EDGLINGS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Chef & Co - Owner of Blue Hill Restaurant and Creative Director of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture
- Head of Sysco
Barber: head of Sysco thinks the food market is changing more than in the past 300 years.
Barber: a fellow in France makes 'natural' foie gras without gravage. His greatgranfather started in 1918.
[Tells an anecdote about the French farmer who has made life wonderful for his geese. When Barber was there, he saw wild geese land on the property, and he asked "are they coming for a visit?" And the Farmer replied, "to stay." The wild birds are supposed to migrate, but the farmer pointed out that they had everything they needed at the farm, so why would they leave? So Barber points out that the farmer would be getting "Volunteer foie gras."
Job Titles:
- Founder, Renewing America 's Food Traditions ( RAFT ) Alliance
Edwards is the only one of the three front-runners who has a universal health care plan that will lead to the single-payer kind all other civilized countries have. His plan doesn't go as fast as I would like, but he is the only one who has correctly pointed out that the health insurance companies are the enemy and should not have a seat at the table.
Mark Zandi Has Been Econolypsed, But Gore And Obama Haven't
A piece in today's NY Times demonstrates how differently things look based on where you are standing. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's, has an darkly downbeat view of how Americans are going to respond to the Econolypse:
Job Titles:
- Author, in Defense of Food and Omnivore's Dilemma, and Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley 's Graduate School of Journalism
Michael Pollan wrote a longish essay for the New York Times on proposed food policy to the incoming Farmer-in-Chief (whoever it may turn out to be), that outlines near-term actions that should be taken to start to reorganize the food economy to make us healthier and less dependent on large energy inputs for our agriculture. His weighty piece has been nicely summarized by Michael Ruhlman:
I am with Nora Ephron on this one: Gore for Obama's VP. He has all the necessary characteristics:
Job Titles:
- President, How to End the Recession
In a recent piece published by The Nation, Robert Pollin, a professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, suggests that a huge infrastructure rebuilding initiative is necessary:
A spokeswoman for Michelle Obama, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, said [Sam] Kass would not be the only cook preparing the family's meals, but "he knows what they like, and he happens to have a particular interest in healthy food and local food."
Mr. Kass will work alongside the White House executive chef, Cristeta Comerford, who was promoted to that job by the Bushes in 2005 and is being kept on by the Obamas. Mr. Kass is filling a vacancy and will be a White House employee, paid by the government, not the Obamas.
Mr. Kass's appointment should please chefs like Alice Waters, who have lobbied the Obamas to set an example for the rest of the country by emphasizing food that is healthy, local and sustainable. It further suggests that a vegetable garden on the White House grounds, another of Ms. Waters's dreams, could be on the horizon.
Mr. Kass, one of the new breed of chefs who are concerned about the environment and about poor eating habits in this country, has been quoted as saying people in his profession should take the lead in tackling public health issues.
"Not only is there an unconscionable amount of people who remain hungry," he told In These Times magazine last year, "there's even a larger population, mostly poor, who are faced with obesity, diabetes and various other problems from overabundance."
Kass has cooked for the Obamas before, in Chicago.
Job Titles:
- Boston Attorney Who 's the Lead on Several of These Cases, Told the San Francisco Chronicle
Shannon Liss-Riordan, the Boston attorney who's the lead on several of these cases, told the San Francisco Chronicle: "These companies thought that if they call themselves technology companies because they provide services by using a smartphone app, that somehow makes them different. […] They think they can get away with transferring the costs of doing business to their workers and depriving employees of the benefits they're entitled to." Which is exactly what Clinton was referring to in her speech when she said: "I will crack down on bosses who exploit employees by mis-classifying them as contractors."
Job Titles:
- Native American Activist, Environmentalist, Economist, Author and Founding Director White Earth Land Recovery Project
Pollan: Cheap fossil fuel + highway system + large grocery chains = delocalized food
Pollan: shipping a crate of broccoli from CA to NYC has gone from $3 to $10, so they are buying farmland in MA