Paul Krugman’s Invocation

Yet another desperate elitist shill trying to make the TEA Party go away by playing the race card.

Interestingly, Paul Krugman is described as a columnist in the teaser for the article:”If you take seriously the columnist’s words about Tea Party film touchstones, Mark Bauerlein asks, what are the implications?” Isn’t that a little misleading? It’s sort of like describing President Obama a politician. The question as to whether his analysis of the Tea Party is apt/sound/valid is something else entirely.Just a thought.

I haven’t seen the “teaser,” but what struck me about the column was this clever little throwaway characterization. To equate the Tea Party people to the 2nd Klan is pretty bizarre in light of the historical moments of 1915 that inspired the movement. Lynchings, disfranchisement laws, race riots, “night riders,” cross burnings, anti-Catholic and anti-Jew outpourings (the Leo Frank case was a prime inspiration), a President out to undo the progressive racial policies of the Republican Party . . . At the rhetorical level, things are even farther apart. Have you read magazine articles and books from the time arguing white supremacy? They had titles such as “The Negro a Beast.” I don’t agree with Tea Party positions apart from fiscal conservatism (I’m socially liberal), but the casual and insulting and condescending remarks tossed their way by Krugman and others are hard to take.

I almost never defend Krugman (as he is apart of the Clinton era economic machinations associated with many mistakes). However, here I wonder how errant he is being in this analogy. Many of the Tea Party participants are white males who are not reacting against all injustice but only those that they see (the government’s role).For a system’s thinker, the analogy between the KKK and TP’ers are similar in that they see only one race as superior or one explanation for how this economy became unrooted. Granted there are so many stigmas that do not apply to TP’ers and many can claim some justified victimhood here. On the other hand, Matt Taibbi has just an article about the TP’ers that challenges many there assumptions about where problems start and end in the movement (identifying a lot of hypocrisy about the age-old problem of: “if it affects you, too bad, but if it affects me then we have a problem.”"Tea & Crackers”: Taibbi (Oct, 2010) Rolling Stone

Far too many Tea Partiers are closer to the Taliban than to the Klan.

I posted before I saw 11261897′s absurdity–yeah, right, the Taliban. How about just “Tea Party activists are . . . !” (to be completed by filling in whatever or whoever one fancies is synonymous with something or someone evil). OK, I’ll repeat: what next?

Well Mavprof, if we have it wrong (the Tea Party Movement) then why don’t you enlighten us a bit to what it does stand for and how this is different than right wing white male republicanism (I am really wanting to learn from you here)?

mavprof, so what Krugman is doing is part of a “calumny chorus” but what the Tea Party (and folks like Beck, Limbaugh and others) is respectful discourse? What exactly in Krugman’s piece was false or defamatory?And trend, thanks for the pointer to the Taibbi piece I(http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904). I’d missed it. My favorite graph: “A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can’t imagine it.”

djones83, anarchy seems a just label for the incoherent, unfocused rubbish with which you’re littering this thread. And marktropolis, mon vieux, we’ve heard before the racist charges you’ve indiscrimately flung at Tea Partiers. Both (ah well, all, for let’s throw in trendisnotdestiny’s nonsensical charges against Tea Partiers to boot) your screeds wouldn’t be as funny though, if you took the time to edit out all your “siccups.” Mark Bauerlein’s chiding of Paul Krugman’s lamely malicious comparison remains untouched by such calumnies, support of the “Rolling Stone” dopester press notwithstanding.

@ marktropolisHere is my favorite characterization (less humorous but more to the point:”The individuals in TP may come from very different walks of life, but most have a few things in common. After a year of talking with TP members from New Jersey to Nevada, I can count on one hand the key elements I expect to hear from in every interview:1) Every single one of them was the exceptional republican who DID protest the spending in the Bush years and not one of them is a hypocrite who took to the streets when a Black Democratic President launched an emergency stimulus program.2) Each and every one of them is the ONLY person who has read the constitution or watched the movie Schoolhouse Rock. 3) They are all furious at the implication that race was a factor in their political views — despite the fact that they blame the financial crisis on poor black homeowners, spend months on end engrossed in reports of “the new black panthers” wanting to kill “cracker” babies, support politicians who think that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an overreach of government power, tried to exact South African-style immigration laws in Arizona and obsess over Charlie Rangel, ACORN and Obama’s birth certificate.4) In fact, some of TP’ers best friends are black. (Reporters in KY invented a game and called it: White Male Liberty Patriot Bingo (checking off a box everytime a TP member mentioned a black friend.)5) Everyone who disagrees with them is a radical leftist who hates AmericaPeace

Taibbi has another couple whoppers that resonates with me:”Buried deep inside the anus of the bible belt, in a little place called Petersburg, KY is one of the world’s most extraordinary tourist attractions: The Creation Museum, a kind of natural history museum for people who think the earth is 6000 years old.”"The world is changing all around the Tea Party. The country is becoming more black and more hispanic by the day. The economy is becoming more and more complex, access to capital for ordinary americans more and more remote, the ability to live simply or run a business without worring about Chinese labor or the depreciating dollar has vanished more or less for good. They want to pick up their ball and go home, but they can’t; the difficulties and rancor of us who are resigned to life on this planet.”

I’m not sure that your “worst run” line-up quite holds, trend. Compare the finances of those states with CA, NJ, NY, and MI. And I wouldn’t dismiss the voter intimidation case, especially as the most recent whistle-blower is Chris Coates, who came up with the ACLU, represented environmentalist plaintiffs in the 90s, and has won an NAACP award.

Mark,My point holds true for longer periods of time, but yes the four worst state economies (with higher municipal default risk are MI, CA, NJ, & NY). My point was more about the culture of corruption (Birmingham’s Waste System, louisiana politics (New Orleans privatized education model) and the southern states that have gutted the public sector. Admittedly large problems exist on coasts where housing prices had appreciated beyond sustainability. And Michigan is about the death of the auto industry and manufacturing belt. However, I suspect you are aware these things being more socially liberal…

Re #7:Howler o’ the month: “I do not believe the KKK described themselves as racists either.”The Soviets did not describe themselves as totalitarians; the Nazis did not describe themselves as bigots; the Hutus did not describe themselves as mass murderers; the Balkan war criminals did not describe themselves as war criminals; Goldman Sachs executives did not describe themselves as greedy; “independent contractors” in Iraq did not describe themselves as mercenaries; “adult entertainment” executives do not describe themselves as pornographers; those firefighters in Tennessee do not describe themselves as callous; and so on and so on and so on.

Re #29:”…perhaps basic English literacy and even simple civics tests for voter qualification…are worth considering after all.”C’mon, think about it:* One has a right to vote (given age, residency, and registration); one does not have to earn it by passing a test.* Where, by whom, and when will voter-qualification tests be given? Who will score/grade them? Who will determine what the passing grade is? Will the tests be given in English only?* Will the passing grade be a hard line, e.g., a 65% passes, but 64% doesn’t, and that’s it, too bad, for the prospective voter who fails by a point?* Is the test a once-in-a-lifetime thing, like the citizenship test, or does a voter have to take it before every election?* How local is the test? Does it test for civics knowledge in town and county matters (towns and counties have elections, too), or just in state and Federal matters?* If a voter changes state residencies, does he or she have to re-take the test?* How does mavprof think that it’ll go over when military enlistees fail a voter-qualification test and cannot vote?…and so on.Voter-qualification tests sound at first like a not-bad idea, but they’re usually either somewhat innocent pipe dreams of people who dream of some homogenuous Switzerland-like electorate, or closet oligarchists who just don’t like the idea of uneducated or illiterate proletarians voting. The main trouble Jim Crow voter-qualification tests was that blacks were rather deliberately kept under-educated so that they couldn’t pass the tests. T’was the pedagogical equivalent of the poll tax.Essentially, voter-qualification test make democracies not really democracies.

mavprof,QUOTE”At any rate, could your general objection to voter qualification tests have a partisan edge, in that Republicans tend to test better than Democrats on knowledge of current events and civics in various polls?”Maybe Paolo Freire’s “Pedagogies of the Oppressed” could answer your faux-left/right dichotomy. It is interesting that your comments make no mention of Goxewu’s question about who has the power to construct these test.

Good grief, Mayprof! You can’t demand a literacy and civic test of prospective voters, we would have hardly anyone left to vote!Look at those rightwing elected Republicans and candidates for office who are opposed to the minimum wage yet when questioned have no idea what it is. Should they be allowed to vote? And how about Beck and Limbaugh who keep on smudging the most basic facts of governance (you know the division of power, the separation of church and state, the fact that elected officials are actually legitimate because they’re elected, etc.). Or how about the surprising number of Republicans/TeaPartiers (the two are now synonymous, or haven’t you noticed?)who think Hawaii isn’t a state? And how about that Republican candidate claiming there’s Sharia law in Ohio, or is it Iowa, or both?Or when it comes to literacy, the claim that Obama hasn’t made his birth certificate public when it’s been on line for years now for all to read (if they can read, that is!), and the State of Hawaii has certified it along with independent organizations… I guess literacy tests are for voters but not for elected officials or people running for office?And doesn’t your university like most others have to give remedial reading and writing to their incoming freshman class? As for you, I don’t think you’d pass a civics test. Surveys have shown over and over again that the majority of Democrats are better educated than the majority of Republicans, yet it’s Republicans who are asking for a return of Jim Crow literacy and civic tests even as they complain about an imaginary intellectual elite (our society is so absurd that people have no problems taking up the Know Nothing agenda while at the same time demanding literacy tests of voters)So you say you don’t want them to be like Jim Crow tests, but we all know how biased civic tests can be…. If you’re not aware of that, you flunk the test again! PS: Have you ever actually read the constitution of the United States and can you recite the Bill of Rights? (though I’m pretty sure the later wouldn’t be a question on any civics tests you might administer!

#34 katisumas: Rather than answer every groundless assertion and presumption you make in your posting (e.g., “I don’t think you’d pass a civics test,” or “Have you ever actually read the constitution [sic] of the United States . . . ?”), I’ll just point out that it doesn’t include “the separation of church and state,” but only the free exercise of religion and the prohibition of a law establishing religion. There’s a difference in the words of the Bill of Rights and in those of the desideratum expressed in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. At any rate, I think the examples you’ve given above show your incapacity to contribute in an unbiased way to forming such impartial and basic tests.

@ mavprof,In terms of Freire, helping people become literate and understand the context of thier oppression is less about marxism and more about humanism (as the socialist leaning bent you refer to is more about inclusiveness and resisting unchecked power that has run amok rather than utopian marxism). It is about not talking down to people who do not have the resources that of a few. It is about helping them to ask questions without feeling sold something, betrayed/shamed or imprinting our world view onto their experiences. Paolo Freire is exactly what is required since the people who do not fit into your elitest scheme are hit with one more right stripped from them by society. Mavprov, power is in a constant state of flux (overthrowing it, consolidating it or transforming it occurs naturally). Why should the poorest among us not be allowed to organize to seize empowerment.

No more numbers on the comments? Not good.

Anyway, the malfeasances cited by mavprof in allowing ineligible people to vote are problems, but irrelevant to whether or not voter-qualification tests are either ethical in principle (they’re not) or feasible (they’re not), as is whether or not I’m “concerned” about the disinfranchisement of military personnel.

I’ll make it easy for mavprof: Given a choice between come-one / come-all to the polls and an electorate restricted to white male property owners, I’ll go with the former. And in the plausible reality in-between, I’d prefer to err toward the former than the latter.

Mavprof, I guess it was only a matter of time before your true feelings came out. First off, literacy tests have been ruled unconstitutional. Of course, given the current court’s latest rulings that could be up for debate. But currently, it’s a matter of law. If you want to live in a country where your education determines your eligibility to vote, perhaps you should move to some other developing country. I hear there’s some great places in Africa if your interested in maintaining tyranny.

As for the voter “malfeasance” issue, you’re getting good at toeing the right-wing mantra about all these alleged acts. Of course, they’re usually wrapped up in a pretty bow and tied to ACORN, but since they’re out of business now, you can’t do that anymore. How about all the voter irregularities in 2000 and 2004 in Ohio and Florida. From a purely statistical standpoint, those situations had significantly more impact than some 85 year old African American great grandmother who never had an ID.

Oh, and don’t forget all those felons hiding in the voter rolls. And dead people. Of course, your willingness to compare voting to buying a six-pack says enough about how serious you take these issues.

Mavprof, go back to Limbaugh and Beck. They’re more likely to give you what you’re looking for: A clearly distorted view of reality.

Marktropolis, after scanning your latest effort to express your ire at my consideration of literacy and basic civics tests for voter qualification, I now realize the extent to which such tests might pose some danger to your own enfranchisement. I didn’t compare voting to buying beer as you say, but merely pointed out that showing an ID is a routine requirement in such common practices as purchasing alcoholic beverages or cashing checks. All the more important is showing proper identification by prospective voters in ensuring the integrity of the elective process. That’s what I think; I’ll leave you to vociferate your feelings.

Apologies, but I’m not sure why I’m getting these double line-breaks between ‘graphs. Maybe it’s related to the missing post numbers…?

goxewu, Bush “almost certainly” lost in 2004? I can’t recall the exact number of votes by which Bush won Ohio–anybody have that?

mavprof, so you agree that the Voting Rights Act corrected “terrible abuses” and yet you are arguing to reinstate one of key tools in that arsenal, the literacy test? I guess you figure that there’s no way those same tools could be used for those same nefarious purposes in 2010. If it quacks like a duck…

Mark, Bush won Ohio in 2004 by a little under 120,000 votes.

goxewu: Calling out the 2004 Ohio presidential vote as a Republican conspiracy and fraud seems to be a cause celebre with liberals and the left. Perhaps you could suggest a relatively unbiased analysis.

I looked at one by a Steven F Freeman at UPenn that tried to establish the sanctity of exit polls (as opposed to various election eve polls that showed the advantage slightly to Bush) and to dismiss various explanations by WaPo, NYT, the MITCalTech Voting Project of the possible discrepancies in the exit poll results and the final vote certification that showed Bush had carried the state. Freeman’s conclusion suggests the possibility of mistabulation or fraud, but he also says to date that was an “unfounded conclusion.” I’m not sure why exit polls should be sacrosanct over pre-election polls. And it should be noted that the exit poll/actual vote count discrepancy was considerably higher in New Hampshire (9.5), about the same in Pennsylvania (6.5–Kerry-carried), and a bit less in Minnesota (5.5–Kerry-carried) than in Ohio (6.7). Actually, in ten of eleven “battleground” states, Bush bested the exit polls (the last, Wisconsin, showed no change). Are there similar accusations of fraud or mistabulation there?

On the voter qualification issue, I’d hardly call designers of civics tests for students or of motor vehicle examinations for prospective drivers “oligarchs.”

Re mavprof, Oct. 11:

Yes, the 2004 Presidential election, and the goings-on in Ohio in particular, are a cause celebre among liberals. With good reason. Just because there are a lot of leftwing wingnuts on board with the reasonable people who think there was a Republican conspiracy, doesn’t mean there wasn’t a conspiracy, and a successful one at that. As for “a relatively unbiased analysis”: As I said, just Google the relevant terms, and nose around. Among the obviously partisan sites, you’ll find some pretty well-researched and well-reasoned ones.

The policy-makers who tell their subordinates (who tell their subordinates) what to put into student civics tests and DMV tests have little reason to be politically partisan. (Well, OK, the Texas Board of Ed is an exception.) People who make the policies concerning voter-qualification tests have reason to be politically partisan.

One presumes mavprof has noticed that driving is different from voting. Voting is a right (that why they called them Voting RIGHTS Acts), while driving is a privilege. Nobody–they told us in Driver’s Ed and are still telling students–has a “right” to drive. It is a privilege which has to be earned. On the other hand, no age- and residence-qualified citizen should have to “earn” the privilege of voting. No age- and residence-qualified citizen should be turned down for registering to vote because he or she didn’t pass a literacy or civics test. Illiterate and/or civics-undereducated voters may not be the ideal voters, but they have a RIGHT to make their choices at the ballot box along with everybody else. Messy, but that’s democracy.

Just as there’s a difference between driving and voting, there’s a difference between age and residency requirements (i.e., qualities of simply being [a citizen of a certain age and address]), and civics-/literacy-test requirements (i.e., surpassing a certain performance obstacle). If you ARE certain things (e.g., over 18, a resident of where you plan to vote) you should be able to register to vote without having to DO certain things (e.g. pass civics and literacy tests) beforehand.

In a real democracy, illiterate and under-educated people voting is an undesirable phenomenon. But it’s less undesirable than the phenomenon of people who otherwise have the right to register to vote being deprived of that right because they’re insufficiently literate of educated in civics.

I’ll go with MIT and Cal Tech. Thanks.

goxewu: Good choice; the MIT-Cal Tech analysis concluded:

“There is no evidence that electronic voting machines were used to steal the 2004 election for George Bush. The ‘facts’ that are being circulated on the Internet appear to be selectively chosen to make the point. Much of that analysis appears to rest on early exit poll results, which were bound to be highly volatile, given the nature of exit poll methodology.”

I stand corrected on the voting machines, perhaps. But the voters in poor districts of Ohio’s large cities and in largely university and college precincts (hotbeds of liberalism) who were deprived of their votes by intimidation, non-counting of ballots, and malfunctioning/non-delivered voting machines and delivered-malfunctioning voting machines (I have eye-witness knowledge of this one) number a couple of hundred thousand.

http://www.jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/22/143719/67
and others.

True, leftish sites. But then again, only leftish sites told you that the Bush Administration’s rationale for the invasion of a country that had nothing to do with September 11th, 2001, was a total and deliberate crock. (Poor Colin Powell.)

Anyway, we can bandy this about forever. Nice, mavprof’s catching me out on MIT/CalTech, although that report seems to cover only the matter of possibly rigged electronic voting machines.

Back to voter-qualifications tests: Does mavprof actually believe that people who otherwise have the right to register to vote should be deprived of that right (and it is a right, not a driving-like privilege) because they’re insufficiently literate of educated in civics?

mavprof has found the WMDs!?

Just in case we needed any more fodder for this discussion, Pat Sajak just penned a piece for the National Review making the argument that public employees shouldn’t be allowed to vote on matters that affect them. Something about a conflict of interest.

Slippery slope, no? Why stop at public employees? Why not you can’t vote on anything that you pay taxes for? Or if you’re a woman, you can’t vote on a ballot initiative related to abortion or contraceptives?

What so you, mavprof?

A question, marktropolis: Why do you think Sajak makes that argument?

Because the “bankruptcy” and “lose a turn” sections cover 75% of the neoliberal wheel?

That’s the only reason you can think of, marktropolis? Nothing about Sajak worrying about the powers of public employee unions, the too-cozy relationship between those unions and office holders, or the pensuion finances?

MarkB, what about the cozy relationships between the Chamber of Commerce and members of congress? Business types don’t like unions because they cut into their profits, for one thing. They also don’t like the specter of workers coming together as a collective for any reason. Collectives imply power. And workers aren’t supposed to have any.

Those in power live in fear of those who might get it. The only reason there is a middle class in this country (although currently shrinking rapidly) is because of the rise of organized labor in the 40s and 50s. Let’s see, minimum wage, 40-hour work week, overtime pay, paid vacations, all thanks to unions. And let’s not forget the weekend.

Oh wait, West Virginia GOP candidate Rease wants to repeal the Fair Labor Standards Act, calling it “archaic” (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jn8T7YOFdG7iAIypKfsQop8_i3eQD9IQDEAG0?docId=D9IQDEAG0).

And by the way, there is a movemement afoot to unionize the TSA. That’ll send some folks into a tizzy.

But again, where do you draw the line? Is it only public employees who get excluded? Or do you go as far as goxewu suggested and have an initiative on the ballot that actually no one can vote for? Which takes us back to mavprof’s proposal. So instead of having a literacy test (which has already been ruled unconstitutional) let’s just create a list of who can vote on what and when. So who gets to decide on what’s a conflict of interest? Do we need to create one more layer of governmental bureaucracy? In order to vote in the upcoming election, how much paperwork will I have to provide to prove my lack of conflict.

And what the hell ever happened to the right to vote?

As for Sajak, I don’t think it has anything to do with actually interrogating the issue. He’s just flying his anti-union flag. After all, you can’t be a good conservative if you support workers.

Mark, Sajak’s biggest problems are not public employee unions. Rather it is the ratings of his show and the fact that he does not benefit from the royalties from the Wheel of Fortune slot machines… I am with Gox on this one (psychiatrist, accountant or barber). Have another spin!

So, Markb, you have no interest in his argument, but you want us to recognize that he *may* be a response to a “genuine problem”? What’s the problem, or rather what’s genuine about it? That public employees have a right to vote just like everyone else? Or is the point that public employees, because they are unionized, have more power than others, and therefore their power must be checked by restricting their right to vote on matters that affect them?

Sorry MarkB, but there seems to be a pattern here. You want to hang on the tangential nature of the issues, but you still want us to consider them important. Like Krugman mentioning the Klan in what you refer to as a “throwaway remark.” But you want us to focus on it nonetheless.

Oy.

Sajak’s argument, which was posed in that disingenuous “just asking” way that indicates the person “just asking” can’t possibly defend what he or she is suggesting is, and I quote: “So should state workers be able to vote in state elections on matters that would benefit them directly?” Note that Sajak says VOTE IN STATE ELECTIONS, and not serve and vote on courts or regulatory agencies or legislative bodies. He suggests by “just asking” that there might be valid reasons for DEPRIVING PUBLIC EMPLOYEES OF THEIR FRANCHISE–a franchise every other registered citizen has a RIGHT to. (Sorry for the caps, but…)

When the idiocy (not to mention the troglodyte reactionary nature) of Sajak’s argument is pointed out, does Professor Bauerlein defend it? No, not openly, because, without suffering utter embarrassment, he can’t. So he asks one of Sajak’s critics, “Why do you think Sajak makes that argument?”

Inexplicably, Professor Bauerlein says, in his most recent comment, “Again, this has nothing to do with Sajak’s argument, not with its motivation.” Did he mean, “…everything to do with Sajak’s argument, not with its motivation”? Or did he mean “nothing to do with Sajak’s argument, but everything to do with his motivation”? Or did he mean what his supremely garbled sentence actually says: that “this” has nothing to do with either Sajak’s argument or its motivation? Then why, pray tell, did Professor Bauerlein ask marktropolis, “WHY do you think Sajak makes that argument?” [Emphasis mine]

It’s supposed, I supposed, to have something absolutely Sajak-free (i.e., nothing to do with either Sajak’s argument or its motivation), with states giving public employees too much in the way of pension benefits. Fine–that’s a point that can be argued. But to suggest, even by “just asking,” that the solution, or part of one, is to prohibit state employees in voting in normal public elections when an office or proposition up for a vote has some direct effect on them, is, to put it very, very mildly, absolutely preposterous.

Professor Bauerlein doesn’t really support the Tea Partiers; he’s just tired of the way they’re characterized and dismissed by the left. He doesn’t really think that, as part of a solution to excessive pension benefits, public employees should have their right to vote in elections curtailed; he’s just asking why Sajak might suggest that. Followed by “…this has nothing to do with…[Sajak's argument's] motivation.

marktropolis, you go figure Professor Bauerlein. I’ve got to go bang my head against a wall.

Oh, those typos! Some crucial (that Mars lander trajectory in inches, not centimeters; that $400 million education grant Gov. Christie’s subordinate lost on account of some stat typos), some not.

Even with the typo corrected, Professor Bauerlein’s position (or nominal non-position–”just asking,” you know) is weird: A solution to excessive state pension benefits might lie in not allowing state workers to vote in state elections. Brilliant!

But how about anybody who’d benefit from not raising the Federal income tax on people with incomes over $250,000 similarly not being allowed to vote in elections for Congress or President. Just asking.

MarkB, no I have not “examined pension/health care commitments to public employees in CA, NJ, and NY,” but the point that so many on the right always conveniently forget is that union contracts are *negotiated* and there is always at least one other signatory to that document in addition to the union’s. And I suppose, if we take Sajak’s “motivation” to the next level, you’re suggesting that unions shouldn’t be allowed to vote on their own contracts.

Sajaks’s argument is more about disenfranchising organized labor than any thing else. And you’ve only reinforced my conclusion based on your rhetorical query about whether or not I’ve “examined” the health care commitments made to public employees – most of whom are unionized, so those commitments would have had to have been signed off on by management. But maybe that’s too complicated for Sajak.

I guess he’s not a member of a union – but I bet his camera crew is. I wonder what their health care plan looks like.