Giving Back and Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving week in DC was certainly different than Texas! As part of my semester through The Washington Center, I have to volunteer for 5 hours over the course of the semester. Saturday, I finally completed my hours, a whole 3 weeks before I leave (I swear I only selectively procrastinate). To do so, I helped with a thing called Cranksgiving (not a super title), which was basically a bike race to different stores to buy Thanksgiving goods (I didn't do the bike race, I took the food). The food was then given to low-income families so they could have a proper Thanksgiving meal. It was certainly rewarding to give back, but a bitingly cold breeze numbed the reward (and my hands) a bit. Then Sunday, my roommates and I finished the last museum on our list: the Natural History Museum. The museum was pretty interesting; however, after spending 45 minutes in the rock and gem section, I was already beat! Thus I spent the rest of the museum in a slightly catatonic state. Nevertheless, the rest of the museum was fairly good.

            As it was a short week, I didn’t get the opportunity to do much at my internship this week. However, I did get Wednesday off because both my scholar and his research associate were out! (Cato was open Wednesday, though most interns used one of their personal days). Though I did not do much work, I did some things to set up my upcoming work, which will be on inequality.

            Perhaps slightly unfortunately for me, all of my roommates traveled for Thanksgiving, leaving me in the apartment alone. TWC did host a potluck for interns who stayed in DC for the holiday; however, in my eternal brilliance, I missed the sign up. This turned out to be a slightly good thing, as I made my own Thanksgiving meal (yes, I actually cooked!). Before you feel sorry for me for spending Thanksgiving alone, think about it: I had an entire pan of cornbread, an entire pot of potatoes, a whole gallon of sweet tea, and plenty of turkey and dressing all to my self. In addition, I didn’t have to stop watching football to eat (though an excuse to stop watching football would have been nice considering how the Cowboys played…). Though not as good as spending time with family and friends, Thanksgiving turned out to be just fine!

Story of the Week: One of the things I’ve missed most about Texas is quality Mexican food (nobody up here knows what proper Tex-Mex is). To compensate for this great tragedy, I’ve been buying bags of chips and glasses of salsa (the desire for Mexican food is extreme…). However, some of my roommates (not the Indian) aren’t used to the "extreme spice" brought by a big ole scoop of some medium salsa. They clearly don’t know there’s a difference between medium salsa and ghost salsa, as they are in tears and drinking an entire glass of milk after just one bite! Maybe I should get them to try some ghost salsa and see what happens…?

Product Has Not Been in Space

It was definitely an interesting week to be in DC! Saturday, I went to do the space half of the Air and Space Museum (we did the air half on Labor Day). The space half of the museum was very cool, initially taking one through the

Its no West Texas sunset, but it'll do

physics of air and space travel, then touching on the space race and the lunar landing, shuttle missions, and the future of space travel. Seeing all of the space memorabilia, from moon rovers to space suits, was very neat. However, every time we had finished looking for alien dust and discussing how cool it was that those things had actually been in space, we would notice a sign that said “the item shown is just a replica. Product has not been in space.” This was supremely disappointing, as the entire benefit of staring at a space suit for any extended period of time is to contemplate the places it has been. It's slightly less fun when the only places it has been is in a factory and on a plane from Florida. Nevertheless, it was very interesting. Sunday, I had to work on a PowerPoint presentation for my class. I planned to start working on the presentation at noon; so naturally, I started the presentation about 9 (but really, what else would you expect from me?). Thankfully, the presentation did, indeed, go well.

            This week I didn’t directly look into studies on poverty. Instead, I spent a large portion of my week pouring through wage data from every industry in every US city at least moderately sized (seriously, the excel sheet had 150,000 rows). That wasn’t terribly interesting, as I was largely transferring data and looking at percentiles of wages. However, after working on it for nearly a day, a true tragedy happened: my computer didn’t save my work. I guess I didn’t save it properly, as the original excel sheet was from a zip file. Needless to say, I was greatly disheartened! To finally finish this, it took a very long night on Wednesday. 
           Also this week, I met some people from Ted Cruz’s Senate staff (I didn’t get to meet Ted Cruz because, well, I think he’s in the middle of looking for a new job or something). I had to do this as part of my TWC public policy dialogue. It was very cool to meet them in his office. I could definitely tell they wanted people from Texas to feel right at home, as they gave me Dr. Pepper and advice on finding quality Mexican food in a place seemingly void of such happiness. Those on his staff were very interested in my job at Cato and gave me their business cards, which means an ever more expanded network.

No Story of the Week this week, just a quick update on DC in the news. We have been well informed of the threats on DC, and everyone here is taking them seriously. I have gotten multiple emails on safety precautions being taken by DC law enforcement and the precautions those in DC must take. I have noticed enhanced security across the city, as well as suspicious looks on the faces of many Washingtonians. Prayers are certainly appreciated and I will do my best to stay safe for the remainder of my time in DC.

Meeting the World's Economic Leaders

With less than a month left, I’ve reached the home stretch! After a fairly relaxing day on Saturday, Sunday I went to the Holocaust Museum. Making the Holocaust Museum the only museum for the weekend was certainly the right idea. It takes one through the history of the Holocaust, from Hitler’s rise to power through his “final solution” to the Allied liberation. While going through the museum, each person is given a booklet with the name and story of a person who lived and died in the Holocaust. This certainly changes the experience because, although we often are saddened and are taken aback by the millions of people that lost their lives, we rarely consider the personal side of it, with each of the millions of people having their own back-story and specific personality. As the museum is already depressing, the employees are sure to remind guests to simply follow along on the story of their person, but not to imagine themselves as that person as they are taken through how that person’s life played out. While all of this was certainly memorable, the lasting memory for me would be the smell in many of the rooms. It was difficult to describe, but it’s almost like one could smell the sadness and gravity of the things in each room.

            On a much more fun note, my internship was awesome this week! I spent the beginning of the week looking into the administrative costs of many of the 80 federal anti-poverty programs. As we spend more than $1 trillion on anti-poverty programs, you can imagine the administrative costs were correspondingly high. However, I did not have a lot of time to do my traditional work this week, as we had a plethora of seminars and conferences this week. Wednesday morning, we spent in a résumé and interview workshop, which was certainly interesting. Then, Wednesday afternoon, Cato’s former president and CEO, John Allison, spoke to us about leadership and his book, The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure. Mr. Allison was certainly a cool person, with his backwoods North Carolina accent contrasting with his business and leadership acumen to make the talk both interesting and entertaining. However, while all of this was cool, the highlight of my week at my internship was, without question, working Cato’s annual Monetary Conference. As this is

With the original JT

Cato’s most prestigious event, many world-renowned government officials and professors were in attendance, such as 3 regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents, 2 international central bank presidents, and multiple well-known professors. While meeting many of these people was cool, nothing was better than meeting John Taylor, one of my favorite economists. Dr. Taylor is an economist at Stanford and the Hoover Institution and one of the world’s leading experts in monetary economics. Meeting him, and having a short conversation before his speech, was one of the highlights of my internship.

Story of the Week: At long last, I FOUND THE GOOD SWEET TEA! While Arizona sweet tea can be bought for about $4 per can here, I had yet to find some tasty and cheap sweet tea. However, I went to a different grocery store on Friday. After getting my groceries, I noticed that, on an aisle toward the front of the store, there seemed to be a glowing light, like one coming from the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. After turning the corner and finding it to be the glorious beverage, I’m fairly certain I could hear angels, softly singing “Hallelujah.” Needless to say, it was a glorious moment.

Feelin' My Way Through the Darkness

So Saturday was Halloween! I had a pretty good costume this year; I’m not going to lie. I tend to not like putting effort into dressing up, if I dress up at all (in years past I have written “book” on my face to be Facebook or worn a name tag that says "Bill"). However, this year, I had the ultimate Halloween costume idea: I would be James Dean! Everyone in DC, immediately after hearing my name, goes “Oh, that’s cool. Like the actor?” (Steer into the

"Dream as if you'll live forever, live as
if you'll die today -James Dean" -James Dean

skid, right?) So I went to the trouble of slicking my hair back, borrowing my roommate’s leather jacket, rolling up a paper towel into a fake cigarette, and rebelling against societal norms without a cause to be James Dean. It turned out to be a big hit with both TWC interns and Cato staff, but you can judge the costume for yourself. However, don’t expect this to be a new normal! Rest assured that next year I will return to finding the cheapest, laziest costume to skate through Halloween! To display this costume, I went with my roommates to Embassy Row, where many college-age kids can go door-to-door trick or treating without looking strange among many little kids. Better yet, many of these embassies invite the trick-or-treaters in to learn about the cultures of their countries and give native treats and goodies.

On a sadder note, time change was Sunday. Because I’m used to a Texas-style time change (when, instead of getting dark at 7:30, it does so at 6:30) I was in for a very rude awakening. In DC, it is now pitch-black at *wait for it* 5 o’clock! While this is bad when taken by itself, it gets worse when one finds out that I get off at 5:30. Thus, instead of walking home in the midst of a DC sunset, I am forced to walk home in what is essentially the dead of night (at 5:30). This inconvenience aside, poverty was still interesting this week! In a slight change of pace, I got to turn from domestic poverty to worldwide poverty. Through this, I got to look at the effects of foreign aid to poor countries. From this, it becomes clear how, often, a country stifles the development of a poor country with foreign aid by not allowing a market to grown. (Watch the preview for this documentary; it’s only 2 minutes and very interesting)

Story of the Week: Saturday, before becoming a rebel without a cause, some other interns and I watched the Texas A&M/South Carolina game on my laptop (we don’t get the channel on which it was aired). Because of the delay inherent with watching sports online, I would often get texts and scoring notifications before they had actually happened. In typical James fashion, I used this to freak out my fellow interns. Prior to big plays, after getting a text or notification, I would turn to my friends and say, “I’ll bet you anything he scores on this play.” Naturally, they didn’t believe me. However, after predicting every score correctly for the entire game, they were convinced that I was either all knowing about football or psychic. Maybe I should tell them…