Category: Politics

I have a different take from Bitter over the food police story. I’m generally pretty understanding of the nanny state taken way too far, especially when it comes to small businesses having to comply. But when you’re in the dairy business, and your complaint is a pasteurizer is really expensive, and you think you shouldn’t have to buy one, my sympathy drops off considerably.

To me this isn’t that different than the people who like raw milk, and the controversy surrounding its distribution. Many libertarians believe this is an example of government overreach. I agree it’s an example of federal overreach. If farmer John is quietly selling the unpasteurized teat squeezings from Bessy the Cow out the back of the barn to some local raw milkers, I’m not sure why the USDA or FDA needs to poke their noses in; it’s a job for state and local health authorities. But in the case of this “artisan” ice cream maker, we’re dealing with state public health regulators.

And this is actual public health, not the fake public health that gets authorities involved in gun control and health insurance. Pasteurization is meant to stop communicable diseases, like typhoid and listeria. There’s a reason pretty much everyone knows who Louis Pasteur is, because pasteurization was one of the great public health achievements of modern times. I think people who want to abandon that principle are, to put it mildly, nuts.

That’s said, there has to be some sphere of freedom for people selling food. I don’t want to see public health authorities cracking down on bake sales, flea markets, church pot lucks, and the like. Much like how home brewing is regulated, there ought to be a certain scale that needs to be reached before the man takes notice. Because these measures a bit like vaccination, in that you can have a small group of people free ride on the immunity of others, a small scale operation isn’t likely to have much of an impact on public health. So if you’re making a product and selling small quantities at your stand at a farmers’ market, or in your store, great. When you’re selling your product at Whole Foods, it’s time to accept you’re in the big time and buy a friggin pasteurizer.

So says the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The insurance industry was only too happy to collude with the Democrats to turn health care delivery into a government operated cartel, provided everyone was forced to buy their wildly expensive product. Now that it’s appearing more likely that could very well be off the table, I’m going to bet the health insurers lobby up to get Obamacare repealed right quick once he leaves office.

A very good read, courtesy of Instapundit. Likewise, I don’t blame Obama for the current economic situation; he didn’t create it, and I don’t expect him to get us out of it. But I do expect him to stay out of the way, and he has not done that.

If the Democrats have their way, our health care is going to work like this too. Basically, a company developed a lightning machine (i.e. a fancy tesla coil) and claimed would deactivate IEDs. Turns out it didn’t work so well.

Eventually, the Pentagon soured on the JINs. Ionatron lost most of its cash, changed its name, and got wrapped up in a series of shareholder lawsuits and insider trading scandals. A couple of years ago, the broken firm reached out to Tuscon’s Southwest Liquidators, who helped clear the Ionatron warehouse of its useless inventory of electronics. “We took it all,” says Southwest’s Keith Tearne. Then they put it on eBay.

So basically the defense department was bilked out of a wad of cash, which in the big picture of the whole defense budget isn’t much. Hell, maybe some of the Pentagon brass and political appointees figured even if it didn’t work, it would scare the hell out of the insurgents. I have to admit that if my existence was mostly of dirt floors and poppy growing, seeing this head down the street would probably scare the shit out of me too. But the point is, when you don’t have a free market, or at least a somewhat free market making your decisions, bureaucrats aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are. Smarter people, with fewer scruples, are going to bilk them out of large sums of taxpayer money.

I read this quote from Rep. David Wu who resigned last night amid allegations of sexual assault, and I just can’t wrap my head around this kind of thinking.

“Serving as a U.S. Congressman has been the greatest honor of my life. There is no other job where you get up each day and ask, ‘How can I try to make the world a better place today?’” Wu said in the statement.

Really? There’s not a single other job on the planet where you can feel like you’re contributing toward making the world a better place? That seems a tad extreme, even from someone on the left.

Even if you take out anyone working in the for-profit sector, which I wouldn’t in my world view, but I can understand if a progressive would cross them off the list, I can think of plenty of roles and organizations where people get up every day and try to make the world a better place – even doing so without the power of government. I don’t know what drives that kind of statement – an overly inflated ego for a resigning Congressman or someone who can see no improvements to the human condition other than that which comes through government. Either way, it’s rather disturbing.