ReasonTV
Welfare Pays More than Minimum Wage in 35 States: Q&A with Cato`s Michael Tanner
The FDA Is Holding Thousands Of Pounds Of Mimolette Cheese Captive
From Video Description:
With immigration reform in the news, here’s another tale of the federal government telling foreigners that they’re not welcome in the United States: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is holding thousands of pounds of mimolette cheese captive in a New Jersey compound because the regulators say the orange-hued, gouda-like fromage has too many mites on its rind.
Never mind that the mites – tiny, microscopic insects – are supposed to be there as part of a cheese-making process that goes back hundreds of years. The mites help to aerate the rind of mimolette, thus helping to produce the cheese’s distinctive attributes. Many other cheeses – including hugely popular varieties such as Stilton and high-end “bandage-wrapped” cheddars – also have rind mites that serve similar purposes. The FDA worries that some people might have allergic reactions to the insects.
Virtually all of the mites are blown off the cheese with compressed air or wiped off by hand, but some always manage to stick around. Although it has no official or definitive guideline of how many mites per square inch is acceptable or safe, the FDA has decided that a recent uptick in the number on mimolette is grounds for holding the cheese hostage.
The result, explains Jill Erber, the owner of Cheestique in Alexandria, Virginia, is that once American cheese shops sell out whatever supplies they have left, the United States will be a mimolette-free zone. As she told Reason TV, there is simply no way to know how or when the prohibition might be lifted.
Erber, like other cheesemongers, isn’t taking the arbitrary FDA action lying down. As a way of drawing attention to the situation, Cheesetique offered patrons of its Alexandria and Shirlington, Virginia free chunks of mimolette if they posted Facebook pictures of themselves frowning. Another Facebook page, Save the Mimolette, has over 2,000 likes and is rallying forces to say “No to the Mimolette ban in the US! Let us eat stinky cheese!”
For Erber, who worries the FDA will extend the ban to other mite-rind cheeses, the issue is about more than just cheese. “Food is one of the products for which it’s easy to say less regulation is better,” she explains. “The research is out there, let people look into what they want to eat. If they’re concerned about the safety of a particular food, they shouldn’t consume it.”
And, she adds, “It’s less about the actual cheese and more about ‘I want my choice.'”
Professor Thomas Hazlett – Net Neutrality
- Thank Goodness We Have Net Neutrality to Save Us From the Threat of People Paying to Video Chat Over Mobile Networks
- Happy 100th Birthday, Ronald Coase, Nobel-winning Economist & Pathbreaking FCC Critic!
- “The FCC did not have the statutory authority to do what it did” On Net Neutrality, Says Departing FCC Commissioner
Nanny of the Month (2-2013)
3 Reasons to Build the Keystone XL Pipeline ~ ReasonTV
A Liberal Democrat Governor Of Hawaii Talks Unfunded Liabilities And Democratic Spending Habits ~ ReasonTV
From Video Description:
“When the special interests become too powerful,” warns Ben Cayetano, “the voter only has the collective conscience of the people who are in public office.”
Cayetano was a popular two-term Democratic governor of the state of Hawaii who held office from 1994 to 2002. In 2012, Cayetano became alarmed by what he saw as out-of-control spending and special interests run amok. He came out of retirement and made a failed bid to become the mayor of Honolulu, Hawaii’s largest city.
Cayetano opposed the city’s $5.26 billion rail project, which he says costs too much and will not address Honolulu’s traffic problems. The massive system and inevitable cost overruns, he fears, simply piles more debt on a government already straining under unfunded liabilities for public-sector pensions and benefits. “They are going to end up raising taxes,” Cayetano told Reason TV. “Or the city will go bankrupt.”
In a wide-ranging conversation, the 73-year-old Filipino American discusses the Aloha State’s fiscal mess, the trouble with Hawaii’s one-party government, and why he believes social issues are distracting voters from more pressing economic problems.
Nanny of the Month (First of 2013)
Nanny of the YEAR (2012) ~ ReasonTV
Nanny of the Month (ReasonTV)
Video Description:
This month’s lineup of of busybodies includes the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where administrators may ban booze in dorms–even for students of legal drinking age (guess those college kids would just stay dry!). Then there’s Chi-Town, where officials are using GPS devices to track food trucks to make sure they don’t wander within 200 feet of any fixed businesses that sell food, including convenience stores. Violators could face fines of $2,000. Compare that to the $100 fine you’d face for parking in front of a fire hydrant and you get an idea for just how seriously city officials take the threat of competition. (Good thing the Institute for Justice is on the case.)
But this time the nanny of the month comes to us from deep in the heart of Texas, where administrators at San Antonio’s Northside school district are tracking kids with radio frequency identification chips. Dozens of electronic readers have been installed in the school’s ceiling panels to keep tabs on the kiddos while they’re at school. The official number-one reason for going RFID is to “increase student safety and security,” but–since district funding goes up when attendance goes up–it’s clearly all about the Benjamins.
With school-based tracking going back to at least 2004, the Lone Star State has been something of an RFID trailblazer. In fact, Northside is considering expanding the program to cover all of the district’s 97,000 students.