States and school systems around the country have been reformatting cafeteria menus, partly pushed by Michelle Obama’s 2010 “Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act,” which essentially has taxpayers triple-paying for the food schools serve under wild and conflicting nutrition regulations, and partly pushed by a desire to be politically correct. This has led to some outrageous incidents, including the recent North Carolina incident where a teacher forced a child to swap her homemade lunch for the school’s chicken nuggets, a Michigan state child obesity registry and tracking system, and now a new set of rules in Massachusetts that forbid school vending machines, bake sales, door-to-door candy fundraisers, and snacks at after-school events and parties.
The state’s justification is “an obesity epidemic.” And, to be fair, lots of American kids are fat–not pudgy, fat. But does this justify blanketing schools with often conflicting and nonsensical food requirements? Massachusetts State Sen. Susan Fargo thinks so.
“If we didn’t have so many kids that were obese, we could have let things go,” she said. “But this is a major public health problem and these kids deserve a chance at a good, long, healthy life.”
Ah, yes, government. Giver of good, long, healthy lives!
These regulation-happy state officials don’t seem to understand the law of unintended consequences, and this action has several. The problem for them is that some of the unintended consequences pit government regulation against government regulation, with the not-unlikely possibility the public begins to notice the Kafka-esque absurdity of it all.
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Over at Slate, Torie Bosch writes that that an underlying subtext of the Hunger Games franchise is a dystopian future induced by climate change and resource conflict. Bosch writes:
For those who have remained immune to The Hunger Games’ hype (and that’s just silly—read the books already!), Suzanne Collins’ story revolves around a cruel yearly pageant held in the country of Panem: One boy and one girl from each of 12 “districts” scattered through what used to be the United States are sent to battle to the death in a reality TV competition. Twenty-three will die; one will survive to live a life of luxury. We’re told that the games were instituted by the leaders of the Capitol, which governs Panem, to keep the district residents docile: The forced sacrifice of their children reminds them that they are allowed to live only so that they may provide the Capitol with goods and entertainment, panem et circenses.
In the first book of the trilogy, we witness the Reaping, the ceremony in which the boy and girl from each district are chosen in a brutal lottery. The mayor tells the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Panem, then, is what happens to North America’s democracies in a post-climate-change world.
Bosch hits on what is undoubtedly a theme of the series, but what is missing from her analysis is the other side of the story. In Panem, the only way to maintain the lifestyle of elites in the Capitol is to subject the producing districts to abject poverty. District 12, the home town of series protagonists Katniss and Peeta, exists only to produce coal for the capital. While certain resources may be scarce, lying on the other side of the fence are abundant plants and wildlife that could be harvested to address the needs of the people. Poor families can receive more grain and oil from the government only if they in turn place another slip with their name in the reaping, increasing the likelihood of their participation in the Hunger Games. Instead of allowing its people to prosper from these resources, the Capitol purposefully limits their access to resources to make them subservient to an authoritarian state. [click to continue…]
The story of a schoolteacher ripping away a 4-year-old girl’s carefully packed lunch from home–containing a turkey sandwich, banana, and snack bag of chips–to make the girl eat school-served chicken nuggets has ripped through the talk show circuit and prompted angry letters to the U.S. Ag Department from her family’s elected representatives.
Now the school principal and Associated Press have come in to set the story straight. Except that learning more facts makes the truth uglier.
The child’s teacher mistakenly sent the girl to the wrong school line at lunch, said Hoke County Schools Assistant Superintendent Bob Barnes yesterday. Instead of handing her a carton of milk to “round out her lunch,” the teacher wrongly made the girl eat the entire school lunch.
“We’re not trying to force government down anybody’s throat,” Barnes said. “All we’re trying to do is make sure that our children get a good education and a nutritious meal every day. It comes back to: We had an employee who made a mistake.”
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In the midst of state budgetary turmoil, it is not surprising that legislators are turning to unconstitutional regulatory measures in the pursuit of a few extra tax dollars. Arkansas, Connecticut, Colorado, North Carolina, and Rhode Island are among those states that have attempted to force Amazon.com to collect taxes on Internet sales. The tax has become a reality in Illinois, with Gov. Quinn’s signing of the “Mainstreet Fairness Act.” The online retailer has challenged and resisted these attempts at taxation, shutting down its affiliates program in the aforementioned states in retaliation.
Justifying the selective elimination its affiliates, Amazon points to the economic losses that are starting to add up as a result of these regulations. In a letter sent to its affiliates in Arkansas and Connecticut on June 10 2011, the company asserted that the increased regulatory efforts are the work of “big box retailers” hoping to harm the competition:
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On February 10th, 1999, world famous economist — and good friend of The Heartland Institute — Milton Friedman spoke on then-television show (now Web series), Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson.
In this episode, which you can view at the bottom of this post, Friedman underscores the importance of freedom and liberty to be the foundation of a prosperous society. Moreover, Friedman states how individuals should be free to live their lives so long as they do not infringe upon the freedom of others.
So, to what does this criteria translate? To find out, Robinson cites the federal executive departments of the United States government and asks the Nobel Laureate which departments should be kept and which should be abolished. The results are recorded below.
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Public schools nationwide have started “to look at every single thing” that could ease widespread budget woes, says a National School Boards Association spokesman. In the spirit of Thanksgiving’s food revelry and abundance, Congress has just offered them some financial flexibility on school lunches.
A House and Senate compromise on a big agricultural bill November 14 pulled the funding for school lunch rules the U.S. Department of Agriculture had implemented earlier this year, which would have required schools to offer “dark green and orange vegetables,” limit starches such as potatoes and peas to one-quarter cup every week, ban 2 percent milk, and make half the grains available whole-grain.
Those unable to get past the incessant, incestuous kabuki between big government and big business, such as the New York Times, painted the move as a fight between virtuous bureaucrats attempting to give poor kids more broccoli and whole-grain kale rolls versus industry giants evilly hoping to stuff transfat-soaked junk food into virgin bellies.
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On Thursday, November 17th, 2011, Senator Lautenberg (D-NJ) held a legislative hearing to garner Senate support for his new bill, the Safe Chemicals Act.
What this bill proposes:
- Ensure EPA has information on the health risks of all chemicals
- Require EPA to prioritize chemicals based on risk
- Expedite action to reduce risk from chemicals of highest concern
- Further evaluate chemicals that could pose unacceptable risk
- Provide broad public, market and worker access to reliable chemical information
- Promotes innovation, green chemistry, and safer alternatives to chemicals of concern
Full Text here.
In short, at the behest of many special interest groups – and apparently Jessica Alba – the EPA will have more power to regulate the chemicals that manufacturers embed into our economy. If it passes, the new law will attempt to accomplish this goal by placing the burden on industry to prove chemical safety.
That’s right. If Jessica Alba and multiple special interest groups have their way every chemical manufacturer in the country will be forced to submit information proving the safety of every new and existing chemical in production. Additionally, the EPA will have the final word if it enters the marketplace. [click to continue…]
Environmental advocacy groups such as the Safe States Alliance, the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, and the Interstate Chemicals Clearinghouse, are pushing states to enact legislation to create “chemicals of concern” lists. What these lists do is target chemicals widely used in industry for what will be unnecessary, and cost-heavy regulations.
For the simple cost to society in the form of lost jobs, higher consumer prices, and diminished product effectiveness, your child can be safe from chemical substances such as silicone. The same inert, low-toxic silicone that has been in production and played a major role in many industries for generations. While it is important that the most vulnerable members of society are safe from harm, there needs to be a clear, precise limit to how far government can intervene in between the chemical elements that make up the world around us.
Instead of basing regulation policy on hypothetical risk deduced from biomonitoring, they should based on real epidemiological research that passes the quality standards set by the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. This should be followed up with strict cost-benefit and comparative risk analyses so appropriate legislative action can be taken if needed at all. This will reduce unnecessary burdens placed on the economy while more efficiently protecting society from unintended harm.
By Taylor Smith, special legislative-development intern at The Heartland Institute.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is out of control. Beyond the typical FDA reforms of getting drugs to patients faster, the FDA should reform its scare-tactic policies.
On a recent trip to California, The Heartland Institute’s Amanda Evans took a picture of a popular sign demonizing acrylamide (right), a chemical commonly found in food and drinks after heating or cooking.
Like so many government agencies, the FDA is missing the big picture: everything can be toxic at a high dose. Water. The Sun. Chocolate. We must remember the FDA, EPA, and other agencies uses higher than normal exposure doses of chemicals on rats to determine toxicity to humans. A detailed explanation of this by the University of California at Berkeley is here.
Rich Trzupek, a policy advisor at The Heartland Institute, has written extensively on toxicity and dosage scares. His books can be found here, here, and here. Rich was recently featured in a Fox News video here.
The New York Times reports that one of many “little-noticed” provisions in Obama administration laws is forcing school districts to raise school lunch prices for those families that pay for them. Schools duly complying have faced a barrage of parents questioning the change.
Of course, as I report in today’s School Reform News, school lunches are already a massive subsidy from middle-class and wealthy families to poor ones. Michelle Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 only made this wealth transfer more explicit by immensely expanding federal food subsidies (including forcing states to let districts choose “free for all” lunch programs by 2014) and effectively insisting middle-class and wealthy families pick up the tab, both beforehand as taxpayers and at the lunch counter with higher prices.
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