Is USDA an 'out-of-control muenster'?

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:03:00 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 1, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Is USDA an 'out-of-control muenster'?

Bureaucrats have a funny way of envisioning the "free market."

In recent years, the nations of Europe (with the partial abstention of Britain, an island whose most prominent newspaper once ran the famous headline "Fog Blankets Channel, Continent Cut Off") have put their bureaucrats to work, figuring out how to "open their borders to trade."

Mind you, this is a good thing -- America became an economic powerhouse in large measure because there is no import duty for Michigan automobiles entering Tennessee or Texas. Till recently -- see "The War on Drugs" -- American travelers also never had to worry about being stopped and asked for their "travel papers" upon crossing the border from Pennsylvania to Ohio -- nor from Arizona to California, for that matter. If the Europeans have finally seen the light and wish to similarly liberate the movement of goods and people across their continent, more power to them.

But the European bureaucrats couldn't merely tear down the barbed wire and tollhouses between Martelange and Bigonville and say "Good luck." Oh no. Private buyers and purveyors couldn't be left to their own devices to settle on standard sizes, as the 19th century American market managed to pretty well standardize the size of light bulbs, electric plugs, and automobile lug nuts. What would that leave for the bureaucrats to do?

So in Europe, special committees have busied themselves for years now, setting "standards" which each commodity must meet in order to move in "free market" trade -- the most hilarious example being the recent dispute between the French and Italians on what shall be the "standard" sizes for male birth control devices, the details of which (including predictable acknowledgments that perhaps on the other side of the border some smaller sizes might be in order) probably need no further explication in a family newspaper.

At any rate, Americans have long laughed at such typically continental folderol -- when not actively hissing that Teutonic Gestapo man as he moved through the passenger car, asking Dame May Whitty for her "Papers, please."

But perhaps we laughed too soon.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a new 15-page set of regulations, proposing that in order to gain the agency's "Grade A" rating, Swiss cheese shall henceforth be required to display holes with an average diameter of three-eighths of an inch -- down from the eleven-sixteenths-inch standard established back in 1987.

"Something smells here, and it isn't the Limburger," comments George Getz, press secretary of the Libertarian Party in Washington. "It's these federal bureaucrats who think they should be able to tax, regulate, mandate, subsidize, prohibit, and micromanage every area of our lives -- up to and including the size of the holes in our Swiss cheese. ... Americans don't need Monterey Jack-booted thugs from the USDA messing with our Swiss cheese."

Indeed, private brand names -- for which families and corporations invest decades and small fortunes establishing good will -- are the best guarantee of the wholesomeness of our foods. Historian and former Gorbachev economic adviser Yuri Maltsev recalls that the Soviet Union used to have a "Ministry of Vegetables," which so far as he knew never planted a single vegetable. Nor, so far as I can determine, has a single tomato ever ripened behind the concrete facade of the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.

It is past time to "reform" the USDA. The Constitution grants the federal government no power to "regulate, mandate, or subsidize" our very food.

Abolish it.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (subscribe by calling Neville at 612-895-8757.) His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair