You Say Tomato, I say Tomato. Let’s call the whole thing off.

Switzerland is one of the sticklers for the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks on agriculture subsidies. We have mountains here, and a good way up some of those mountains are farm animals. It costs a fair amount of money to bring those products to market. Wherever those animals are, farm products are carefully inspected before going to market. Salmonella has not been an issue here. NPR had a story on this back in 2005.

In the meantime it’s tomato season back in New Jersey and elsewhere in the States, and it has been marred once again by a Salmonella scare. Official warnings have been canceled as of July 21, but a new warning has been issued regarding jalapeño peppers. Here we go again. U.S. farming practices remain a disaster. Thanks to lax regulation of the food supply we have had repeated scares. Last year it was spinach, with a bunch of pigs having taken a romp in a California field. What will it be next? People often mention the food supply as a potential terrorist target. I don’t see why they should bother. The farmers are doing a fine job of poisoning Americans without additional help.

Here is why the WTO is so important in this discussion. The Swiss pay a premium to protect their food supply through tighter inspection regimes and a higher standard of farm practice. Americans do not pay that premium. If the Swiss authorities deregulated their agriculture, they would in effect be reducing their standards for food quality. Perhaps instead Americans should consider raising their standards so that fewer people get sick.

“Law Enforcement” Stupidity Harms People

People who are in the country illegally take many risks. They risk being deported and not allowed back into the country. They risk not being able to take advantage of many aspects of the financial market for fear of being deported. They often risk their lives to get into America in the first place. And while it may seem reasonable for them to be arrested because they have entered the country illegally, that doesn’t mean they should be mistreated by the government while in detention. Such was the case with Juana Villegas, as the New York Times reported.

While in custody she went into labor, and was not permitted to see her husband in the delivery room. After the birth she was not permitted to breast feed her child or to have a breast pump. It is generally believed that breast fed babies are able to retain their mothers’ immunities longer than those who use formula. Many branches of our own government encourage breast feeding. And so by unnecessarily separating the mother from the child, the police effectively harmed the child, who is an American citizen and is eligible for social assistance. The child having already become sick once, is now costing Tennessee taxpayers.

This is all as a result of a program called 287G that turns police officers into immigration agents. The behavior of the police in Tennessee is precisely the result of design and desire of the Bush Administration. This is sad, because although this president has many flaws, one of his supposed bright spots was to be immigration reform. Unfortunately even there matters have gotten worse, as a fence is erected along the California border, and children suffer because of stupid policies such as that of this town in Tennesee.

One of the many remarkably stupid things in Mrs. Villegas’ case was the absurd statement made by the corrections official that they routinely bar medical equipment like a breast pump from a jail. It demonstrates either ignorance of the benefits, incompetence at being able to service inmates’ medical needs, blindness to the fact that an illegal immigrant is not the sort that is going to turn a breast pump into a bong, or all of the above. I wonder if they keep walking sticks away from the blind.

Let’s Outlaw Religion before outlawing homosexual marriages

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One of the odd “advantages” of being married and gay in San Francisco must be that couples get to have weddings every couple of years. At first San Francisco passed a domestic partner law back in the 1990s and then they started issue marriage licenses under Mayor Gavin Newsom. At some point those were invalidated and now couples can once again get married. But wait, California has an initiative on the ballet to overturn the legality of those marriages. Presumably this debate will seesaw from one side to the other, and each time it becomes legal to do so, a gay couple can marry. The county clerk’s office makes out like a bandit until everyone gets tired of the game in the process.

Here’s the problem: each time a law is passed that forbids gay marriage, someone’s rights are taken away, in this case the right to be recognized as married, to have spousal rights, and to take advantage of other perqs only offered to married couples.

If the government is going to discriminate in such a way, we should ask either who it helps or who it hurts if they don’t. One could easily see why the government might need to restrict movements of someone with an infectious illness. One could agree with the argument for not giving driving licenses to the blind. But here, who is hurt if a marriage license is given to a gay couple? Nobody. Absolutely nobody.

It might make a person feel good to take someone else’s rights away, until that person has his or her rights taken away. Suppose we forbid the practice of religion? I could argue that there are immense social benefits to doing so. In fact I might continue that line of thought in the future. But keeping in mind the Spanish Inquisition, the recent abuse children in the Catholic church, and everything that went on in between (including standing by while many died in WWII), we could make a strong argument that religion is harmful, because we’ve seen evidence of it being harmful. We cannot say the same with gay marriages.

So let’s outlaw religion first, at least for a while, and see if the abuses curb. If not, then let’s agree to keep government out of the church. But let’s also agree to keep government out of the bedroom.

Viva La France!

France

Happy Bastille Day!

It was on this day in 1789 that The Bastille itself was stormed, it having become a symbol of oppression where many folks lost their heads. Let’s take a moment to recount just a few things the French have brought the world (and for now we’ll exclude french fries, french toast, and frenching).

French Wine— France offers a wide variety of reds and whites, including some interesting sparkling reds. Chateua Nuef de Pape, Cotes du Rhone, and the big ones like Pomerol are something they’ve given me.
Bread— Nobody does a better croissant than France. Napoleon even erected a fort in the Alps to keep the Italians from stealing all the good bread. Italians need to learn how to make bread like the french.
The Statue of Liberty— a remarkable lady whose purpose seems forgotten in this unkind time.
The United States of America— Without Lafayette there would have been no U.S.A.
The Citroen— without this peace of junk, there is no way the big three could have lasted as long as they have.
The Crepe— need I say more.

So Happy Birthday, France! Salut!

The Do Nothing Presidency

Smoke Stack

Yesterday, the Bush Administration released a long awaited report by the Environmental Protection Agency, that says that Carbon Dioxide can and should be regulated. One would think this a remarkable departure for an administration that has done everything within its power to destroy the environment, through drilling in fragile environmental areas, unmitigated logging, and the failure to protect endangered species. There’s a catch: the Supreme Court ordered the EPA to develop the report, and in releasing it, in the same breath, the administration argued that regulation by the EPA to protect our children will hurt business and industrial growth.

Let’s review our tally for this administration:

Housing — Failure to properly regulate the housing market has led to a massive series of bank failures.
The Energy Market — we are suffering from inflation due to a massive increase in oil prices, which itself is in part due to an inability of Americans to conserve. The administration has done absolutely nothing to reduce consumption, or for that matter offer fuel alternatives. Instead, they’ve argued that drilling in wilderness refuges will offer some form of relief, a claim that is disputed by every expert in the field, because it will offer no short term relief, while medium and long term relief are by no means at all assured.
Security— having gone to war twice and wasted billions of dollars on meaningless programs, the administration has managed to alienate America from the rest of the world, reducing people’s desires to visit, impacting tourism, and reducing our national credibility. At the same time the Taliban has rebuilt itself, and we’ve lost our allies in Pakistan and now, seemingly Iraq (not that Prime Minister Maliki was every clearly an ally).
Education— No Child Left Behind has meant that our children haven’t gone forward as a group. Our public education system remains in a shambles due to lack of incentives for good teachers, buildings that are falling apart, and a general willingness by this administration to divert funds to religious programs.
Public Transportation— our skies are more dangerous than they have been since the creation of the FAA. More runway incursions, more close calls in the air, disgruntled workforces, and disgruntled passengers have left our air transportation system in a mess, while we’ve invested nearly nothing in ground public transport.
Public Welfare— with a remarkably lame response to Hurricane Katrina, the administration demonstrated that they could not be trusted with emergency crisis management.

In short, they did nothing except collect pay checks. Perhaps Americans will pay more attention to our civic responsibilities the next time we hand someone the keys.