Tag: health

Categories
crime and punishment free trade & free markets regulation

Natural vs. Regulated

“I don’t need metabolically unhealthy politicians and obese bureaucrats watching out for my health,” The Telegraph quotes an anonymous source. 

The subject? “How milk became the new culture war dividing America,” published on June 22. It’s a “natural” vs. “technological” debate.

“For more than 130 years, Americans have been instructed that drinking milk that comes directly from a cow’s udder can be dangerous,” Tony Diver’s article begins, but how it ends is telling: “‘With respect to the question of food being natural — arsenic is natural,’ Prof Schaffner said.” And so, too, he says, is cyanide. 

“Sharks are natural. Those things can all kill you. So just because something is natural does not mean that it’s safe.’”

That sounds like something I’d say. 

But is it something to say about raw milk?

Consider the historical context. Raw milk and its products have been produced for human consumption for millennia. Of course there are dangers, and pasteurization has done wonders to curb bacteriological infections and death. Still, a lot of people wonder what we’ve lost in the pasteurization process. Nutrition and immune system health, for example. So for decades — perhaps as long as there have been regulations to make pasteurization mandatory — there’s been a “pro-​natural” backlash.

On the Nature side, we note that our populations aren’t as healthy as you’d expect from the benevolent tyranny of politicians, regulators, and, uh, “obese bureaucrats.”

So, last week, “the latest bill to repeal an outright ban on raw milk hit the governor’s desk in Louisiana, after similar efforts in West Virginia, Iowa, Georgia and North Dakota.”

If signed into law, Louisianans will be able to purchase raw milk in stores — “albeit with a warning, in capital letters, that it is ‘not for human consumption.’

“Everyone, including the legislators, knows that instruction will be ignored.”

There’s something sickness-​inducing about that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with ChatGPT4o and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
free trade & free markets regulation too much government

SAD Regulators

nanny state, regulations, food, safety, health

Americans are getting sicker and fatter on government-​approved, corporate-​made foodstuffs, yet government continues to crack down on the sale of natural and home-​made foods.

The classic case is raw, whole milk. I’ve talked about this before. The most recent case is from Amish country, where the State of Pennsylvania raided a farm “on suspicion of selling ‘illegal milk,’ among other products,” explains The Epoch Times, and the farm “is being sued by the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General and Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.” 

The Amish farm “has been ordered to halt all sales of its dairy products, inspiring widespread anger over what critics have called a blatant example of government overreach.”

At issue is government interference in farmers and customers freely choosing to skip the major grocery outlets multinational companies and dealing with each other on a local, free-​market basis. “Capitalist acts between consenting adults,” as Robert Nozick put it.

But it’s especially galling when placed in the wider context of the FDA’s and USDA’s obvious failure to produce a healthier populace. Though the state’s attorney general insists that “we cannot ignore the illnesses and further potential harm posed by [the] distribution of these unregulated products,” the illnesses caused by what many call the Standard America Diet (SAD) go unnoticed and unregistered as such. 

One standard for “the market,” another for the regulators.

Meanwhile, the State of Wisconsin is pushing a new bill to impose a $20,000 annual sales cap on participants in the state’s cottage food industry, “one of the most restrictive in the nation,” explains Suranjan Sen, an attorney at the Institute for Justice — a legal aid outfit often mentioned in these pages.

The very point of the law is to protect brick-​and-​mortar grocery and baked-​goods stores — not the health of consumers. It has the backing of powerful lobbyists.

Looking for healthier foods and healthier economies? Don’t look to government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Midjourney

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government

Working to Boost Unemployment

occupational licensing, hair braiding, permission, law, crime, employment, unemployment, control, health

Some government officials work overtime to throw people out of work.

What I’m referring to differs from losing your job or business because of slack performance or slackening sales. Instead, you lose the right to earn your living a certain way so that the government can benefit competitors at your expense.

Occupational licensing is great at dis-employing people. The regulations are especially galling when the work being regulated obviously requires no formal training in order to be done well and safely.

Hair braiding, for example. 

The Institute for Justice — which has done incredible work over the years representing victims of destructive government mandates — just won a victory for hair braiders in Iowa. Thanks to IJ’s efforts, a new law there exempts braiders from having to waste time and money getting a cosmetology license in order to practice their craft.

Such battles are never won permanently, of course. Washington, D.C., recently started requiring day care providers to get a college degree or lose their job. (As I have argued in a Townhall column, the same “logic” would justify forcing people to get college degrees to become parents.) IJ is helping affected parties to challenge the absurd law. 

It is time for a new licensing requirement. Nobody gets to become a local, state or federal lawmaker unless he first writes a million times in a row, “I will never help violate the rights of any man or woman to earn an honest living.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability folly ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Tough Luck, Chumps

Obamacare, Affordable Care Act, Obama, Trump, Sanders, debate, CNN

Advertised as a big deal ahead of time, the debate didn’t get much play afterwards.

Especially from the Left blogosphere.

Why?

Billed as about the “future of ObamaCare,” it was really about what should replace ObamaCare.

The CNN debate pitted Sen. Ted Cruz, well-​known Republican opponent of the Affordable Care Act*, against Sen. Bernie Sanders, well-​known “independent” proponent of what he likes to call the “Medicare for All single-​payer program.”

Upshot? While either Bernie or Ted may possibly be construed to have won, there was indeed one certain loser, ObamaCare itself.

Sen. Sanders conceded nearly every charge Sen. Cruz lobbed at the program. He merely countered with his support for treating health care “as a right, not a privilege” (a leftist farrago from days of yore) and moving on to single-​payer medicine.

That’s how bad ObamaCare really is. Its chosen champion refused to champion it.

The basic tension was best summed up between “town hall” questioners Carol, suffering from multiple sclerosis, who asked Cruz to promise continued coverage for cases like hers, and LaRonda, a woman with a chain of hair care shops who cannot afford insurance for herself or her employees and also cannot expand her company because at 50 employees the ACA would force her to provide insurance.

Cruz expressed his sympathy for Carol, but seemed to meander around her request for a guarantee. He also evaded** a straightforward answer re: “healthcare as a right.”

Sanders was a tad more honest, in effect giving the “tough luck” answer that the entrepreneur just “should” pay*** for her employees’ medical insurance.

Well, we sure are all “paying” for ObamaCare, one way or another.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Which is the same thing as ObamaCare. Some folks purportedly hate ObamaCare but love the ACA. No reader of Common Sense, of course.

** Cruz concluded the debate better, alluding to an old SNL skit about a recording session wherein the cowbell ringer always wanted “more cowbell” in every take. “It was government control that messed this all up. And Bernie and the Democrats’ solution is more cow bell, more cow bell.”

*** “[I]f you have more than 50 people, you know what, I think — I’m afraid to tell you — I think you will have to provide health insurance.”

Printable PDF

 

Categories
ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

It’s Viral

Hillary Clinton, health, 911, illustration

Yesterday, around the country, flags were flown at half-​staff, a sad acknowledgement of the atrocities on 9/​11/​2001.

In preparation for the 15th anniversary, students at a California college put up signs, emblazoned with the motto “Never Forget.” At least one faculty member took it upon herself to rip the signage down. Perhaps believing in blowback, her excuse had something to do with the posters needing a stamp from authorities in a “free speech area.”

Hey, I believe 9/​11 had something to do with blowback, too. But trying to squelch speech rather than add to it seems like the wrong way to go.

In any case, the history teacher saw no problem suppressing the motto “Never Forget,” as if she were not in the “never forget” business.

Then, yesterday, on 9/​11, Hillary “Never Admit” Clinton fell into wooziness at a memorial service. She hurriedly left the madding crowd. Yet, somebody recorded her stumbling, her knees buckling, being physically helped into her van.

For months now, her “conspiracy theorist” political enemies have been speculating about her persistent coughing, apparent confusions, and maniacal laughing fits. Now incontrovertible proof that something was wrong.

After going dark for 90 minutes, her campaign issued a statement that Mrs. Clinton had become “overheated.” Hours later, her doctor announced she’d been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday.

Was it bacterial? Chemical? Viral?

No specifics.

And it raises more questions than it answers.

On 9/​11/​2016, what became news was Hillary’s ill health. That news, at any rate, has gone viral. And will probably linger, adding yet another dimension to a strange presidential campaign year.

But, as the history teacher should have asked, are we learning anything?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Hillary Clinton, health, 911, illustration

 

Categories
ideological culture

The Race Card, Again

Are persons necessarily racist if (a) white and (b) opposed to expansion of the welfare state — that is, merely for opposing such expansion?

In the New York Times, journalism professor Thomas Edsall, echoing a now-​familiar charge, implies as though it were self-​evident that many who oppose Obamacare-​ized medicine do so because of the race(s) of the recipients:

“Those who think that a critical mass of white voters has moved past its resistance to programs shifting tax dollars and other resources from the middle class to poorer minorities merely need to look at the election of 2010.… [Obamacare] forced such issues to the fore, and Republicans swept the House and state houses across the country.”

Poor(er) people can come in all shapes, sizes and colors. But for the sake of Edsall’s freighted non-​argument, let’s stipulate that the poorest Obama-​subsidy recipients are slightly or much more likely to be minorities than not. Why must this fact motivate an individual’s opposition to seeing more and more of his hard-​earned income coercively transferred to anybody?

Change the context to a street mugging. If a mugger is non-​white, does the victim’s dislike of being mugged necessarily hinge on the race of the mugger?

Of course, any victim of crime may be a racist. But you wouldn’t simply assume it.

Gratuitous charges of racism are one sign of desperation by friends of Obamacare — a program the color-​blind horrors of which will only grow more evident over time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.