Thomas Peno has been arrested forty times. Peno’s latest arrest came after he allegedly tried to sell a GPS he stole to its rightful owner – while he, Peno, was in court to answer a larceny charge filed against him.
See, Suspect in Court Allegedly Tried to Sell Stolen GPS to its Rightful Owner.
The war against raw milk sales in a dairy state, a war whose generals are big business interests, is underway in Wisconsin. I’ve written about previously about Governor Doyle’s veto of a bill allowing modest raw milk sales, and about regulatory badgering of dairies that offer raw milk for sale. (Some raw milk may be sold even now, and Doyle vetoed a bill that would have allowed just a bit more.)
Over at the Huffington Post, David Gumpert, author of The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Struggle Over Food Rights, has an essay explaining that money, and not safety concerns, motivates the war against raw milk sellers. See, Making the Business Case for Dairy Farmer Civil Disobedience.
Gumpert describes the situation in Wisconsin, one that’s favorable to raw milk sellers, all things considered:
Well, the big thing the raw dairies have going for them is that so-called “primary demand” for unprocessed foods is growing. Increasing numbers of people are learning about the dangers of processed foods and foods produced with antibiotics and pesticides. They want real milk, meat, and eggs produced locally by pastured cows and chickens, without the antibiotics, hormones and pesticides of the commodity segment. Similarly, they want organic fruits and veggies.
Also pushing primary demand is that more consumers are coming to understand that the commodity producers and their supporters rig the system. Big Dairy uses its pull to get the governor of a major dairy state (WI) to veto small-potatoes legislation that would open a tiny window of business opportunity for the little guys. The public health officials of a large urban state (MA) push for a crackdown on raw milk delivery services even though there’s not been a public health case in over a decade. A Big Dairy commodity producer thought to be friendly to farmers and consumers (Organic Valley) tries to squash raw milk producers that are grabbing more market share.
The result? Ever more interest and sympathy for the small producers. Stronger primary demand for raw milk and other such unprocessed products.
Gumpert contends that the claims of raw milk health risks that regulators and special interests make are wildly exaggerated, and are scare tactics, not sound public health policy. There are many similar regulatory efforts that are little more than government schemes to generate money through fines and penalties.
There will be a great many twists and turns in the months ahead, but I think that Gumpert’s right that raw milk dairies are likely to prevail, even against the powerful political forces arrayed against them.
Here’s the second of two videos about culinary freedom. This shorter video presents “The Case Against Jamie Oliver: Why the Naked Chef Should Take His “Food Revolution” Back Home.” No one doubts that some diets are more healthful than others. Choosing what to eat is a decision that people should make on their own, without government prohibitions, and without the false claims that food hysterics like Oliver make as a matter of routine.
Link: The Case Against Jamie Oliver.
In February, celebrity British chef Jamie Oliver scooped up the prestigious TED Prize, awarded for his crusade “against obesity and other diet related diseases” and for having “pressured the UK government to invest $1 billion to overhaul school lunches to improve nutrition.” Upon receiving the award, he warned America that it was committing national suicide through food. In an attempt to recreate his British school lunch campaign in the United States, Oliver is launching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, a reality show that attempts to overhaul the school lunch regimen in America’s unhealthiest city.
But while food nags like Oliver and First Lady Michelle Obama are surely right that Americans need to eat better, is he right that our eating habits are killing us? And do we need a massive budget increase to introduce fresh foods and food education to our schools?
Reason.tv’s Michael C. Moynihan talked to food blogger and journalist Ed Bruske and Reason senior editor Katherine Mangu-Ward about school lunch reform, whether more government money could slim student waistlines, the United States Department of Agriculture’s role in making kids fat, and whether young American really are, as Oliver claims, living shorter lives their parents and grandparents.
Approximately 7 minutes. Written by Moynihan. Shot and edited by Dan Hayes. Production assistant, Joshua Swain. more >>
I’ve written before about how hard it is buy drink raw milk, for example, in a dairy state. People are, and should always be free, to advocate for one kind of food, or diet, over another. What, though, about the insistence that people must eat a certain way, and the use of government power to deny a person the ability to choose the kind of food he wants?
That’s the subject, among others, of an interview that Nick Gillespie of Reason conducted with Liz Williams, the founder and president of New Orleans’ Southern Food and Beverage Museum.
Link: http://www.reason.tv/video/show/liz-williams-and-nick-gillespi.
Here’s a description accompanying the video:
The forces of neo-Prohibitionism are afoot everywhere, seeking to minimize not just our choices when it comes to food and drink, but our very pleasure. In San Francisco, health officials have cracked down on high-end bars that make their own bitters. In New York, raw eggs have been banned from use in cocktails such as sloe gin fizzes. When will it ever stop?
To get a sense of the range and causes of the neo-Prohibitionist mind-set, Reason’s Nick Gillespie talked with unabashed culinary freedom fighter Liz Williams, the founder and president of New Orleans’ own Southern Food and Beverage Museum.
Williams believes we are what we eat, and we should be free to eat and drink what we want. She is a lawyer by training, has served as a Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Army, and is the author of the forthcoming book The Encyclopedia of Law and Food.
Approximately 44 minutes.
This discussion was part of Reason Weekend, an annual conference held by Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason.tv. This year’s event took place in New Orleans from April 15-18 in New Orleans.
Good morning,
Today’s forecast calls for a mostly cloudy day with a high of seventy-six degrees.
In the City of Whitewater, the Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 6 p.m. The agenda is available online.
It’s the last day of school for our district today. It’s Olympic Day at Lakeview School today, and there will be a fifth grade recognition program at Lakeview, beginning at 1:15 p.m. Washington School will have awards assemblies, Field Follies, and lunch on the lawn today.
Yesterday, I posted about Wisconsin’s regulatory badgering of dairy farmers trying to sell raw milk within existing legal requirements. Even that’s now hard to do, following Governor Doyle’s veto of a bill that would have allowed expanded, yet still modest, raw milk sales. See, Ongoing Harassment of Dairy Farmers in America’s Dairyland.
One of the two lawsuits mentioned in that post was filed in Walworth County. (Note: As one would reasonably expect, I have no connection to these plaintiffs. I’ve simply been following the raw milk sales issue for a while.) There’s a
story online that mentions the Walworth County lawsuit.
A motion hearing in that local case is scheduled for Thursday, June 10th at 10 a.m. before Walworth County Circuit Judge John Race. Among the plaintiffs are local dairy farmers, and the Farm-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.
In a state with high unemployment, with temporary census workers masking the true weakness of the job market, and with the prospect of upcoming tax increases that will retard economic growth, there are still ways for local governments to improve their own prospects. I posted earlier this year on the suggestions of Stephen Goldsmith of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government about government strategies to avoid. See, “Red-Ink Tsunami: Why Old Ideas Can’t Fix the New Government Perma-Crisis”.
Goldsmith listed five “Strategies of Yesteryear that Won’t Work Today”:
1. More federal aid
2. More government debt
3. More taxes
4. More delaying tactics
5. Incremental, stopgap measures
Goldsmith picked up on that those suggestions in a subsequent article, entitled, “Burdening the Future: It’s Not Just the Feds.”
Goldsmith describes the problems that many state and local governments face:
The recently released federal budget has shed a harsh spotlight on government’s tendency to spend today while leaving the bill for our children to pay. The budget projects $8.3 trillion in deficit spending between 2011 and 2020 on top of an already massive debt….
Government budgets, unlike private sector accounting, make it possible to ingeniously “kick the can down the road”….
A clearer understanding of the ways the future gets burdened with the debt of the present is a good place to start.
1) Paying employees with promises
Set aside any discussion as to how much public officials ought to be compensated. Instead, focus solely on how they get paid. In general, public workers earn both current salary and benefits plus credit toward promises of future compensation, most notably pension and retiree health care benefits. The problem with this is that today’s elected officials rarely put away enough to cover expected payouts….2) Borrowing to stay Afloat
The amount of municipal debt presents challenges to city and state governments. And when government borrows for capital purposes leaders need to make the case for why the investment produces a strong foundation for the community and why the debt matches the life cycle of the asset. A riskier problem occurs when officials borrow to manage operating deficits. Essentially this is the difference between a family that takes out a mortgage for their home and one that takes out a second mortgage to help finance their credit card purchases….3) Accepting Medicine That Makes the Patient Worse (a Short Term Fix)
No stressed mayor or governor faced with layoffs and budget cuts can rationally turn down stimulus money. But instead of investing the money in transformative approaches to public services that will permanently reduce the cost of production, the federal government forced local officials to temporarily keep public jobs at unsustainably higher levels – thus ensuring an even steeper cliff event when the money runs out….4) Deferring maintenance on infrastructure
Very few governments maintain a true capital budget reflecting depreciation. Therefore officials have little incentive to defer today’s needs to prepare for tomorrow’s infrastructure crisis. Yet this deferred maintenance comes at a very steep price eventually as the neglected small repairs of today become the huge replacement expenses of tomorrow. Recently enacted GASB rules 43 and 45, helpfully require governments to account for the costs of unfunded liabilities on their balance sheets, belatedly forcing some attention to this issue….
Not every state or municipality has all these problems; those that have even some of them are struggling under that burden. Whitewater, Wisconsin has a particular problem of focusing on grand projects rather than simpler undertakings. The cost in taxpayer earnings, municipal debt, and the redirection of city workers’ priorities to build something like the Whitewater-University Innovation Center is an example of mistaken priorities. It’s a capital project, but it’s hardly maintenance of infrastructure. It’s something far worse — setting out on another new, bad idea rather than fixing underlying problems from former bad ideas and ignored present needs.
The best immediate fixes for Whitewater would be to scrap the Innovation Center and Tech Park, recognize the many wasteful mistakes from failed tax incremental financing schemes, abandon any further tax incremental schemes for the city, and to focus on basic maintenance, and choose simple governance over showy cheerleading.
Good morning,
Today’s forecast for Whitewater calls for a mostly sunny day, with a high of eighty-three degrees.
Here’s a quick reminder that the Whitewater’s Bethel House Charity Golf Event is this Saturday, June 12th.
The proceeds from this fundraiser are used entirely to support Bethel House, an ecumenical project with six housing units for families in need of shelter and providing other support services in the Whitewater area. During the last fifteen years, Bethel House has provided 75 families with housing and helped many more families with financial assistance for rent or utilities, household items, food, or referral services.
This year’s Golf Event will be held on Saturday, June 12, 2010. The day’s special activities will include golf, lunch, prize drawing, and awards ceremony. Participating as a sponsor or golfer is very important to Bethel House. This major fundraiser helps cover the costs of operation. Your contribution, large or small, will help to make this a special day for Bethel House. Sponsors for the respective holes will have their names prominently displayed at the tee for the hole that they are hosting.
We are looking forward to a great day on the course with a 9:00 AM shotgun start using a best ball scramble format. This year’s event features a $10,000 Hole-In-One prize provided by Binning and Dickens Insurance, as well as many other hole prizes for the participants. Foursome prizes for 1st, 4th, 7th, & 11th place will also be awarded. Costs for this year’s event are $50 of which $19 is tax-deductible. Fees include the 9 holes of golf, many individual and team prizes, and buffet lunch….
The History Channel recalls that on this day in 1973, legendary thoroughbred Secretariat won the Triple Crown:
With a spectacular victory at the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat becomes the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win America’s coveted Triple Crown–the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. In one of the finest performances in racing history, Secretariat, ridden by Ron Turcotte, completed the 1.5-mile race in 2 minutes and 24 seconds, a dirt-track record for that distance.
Here’s footage of that victory:
Wisconsin Governor Doyle gave special interests a victory over small farmers when he veteoed a bill that would have permitted limited raw milk sales. Now, during the deepest recession in decades, state inspectors are badgering small farmers about voluntary transctions between adult buyers and sellers of a dairy products. See, Raw Milk Advocates Decry State Action Against Farmer .
(Fortunately, some farmers in Dane and Walworth counties are pursuing separate lawsuits to defend their property rights against overreaching regulatory enforcement.)
Arthur Laffer, of the Laffer Curve, writes in the Wall Street Journal of “Tax Hikes and the 2011 Economic Collapse.”
It’s sobering, somber reading:
Today’s corporate profits reflect an income shift into 2010. These profits will tumble next year, preceded most likely by the stock market….
People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives….
On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush’s tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.
Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there’s always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere.
Now, if people know tax rates will be higher next year than they are this year, what will those people do this year? They will shift production and income out of next year into this year to the extent possible. As a result, income this year has already been inflated above where it otherwise should be and next year, 2011, income will be lower than it otherwise should be.
Also, the prospect of rising prices, higher interest rates and more regulations next year will further entice demand and supply to be shifted from 2011 into 2010. In my view, this shift of income and demand is a major reason that the economy in 2010 has appeared as strong as it has. When we pass the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 2011, my best guess is that the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe “double dip” recession….
The result will be a crash in tax receipts once the surge is past. If you thought deficits and unemployment have been bad lately, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Worse still, of course, even those who mistakenly believe that government should spend its way out of a second recession will find no money left to spend.
In a time of a high unemployment and dire budget forecasts, the State of Wisconsin has decided to waste money telling residents that a statewide smoking ban in workplaces begins soon. See, Wis. to Launch Statewide Smoking Ban Ad Blitz. There are a thousand ways to better use this money, from not spending it at all to emergency services for the truly needy.
The campaign involves radio, print, and Internet ads featuring Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle. (Just about any spokesman, of any party, would be more persuasive than our governor, in the final months of his term, and none-too-popular.)
There’s no reason to spend money on a campaign that assumes residents will not know of the ban through their own reading and their won workplace notices. I’m opposed to the ban in any event — businesses should decide for themselves if they wish to ban smoking.
What’s typical though is the condescension of politicians to assume that residents and businesses will not know of the ban without a government ad campaign. Of course they will know of it; it’s a reflex for government to conclude that without state intervention and state public relations efforts, people would be in the dark about all this.
Wisconsin has better uses for the money this campaign will require.
Good morning,
Today’s forecast is for a day of showers, with a high of sixty-five degrees.
In our school district, tonight at 6 p.m. there will be a question and answer session with District Administrator Zentner at Lakeview School.
In WIsconsin history on this date, the Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that Frank Lloyd Wright was born:
1867 – Frank Lloyd Wright Born
On this date Frank Lincoln Wright (he changed his middle name after his parents divorced) was born in Richland Center. An architect, author, and social critic, Wright’s artistic genius demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to create architectural space and vocabulary that drew inspiration from both nature and technology. The son of William Cary Wright, a lawyer and music teacher, and Anna Lloyd Jones, a school teacher, Frank Lloyd Wright’s family moved to Madison in 1877 to be near Anna’s family in Spring Green.
Wright briefly studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, after which he moved to Chicago to pursue a career in architecture. Wright started his own firm in 1893 and between 1893 and 1901, 49 buildings designed by Wright were built. Some notable Frank Lloyd Wright structures in Wisconsin include S.C. Johnson and Son, Inc. Administration Building in Racine, the A.D. German Warehouse in Richland Center, and Taliesin and Hillside in Spring Green. The Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison was also based on Wright’s design. Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 9, 1959, in Phoenix, Arizona. [Source: American National Biography, Vol. 24, 1999, p.15]
For those interested in assembling a house based on one on Wright’s designs, Lego offers a model of Fallingwater:
John Whitehead, who founded the Rutherford Institute, a right-leaning civil liberties organization, has an essay at the RI website about civil libertarian Nat Hentoff, formerly of the Village Voice, among other publications. See, Nat Hentoff: A Civil Libertarian Takes on Obama and the World.
Hentoff, a contrarian, and a bit of a cranky one, is also one of America’s great civil libertarians. Now eighty-five, he’s been advocating for civil liberties his entire life, tirelessly and effectively. He’s very much a model of a dedicated American. I’d disagree with Hentoff on any number of points (he describes himself contrarily, for example, as a Jewish atheist), but I can think of no one who’d do a better job advocating on behalf of someone’s rights and liberty. Truly, I can think of no one from our time who would be a better advocate.
Hentoff also appreciates and knows jazz well, and that’s admirable. I grew up in a jazz-loving household, favoring that music over any other all these years, and Hentoff’s reviews and assessments have always seemed insightful.
Here’s part of Whitehead’s description of Hentoff:
At the age of 85, Nat Hentoff is a radical in the best sense of the word- a true freedom fighter and warrior journalist with a deep-seated intolerance of injustice. His integrity and willingness to buck the trends have earned him the well-deserved reputation of being one of our nation’s most respected, controversial and uncompromising writers.
Armed with a keen understanding of the law and an enviable way with words, brandishing a rapier wit and teeming with moral outrage, Nat has never been one to back down from a fight, and there have been many over the course of his lifetime – one marked by controversy and fueled by his passion for the protection of civil liberties and human rights. There was the time Nat testified for stand-up comic and political satirist Lenny Bruce during his obscenity trial; stood up for a woman rejected from law school for being white; called into Oliver North’s talk show to voice his agreement about liberal intolerance for free speech; and resigned from the ACLU in protest of their position on assisted suicide, as well as their position against revealing the results of HIV tests on newborn babies.
This is also a man who has walked among political and cultural giants and lived to tell the tale. He was friends with Malcolm X, was labeled “the Antichrist” by Louis Farrakhan, and came to know some of the most talented jazzmen of all time – Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Dizzy Gillespie, to name a few. He also wrote liner notes for such musical greats as Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, and Aretha Franklin….
It’s people like Nat Hentoff who keep us honest, inspire us, and push us to think. As he once told me:
“I am optimistic. I have to be optimistic, as I know you are. That is why you keep writing and keep doing what you do. You have to do this because we have been through very dark periods before. There are enough people who are starting to be actively involved that we can turn things around. And we need to encourage others to become involved.”
Nat Hentoff, thanks for being “a general pain in the ass.” We’ve all been the better for it.
It’s easy to be optimistic for an America that produces champions like Hentoff. I’d say it’s impossible, truly, to be anything other than an optimist for so many reasons. Hentoff’s work has its place among those many reasons. The Rutherford Institute’s right to acknowledge and praise that admirable, impressive work.
Lots of people complain about speeding tickets, but I have never heard of anyone doing what Brian McCrary did. McCrary saw that a local police department website’s address wasn’t properly renewed, so he purchased it for himself.
He’s now the proud owner of www.bluffcitypd.com.
I’m not sure how long he will have the domain, but it’s his for now.
