Quote of the Day
A friend is one who sees through you
and still enjoys the view.
Wilma Askinas
Just When You Thought the Annual Award Season
Was Over...
We have the Nannies. We as young adults thought that once we turned 18, we were no longer minors. We had earned the opportunity to leave the nest, to experience life, to make our own decisions, right or wrong: yes, sometimes we would make mistakes, but they would be our own mistakes, and we would learn from them.
However, there are some among us whom idolized adults in authority--one's parents or nanny, the school teacher, policeman, etc. To them, the ultimate perk of becoming an adult was the option of being able to tell other people what to do. You know those kids: they excelled at playing "(Simple) Simon Says". The rules of the game are simple: commands of activities are given. Failure to follow an authorized command (i.e., prefaced by 'Simon says') means you lose; doing something unauthorized also means you lose.
So these children grow up wanting to be Simon for a living. But to be merely the parent or nanny of a single family ("Little Nanny") is not enough: it takes a village, a state, a country, the world, the universe (i.e., a god). Thus to advance in one's professional calling to the Nannihood in enlightened countries, one follows one of two tracks. The bureaucratic track consists of government employment (by administrative selection or appointment). For many Big Nannies, this role is too limiting: your discretionary ability of telling other people what to do has certain constraints (i.e., the law).
No, to truly advance in one's vocation as a Big Nanny, one must be able to expand those boundaries through the political track. In democracies, there is a special qualification or ritual to this Higher Nannihood called an election. Political success often depends on the effective use of deceptive rhetoric, exaggerating one's limited abilities, qualifications, contributions, and accomplishments, raising unrealistic expectations of what government can or even should do, deflecting criticism and responsibility, and knowingly mischaracterizing the opposition's position, often in derisive, personal terms. The politician learns early not to speak his mind, to pay tribute to the patriot and to rail against the straw man, to promise what is popular and not to speak of what is necessary, to defer the contentious, and to prefer formulaic (vs. direct) responses to difficult questions.
Big Little Nannies
Some Big Nannies never forget their roots as Little Nannies; they will tell restaurants how much salt they can put in their foods or size of their portions. Are you wearing your helmet? Your seat belt?
The unelected First Nanny is determined that on her watch what your child eats at school will be by Big Nanny guidelines. If you dare ask 'Why?', she'll tell you: "Because I said so."
I want to specifically point out the topic of milk in particular. My Dad is the youngest in his family. I never knew my paternal grandfather whom died just before my Dad hit his teens. As I recall, my Dad worked during the summers on a small Massachusetts farm owned by relatives. Dad recalls that one day the ladies of the farm baked fresh blueberry pies and set them out to cool. He and the other guys swiped a pie and grabbed a cold bottle of farm-fresh milk, with that natural layer of cream at the top; my Dad's eyes light up as he recalls eating that glorious warm blueberry pie washed down with raw milk. (Of course, he and the guys thought that they had gotten away with it as the ladies of the farm went around looking for their missing pie. Until she made them stick out their tongues for inspection...)
Where do I stand on this? As a scientist, I would have to carefully look at the empirical evidence and any relevant research methodology. Note that any food source can be contaminated--including the handling of food at home. Clearly the farmer needs to ensure that his cattle are healthy, pastures or other feed and water are safe, fecal matter is properly controlled, milk-related equipment and containers are well-maintained, the milk is properly sealed and cooled as soon as possible after milking, etc., but these things are true for any dairy operation.
The reader is encouraged to do his or her own due diligence. For example, you can look at CDC public information on raw milk (e.g., here). For an alternative point of view, you can review reports at the Real Milk website.
But my quick takeaway: the fact of the matter is that raw milk has been SAFELY consumed by humans for literally thousands of years before the birth of Christ; pasteurization is a very recent phenomenon. By the most reasonable estimate over 9 million people regularly consume raw milk in the US in those states where it is legal. Yet roughly around 42 cases of raw milk issues per year have been reported. Whereas any contamination case must be taken seriously, one should realize that many LEGAL foods (including pasteurized milk) have as many, if not significantly more, reported safety issues.
In my opinion, it looks as though CDC is acting on an agenda and is engaged in policy fear-mongering. It seems that the federal government is abusing its interstate commerce authority in an intentionally discriminatory manner, which I regard as an unconscionable, blatantly unconstitutional violation of economic liberty.
Let me quote from a timely post today; keep in mind the sale of raw milk in Pennsylvania (less than an hour's drive away from me) is legal. (For the record, I've never purchased raw milk, but I would try it if I didn't live in an anti-liberty Nanny state like Maryland)
Last month, a federal district judge banned an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania from selling raw milk to Marylanders who were members of a local food club. 'The ruling followed a two-year undercover investigation of the online club, Grassfed on the Hill, by the Food and Drug Administration.
An FDA agent used an alias to become a member of the club, and ordered large quantities of unpasteurized milk to test. After lab tests proved the milk was raw, a fact the farmer Dan Allgyer openly admitted, Judge Lawrence Stengel issued an order blocking milk sales to the club.Is this the kind of thing we've come to expect from the federal government? Treating Amish farmers like criminals for selling healthy, wholesome foods to fellow Americans? Wasn't the whole purpose of interstate commerce regulation to eliminate state barriers to entry in commerce (including disparate taxes)? I swear to God, sometimes the casuistry of American jurisprudence has gotten so convoluted, the original foundation, intent and meaning to the unalienable right of liberty has gotten lost in the weeds.
Judge Stengel, I suggest that you go to your quiet corner and write down the Ninth Amendment 500 times. (What an empty robe!) Or, better yet, do your country a favor and resign. If you can't recognize a federal abuse of power on its face, I don't have faith in your overall professional judgment.
Going back to the politicization of milk in general, here's an additional (edited) note on milk sales from Wikipedia:
According to an article in The New York Times, milk must be offered at every meal if a United States school district wishes to get reimbursement from the federal government. Some school districts have proposed or enacted bans on flavored milk because of added sugars.I have a general issue with the federal government subsidizing local/state school expenses, period. But I don't like the federal government manipulating local school meal policies. And from my perspective, milk is a healthy food, flavored or unflavored. If the point is getting kids to drink milk and they prefer chocolate or strawberry-flavored milk to plain milk and are more likely to finish drinking it, what's the big deal? If a choice is to be made, empower the child's parents to make that decision.
A final note: there is a strong whiff of crony capitalism going on here. Big Dairy clearly is unnerved by the encroachment of increasingly popular raw milk sales (up by double-digit percentages in California, for instance). We have, of course, concerns about large-scale farm operations and their intrinsic vulnerability to the rapid propagation of health risks. Big Dairy isn't going to candidly admit that it wants to shut down small independent dairy operations (that Goliath picking on David image: not good for business). So, as all Big Businesses do, Big Dairy works arm-in-arm with government food propagandists to posture itself as the "Safe Milk" choice; Louis Pasteur must be so proud! I have seen a couple of blogs out there that are thinly-veiled fronts for Big Dairy; I will not promote them in this blog. (One of them has a misleading name that seems to suggest that it's a raw milk advocacy. It zealously exposes every new allegation of contaminated raw milk it can find.)
Natural foods activist Mike Adams (involved in the below embedded interview with a California grocer and the tongue-in-cheek TSA protest song) has an interesting anti-protectionist style argument, which should be familiar to my fellow free market readers. Adams argues that the pasteurization process (much like the effects of a subsidy or tariff on imported competitive goods) can mask the effects of poor dairy management, unduly relying on pasteurization to offset the risks associated with a lower-quality, less healthful natural product.
Video Liner Notes: "From the August 3, 2011 raid of Rawesome Foods by government [personnel] who conducted a SWAT-style armed raid on this store selling raw milk and cheese." Rawesome Foods is cited in the above Stossel video.
I would tone down the rhetoric in the following interview (e.g., use of the term "torture"), but keep in mind that we're discussing a grocer--not a member of organized crime, a murder suspect, etc. Why is he being held at all? I seem to recall a certain Hollywood starlet with a ridiculous number of arrests over the years whom spent less time in jail than this guy. Why the handcuffs? Were the law enforcement officers worried that the 65-year-old grocer would overpower them and shove raw milk cheese down their throats? This is just WRONG on so many levels.
Political Humor
Mike Adams' mp3 is available for free download here.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Cars, "Magic"
