On January 9, 1793, Jean-Pierre Blanchard became the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States.
Precisely 13 decades later, Juan de la Cierva y Codorníu, 1st Count of la Cierva, made the first autogyro flight.
“Rugged individualism may seem frigid (it’s anything but), but the people in the countries that used to be bathed in the warmth of collectivism now live a lot longer.”
—Michael Shermer (an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims)
“Rugged individualism may seem frigid (it’s anything but), but the people in the countries that used to be bathed in the warmth of collectivism now live a lot longer.”
—Michael Shermer (an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims)
I do. But the federal government taxes, regulates, subsidizes, and researches for food production in these United States “bigly.”
And then the government taxes, regulates, subsidizes and researches for medical interventions that mitigate the consequences of how we eat.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Brooke L. Rollins, the current secretaries of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA), respectively, have signed their names to a new set of Dietary Guidelines for Americans — an interesting document.
“The message is simple,” it says: “Eat real food.”
The fact that much of our food industry has been constructed in collaboration with the USDA makes this advice . . . piquant.
While Vitamin D intake was mentioned several times, I notice that the fact that our bodies produce Vitamin D when exposed to sunlight went undiscussed. Also unrecognized? That Vitamin D levels have been shown to be a key indicator of how well people fight off infections . . . like COVID.
Alcohol use is discouraged. Drinking “water (still or sparkling) and unsweetened beverages,” highly encouraged.
“Pay attention to portion sizes” is just common sense.
The advice to “increase protein consumption” ruffles some feathers, according to The Epoch Times’ coverage.
“Since the first edition was published in 1980, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans have provided science-based advice on what to eat and drink to promote health, reduce risk of chronic disease, and meet nutrient needs,” explained the previous Guidelines.
But how science-based is all this, really? Seems “the Science” in the Guidelines changes with each innovation in political and economic pressure.
Now and previously.
Most of all, however: Our diets remain our own responsibilities.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (1960).
What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.
Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
On January 8, 1790, President George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York City.
A recent Post editorial slams progressives who “think of taxation the way teenage boys think about cologne: if some is good, more must be great.”
I’m no fan of even a moderate amount of that brand of cologne. But anyway. The Post is discussing a proposed ballot measure backed by the ultra-lefty Service Employees International Union.
SEIU troops are currently collecting signatures. And before they’ve even gotten enough to post it to ballot, the people being targeted have started moving.
Out of state.
The measure would impose a new 5 percent tax on billionaires. Some of the state’s billionaires, including Google cofounder Larry Page and Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, aren’t willing to wait and see whether it actually reaches the ballot and passes in November. Why? The measure would apply retroactively “to those who were California residents on January 1, 2026.”
Some Democratic lawmakers are saying “good riddance,” as if it’s possible to loot billionaires who don’t wait around to be looted. Or that it’s good for state coffers to lose their billionaire entrepreneur “contributors.”
The Post says the retroactivity would open the measure to legal challenges, but that if it gets passed and survives litigation, “it’s a safe bet this won’t be a one-off. Funding ongoing expenses like health care with one-time taxes isn’t sustainable. Progressives will want to return to the well until they’ve sucked it dry.”
And no one should know better than Californians how dangerous dry wells are.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Planning in the specific sense in which the term is used in contemporary controversy necessarily means central planning — direction of the whole economic system according to one unified plan. Competition, on the other hand, means decentralized planning by many separate persons. The half-way house between the two, about which many people talk but which few like when they see it, is the delegation of planning to organized industries, or, in other words, monopoly.
F.A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” 35 American Economic Review 519 (September 1945), included as Chapter V in Individualism and Economic Order (1948).
On January 7, 1940, the Finnish 9th Division completely destroyed the much-larger Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi Road, in a crucial battle during Finland’s Winter War.
In his whiny announcement, Governor Walz verged on apoplexy. “Those bumbling Somali fraudsters screwed everything up! The optics have gone to @#$%&!; citizen journalist, my [insert alternative grawlix here]! And Trump is mean!” Look, if you don’t believe me, I’ll fax you the transcript.
OK. I may be paraphrasing.
But I’m close. Associated Press reports his bitter comments on why the jig is up. Walz is waltzing out of the campaign because he can’t give it “my all” because of the “extraordinarily difficult year for our state” because of the latest revelations of how crappily and dishonestly he functioned as governor.
Walz said: “Donald Trump and his allies — in Washington, in St. Paul, and online — want to make our state a colder, meaner place.” These baddies “want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors . . . want to take away much of what makes Minnesota the best place in America to raise a family.”
All very elusively allusive. What could Senor Real Man possibly be talking about? Why would any Minnesotan — say, an honest taxpayer — want to attack another Minnesotan — say, someone living high off the hog on the taxpayer dime, effectively taking money from the mouths of babes? Or a dishonest politician cooperating with and benefiting from just such massive taxpayer-funded fraud?
Don’t run, Walz. Don’t run. Stay right where you are.
So that prosecutors can find you.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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