school programs that would peak my interest. After a few days, I was armed with significantly more information, but my career path was still no narrower than “the world is your oyster’ approach I was raised with.

 

I am intrigued by the idea of a joint degree and believe that one of them will be an MBA. I am also inclined to think that I could go and get just a plain-old vanilla MBA. Or I can get a different degree that does not require a GMAT score. So 2 out of 3 aint bad, right? My family and friends disagreed: “Why would you take a class, pay money, waste loads of time on a test you may or may not need?” This logical line of thinking would have probably killed my ambition if I wasn’t so restless and with loads of free time at work. This time was spent researching GMAT classes and one in particular happened to be letting prospective students attend the first of a nine part course for free. With this angle, nobody stood in my way: “Yes, of course go to a free class and see if you like it and what the test is all about. After all you might see the material that it is testing and decide it isn’t for you.”

 

So I took the class and enjoyed it as much as such things are enjoyable. There are 16 people in the class, with everyone wanting a 700 and half the class expecting a 750! After class I was still unconvinced, so I took a practice computer adaptive test offered on their website. It was a pretty infuriating test, not by itself, but because I couldn’t remember how to do anything. Fractions, percentages, 2 equations with 2 unknowns were once my playthings in my AP math class playground. Now we interacted like ex-coworkers bumping into each other on the street; we once had an engaging dynamic but now can only keep up awkward small talk.

 

Anyway, I bombed the test or so I thought. I got a 570 which is within striking distance of 700. Ironically, I got an equal percentage of hard questions wrong as the gimmies. Needless to say, there was much room for improvement. This notion was reinforced by a conversation with a friend who had a similar experience and ended up with a 700.

 

The last things in my way were money and wasting time. I didn’t much care for wasting time, but throwing money away, especially such large sums is unlike me. On a whim while riding on the elevator, I was thinking of whom I could pawn this cost off on. Brazenly, I waltzed into my boss’s office and presented him a well articulated bullshit reason, something about my career advancement and increased marketability to our clients. They bought it! Well almost, they reimbursed me 500 bucks. So now the cost came down from a whopping 1390 to 890. As a side note, there was a promotional code box when filling out the credit card information. I googled “GMAT promotion code” and the first link led gave me a 10% discount. So I talked myself into studying for a test I might not need that I could possibly do well on, because I have lots of free time on my hands for 760 dollars. As they say, “Here goes nothing….”   

The Internet is not just for porn

By: C. Sherden

Americans are the most infuriating people when it comes to the topic of politics because the typical American wants to have a new and edgy opinion about candidates, policy, party lines, whatever, but I would say that a majority of U.S. citizens have no facts in their verbal arsenals to use in a debate that should be structured around truths.

 

For my first example, I will take us to a conversation overheard outside of a bar.  Two strangers were sharing a cigarette break, discussing the differences in the tax plans of the two presidential candidates.  The talk was loosened a little by the wonders of alcohol, but it was coherent enough and articulated to the point where it was obvious that both parties were conscious and able to make what they thought were intelligent points.  I started eavesdropping at one of those all-too-perfect parts of their dialectic: the bigger guy was mid-tirade and finished with “I don’t know about all that dude, but I’m voting with my wallet,” he then proceeded to punctuate this point by taking out his overstuffed wallet and wagging it in front of the face of the smaller gentleman.  In a lightning quick response, the more diminutive fellow said “Well then that’s definitely McCain.”

 

Here’s where it gets tricky for people who refuse to do any research and instead let word-of-mouth or political heresy to determine their opinions.  Who hasn’t seen a McCain campaign add where John says he will lower taxes more than Osama (excuse him, Obama)?  It was said on television so he can’t be lying, which to some extent is true, but the smallest amount of research shows that tax plans are not as black and white as overall raising and lowering.  A simple Google search for “taxes Obama McCain” produced a side-by-side comparison of the tax plans on the Washington Post website.  Now, while it is true that McCain is lowering taxes a full 1.7% more than Obama, anyone who is making less than $112,000 a year (more than 60% of the voting population) is getting a bigger tax break with Obama than with McCain.

 

So, if we return to the two gentleman talking outside the bar, the larger gentleman who wants to vote with his wallet should be voting for Barack, unless of course he happened to be a member of 0.1% of the American population that makes more than $2.87 million a year, then he will get a huge tax cut from McCain.  Although, millionaires tend not to hang outside of dive bars in Allston, wearing ratty Iron Maiden t-shirts.  In fact I bet people who make that much money don’t even carry wallets, they have some sort of trained animal that knows how to hurl a Black Card at the peasants that handle immaterial assets like money.

 

Yet the littler man was entirely convinced that he was correct.  In his mind, he knew that McCain was going to significantly lower taxes, so if he were to want to make more money in 2009, he would vote for McCain in his own disinterest.  It is this approach to politics that lets Sarah Palin say in her Vice Presidential Acceptance speech that she did not approve a bridge to nowhere when, oh looky here, on another quick as possible Google search for “Palin bridge”, it turns out that she definitely did approve the monstrous waste of a project.  She lied to everyone in her acceptance speech, but so many Americans took her at her word because apparently the internet is only good for shopping and porn.

 

Less than five minutes on a computer, looking at reliable sources like newspapers and established institutions, not blogs (especially not this one) or discussion forums, will reveal the truths behind the flashy presentation that both candidates will provide us as we approach November.  Do a little bit of research then talk, not the other way around.

Are You Qualified to be a Vice President?

            I am sure most of you have been following this week’s Republican National Convention with awe at how quickly Sarah Palin has rocked the political world by revitalizing her party’s enthusiasm and by putting their rhetoric back on the offensive. In particular, she has galvanized her supporters by berating an easy scapegoat, the ‘liberal media elite’ and their perceived inappropriately negative coverage of Sarah Palin’s family issues.  I, as well as most, agree that personal family matters should not be too closely scrutinized. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t substantive reasons to question Sarah Palin’s qualification for being VP or her campaign strategy. The most bothersome aspect is that her campaign is so flimsy. She is running on being an average mom with small town values, and a reformer, but this platform is mostly irrelevant and suspect at best.

What does being a good mom or a bad one have to do with being the Vice President of the United States? Now, to set the record straight, there is nothing wrong with the vice presidential nominee being a woman, or having five kids, or having a pregnant underage daughter, nor a Down syndrome infant. This is not what I have against her or her campaign. What I don’t like is how she is using her family as a political asset. In her acceptance speech, she went out of her way to parade her family in front of the nation. The implication here is that she is a ‘real person’, a hockey mom, with small town values with common life issues that every American can relate to. This is completely irrelevant to a White House campaign. As Obama pointed out, we should not make this big election about small things. Therefore, the fact that Sarah Palin seems like the PTO mom everyone knows, has nothing to do with her qualification as a Vice President. This seems eerily familiar to Bush being ‘the guy you can have a beer with’ argument made in 2000. How well did platform of ‘being just like you’ work out eight years later? The fact that this is a significant talking point amongst her constituency and the TV pundits, underscores the fact that she has little to run on. It is the media’s job to point this obvious fact out, and criticize a campaign strategy that has nothing to do with the issues at hand and stop focusing on Bristol and Trig.

Leaving the family issue alone, the spotlight should be focused on her small town values. I can see why the Republican base can get excited about a candidate that represents their ideals. But ask yourself a question, “Could you, yourself, be a Vice President?” The answer is an obvious, “No.” Therefore, just having small town values does not qualify one for such a high post. The position in large part requires meeting important worldly dignitaries to discuss cosmopolitan issues. Having small town values inherently implies being from a small town, which in turn decreases your exposure to different personalities and types of interactions. So, having small town values is not an asset, but a hindrance on the world stage. This is not to say that people from small towns cannot be successful, but their success will be in spite of their lack of exposure instead of because of it.  

John Stuart and The Daily Show astutely posited the question: what are small town values? To propose an educated guess, I would say, it means being a pious, friendly, family and community-oriented individual. Seems reasonable enough, but Sarah Palin is an extremist and would be on the outlier in any small town. She is against abortion even in cases of rape and incest. She has an extensive list of books she tried to ban as Governor of Alaska, not from the school curriculum, but from the public library! This action puts her in line with another charismatic far right extremist. She would become the laughing stock of the world. Just look at that list and see how many of those books you have read, and if it is democratic to outlaw them from libraries. Can you really support someone who thinks “To Kill a Mockingbird” is un-American or someone who may or may not support the secession of Alaska?

Is this the type of reform you are waiting for? Her supporters will cynically read this argument and point out that she is, in fact, a reformer for different reasons. They have been hyping up the fact that she took on the republican establishment in Alaska. But as more and more information pops up about her history, she seems to be a politician just like all the rest. She is against earmarks, but when she was Mayor of Wasilla, she was all for them. She is for cutting spending but as Mayor she ran a deficit. She is against the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’, but only after criticism against it mounted. All this will be discussed in much greater detail in the coming months, but it is not the main issue.

The real reason why you shouldn’t support Sarah Palin is because she is a Republican, and simply put, the country does not need a Republican in office right now. This is not to say that Republicans don’t have valid arguments and strong political messages. It is just that their small government stance is not appropriate for the state our economy is in. The way to get out of a depression is to increase government spending in order to stimulate the economy. This is what FDR did in the 1930s and it is what is needed today. You may, validly, think that the Democrats over-promise and overtax, but that is much better then another Great Depression, or even a Japanese-like ‘lost decade’, read that link and see if it rings a bell. You can think that Barak Obama is unqualified, a celebrity, and is soft of national security, but the fact is that he is a Democrat that will try to stimulate the economy the way FDR did and that is our most pressing matter. Lastly, to those who are more focused on national security, it will be a lot harder to run a strong war campaign if everyone back home is clamoring for economic relief. So with two-thirds of Sarah Palin’s platform being irrelevant and the third under much scrutiny, she should not sway independents her way nor is she the change we actually need to stimulate the economy.