Overruling NYC’s Ban on Large Sodas
A judge has overruled this. I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t comment on the legality, what I will say is that in this case, I actually support Bloomberg. High doses of sugar and fructose contribute to obesity and the diabetes epidemic: they kill a lot of people. A lot more people than, say, marijuana. There’s very little difference, in harm, between processed sugar/fructose in large doses and cigarettes.
You could, of course, also tax it into the ground.
I would also put limits on plate size in restaurants, and would tax fast food very heavily, along with increasing the minimum wage to at least $14/hour. Get rid of ALL the corn subsidies and move them over to subsidizing small independently owned farms growing vegetables while taxing large corporate owned farms at higher rates (about half the remaining family owned farms in America went out of business during the last drought, I’m given to understand.) All of those things would have significant beneficial health effects. If you believe in markets (not free markets, there are no such things) you believe also that incentives have effects. Change the incentives and you change the behaviour.
Oh, and tax the heck out of lawns, which do nothing but waste water, and make it legal everywhere (by making it a requirement for a federally conforming mortgage) to grow and sell vegetables at your home.
Hear hear! The social institution of lawns and the strange community by-laws that accompany it always were an abomination.
When we have to legislate peoples behavior (even in their own self interest), then the fucking trip is over.
Soda size? Sugar intake? Another war on substances?
God’s almighty; have we really come to this?
Scotty? Oh yeah; you’re dead…
We always had to legislate these things. It’s no different from “forced” retirement saving. In the anarchist utopia, where people’s true selves are permitted to match their ideal selves, it won’t be necessary by definition. Otherwise there are negative externalities that need to be dealt with.
Now what exactly needs to be controlled is a matter for science…
That’s a very libertarian view. We already legislate people’s behavior in their own interest. Seat belts, helmets, prescription drugs, traffic laws, illegal drugs, what pesticides can and can’t be used, how animals are slaughtered, how food is cooked in restaurants, what additives can and can’t go into food. Lawn darts. Some of those laws are good, some of them are bad.
There is NO substantive difference between many of those laws and regulating or taxing sugar. If you want to make the libertarian argument in pure form, then you have to argue for ending all forms of goods which might harm the person using them. If you don’t want to use the pure form, then you have to argue benefits and negatives.
Do I need to do a post with a diabetes graph? An obesity graph? Do you understand how fat and sick Americans (and Westerners) are?
…Oh, and tax the heck out of lawns, which do nothing but waste water…
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Having lived in an “emerging” third world country for the last decade this (above quote) is the thing that irks me most. The first world’s galactic waste of water; but not just water, water that is fit for drinking right out of the tap, used for everything but human consumption.
Here, 90+% of tap water is NOT fit for human ingestion; for that we have to buy RO water separately. Nowhere, that I’m aware of, is drinking quality water used for anything else.
Do I need to do a post with a diabetes graph? An obesity graph? Do you understand how fat and sick Americans (and Westerners) are?
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Not for this one, I already know. It’s a form of mental/societal illness.
I’m all for nature taking its course; it’s how I plan to leave.
And believe me, my clock is far older than yours.
It’s really shocking, especially in the fat belt. When I returned from Denver in 2008 to Toronto I saw more people of “normal” weight in the 30 minute subway ride back from the airport than I saw in 5 days in Denver. You go to NYC or DC and you stay in central areas and you don’t realize just how bad it is.
I lived overseas (Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, India) plenty when I was a kid, I’m aware of the drinking water issues.
Very strongly correlated with economic well-being though. NYC sodas are only a stopgap measure.
I lived overseas (Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, India) plenty when I was a kid, I’m aware of the drinking water issues.
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Didn’t know that, interesting. Most have no idea (as you already know).
The U.S. is so broken; I’ve no expectation of anything but a dystopian future.
As the Borg were so fond of saying; resistance is futile.
Of course, I’ll never lie down for that or any of the other stupid human tricks.
Cheers Ian; don’t let the bastards get you…
Very strongly correlated with economic well-being though. NYC sodas are only a stopgap measure.
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Of course. And of course your other points are well taken and on the mark.
Cheers.
I have no problem with what Bloomberg was trying to accomplish, but the judge was right that the exceptions (convenience stores, > 50% milk beverages, etc.) made the law capricious, and, IMHO, self-defeating. Hopefully the city will rewrite the law without the exceptions.
If people will not live a healthy lifestyle on their own, can a government successfully force them to by passing laws? The idea strikes me as ludicrous, especially when I peruse the aisles in the grocery store today.
I was behind a woman in the checkout line a month or so ago. She must have weighed 400# and had a cart filled to the top. It was exclusively of the “Twinkie” class of foods; sugar enhanced cereals, cookies, prepared dinners, etc. Is preventing her from buying a supersized soft drink going to help the cause for her and her family?
To respond the way I think a conservative would:
The government shouldn’t interfere in the market by eliminating subsidies.
I like the lawn tax idea but Scotts is too important an interest group.
A large-scale shift in distribution came about by the changing of large-scale conditions. Presumably the purpose of government prior to the establishment of anarchist utopia is for us to get a handle on large-scale problems. It’s exactly like retirement: most people do not have the foresight or even sometimes the ability to save all they need to retire from the labour market.
My main worry about all of this is the excessive pathologization of obesity as moral incontinence, becoming a burden, *over*emphasis on the direct health risks, rather than as a symptom of other associated things.
Lawns where I live serve a needed function. the nearby Passaic River floods and lawns and trees absorb the water. Overbuilding leads directly to rather frequent flooding. Overbuilding has taken the form of mcmansions on relatively small lots (on third to four tenths of an acre for a 4,000 to 4,500 foot house. The standard house of 1,500 to 2,000 square feet sits on on half an acre.
The other forms of local over building are big box stores. Zoning which had been pretty restrictive has been taken out of local hands and moved to the state government which approves everything that is large and corporate. The power of local zoning now is restricted to permits for fences and other nonsense issues.
Of course government can change how people eat. It already has, by massively subsidizing certain types of foods, and not subsidizing other types of food. This is a relatively trivial exercise, if you don’t want people eating sugar and corn syrup, tax the hell out of them. Most junk food uses a ton of corn syrup, corn in other forms, or sugar.
Zoning itself is highly problematic. In most of Western Europe, mixing most commercial and residential uses is done as a matter of course. Urban apartments and row houses sometimes exist facing an inner courtyard with retail and office space on the outer courtyard. A lot of US/Canada suburban pathology is created by demanding that no one buy anything where someone may build a house. The big box phenomenon is a natural extension of this.
Lawns meaning greenspace is not itself the problem, inherently. The problem is the artificial watered manicured lawn, with an enforced grass monoculture and no other use permitted but decorative. It’s intended to let people ape English gentry—or force them to.
I understand what you’re saying, Ian, and I’m all for certain incentives and taxes, blah blah blah, but Bloomberg is a nut case sometimes, and this is one of those times.
He also just gave a boatload of money — again — to Johns Hopkins, a phenomenally wealthy institution; meanwhile, thousands of NY residents are still without homes after Hurricane Sandy. Bloomberg’s off his rocker.
I’m puzzled by people who object to taxing corn and sugar products, but seem to have no objections to the very heavy federal subsidies that corn and sugar enjoy. Does it have something to do with preserving illusions about individual free choice? If I can see the tax raising the cost of what I buy, it’s the interfering government nanny state. If I can’t see the subsidy lowering the cost of what I buy, there’s no government interference. Is that it?
The world is too complex now for any individual to know enough to make the wise, informed choices that we’re told we ought to make. The information we get is provided by corporations out to make profits, and the information is provided in ways that create emotional longings. In this context, agents supporting wise decisions should use incentives to mitigate the damage.
Cigarettes, already touched upon in this thread, are the obvious comparison.
As rather defiant smoker (I have no excuse or justification for this, it’s just so), the creeping regulations against smoking, stretching back to the late ’70’s in my experience, has been an ongoing burr in my ass. I have raged, I have cursed, I still sneer against the “harm” that I experience just trying to get a damned drag.
My psychological capitulation to the smoking ban in bars (!) is aided by some ethical sense: Shouldn’t force people to suffer secondhand smoke at their job (eff the other patrons, who are there by choice), so I deal.
For all of my squirming, however, my more benevolent civic side acknowledges that the anti-smoking Nudge from government and media propaganda has achieved a greater good – it might piss me off that my kid looks at me as if he is beholding Satan himself when I light up, but it’s kind of nice to see he doesn’t have the habit himself.
Of course government (“us,” for all of its warts) can do a little successful social engineering. Even, at times, for the good.
Now get off of my lawn!
Ian,
I wouldn’t use marijuana laws to justify anything, there are already too many underclass rotting in jails while killers roam free.
“limits on plate size in restaurants”, NO, how would you police that…TSA?
“tax fast food very heavily”, NO, you’d kill off a lot of small business’s, while McDonald’s would use lawyers to make sure it got the lowest rate.
“increasing the minimum wage to at least $14/hour”, YES and while we are at it, end all the practices that have led to a declining wage for average US citizens, H1-B’s, L-1’s, TN’s and a host of others that bring in 450,000/yr into the STEM professions
http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/lobbyist-congressional-cheap-labor-drone-marches
“Get rid of ALL the corn subsidies”, YES, make Iowa the last primary in the United States, ban candidates selected by caucus for federal offices.
“Subsidizing small independently owned farms growing vegetables”, WE ALREADY DO WITH OPPRESSIVE LABOR LAWS, put Salinas and the Central valley on next vacation route, or read about Chavez.
“taxing large corporate owned farms at higher rates”, YES, break up farms to smaller parcels would be good for the environment. AND tax the shit out of Monsanto and it’s pinkertons
“tax the heck out of lawns, which do nothing but waste water”, NO, c’mon the grass I have is less than 250ft^2 front and back, the rest is garden, it keeps weeds from growing [used to spend 1.5 hours every other week weeding…most people won’t they’ll just use weed killer]. Plus it’s great place for me and my dog to play. Most people use rain barrels in my neighborhood (remember, I am just south of BC).
If you’re going to use the “X large industry will lobby” argument, then we may as well admit we’re all fucked, screwed, and that a couple billion or more people are going to die from climate change than necessary. At which point I should stop writing.
There are very few fast-food restaurants in Scandinavian countries. They do just fine without them. There are plenty of things we can hire people to do, but even if we couldn’t we’d be better off giving them a guaranteed annual income and having them rotate on their thumbs, because such restaurants do a great deal of damage.
As for lawns, ok, overstated the case. However no covenants requiring them, no municipal laws disallowing gardens. And in a lot of places they do need to go (like desert states with water problems, and, well, most of California, and…)
Where I live every restaurant gets inspected once a year. Those that don’t pass get shut down.
Government works when you want it to.
I agree with this “Government works when you want it to”. Remember, I am the guy who keeps saying that if want to make progress in the US, we need to return to what brought so much progress during the FDR/New Deal years [1932-1978], what worked before, FDR policies, regulations and laws.
But inspecting for portion control is not like inspecting for cleanliness…one is hard, the other damn near impossible.
Besides, the reason people are getting fat is a combination of work related stress*, imposed idleness at work**, long hours*** [longer than Japan] and long daily commutes that range from 1.25 – 2.35 hours a day. All of this recent, all of it missing for most of the 1932-1978 period. These are the proximate cause, with stress being the biggest, lack of security triggers a hormonal response in primates that cause them to “get hungry” and sugar and fatty starch’s are what will stop the hormone flow.
Now granted, as the rest of Europe returns to the 19th century economics of austerity and shreds the social contracts, things will worsen there as well…
*[stuff like “do I get laid off this week” – “do I really have play the “Tom” role to keep this job” – “how much free overtime do I have to give to keep from being fired” – “if I don’t train my foreign replacement I’ll be fired, but if I do, I’ll be laid-off]
** A lot of workers are forced to remain seated, asking for something as simple as being able to go to the toilet.
***http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93364&page=1
People do not decide their lifestyle on their own. We are all the focus of billions upon billions of dollars in advertising to get us to drink and eat certain products created by the private sector. The private sector has successfully gotten people to eat garbage (myself included) for the better part of a century now. It’s entirely possible. It’s been done.
What NYC is doing is regulating the ability of the private sector to negatively influence the choices, lifestyles, and health of its citizens.
I lived in Phoenix for 5 years. Watching golf courses getting watered at 2pm in 105 degrees and with 1% humidity… you could see the water sizzling off the grass and into the air.
As lovely as many Scandinavians are, I’m not sure I’d hold them up as a success story. Their rates are still relatively high:
http://www.iaso.org/iotf/obesity/
The best model to emulate would be found on the islands I call home and no where better to start than with kids:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-26/world/36562478_1_school-lunch-child-obesity-rate-meals
And I’d add that McDonald’s is as ubiquitous here as in Fast Food Nation. As Ian says, I see more obese people at Dulles when I land stateside than I see all year here, not counting the sumo wrestlers I’m going to watch later this afternoon.
In any event, once again our author illustrates how mindgobbingly obvious the solutions are if we only had the resolve. And I can’t just chalk it all up to evil corporations/media. If you can’t take ownership of your own backside …
@ jcapan
In any event, once again our author illustrates how mindgobbingly obvious the solutions are if we only had the resolve. And I can’t just chalk it all up to evil corporations/media. If you can’t take ownership of your own backside …
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Mercy; one would think we’re bots operating under some master droid.
No minds, no will, no autonomy, no brains.
I’m with you; we always have choice.
As I stated above; the society is sick (mentally ill) and frankly, let things fall where they may.
Maybe a culling is in order…
Really?
Wiki: Culling is the process of removing breeding animals from a group based on specific criteria. This is done either to reinforce certain desirable characteristics or to remove certain undesirable characteristics from the group. For livestock and wildlife alike, culling usually implies the killing of the removed animals.
One myth rises above all others. It affects public opinion about what drives America’s diet, how politicians respond to increasing obesity, what we permit of the food industry, and the health of the nation.
It is captured in two words — personal responsibility — The myth has strong, well-funded and politically powerful proponents, most notably the food industry, its trade associations and political figures influenced by industry lobbyists. One example is the National Restaurant Assn. and its state affiliates who use their considerable political muscle to oppose actions such as offering calorie values on restaurant menus (despite more than 80% of the public favoring such action) while trumpeting the personal-responsibility mantra.
Personal responsibility is not a hard sell in a country steeped in Puritan values of hard work, discipline and self-restraint. It works in some contexts but has two fundamental flaws when considering the nation’s diet — it is wrong and it leads down a failed and unproductive path. Every country in the world has increasing rates of obesity. Are people becoming irresponsible in remote islands in the Indian Ocean, poor African countries, China, India and everywhere else? People who move to the U.S. tend to gain weight, and those who move from the U.S. tend to lose. Laboratory animals given calorie-dense foods sold in any convenience store will ignore healthy foods and as much as triple their body weight. When the environment promotes obesity, weight will rise.
Economists use the term “optimal defaults” to describe conditions that promote beneficial or healthy choices…We could reduce traffic deaths by just imploring people to wear seat belts, drive slowly and avoid dangerous roads, but we install air bags. We could deal with air and water pollution by asking citizens to be responsible (wear masks and boil water), but instead we monitor industry, have emissions standards for cars, etc.
The nation’s diet is driven by terrible defaults. Large portions, a tidal wave of food marketing directed at children, schools selling unhealthy foods, and economic policy that makes healthy food cost more than calorie-dense processed foods are but a few examples of defaults that take a massive toll on the nation’s health and well-being.
The challenge is to create better defaults. This will be possible only when we turn from blaming people for irresponsible actions to giving the nation what it deserves — conditions that make responsible behavior the easy choice.
Kelly D. Brownell is a professor of psychology, epidemiology and public health at Yale University, where he serves as director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-dustup20sep20,0,5487871.story?coll=la-promo-opinion
jcapan
March 12, 2013
Really?
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I apparently used the wrong term.
As S Brennan says above; personal responsibility!
I’m not advocating killing anybody; however many Americans are committing a slow and expensive suicide; let them.
Celsius 233,
Keep me out of your eugenic sentiments, experts in the field say you [and those like minded] are simpletons.
Stress is factor #1 and that stress is directly related to hierarchical status. Cruelty is how you display status as a primate, which leads to premature death, you advocating death by cruelty is hardly new, monkeys express the same thoughts. The fact that you confuse primal urges with higher thought speaks volumes about your intellectual capacity and self realization.
Stress May Drive Obesity Epidemic
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on May 14, 2008
http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/05/14/stress-may-drive-obesity-epidemic/2286.html
weightA new research study finds that some subjects consume calorie-rich foods at a significantly higher level when chronically exposed to a psychologically stressful environment.
The behavioral impact of stress and weight gain occurred among subjects who were assuming subordinate roles in their social hierarchy.
Because the relationship between diet, psychological stress and social and environmental factors is complex, researchers set out to determine whether individuals chronically exposed to psychologically stressful environments over consume calorie-rich foods.
Scientists at at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, found socially subordinate female rhesus macaques over consume calorie-rich foods at a significantly higher level than do dominant females.
The study, which is available in the online edition of Physiology and Behavior, is a critical step in understanding the psychological basis for the sharp increase in obesity across all age groups since the mid-1970s.
The study also is the first to show how food intake can be reliably and automatically measured, thus identifying the optimal animal model and setting for future obesity studies.
To do this, they studied the feeding patterns of socially housed female rhesus macaques, which are organized by a dominance hierarchy that maintains group stability through continual harassment and threat of aggression. Such structure is a constant psychological stress to subordinates.
During the study, female macaques were given access to a sweet but low-fat diet and a high-fat diet for 21 days each. For a 21-day period between each test diet, the group was able to access standard monkey chow only.
To track feeding patterns, automated feeders dispensed a pellet of either the low-fat or high-fat chow when activated by a microchip implanted in each female’s wrist.
Researchers found socially subordinate females consumed significantly more of both the low-fat diet and the high-fat diet throughout a 24-hour period, while socially dominant females ate significantly less than subordinate animals and restricted their feedings to daytime hours.
This difference in feeding behavior resulted in accelerated weight gain and an increase in fat-derived hormones in subordinate females. Dr. Wilson believes this may suggest profound changes in metabolism and the accumulation of body fat.
“Subordinates may be on a trajectory for metabolic problems. As this study shows, they prefer the high-fat diet and, as a result of the stress of being a subordinate, they have higher levels of the hormone cortisol.
This may be involved in the redistribution of fat to visceral locations in the body, something that is clinically associated with type II diabetes metabolic syndrome,” continued Dr. Wilson.
Using Yerkes’ extensive neuroimaging capabilities, Dr. Wilson and his research team next will attempt to determine the neurochemical basis for why subordinate females overeat; specifically, whether appetite signals and brain areas associated with reward and satisfaction differ between subordinate and dominant females.
^ Ouch. Celsius got 0wn3d like Kunta Kinte.
(I dated myself with THAT reference.) -_^
@ Hamfast Ruddyneck
Thanks so much for that erudite contribution to this thread.
Celsius 233,
Keep me out of your eugenic sentiments, experts in the field say you [and those like minded] are simpletons.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wow, that’s quite a leap. And totally misses the point.
Personal Responsibility; your words.
I agree whole heartedly and it’s the missing ingredient in 99% of what’s going on today.
I learned along time ago to be highly suspicious of most psychology; because of “them” we are a Prozac Nation, ADHD/ADD infected, PTSD afficted (self), and millions of children on Ritalin.
There are always “reasons” found for every pathology; but what is most generally lacking is any sense of personal responsibility. It’s rife in America (and where I’m expatting as well) and I’m a bit perplexed with your rational of this “research”, which once again, will likely be dealt with by some form of medication.
When we, as a country, can finally mature past the post pubescent age of 17, we may just start to come to grips with the poor, the ignorant, the willfully under-educated, and mentally weak/scared/damaged citizens who populate the country known as the U.S.A.
We’re a population bereft of any empathy.
So, now you put your faith in psycho-anthropologists? Good luck with that…
As I stated above; the society is sick (mentally ill) and frankly, let things fall where they may.
Maybe a culling is in order…
I’m not advocating killing anybody; however many Americans are committing a slow and expensive suicide; let them.
We’re a population bereft of any empathy.
Oh my god, are you drunk?
And you are a jerk; posted every one out of the context of the sentence. FU!
Honestly if Bloomberg cared he would’ve been better off banning HFCS instead of arbitrary regulations that didn’t were a mish mosh from place to place. That’s why the transfat ban worked while this didn’t.
Alright folks, enough. Be polite or drop it.
I would like to give S Brennan a Gold Star on this issue for hitting the nail on the head re stress, excessive individualization of the issues, etc.
I disagree with the ban, to me it would be like saying alcohol can only be sold in airline size containers because the bigger bottles lead to alcoholism.
Genetics plus environment plus individual will.
You can’t do too much about genetics, at least not with current technology and wealth distribution. Environment includes immediate peers, stress levels (place in the hierarchy), customs under which you were raised (of family, nation, etc.) , and larger societal influence (e.g. advertising, suburban development styles, etc.). Individual will is self-explanatory but, as Ian has pointed out repeatedly, is relatively weak. It is especially weak in the face of environment and genetics, as these are constantly wearing on the individual.
Individual responsibility is important, but it is absolutely crucial to recognize that the vast majority of the population will succumb to the overall social currents of their time and place.
We highly regulate alcohol. In Canada you can’t get more than 40 proof, in many provinces it can’t be sold in ordinary stores, and so on.
S Brennan and Mandos,
The four years of “recovery” have not been good for most Americans or Europeans. The stock market may be back and “wealth”may have officially recovered but that is not what most of us are actually experiencing.
Not long ago, 65% of Americans owned homes. Most households wealth was largely in the net value of their homes. That plunged dramatically with the banks keeping theirs and the homeowners, aka 65% of Americans, losing an average of 35% of value and nearly or all of their wealth.
Real unemployment remains stubbornly above 10% probably closer to 15%. If you count WPA workers as employed, unemployment now is equivalent to that of 1934-35 and our recession actually is staying under 10% real unemployment longer than the Great depression did.
Government is seen as making things worse by both conservatives and by liberals these days (tax cuts to re-distribute money upwards, shredding of the social safety net). Not true in the 1930s when Social security, FDIC, re-organization (not funding) of the banks, regulation of the stock market, unemployment compensation and the alphabet soup of government programs built up America.
Workers ability to control their own fate has also decreased. Union membership continues its downward trend and it has accelerated during the Obama recovery years. Overall, membership (11.3% in 2012) is down to the rates before the Wagner Act was passed in 1935 and membership in private industry (6.6%) is down to the levels of the early 1900s. Some of this is desperation but much is due to deliberate policy by the Koch brothers and their allies.
Among the states with a sharp downtrend in union membership since 2008 are Maryland, Delaware and D.C., areas with liberal democrats “in control” as well as large black populations (blacks are the racial/ethnic group most likely to join unions according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Of course, similar drops were recorded in some states with Republican governors (WI, IN, NJ).
Two things seem to be pushing this. The immediate benefit of the investor class and the political advantage enjoyed by Republicans through weakening unions.
It is time, past time, for a change for the better.
If you want to get a grip on the underlying problem of negative personal behaviors (caloric consumption being a small portion of the spectrum), you have to, [at the very least], explore long term stress. To explore long term stress you have to look at the role hierarchy plays in it’s imposition upon a social group. Bear in mind, that long term stress changes genetic expression through a mechanism called epigenetics (chemical switches that turn on/off our genes). Effectively, your genes will change if you are exposed to constant stress, the same way they do when humans are exposed to carcinogens.
For a light and entertaining overview, you would be well advised to take the time to watch this National Geographic special, available on Netflix or this link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYG0ZuTv5rs
intro is ~3 minutes long and can be skipped, FYI the show is really about hierarchy’s role in inducing stress.
Although National Geographic is pretty much an NSA organ, many of our National Security institutions survived the doctrinal purges of our comrade Bush [the 1st] and are quite useful…and somewhat subversive, think GINI coefficient.
Yes, the GINI coefficient, is often fudged, or not given for countries that do well by policies that are deemed inappropriate by our ruling cabal, but the concept itself is highly subversive to hierarchical doctrine. That doctrine is often referred to as the “Chicago School of economics” which is the religion of our rulers and their minions. It is a religion that permits…no, change that…encourages primate cruelty, by redefining it as pious behavior.
David Kowalski, the comment you addressed to me is insightful and really opened my eyes to a reality that is quite country to my own.
Thanks for letting me know things are worse than they have been in the past [in say, 1932-1978 period*], as you have read my comments dutifully you will notice my strong support for continuing on our present path and plunging my country further into darkness. Thank goodness you told me the truth about the Koch brothers and the Republicans, I never would have guessed they were meanies without your help! Fortunately we have the Democrats and Obama, who is both your hero [AND MINE!!!] to save us from those bad people.
PS , you’re swell guy, thanks for the enlightenm…Oh wait a minute, I just checked my junk mail and there 6 emails saying pretty much the same thing you did…and asking me to send money to Democratic Party bundling organizations. …whoa…yesterday has the same…wait a MINUTE…Monday too…oh look, Sunday’s the same…Saturday too…and Friday…and… HEY, you not one of these guys are you? I guess I’ll have to take back all those nice things I said about you.
*I don’t know why I keep picking that time period, over and over and over and over, since read my comments consistently, you must know, what do you think?
Regulating portion control is a tricky one…Now I am a 25y/o male active in grappling so I’m obviously an outlier, but I have been practicing my own take on “intermittent fasting” for the past few years…I will never go back to the rat race that is the standard, 3 meal a day, carbohydrate driven, satiety absent way of eating that is common (or the even more stress inducing 6 meal a day, whole grains based “healthy” approach). The waters are so thoroughly polluted…
@ Celsius:
You’re welcome. ^_^
Ah, S Brennan. I never voted for Obama and never intend to vote for anyone with his views.
I was agreeing with your comment, not arguing for Obama and placing it into context.
I think many people would think that things are far better than in the late 30s. Some of the fools use the late 30s to “explain” why government can not sove economic problems even when the data shows the exact opposite.
I see Obama as a right winger in disguise and at least a good chunk of the Democratic party as following in his foot steps.
The de-unionizing of DC and Maryland is hard to explain unless one buys the influence of the federal government in that process. That may be partly the role of Republicans but Obama and the Democrats have a big part in it. Obama, after all, promised the Blue Dogs austerity before the vote for increased government spending and he has pretty well complied. Just not as much as Republicans have complied with the wishes of their donors (and corporate Democrats have complied with the wishes of many of the same donors).
Virginia (the more military of the DC suburbs) is already pretty anti-union.
Dearest David Kowalski,
I was talking about: “stress, excessive individualization of the issues, etc.”* before you started going off on your unrelated spiel…nothing you say to me is news…other than you addressing me for no apparent reason. And that…Dearest David Kowalski is why I gave your comment any notice…which is probably the purpose of your banal literary device…to get attention.
* – Mandos
Don’t forget GM wheat. Hashimoto’s disease is an autoimmune thyroid disease that has escalated since GM wheat showed up. And people with Celiac disease are having a bigger problem when their food is cross contaminated with this junk. GM wheat/gluten is making us sicker.
It would be easier to teach people about proper diets and make sure they have access to real food. And this approach has about the same chance of being done as the policing approach. Most are forced into obesity and diabetes by economic need, availability of grocery stores or lack of knowledge. Although it is true that not just poor people are fat.
Big Ag and with the rest of the MOTU run our diets/transportation/health care/etc. Nothing is going to change.
“Large pops”…?
Not the major point here, but I’m fascinated by the regionalisms. In NYC and environs, it’s “soda.” Nobody would know what you mean by “pop.”
Love this post, but unfortunately, I was misled by my education: facts don’t matter.
Ha, Thers. Didn’t know that. Pop is what we call it in Canada, at least in all parts of Canada from Ontario west (not sure about the rest.)