They say “Jolly is the fat man,” but perhaps not when he’s being chased (and, I’m sure, caught) like a Frankenstein monster by the Body Cult crazies. And that is the case today, as it has become fashionable to affront the friendly-fronted.
It seems most anything goes now: bloated houses, bloated egos, bloated libidos, bloated bureaucracies, bloated government — but not bloated bellies. And a perusal of the news makes this clear, with a never-ending stream of stories about obesity this and obesity that. For example, headlining Drudge the other day was a piece about how fathead officials in Massachusetts propose to ban school bake sales — even before and after school hours — to combat obesity. This, of course, is just the next step in a progression that has seen localities purge schools of cookies and sodas along with the faith and patriotism that were deemed unhealthful long before.
We also had the San Francisco Stupidvisors, who run the city (into the ground), who banned toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals. Deliciously, the restaurant chain circumvented the law by charging an extra ten cents for those who want the toy. I would’ve really rubbed the health Nazis’ noses in it and made it a penny.Then there was the 2008 proposal by three legislators in Mississippi — said to be the fattest state in the nation — to prohibit portly people from dining in restaurants. The politicians said they were just trying to make a point with their measure. I wonder, though, given that the vast majority of gun crime (98% in New York City) is committed by blacks and Hispanics, would these bold statesmen seek to “make a point” by proposing to ban those groups from gun stores? Oh, that would be discriminatory? I see.
Although Mississippi Fat Burning never saw its opening day, other Orwellian measures have. For instance, a Missouri judge was accused of delaying an adoption until the prospective father lost weight, and last year, Ohio DCFS seized a boy from his parents because he was obese. This, despite the fact that if the president ate like his wife does, the boy would look like Obama’s son.
The irony here is that most of the health Nazis probably would have had the overindulgent Ohio mother’s back if she’d ended her boy’s life in the womb. But merely increase the chances of shortening his life by feeding him too many Twinkies? You’re a derelict mother!
When it’s the matter of a body within a body, it’s the bigger body’s “choice,” but when it’s a matter of just a bigger body, you have no choice. My, how the scales of justice tip when you tip the scales.
As for the busybodies — the politicians, gubmint bureaucrats, and “public-interest” groups — how do we explain their interest in our health? They really must care, right? About you, about me, about all and sundry. Well, I’d say so but qualify it with a paraphrased Rodney Dangerfield line: “They really care…
…About what, I have no idea.”
Of course, there is the “Obesity hurts society” pretext. The argument is that you fatties are burying our health care system with a knife and fork, as you cost it more money with your increased health problems.
The modern West has some of the most inefficient governments in human history which are obsessed with making things more efficient. Along with the inefficiently efficient machine, we also have two crises. One real one and one imaginary. The crisis of government growth and the crisis of global warming. Governments insist that we must adopt austerity to cope with the imaginary crisis of global warming, while reform advocates demand that governments adopt austerity to cope with the tremendous piles of debt and unsustainable spending.
It’s a basic power struggle over whether the government will starve the people or the people will starve the government. Like most political power struggles it begins with a crisis and a program for resolving it by transferring power. Depending on which crisis and which program wins the day, there will either be a massive transfer of power from the government to the people or an equally massive transfer from the people to the government.
Determining the locus of the crisis will also determine which way the power will shift. Are we the irresponsible ones for not biking to work or are they the irresponsible ones for running up a fifteen trillion dollar deficit? Are we the irresponsible ones for not skipping desert or are they the irresponsible ones for demanding totalitarian power over us? Are we destroying the planet or are they destroying the country?
The fundamental split between the Right and the Left in America and Europe now rests on austerity. The Right wants government austerity while the Left wants austerity for everyone else. Austerity is a form of efficiency, accommodating output levels to input levels for government, a heresy on the Left which believes in unlimited government growth and spending at everyone else’s expense. That means austerity for the rest of us in the form of more taxes, higher costs and assorted restrictions that make it cheaper for government to manage our lives.
The tug of war is over whether governments will impose austerity on us or whether we will impose it on them. Whether we will force governments to run more efficiently or whether they will force us onto a treadmill to cut health-care costs, whether they will drive us into cities to make delivering services to us easier and whether they will continue raising the price of gasoline to force us into their light-rail system.
Liberals have embraced locally-grown food, but not locally-managed government. They eat eggs from four miles away but insist on central governments in Brussels and D.C. invested with unlimited power. Their drive for energy efficiency is equally centralized and equally inefficient, depending on massive subsidies to develop the next-generation technologies that never seem to materialize, never seem ready for prime time and whose energy savings don’t reward the cost of developing and implementing them.
Regulating everyone’s energy efficiency, from the producers to the consumers, imposes a universal austerity on the people, but not on the regulators. In a regulator state, the only truly vital work is carried out by the regulators, who already embody efficiency by making everyone else efficient.
Governments impose energy efficiency by raising the cost of energy.
Controlling a large number of people isn’t easy. The United States alone consists of 312 million people spread out across nearly 4 million square miles. Add on nearly 500 million for the population of the European Union and another nearly 4 million square miles of territory. Then pile on Canada with 34 million people and another 4 million square miles, Australia with 22 million and 3 million square miles and a few other stragglers here and there, and the postmodern rulers of the progressive empire have to cope with nearly a billion people spread out across 15 million square miles.
Large territories and large numbers of people are very difficult to govern. Structures tend to break down and people further away from the centers of power don’t listen to the boys at the top. The only way to make a going proposition of it is to consolidate as much power as possible at the center and the very act of centralizing power leads to tyranny.
The most direct chokehold possible is physical. China’s rulers, faced with vast territory and population, turned to the water empire. The modern West is quickly rediscovering a more sophisticated form of hydraulic despotism, cloaked in talk of saving the planet and providing for everyone’s needs.
Western resources are not innately centralized, which makes seizing control of them and routing them through a central point more difficult. This has to be done legislatively and has to be justified by a universal benefit or a crisis. One example of this is FDR’s Agricultural Adjustment Act which allowed the government to control wheat grown on a farm for private consumption. Another is nationalizing health care by routing the commercial activity of medicine through government organs. Both services and commodities can be controlled in this manner.
But the larger challenge is that the West is rich and a water empire depends on scarcity. Central control is much less potent if there is plenty of the commodity or service available. It’s only when shortages are created in bread or health care that the system really wields power by rationing a scarce commodity or service.
If a resource is scarce, then the water empire has to distribute it efficiently. But if a resource is widely available, then the water empire has to find ways of making it scarce, until the demand vastly outstrips the supply.
The modern water empire is dependent for its power on manufactured shortages. The rise of the progressive state was closely tied to its exploitation of shortages. Its challenge has been to win the race with industrial productivity by manufacturing shortages and destroying wealth faster than it could be created. While the machine of industry created wealth, the machine of government destroyed it. Today the machine of government is very close to winning the race, creating a state of permanent shortages.
Manufactured shortages are the great project of modern governments. This manufacture is done by prohibitively increasing the cost of creating and distributing products and services, by controlling the means of production in the name of wealth redistribution and by prohibiting the production on the grounds that it is immoral or dangerous. Over the 20th century the transition was made from the first to the second and finally to the third.
It is the nature of any government to seek to expand its authority. The Founding Fathers knew this and gifted Americans with a Constitution that limits authority devolving it to the states and to “the people.” Read the Tenth Amendment. It isn’t working.
The freedoms they sought to establish and preserve for future generations are being eaten away and we tend only to hear about in individual cases when, in fact, it is so widespread we accept the injustices, the inefficiencies, and the enslavement in increments.
After 9/11 it was clear that some reorganization was needed to ensure that various enforcement and other agencies could communicate and coordinate more effectively in order to wage “a war on terror.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created. The sheer size of it should have been a warning.
One of its siblings was the Transportation Security Administration that currently makes taking a flight anywhere a nightmare of intrusive groping and, because one failed bomber used explosive in his shoes, everyone now must remove theirs to get on a flight.
Fifty-seven years ago, the State of New Jersey issued me my first driver’s license. For years all one needed to do was renew by mail, but after 9/11, it was decided that every license had to include a photo. A very high tech license resulted, but it also means that, if you live in New Jersey, every four years you are going to spend a minimum of two hours in your nearest motor vehicle agency standing in line and sitting around for your number to be called in order to renew.
You need bring several documents with you such as a passport, birth certificate, and Medicare card. Just one won’t do. Even though I already have a license with a photo (it was on record at the agency so there was no need for a new photo), I still had to personally prove I am who I am to receive a renewed license. In an age of computerized records of birth and residence, the whole process struck me as overkill.
After December 1, 2012, New Jersey will join eight other States to issue a driver’s license with a gold star in the upper right corner. Without it, I will not be allowed to board a domestic flight or visit a federal building. Do I feel any more secure? Not really. In fact, what I really feel is the tightening grip of the federal and state government on my freedom to drive my car, get on an airplane, or legitimately enter a building in which the work of the federal government is being conducted. This is less about security and far more about authoritarian control.
Environmental Justice
I tell you this because I doubt you are aware that the Department of Homeland Security has added a whole new layer of authority to its portfolio. You thought it was about protecting the nation against acts of terrorism. Now it is about enforcing “environmental justice.”
The DHS has added Green Police to its concerns and, if you think this has nothing whatever to do with some jihadists trying to kill a lot of people as was the case on 9/11, you would be right.
The Department of Labor cites “public outcry,” but “election year PR disaster” better sums up the reason for this walk back:
Under pressure from farming advocates in rural communities, and following a report by The Daily Caller, the Obama administration withdrew a proposed rule Thursday that would have applied child labor laws to family farms.
Critics complained that the regulation would have drastically changed the extent to which children could work on farms owned by family members. The U.S. Department of Labor cited public outcry as the reason for withdrawing the rule.
“The decision to withdraw this rule — including provisions to define the ‘parental exemption’ — was made in response to thousands of comments expressing concerns about the effect of the proposed rules on small family-owned farms,” the Department said in a press release Thursday evening. “To be clear, this regulation will not be pursued for the duration of the Obama administration.”
Rest assured, if Obama is re-elected the Labor Department will be back next year or the year after, because they’ll have more of that infamous flexibility.
Also, the original regulation would have revoked “government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.” What could possibly go wrong if DC bureaucrats took over farm equipment training? Let’s vote on it with a show of hand.
Here’s one reason given for the administration backing off their proposed regulation:
In nixing the proposal, the Labor Department cited the need to protect “the rural way of life.”
Funny how the same agency that put forth the intrusive regulations then attempts to set themselves up as guardians of freedom and tradition for withdrawing their own proposal. What would we do if the Department of Labor wasn’t there to protect us from the Department of Labor?
They’ll be back. They didn’t establish a “rural council” for nothing.
The Department of Labor’s proposed regulations were aimed at protecting minors from injury while performing certain farm chores, such as unlawful under-age Equus ferus caballus nutrition dispersal and dietetic transportation unit sanitization (above), known to the layman as “feeding a horse and washing the bucket”
“Hope and Change” in theory — “a Federal regulator on every family farm” in practice.
Here’s the latest example of big-government gone wild:
The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.
Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”
“Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read, “would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”
The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.
Would you rather have the 4-H teach your kids farm safety, or some DC bureaucrat whose only experience shoveling bullshit is in the figurative sense?
Yes, what was once referred to as “carrying eggs from the chicken coup to the house” may soon be known as “illegally transporting farm materials.”
Last month, Republican Senators John Thune and Jerry Moran introduced the Preserving America’s Family Farm Act to stop this madness. Thune pointed out that the new regs are so specific that they would ban people on a family farm under 18 from using battery powered screwdrivers and pressurized garden hoses. Somebody needs to turn the hose on the Department of Labor… and the EPA… and the Department of Energy… and the….
If you have a family farm and are concerned that you won’t be able to make ends meet if your kids can’t help with the work, just contact the White House and I’m sure they’d be happy to put you in touch with one of their Big Labor pals who would be more than happy to help you get the job done… at a cost.
Coming soon from the administration to farmers: “You’re also going to be needing to install some solar panels on that farm, Mr. Green Jeans. Fortunately we’ve got some friends who can help you with that too!”
In an unprecedented private property grab, Governor Rick Snyder’s Michigan Department of Natural Resourcesissued an Invasive Species Order (ISO) that allows his agents to forcibly commandeer and destroy heritage breed pigs — including piglets – on thousands of family farms in that state.
In Michigan, government agents are entering private property and killing baby pigs that belong to farmers. Photo credit: Farm to Consumers
Citizens groups and conservative organizations are complaining that Governor Snyder’s DNR is actively taking action to destroy these pigs, the farms and the farmers’ liberties. In fact, the DNR teams have been likened to out-of-control SWAT teams.
“They are blatantly trampling civil liberties and natural rights and doing it to the great benefit of some very powerful lobbyists,” said Tony DeMott, State Coordinator of the non-profit, non-partisan Michigan Campaign For Liberty.
“The actions of Governor Snyder’s DNR are so dangerous that it is very important for you to understand the details,” DeMott stated.
“The local food movement is under attack in Michigan. In a brazen power grab threatening the livelihood of small farmers across the state, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is using the state Invasive Species Act to expand its jurisdiction beyond hunting and fishing to farming operations,” stated Pete Kennedy, an attorney withFarm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.
According to several sources, Governor Snyder ordered the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, in total violation of the Fourth Amendment (Illegal search and seizure) to conduct armed raids on pig farmers in that state.
The DNR chose two farms to start their purge: one in Kalkaska, MI, the other in Cheboygan.
According to several sources, including Brad Roon, who is collecting signatures for a petition to stop this Gestapo-like slaughter of farm animals, “The Michigan Pork Producer Association pigs are magically alright. If left in the woods (as the killed pigs are NOT) the inbred pigs would be just as damaging as the alleged “feral” pigs had they actually been allowed to run wild.”
The ISO prohibits the possession of specified breeds of swine and the Michigan DNR stated that the order was necessary “to help stop the spread of feral swine and the disease risk they pose to humans, domestic pigs, and wildlife as well as their potential for extensive agricultural and ecosystem damage.”
On April 4th, DNR issued a press release stating that it had begun active enforcement of the order.
The ISO allows DNR to seize and destroy heritage breeds of pigs raised by Michigan farmers. To add insult to injury the DNR refuses to reimburse farmers for the pigs they destroy.
The law also stipulates that possession of prohibited swine after April 1 is a felony with penalties of up to two years in jail and $20,000 in fines.
‘In other words, the Michigan anti-pig ‘storm-troopers’ will raid a farm, kill livestock and on top of that arrest and prosecute farmers as felons. The state of Michigan — a state full of radical Islamists who object to the eating of pork – is criminalizing farming and planning to imprison them for doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Farmers are now joining pro-life activists as extremists in this era of Obama,” states political strategist and attorney Mike Baker.
I cannot help but wonder about the motives of those who have managed to plunder the pockets of the American consumer by legislatively changing the laws which subvert the intent of those who drafted the Constitution.
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” – U.S. Constitution – Article 1 Section 8
Thus it was the intention of the Founding Fathers to allow creators of content and inventions to produce and profit from their efforts for a limited amount of time in order to encourage placing such works in the public domain after a suitable period of time. The key being the word “limited” which should be construed to be reasonable in light of the public bargain being struck.
The “Disney Effect” …
Those that held copyrights on commercially lucrative recordings, videos and films decided to spend a portion of their revenue stream influencing mostly corrupt and self-serving politicians to extend the time period for exclusivity farther and farther into the future. In addition, the actual creators, the individual artists, were forced via economic considerations or the denial of market access to cede their property rights to the gatekeepers who controlled the marketplace.
All seemingly to prevent materials featuring a certain mouse-like cartoon character from falling into the public domain.
The loss of freedom …
And it has been these distribution gatekeepers who have imposed some of the most draconian anti-freedom, anti-commerce laws upon the citizens of the United States in order to preserve their constitutionally-guaranteed monopoly.
Even to the point of stealth taxes on blank recording media that could be re-distributed to the major content distributors as pseudo-compensation for revenues lost to illegal copying.
Even to the point of demanding that makers of electronic devices embed secret codes – known as GUIDs (Globally Unique IDentifiers) — in each device and to embed those codes into any files produced by these electronic devices; even if the content produced was created by the original author.
And even to the point of having your devices report all activity involving “licensed” material to computers maintained by anonymous third-parties.
Everyone wants a piece of that Hollywood monopoly action …
Not to be outdone by the Hollywood content distributors, certain businessmen have sought a similar monopoly over their products and services. Once again by lobbying corrupt politicians to create a new class of patents – business process patents – which did little more than represent the automation of existing paper procedures. Extending patent coverage to products and services which were formerly unpatentable because they were not new and novel on the basis of “prior art” or the anticipation of the invention by a practitioner skilled in the subject matter art and practices.
So if the conversation, not the phone, is the problem, why allow passengers in cars? From Fox News:
If you’re driving through Chapel Hill, N.C., and your cellphone rings, don’t answer it. Starting June 1, you can get a $25 dollar ticket for talking on your cellphone while driving within the city limits. In a close 5-4 vote, the town council decided to ban any phone calls made while operating a vehicle – that includes hands-free devices, such as Bluetooth and speakerphones. Chapel Hill, home to the University of North Carolina, is the first municipality in the nation to enact a complete ban on all cellphone use in cars. Town council member Penny Rich says a large number of pedestrians and bicyclists navigating sidewalks and streets among drivers who tend to multitask is a dangerous mix. “The distraction is not holding the phone. The distraction is actually the conversation,” Rich said. “So just holding the phone is not what is making you drive poorly, it’s the conversation.” . . .
I sense a movement to gain access to yet another “natural human right” freebie is on the way. We got a preview of what it might be earlier in the day during Obama’s “White House Forum on Shamelessly Pandering to Women”:
The president ticked off other areas where his administration has made strides to help women succeed, including health care and education. One thing he is still working on, however, is the cost of women’s dry cleaning.
“We don’t know — we haven’t gotten on the dry cleaning thing yet, though,” he said chuckling. “That’s still frustrating, I’m sure.”
Next week Sandra Fluke will be telling Congress that she spends $500 a month on dry cleaning, and it’s just not right!
I’d assume this is a joke, but after living through the past three-plus years I can no longer tell the difference:
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The Department of Labor cites “public outcry,” but “election year PR disaster” better sums up the reason for 
The Department of Labor’s proposed regulations were aimed at protecting minors from injury while performing certain farm chores, such as unlawful under-age Equus ferus caballus nutrition dispersal and dietetic transportation unit sanitization (above), known to the layman as “feeding a horse and washing the bucket” 
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