I was on campus at Georgia Tech a few weeks back and they were hosting an Police Explorer “thing”. In other words they had teenagers all dressed up in Police Explorer t-shirts wearing badges, cuffs, guns (fake I assume), and going through some sort of collection of perverse drills. One was where the kid sat in a police car, jumped out, grabbed a gun off a table and fired three times into something laying on the ground. All the while some loser was timing him and charting his progress. I guess the idea was to see just how fast they could kill someone ?!?!?!?!?!? I had to ask myself: what responsible parent would allow they child to participate in such a thing?

This article in The Week, from “America’s Worst Mom,” is a fascinating reflection on an event that, one year ago, shook the world of America’s most vocal ‘it-takes-a-village’ Safety Nazis.

A year ago, Lenore Skenazy let her independent and spunky 9-year-old child take a New York subway home alone because he asked his parents to let him find his way home from someplace. So the parents, who are best equipped to judge their child’s ability and preparedness, allowed him to journey his way home from Bloomingdale’s along with “a subway map, a transit card, $20 in case of emergencies, and some quarters to make a call.” As a journalist, Mom wrote a column about her son’s experience for the New York Sun.

She was vilified by the media, parenting “experts,” hysterical, busybody parent-peers, and the entire American Parental Safety Entourage. Her ability to raise a child was called into question, and accordingly, I am surprised that social services did not immediately send out a swat team to forcibly remove the child from the home at gunpoint.

I hadn’t made the connection, but this is the same lady who runs the Free Range Kids blog, a neat blog that a reader pointed out to me last year. The central theme of Lenore’s blog is based on her statement that “mostly I’m afraid that I, too, have been swept up in the impossible obsession of our era: total safety for our children every second of every day.” Lenore adds, “it is really up to us parents to start renormalizing childhood. That begins with us realizing how scared we’ve gotten, even of ridiculously remote dangers……We have to be less afraid of nature and more willing to embrace the idea that some rashes and bites are a fair price to pay in exchange for appreciating the wonder of a cool-looking rock or an unforgettable fern.”

Milquetoast Americans love to be afraid, and they love to live in constant fear. These fragile beings desire the government to step in and regulate all of our lives to their liking: the way we play, what we eat, where we smoke, when we can drink, how we drive, how we parent, where we educate – all under the pretense that it is for our own collective “good.” These people are not only hysterical about their own kids, but they are hysterical about all of our kids, and they use the power of the state to force others into obeying rules and preferences set forth by them because they believe that only they know what’s ultimately best for all. These are the self-anointed Safety Czars – mere “concerned” citizens who have a penchant for cross-examining the lifestyles of their fellow humans, and they are never lacking in “expert” advice or a slew of new ideas for more laws to defend each of us from ourselves.

One critic of the Free Range Kids blog wrote Lenore to say, “If you want them to run wild and stay out of your hair, you shouldn’t have had them.” This is a typical and tedious response from a blind advocate of coercive “safety” to any person – such as Lenore – who bucks the conventional wisdom concerning the “rules” of parenting.

On the contrary, Lenore has gone above and beyond the typical passive parenting role. Instead of dumping her kids off at the double doors to the local mall or allowing them to hole up all day in front of black boxes that offer up the pursuit of mindless electronic entertainment, she has allowed her son to develop the soul of an explorer. She has opened up his world and allowed him to use his brain and self-assess his sense of independence while learning how to handle uncertainty and adventure. She has given her son an opportunity that will open up his world to many unique options. Meanwhile, her parenting peers will be slapping down her rights as a parent to decide what is best for her own child, demanding that someone somewhere pass some law that will forever defend their fear mongering preferences and rob the freedom of others to do as they see fit.

I, too, was raised a Free Range Kid. My Dad didn’t have a fear-mongering bone in his body, and Mom just never really cared to spend hours on safety and oversight details. I never took gymnastics, dancing, or piano lessons, but instead, my time was my own and play was unstructured, and I was supervised only from a comfortable distance. I was never shuttled from one predetermined activity to another based on my parents’ proclivities for all things popular and benign. As an adult I realize how immensely I have benefited from those early freedoms to explore and pursue with the blessing of the folks who brought me into the world.

Thanks to Christian Evans for the link.

Elizabeth Warren is a Harvard Law Professor who also chairs the congressional panel charged with spending your money monitoring the Treasury’s spending of the money used to bail out the U.S. financial system. She’s one of the many Central Planners who disguises herself as someone who protects you and has your best interests at heart. Here she is on credit card disclosure:

In 1980, according to the Wall Street Journal, the typical credit card contract was about a page and a half long. It told you about the interest rate, about being late and that was pretty much it. Today, the typical credit card contract according to the Wall Street Journal is about 31 pages long. So, tricks and traps? It’s that other 29 and a half pages.

Read the full blog and the link to her PBS interview.

Almost no one can top the insane proclamations of Bill Gross, a certified nut who runs Pacific Investment Management Co (PIMCO) and consistently partners with government in order to assist with the design of government planning schemes that enrich Wall Street firms and guys like him who pull all the levers behind the black curtain.

This time, Gross, a mega-holder of US-backed mortgage debt, declared the private sector dead in terms of the secondary mortgage market. At a recent housing summit, he was quoted saying this in Bloomberg Business Week:

“To suggest that there’s a large place for private financing in the future of housing finance is unrealistic,” Gross said today at a U.S. Treasury Department conference in Washington. “Government is part of our future. We need a government balance sheet. To suggest that the private market come back in is simply impractical. It won’t work.”

By the way, a “housing summit” is translated as a bunch of arrogant, empowered government central planners and industry bigwigs gathering to discuss the best way to force out the private sector and take over slices of the housing market for the purpose of expanding government’s role in our private lives, expanding the federal work force, and enriching the cooperative power players in the corporate-government complex who will gain a pivotal role in policy decisions and accumulate immense profits for playing the game by the rules declared by their bureaucratic masters.

UPDATE: Video.

Watch the full episode. See more Nightly Business Report.

After I posted this piece about the government’s flouride pushers in public schools, RB, a libertarian acquaintance, sent me this photo he took of Mother’s Choice “infant water.” The label says, “with added flouride.”

On flouride, see Murray Rothbard’s “Flouridation Revisited” and Dr. Donald Miller’s “Flouride Follies.”

No joke – doctors are acknowledging that giving away statins, free of charge, along with that non-food known as fast food, could be a great idea.

In a paper published in the American Journal of Cardiology, Dr Darrel Francis and colleagues calculate that the reduction in cardiovascular risk offered by a statin is enough to offset the increase in heart attack risk from eating a cheeseburger and a milkshake.

…”When people engage in risky behaviours like driving or smoking, they’re encouraged to take measures that minimise their risk, like wearing a seatbelt or choosing cigarettes with filters. Taking a statin is a rational way of lowering some of the risks of eating a fatty meal.”

There’s been some strong evidence that there is an epidemic of asininity within the medical establishment. Perhaps Big Pharma has a drug for that?

Then we have the government’s flouride pushers. If you think that only tin-foil hat-wearing conspiracy kooks evoke the flouride issue from the depths of their conspiracy-laden souls, think again. The Ohio Department of Health has announced it will “help eradicate dental disease” by pushing a flouride mouthrinse program in the public school prisons.

The Ohio Department of Health’s school-based fluoride mouthrinse program will be reinstated for the upcoming school year.

The health department suspended the program last year after state representatives passed a bill that required any prescription medications given to students in school to be administered by health professionals. Gov. Ted Strickland signed legislation in May that made an exemption for fluoride mouthrinse.

…Schools will allot 5 minutes each week to passing out cups of fluoride solution to students, swishing the fluid and disposing of garbage

The article goes on to talk about communities that don’t have flouridated water, and their increase in … cavities? So now we have the “War on Cavities?” Does that come before or after the war on terror and the war on obesity? Thanks to Travis Holte for the flouride story.

I noticed this hideous thing while looking at bicycle helmets at REI: The kids helmet for girls is nice and pink, with flowers. The boys helmet is a police state knockoff, just perfect for the young’un with low self-esteem. Perhaps the helmet comes with the first three brush cuts for free, a taser of the buyer’s choice, and free lessons on how to walk, talk, and harass like a soldier of the state?

In the Republic of the Congo, here are a group of men in a makeshift gym with a bunch of “stuff” cobbled together to make gym equipment that mimics the standard equipment found in the West. They are doing traditional bodybuilding exercises as opposed to functional fitness, but hey, this is sensational given that they are all probably very poor.

One thing that I picked out immediately: the “naturalness” of their bodies, unlike with western bodybuilders. Every one of these men has a tiny, packed waist – no bulging abdomens or unsightly ripple-rolls that are the result of drugs, both illegal and legal. Also, no carb-induced pot bellies here, either. And certainly, none of these men are carrying around sacks of visceral fat while they focus on building huge shoulders and arms, like the typical American, part-time gym bum.

After watching the video, contrast those healthy, natural bodies with that of a man who has access to all kinds of magic potions and magic potion givers, Jay Cutler (Mr. Olympia). Via the Conditioning Research blog.

I reported on a foolish new bubble-driven, infantile fad yesterday – the yogurt taps for adults. Today I have seen the worst case, ever, of a bubble-driven, adolescent, mindless fixation as reported this past weekend in the New York Times (hat tip goes to Lew Rockwell for this one). This particular new business, in Times Square nonetheless, is so beyond belief, and so surreal, I wondered if I had overdosed on inhalation sedation at the dentist last week.

Folks, welcome to Pop Tarts World in Times Square. At Pop Tarts World – a 3,200 square foot shop, if you can believe that – you can have your pick from over 30 snacks and desserts. From the story:

The menu includes the Fluffer Butter, marshmallow spread sandwiched between two Pop-Tarts frosted fudge pastries; the Sticky Cinna Munchies, cinnamon rolls topped with cream-cheese icing and chunks of Pop-Tarts cinnamon-roll variety; and Ants on a Log?, which is celery, peanut butter and chunks of the Wild Grape version.

Or you can get the grown-up treat, Pop Tarts Sushi, which is three varieties of Pop Tars minced and wrapped in a fruit roll-up. Also, you can build “your own Pop-Tarts, starting with a basic pastry and asking servers to add frosting, toppings (coconut, sprinkles) and drizzle (caramel, raspberry).” Or you can skip over to the Pop Tarts vending machine with a lollipop in your mouth and choose from among many different items and assemble your own variety pack. Now here comes the real grown-up stuff:

The store will put on a brief light show every hour. First, visitors will “get frosted,” Mr. Schoessel said, with a red light and a white light. That will be followed by brief pulses of light, “all different colors to mimic the sprinkles,” he said, “then another really bright light” to evoke wrapping the tarts in foil.

A light show for adults, making them “feel” like a Pop-Tart being sprinkled and wrapped? And anyone over 12, with a brain, desires to experience this puerile event and, as such, will have something valuable to gain from it?

By now, you’ve checked my link to the story and you know I am not making this up, right? If you are still not convinced this is real, pop on over to www.poptartsworld.com where you can play Pop Tarts video games and design your own Pop-Tart t-shirt. Lastly, the 50-foot storefront is being wrapped in Pop-Tart branding (foil wrapper?) and there will be a 6-story billboard above the store.

This would be hilarious if it weren’t so crazed, perverted, and tragic. The future of the human race is fucked.

I chuckle at the unsustainable business models that materialized during the Boom, only to go Bust shortly after the Downslide, only to sometimes return – in worse form – after the media hype and government lies sold the masses on the story that we are on the way back to economic prosperity. Crocs have been dying. PB Loco is all but smothered. Cold Stone had to move in with Tim Horton to keep some stores open. Cereality died before it reached puberty. And pricey, huge cupcakes are emerging as a frontrunner for all that’s imbecilic in the world.

Now there’s a great, new place to blow your money by using your credit cards before they close out your account – Sweet Frog. Yogurt taps for adults. And itty bitty pieces ‘n things to put on top of your kiddie treat. Candy, cereal, agave syrup(!), etc. And the interior of the place looks like a child’s bedroom or playroom. Or even a dressed-up schoolroom. As always, bubble business tend toward the juvenilization of the amusement-seeking masses who like to be treated like children and entertained by childish services that cater to that need.

Sweet Frog (next door to Escafé) has ten yogurt taps. Pick your size and your flavor – mango, cake batter, cookies and cream, blueberry, New York cheesecake – and fill it or mix it up as you please. Then comes the fun part: the toppings smorgasbord. Sweet Frog has pretty much every type of candy imaginable, a delicious assortment of fresh fruits, and more unique options such as Agave syrup and cereal. The best part is you get to assemble your own, so no more feeling shameful as you ask the server to add a few more snickers, please. Your cup is weighed at checkout for 39 cents an ounce.

And most notably, this cup of sugar topped with sugar is ……. er, low-fat. Weee! Gotta get that sound bite in!

Thanks to Skip Oliva for the tip. To understand the effects fiat inflation has on society and behavior, see Jorg Guido Hulsmann on the Cultural and Spiritual Legacy of Fiat Inflation.