Here’s an interesting post on food subsidies from 2007.

When the House of Representatives debated the bill in July, PCRM, along with many other health and public interest groups, supported the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment, which was offered by Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). This amendment would have limited government subsidies of unhealthy foods, cut subsidies to millionaire farmers, and provided more money for nutrition and food assistance programs for Americans and impoverished children overseas.

Unfortunately, politics doomed the reform effort. At the eleventh hour, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) feared that freshman representatives who voted to cut subsidies might risk losing their seats in farm states in the 2008 elections, endangering the Democratic majority. The reform amendment was defeated 117 to 309.

Farm and food subsidies are becoming one of the most single important ways in which government can control the populace and feed its own growth and power. If you can keep people sick, fat, needy, hooked on pharmaceuticals, and desiring government programs to solve their problems brought on by government policy, the vicious circle will feed off of itself and grow the powers of the state to “solve” one massive “health crisis” after another.

Congressional friends of corporate interests have one foot in the subsidy trough, propping up their constituency that consists of agriculture and powerful (processed) food interests, and on the other hand they purport to want to save you through their nationalized health care, “war” on obesity, and jihad against any alternative forms of health solutions and maintenance. Government is in the business of making special interests wealthy, and in the process, it knowingly creates problems that can feed its own growth so it has the manpower to “resolve” the problems. Many years and many $$$$$ later, the problems are far more widespread and catastrophic. Yet every dupe in the media and medical establishment acts as if they have no idea how Americans came to be saddled with this exploding epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

From the archives:

I am going to be interviewed by John Loeffler tomorrow evening for his Steel-on-Steel radio show, an established weekly news and interview program airing in the U.S. and Canada on the IRN, USA. and Family Radio Networks, which deals with cutting edge stuff, including political and religious topics. I’ll be talking about the potential for 401k confiscation on the part of the U.S. government. I think it will air on Saturday, March 6th, and I’ll update that if I hear anything further. I get so many of these radio interview requests, however, I cannot do most of them due to time constraints. Unfortunately, most of them look for daytime interviews, which have become very difficult for me to do.

Of course that’s not true, but why is this issue barely making the news wires?

The automaker said the vehicles are still safe to drive and never lose their steering, but it may be harder to steer them when traveling under 15 mph.

The recall affects 2005 to 2010 Chevrolet Cobalts, 2007 to 2010 Pontiac G5s, 2005 and 2006 Pontiac Pursuits sold in Canada and 2005 and 2006 Pontiac G4s sold in Mexico.

General Motors Co. said Monday it will recall 1.3 million Chevrolet and Pontiac compact cars sold in the U.S., Canada and Mexico to fix power steering motors that can fail.

Where’s the congressional interrogation of GM, and when is Ed Whitacre going to apologize for manufacturing unsafe vehicles?

She’s using a Macbook and a teleprompter, and it doesn’t help her act. I hope Apple doesn’t lose sales because of the Macbook prop. The millionaire Liar can’t pull off this prepared propaganda bit because it’s just not possible for middle-class Americans to like her or believe a word she says. Money can’t buy you love, Nancy. The best thing about this whole health care bungle is the failure of the Dems to sell their snake oil to regular Joes, in spite of their constant push to bewitch the masses.

Has anyone ever told her that her plastic surgeon pulls her face too tight?

Those amazingly simpleminded saps are jumping all over Starbucks with their childish campaign, “espresso shots, not gunshots.” Whereas many large chain stores are commencing gun bans in their places of business, Starbucks has not jumped on the bandwagon with the rest of the fools.

But Starbucks, the largest chain targeted, has refused to take the bait, saying in a statement this month that it follows state and local laws and has its own safety measures in its stores.

Hooray for Starbucks! They know who and what is good for business, and it surely isn’t the small bands of crybaby protesters who occasionally gather at a Starbucks to discuss the glories of wealth redistribution and the greatness of government. Then there’s this loon:

Ralph Fascitelli of Washington Ceasefire, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce gun violence, said allowing guns in coffeehouses robs residents of “societal sanctuaries.”

“People go to Starbucks for an escape, just so they can get peace,” Fascitelli said. “But people walk in with open-carry guns and it destroys the tranquility.”

Societal sanctuaries? Tranquility? And a sidearm on some peaceful person’s hip destroys his day, his world?

The ATF seized a shipment of 30 Airsoft BB guns headed for a retail business because ….

Special Agent Kelvin Crenshaw said the toys can be easily retro-fitted into dangerous weapons.

“With minimal work it could be converted to a machine gun,” Crenshaw said.

And then there was the orange tip “problem.”

ATF said it also seized the toys because they are missing the blaze orange tips required on all imported toy guns.

The Martins said they’ve received shipments before from Taiwan that were missing the orange tips and were simply asked by customs agents to drive up to Tacoma and paint the tips orange themselves. They are wondering why it is an issue now.

Thanks to Charles Everett for the link.

I can’t imagine the poise it took for this child to get on stage in front of all those people and perform with Hank Williams, Jr.

Here’s another version.

I’m doing some morning perusing in the food/nutrition blogosphere this morning. One thing I want to link up for all of my primal/paleo readers is Heather Lackey’s new blog, “InThe FoodMoment.” Her posts are straight-up and lacking in any B.S. She has an interesting story about getting smart on all things food.

That said, I am going to link up a few recipes that I have been making from her site and elsewhere.

- I am nibbling on this as I blog. Baked eggs on a muffin pan, wrapped in bacon. This is so simple and quick – especially since I almost always have cooked bacon in the fridge. I customize all recipes I find online, and for this one I just add a lot of spices – rosemary, tarragon, and whatever sounds good at the moment. I’ve also made them without the bacon wrap, and instead I layer small pieces of Canadian bacon on top.

- Heather’s roasted cauliflower has me hooked on the Big C. Only I melt butter and/or ghee, put it in a bowl, throw in many spices (key spice: red pepper flakes), and mix it up. I then throw in the veggies and toss until everything is covered in butter.

- For the cauliflower above, I have been making this cheese sauce. It’s not your standard cheese sauce, but it’s a healthy alternative. Again, I spice mine up. I have been trying to eat less nuts at night (I have been eating too many), and the cauliflower with cheese sauce is an excellent snack with my red wine. I’ll take a nicely-prepared veggie dish over chips/snacks/junk anytime.

- Roasted brussel sprouts with bacon and onion. Hat tip to Heather on that one.

- This is one of my favorite super-quick spinach recipes (scroll to bottom). I had this with four bacon-egg wraps this morning post-workout.

- Where I live, Whitefish is a regional favorite. I like this recipe, though I substitute Fage or Trader Joe’s Greek yogurt for the sour cream.

- Simple, fast acorn squash – I make this all the time and it costs between 50 cents – $1 per meal. And “poor” people who wear better clothes than I do claim they eat $6 fast food meals because it’s all they can afford ……. I am refraining from further comment.

- I’ll make this occasionally, real light on the breadcrumbs. Broccoli polonaise. I’ll use Panko breadcrumbs, too.

- This is wildly delicious: Mark Sisson’s spinach frittata. I also make Sisson’s celery and almond salad, which is a very unique recipe. Who ever thought of a celery salad?

- I’m a slow cooker-a-holic, and here’s just one of my many favorite slow cooker recipes: cabbage and apples. Who needs dessert and junk when you can have real food like this at such a low cost? For the mustard I use Maille Dijon.

- A great substitute for nutritionally deficient and carb-loaded pasta is spaghetti squash. I like Nikoley’s recipe. I am mad over spaghetti made from squash. If you don’t have time, use a prepared sauce and customize it like I do. I’ll use Trader Joe’s organic marina sauce ($2 per jar) or Paul Newman’s sauce ($2 at Walmart, $4 in the grocery stores), and I’ll add chunks of fresh roma tomato, mushrooms, onions, and spices.

- The there’s Nikoley’s veggie mix: Green beans, carrots, yellow squash and a bit of sweet potato stir-fried in coconut oil, then finished with a couple of dashes of toasted sesame seed oil and whole seeds. I make this in the wok.

- I make butternut squash a hundred ways, but here’s a good recipe from RecipeGirl: with garlic, sage, and pine nuts.

I hope this inspires you to get a little creative and spend some time experimenting with foods that you can make very quickly … and yes, very cheaply. Let’s take an example – I pay about $1.50 for a huge spaghetti squash, $2 for a jar of sauce, and the cost of adding my garnishes to the sauce is maybe .50. That $4 will get me 3-4 meals that consist of a heaping plate of spaghetti, the sauce, and grated asaigo on top.

When I was traveling this summer and desperate to find a place in a rural area that had something besides McDonald’s or Taco Bell, I found an Arby’s (a next best solution) and paid $4 for one Roast Beef sandwich with red sauce on it. I was hungry one hour later.

That is exactly why lazy people are fat.

Nolan Finley is a very conventional columnist for the Detroit News. Nolan has just published a very good column (for the most part) on the Tenth Amendment movement. However, he just has to get in that one little comment that separates him from the radical states’ rights movement (radical … meaning scholarly and “no surrender”):

Critics see the Tea Party’s failure to acquiesce to this reality as evidence of its outdated mindset. The kindest jabs find it amusingly quaint that its followers would read the Constitution and actually think it still means what it says. The more vicious connect the revulsion to an overpowering central government to arguments in favor of slavery and against civil rights. Once again, the attacks go, racists are hiding behind states’ rights.

All I can say to that is, “Wow.” I have been involved in the radical libertarian-freedom movement for twelve years in the sense that I’ve become known, and before that, about fifteen years before anyone knew anything about me. I have never found one states’ rights person in favor of slavery. There are groups of extremely racist hatemongers, and they are self-contained within their own very small bands of obscurity that revolve around online forums and philistine newsletters. They are a speck on the radar map, and they have no voice and no impact whatsoever.

Why is it that every tediously conventional writer who addresses this topic (Tenth Amendment/secession) feels the need to make that very visible distinction: “I am not a racist.” C’mon Nolan, dust off the cobwebs and get with the times. Otherwise, Nolan has written a good, introductory column for the general masses. He says:

Advocates of an ever-expanding central government have found good allies in the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which has been used to justify seizure of just about all economic activity, and in its call for Congress to provide for the “general welfare.”

General welfare is a wide avenue. It can easily be twisted to give the government the right to impose any mandate, take over any function, ban any behavior in the name of the common good.

Follow that string to the end and Congress can, under the general welfare guise, collectivize any of the rights guaranteed to individuals.

See Michael Boldin’s Tenth Amendment Center for the real thing.