Free Lunch: CAP Responds

Spencer here. After my objectively-pro-neoconservative post about free lunching below, I invited Amanda Terkel from the Center for American Progress to respond. Here’s Amanda’s defense of CAP’s culinary skills.

The Center for American Progress’s lunches represent a new kind of progressivism. Years ago, I remember mini quiche (both veggie and bacon), grilled chicken, and even the occasional treat of spicy noodles. There was usually so much food at every event that guests AND staffers were able to help themselves each time. This was also the era of birthday cakes for every single staffer.

Times change. Staff size increases, people no longer want to gather in the conference room every hour to sing “Happy Birthday” to someone they don’t know, the organization gets sick of spending thousands of dollars to feed employees, and of course, there’s global warming and a recession. At a time when the world is wondering how it will feed people, CAP is playing its part by cutting back on wasteful food spending.

Spencer is still looking for non-governmental hand-outs. But this kind of socialism has been passed over to conservatives, in the form of bailouts and the American Enterprise Institute’s elaborate lunches, which evidently include “succulent, just-grilled chicken shwarma.” AEI’s spending philosophy on food is Bush-era; CAP is the change we need. I received an official statement from Suzi Emmerling, a Special Events Coordinator at CAP and one of the people responsible for acquiring food for events:

Spencer Ackerman has just joined the ranks  of some of our homeless crowd, who also complain about the free food.

Just to note, we usually order from Whole Foods or Juice Joint  who strive to serve locally grown, organic products. Most of our audience enjoy not only the sandwiches at CAP, but the real meat of our events, the insightful discussions.

CAP briefly also dabbled in international diplomacy by ordering Mexican food — even though it was from California Tortilla — but luckily, those days are over. (The food was not very good.)

Thankfully, we still serve cupcakes (from either Cake Love or Georgetown Cupcake) to the entire staff once a month at all-staff meetings. Cupcakes are recession-proof.