“We are doing this to help consumers make better choices.”

How does this help the consumer to make a choice?  You help people make choices by requiring food to be labeled, as we do in Philadelphia, giving consumers the tools to make a more informed decision.

Taking away a choice does not help people make better choices, it forces a choice on them.

I dislike these proposals for many reasons.  First, the math just does not work.  2 cents per ounce equates to an additional charge of $2.88 per 12 pack of cans, an increase of 65% over Peapod’s price of $4.50.  A 2 liter bottle will have an additional charge of $1.35, an increase of 90% over Peapod’s price of $1.50.  65% and 90% increases, really?

On the other end of the scale, a 17 ounce bottle that costs $1.69 will have an additional charge of 34 cents, an increase of only 20%.  The tax hits harder when more volume is purchased.  Smaller bottles tend to already cost more due to the “convenience” factor.  If the target of these proposals is kids walking home from school stopping at their local convenience store then the tax should specifically target single serving containers.

Given that a 17 ounce bottle of soda would go from $1.70 to about $2.00, will a student stopping with his friends purchase something healthy instead of soda?  Will the tax overcome the peer pressure against buying milk?  Do kids even look at the prices of the drinks?  Will $2.00 make them look at something else that costs only $1.70?  If kids cared about stretching their dollar they wouldn’t be stopping at the store at all, filling up a water bottle instead.

My household has no children.  I excercise, and try not to drink too much soda.  Why should I pay a sugar tax?  I am not at risk for diabetes.  I see my physician once a year.  If I want to enjoy a soda why should I pay a sin tax?

Studies show that sin taxes do not work.  In fact, the soda tax may take so much more money from the family budget that parents need to work longer hours, reducing hours available for excercise with their children and forcing parents to work during meal time, eroding further the eating habits of their children.  The soda tax could actually make kids fatter!

It seems to me that the government is trying to become the parent of the household.  It is parents’ jobs to have their children eat properly.  No family that I know lets their kids drink soda.  Drinks at meals are usually milk, water, or some other healthy beverage.  Good eating habits and healthy excercise start at home, with the parents, not with a soda-sin tax mandated by the government.

What’s next, a calorie tax – the McTax?

Pediatricians are calling for warning labels on foods that can be choking hazards, like hot dogs.  This ridiculous suggestion is indicative of what is wrong with our society today.

We suffer from warning label overload which causes people not to read them.  Any parent that picks up a package and is smart enough to read the labels and understand them is already smart enough to know that their young child could choke on the hot dog.  Parents who are too busy to cut up their young child’s food are too busy to read the warning label.  Warning labels on the packages won’t save lives.

Where has the personal/parental responsibility gone?  Parents should know that they need to cut up large foods for their young children to eat- I see it every day at restaurants and friends’ homes.  What’s next?  Should stove manufacturers be required to display labels warning that ovens could get hot and burn children?  Should we ask mother nature to put warning labels on grapes?

We need to start trusting ourselves again and not legislating proper parenting.  Manufacturers should be immune from lawsuit if their product was properly made – hot dog companies should not be liable if a child chokes on their “high risk” food.

• Average fuel efficiency: 15.8 mpg
• Gallons of gas used per year: 760⁽¹⁾

New Cars:

• Average fuel efficiency: 24.9 mpg
• Galons of gas used per year: 482⁽¹⁾

Fuel Savings:

• Galons of gas saved each year per vehicle: 760-482 = 278
• Vehicles traded in: 700,000
• Total fuel savings: 195 million gallons / year

Barrels of Oil:

• Gallons of oil per barrel: 42
• Gasoline obtained from a barrel of oil: ~20
• Barrels of oil imported: ~11 million / day
• Barrels of oil saved by CFC program: 9.75 million / year
• Cost of a barrel of oil: ~$70
• Dollars saved: $682 million / year
• Import days saved: <1

Dollars and Cents:

• Cost of the CFC program: $3 billion
• Dollars saved per year: $682 million
• Years to recoup inital outlay: 5⁽²⁾

Summary:

Looking at the dollars and cents, did the program make sense?  The $3 billion dollar outlay will be recovered after 5 years but then continue to create gains.

However, cars don’t live for ever.  All the program did was encourage owners to exchange their cars sooner.  If CFC caused an owner to replace a car that they would have replaced anyway within the next 5 years, then this was a net loss.  I don’t know how many of the clunkers exchanged had a life expectency of at least 5 years @ 12,000 miles per year.  For every exchanged car that didn’t save us 5 years we need another exchanged car to have saved us more than 5 years.

The only time the collective american pocketbook comes out ahead is if we encouraged someone to replace a clunker that was not going to be replaced anyway within the next 5 years.  How likely is that?  How likely is it that the average trade in wouldn’t have been replaced anyway within the next 5 years?

There is also the issue of reducing our dependency on foreign oil.  All of the clunkers traded in let us reduce our annual imports of barrels of oil by less than 1 day.  Factor in the impact of cars that may have been traded in ayway and you probably get to less than 1/2 of 1 day of imported barrels of oil saved.  Sure, every little bit helps, but was $3 billion in debt worth it to save 1/2 of 1 day of imports?  That equates to spending $2.2 trillion to end our dependency on foreign oil (ignoring the fact that we don’t have enough oil to service ourselves without foreign oil imports).  Is that worth it?  Maybe, I don’t know.

“IMPORTANT changes to your video conferencing system“

I recently received an email at work with a subject similar to the above (the topic of the email and other details have been changed to protect the innocent).  Not only was the email not important, but it also did not apply to me.  Further, the email didn’t need to be sent at all.  However, it got me thinking about something which I wanted to share with all (5) of you, I call it Josh’s First Law:

The importance of any communication is inversely proportional to how hard the author works to grab your attention.

The fact that the author had to tell me that this was important was my first red flag.  (I have lots of red flags).  If it really was important then I should have been able to recognize this myself.  I don’t use the video conferencing system, so I really don’t care about the changes.  Also, rather than spam the entire company, a note could just as easily have been placed in the video-room explaining the changes.

We all apply a similar technique when filtering SPAM from our in-boxes.  We just look for phrases like “important” and “please read”.  But few of us keep this in mind when writing emails.  This leads to a Corollary to Josh’s First Law:

To get people’s attention, focus on content not on grabbing attention.

I find that the most important emails I get at work are very short and succinct.  The author either spent a lot of time writing, proof-reading, and shortening the email so as to get their message across clearly, or spent a lot of time working on the problem, and is seeking help.  Authors of the lesser important emails appear to waste most of their time formatting, coloring, and adding the word “important” to their emails to attract your attention.

The lesson in all of this is simple.  If your message is important, people will notice.  If you focus on writing clearly and succinctly, people will notice.  If you spend more time trying to get people to read your email than on the message itself, people will notice and will hit delete faster than you can say “important”.

Everyone thinks what they have to say is important.  Let your recipients decide for themselves.

Amtrak recently announced that riders can offset their carbon footprint either by spending Amtrak Guest Rewards points or by purchasing offsets via carbonfund.org.

However, given the principles of Waxman-Markey, the cap-and-trade energy bill that just passed The House, shouldn’t I be permitted to sell off my CO2 savings, rather than pay to offset the remainder?  Where’s my market incentive?

With the active form the author is stepping up and taking responsibility.  The author is not hiding from any potential debate, in fact they are indicating participation in the decision and appear accepting of it.

With the passive form, as I received it, it is clear that the decision is controversial.  Most likely the author does not even agree.  The passive voice distances the author from the debate and hides them from any fallout due to this “bad” decision.  Likewise, no indication is given as to who made the decision so, at the same time, passive voice discourages further debate on the topic.

Why is this important?  Why bother writing a blog post about it?  It is very difficult to convey expression and tone of voice over email.  This is a primary reason emoticons like and came into common use as it allows you to indicate emotion.  But what is also important is your sentence structure and grammar choices.  Subtle decisions, like using the passive voice, can change the entire mood of your email and your recipients.

My recommendation, and what I do with most of my communications, is to read over my correspondence at least once, if not twice.  I think to myself, “Self, how will my intended audience perceive this email?”  Usually a quick once over can help you find issues such as this and have your audience be more accepting and interested.  Remember, you can never take back a first impression.  This counts not only in “real life” but in email (and blog posts) as well.

“America’s newspapers are struggling to survive and while there will be serious consequences in terms of the lives and financial security of the employees involved, including hundreds at the [Boston] Globe, there will also be serious consequences for our democracy where diversity of opinion and strong debate are paramount,”

If a business is failing, there is nothing wrong with letting it fail.  Businesses succeed and businesses fail every day.  In this case, the newspaper industry failed to adapt itself to the technological changes of the day.  While previous generations got their news from the print industry, current generations prefer higher technology solutions.  They prefer to read their news on computers or PDAs.  They prefer websites like CNN.com and abcnews.go.com.  Healthy, strong businesses adapt as their client needs and wants change.  A business that fails at adapting should fail as a business.

Let’s assume for a moment that the government finds a way to “rescue” the papers.  Then what?  The landscape hasn’t changed and the papers have proven they won’t change.  The businesses will fail later, rather than sooner, after flushing more government money down the drain.

Mr. Kerry goes on to suggest that newspapers are vital to the democrat process of debate.  Hogwash!  Newspapers generally have one or two “opinion pages” dedicated to editorials, op-ed, and letters to the editor.  The Boston Globe itself admits that it gets significantly more letters than it can print saying “[Letters to the editor] are selected from a extremely large volume by the letters editor…”.  Further, newspapers generally “reserve the right to edit letters“.

Arguably the biggest advances in free and open debate and discussion of ideas in this country has come from the internet.  Anyone can start a blog.  Publishing is cheap, if not free.    There is almost an infinite supply of customers.  If you don’t agree with other people’s opinions, you can comment and debate, or start your own blog.  If your blog is popular (engadget, The Drudge Report, PerezHilton) it will survive.  If your blog fails to attract readers and doesn’t adapt, it will fail, just as The Boston Globe should.

Recently, Jamie Foxx, a black man, made offensive comments about a 16 years-young white girl.  While broadcasting his radio show, Mr. Foxx called Miley Cyrus, of Hannah Montana fame, a:

“white bitch [who needs to]  make a sex tape and grow up. Get like Britney Spears and do some heroin. Do like Lindsay Lohan, start seeing a lesbian, and get some crack in your pipe; catch Chlamydia on a bicycle seat.”

Other than some conservative radio hosts and bloggers, nobody in the “main stream media” picked the story.  Jamie Foxx was not fired from his radio show or from any movie sets.  Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson remained quiet.  The double standard should be obvious.  Perhaps white Americans need an equivalent to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, someone to rally the troops and boycott advertisers. 

My next example comes from Keith Olbermann’s show on MSNBC.  His guest for the evening was actress Janeane Garofalo of “24″ and “The West Wing”.  The topic was the Tax Day Tea Parties, a nationwide gatherings of citizens opposed to dramatic increases in government spending.  Mrs. Garofalo remarked:

“… let’s be very honest about what this is about. It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. And there is no way around that … but these people, all white, for the most part, unless there’s some people with Stockholm Syndrome.”

In this case the double standard is not between races, but between people of differing political ideologies.  When a conservative speaks, every single word is scrutinized.  Rush Limbaugh is frequently assailed in the media for things he says, or even things he doesn’t say.  Mr. Limbaugh’s comments about wanting this country to succeed despite President Obama’s agenda were front page news for days.  How many media outlets have picked up Mrs. Garofalo’s comments?  Why has she not been chastised for her hatred?

It seems clear to me that the racist in this story is none other than Mrs. Garofalo herself.

The Capital Grille

I recently made a dinner reservation at The Capital Grille. My friends and I really enjoy their meal. While a bit pricey, the food, wait-staff, and general dining experience is amazing. My praise for The Capital Grille is not the point of this post.

When I made the reservation I used a newly created email address, unique to The Capital Grille, something like: CAPITALGRILLE@my_domain.com. This is a common practice of mine and allows me to track how spammers are obtaining my email address.

This morning, I received the following spam:

To: CAPITALGRILLE@mydomain.com
From: thabo mbazima <t-mbazima@hotmail.com>
Subject: REPLY

Dear Friend

I am the manager of bill and exchange at the foreign remittance department
of African Developent bank(ADB) here in Johannesburg,South Africa
...

This is your standard 419 scam. What’s interesting is that it was sent to the email address that I had supplied to The Capital Grille. The only way that a spammer could be using that email address is if either the restaurants database was hacked, or sold.

Using their website’s feedback form, I sent them a strong, yet polite message explaining the situation. While I no longer have a copy of that message, I pointed out that either their database was hacked or they sold my email address. Either way, I was upset. Here is their response:

From: "Matthew Milewski" <xxxx@tcgdine.com>
To: CAPITALGRILLE@mydomain.com
Subject: Your Capital Grille Account

Mr. Lehrer,

Thank you for contacting us at The Capital Grille. I just received your letter, and you are
correct, our database was recently partially compromised. While we know that no vital guest
information was taken, since we do not keep any sensitive data (such as credit card numbers)
in our system, we do apologize for the inconvenience. Please rest assured that we do not sell
our database information.

Since learning of the breach, we have taken steps to increase our security measures to better
protect our guests’ privacy, including the requirement of stronger passwords. I will have your
current account deleted from our system, and ask that you re-register with us at your
convenience.

To thank you for your patience and loyalty to our restaurant, I would like to have a gift card
sent to you for your next visit with us. Please confirm that this is the correct address to use,
and I will have something sent out immediately:

-- mailing address removed --

Sincerely,

Matthew Milewski
Brand Manager
___________________________________
6880 Lake Ellenor Drive i  Orlando , FL 32809
thecapitalgrille.com  i  xxxxx@tcgdine.com
___________________________________
THE CAPITAL GRILLE ®

Needless to say, I was shocked. I thought for sure they would either ignore my message, send me an automated response, deny my allegations, or tell me I was crazy.

While I may be crazy, I appreciate their honesty and will enjoy whatever gift card they send me. I just won’t make the reservation online.

UPDATE – My gift cards have arrived. Two $50 certificates. Not bad for less than an hour’s work.