Tag Archives: War on Commerce

The Soda Pop Shop

I love this video for a variety of reasons. It’s the story of a man who loves what he does which itself is an inspiration for us all.

If you watch the whole thing (and I hope you do), you’ll hear about how government grants protection to giants like Pepsi-co by placing restrictions on businesses like the Soda Pop Shop. He would have been charged with “restraint of trade” if he began reusing bottles. He explains how recycling laws were a

Some highlights:
5:30 — The case against Corn Syrup. He doesn’t say it, but the reason everybody uses corn syrup is because of government tariffs on imported sugar. This comes form pressure both from the American sugar industries who want protection, and corn industries who want more reasons to grow corn.

7:40 — “Big business loves big government.” His disdain is evident even his voice.

9:40 — On recycling laws. [They] were written so that coke and pesi didn’t have to wash bottles and could transfer costs to consumers. Their hypocrisy is evident in the story about how he’d be charged with “restraint of trade” if he ever reused bottles.

Operation Health Freedom

I’m extremely impressed with this video series from the Campaign for Liberty. I learned something from every single one of the videos:

Optometrist & Senatorial candidate Rand Paul. Who are the uninsured?

British MEP Daniel Hannan talks about the National Health Service (NHS):

Peter Schiff on taxes, incentive, & free markets in healthcare:

Judge Andrew Napolitano on the regulation of interstate commerce & healthcare:

Economist Tom Woods and life before Medicare/Medicaid and its effect on society.

Candy and Fruit Flavored Cigarettes Now Illegal in United States

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today a ban on cigarettes with flavors characterizing fruit, candy, or clove. The ban, authorized by the new Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, is part of a national effort by the FDA to reduce smoking in America. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in America. (Read more from fda.gov)

Expect more interference in our private lives as government increasingly forces us to rely on it for our health.

SWAT raid on food storehouse heading to trial

A lawsuit brought by an Ohio family whose children were held at SWAT-team gunpoint while their food supplies were confiscated is scheduled to go to trial this week.

John and Jackie Stowers are suing the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County General Health District over the raid on their “Manna Storehouse,” an organic food co-op that operated in LaGrange.

The Stowerses and their 10 children and grandchildren were detained in one room of their home for six hours while sheriff’s officers confiscated 60 boxes of fresh farm food, computers, phones and records, including USDA-certified meat from the children’s mini-farm, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs.

The state and county are accused of 119 counts, including unlawful search and seizure, illegal use of state police power, taking of private property without compensation, failure to provide due process and equal protection and a multitude of constitutional rights violations, including the right to grow and eat one’s own food and offer it to others.

. . . .

At that time, a state agent from the Ohio Department of Agriculture pressured the Stowerses to “sell” him a dozen eggs, then returned with a SWAT team to detain the family’s children and confiscate food supplies. (Read more from www.wnd.com)

The “CRIME” of working without the government’s permission

Came across two stories recently w.r.t. the government’s war on commerce.

Delinda Epstein, a 51-year-old Las Vegas resident, had comfortable life prior to the real estate collapse that cost her a good job with a construction company. Unemployed for more than a year, she lost her truck and home, and now lives in a tiny apartment.

Desperate to pay the rent, Epstein decided to post an ad on Craigslist offering to do small chores, run errands, and perform other odd jobs in exchange for a negotiated fee. Providing transportation was one of several services she mentioned.

Shortly thereafter, she received a call from a man identifying himself as “Richie,” who wanted to be picked up at the airport and shuttled over to Rhodes Ranch (an upscale “golf course community”). Epstein drove to the airport, picked up the man, and negotiated a $30 fee.

Immediately thereafter, a badge-wielding goon rapped on her windshield and announced that he and “Richie” were undercover officers with the Transportation Authority (TA). Epstein was slapped with a $3,800 fine for offering “unlicensed transportation services.”

The fine was reduced to $250, which is still an extravagant sum given Epstein’s straitened circumstances. She had to surrender her car, which had been impounded would be returned only if Epstein paid several hundred dollars in processing fees. And the TA is demanding that she get rid of her cell phone number — which had been used in hundreds of job applications — because it had been used in a supposedly illegal business transaction. (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

See also:
 

Certified Trades, Permits, Licenses, Insurance . . . . These only protecting cartels, government and insurance companies, NOT consumers.

IJ challenges bone marrow compensation ban!

You get up to five years in prison for compensating a bone marrow donor. In the IJ’s argument in the videos below, they make a point to distinguish bone marrow donors from kidney donors. They are working toward a limited goal, and have a reason for setting a limited goal. Philosophically (and constitutionally) there is no reason for the government to make compensation illegal for ANY organ or tissue donation.

Every year, 80,000 people in the U.S. need a kidney donation. 20,000 are available. Why not legalize compensation?

Every year, 1,000 Americans die because they cannot find a matching bone marrow donor. Minorities are hit especially hard. Common sense suggests that offering modest incentives to attract more bone marrow donors would be worth pursuing, but federal law makes that a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

That is why on October 28, 2009, adults with deadly blood diseases, the parents of sick children, a California nonprofit and a world-renowned medical doctor who specializes in bone marrow research joined with the Institute for Justice to launch a legal fight against the U.S. Attorney General to put an end to a ban on offering compensation for bone marrow donors.

click here for more on the case
click here to read more about the superheroes at the Institute for Justice

Press conference:

Q&A:

NY Government prevents doctor from providing cheap medical care

“The state is trying to shut down a New York City doctor’s ambitious plan to treat uninsured patients for around $1,000 a year.

Dr. John Muney offers his patients everything from mammograms to mole removal at his AMG Medical Group clinics, which operate in all five boroughs.

‘I’m trying to help uninsured people here,’ he said.

His patients agree to pay $79 a month for a year in return for unlimited office visits with a $10 co-pay.

But his plan landed him in the crosshairs of the state Insurance Department, which ordered him to drop his fixed-rate plan – which it claims is equivalent to an insurance policy.” (Read more from crownheights.info)

As is usually the case government regulation = eliminating competition for big business. Let it not be said that the problems in our healthcare system are the result of free markets. We have not had free markets for a very long time.

A Four-Step Healthcare Solution

#3 is especially interesting.

“It’s true that the US health-care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.

. . . .

1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health-care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health-care services would appear on the market.

Competing voluntary accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing — if health-care providers believe that such accreditation would enhance their own reputation, and that their consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it.

2. Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders innovation and increases costs.

Costs and prices would fall, and a wider variety of better products would reach the market sooner. The market would force consumers to act in accordance with their own — rather than the government’s — risk assessment. And competing drug and device manufacturers and sellers, to safeguard against product liability suits as much as to attract customers, would provide increasingly better product descriptions and guarantees.

3. Deregulate the health-insurance industry. Private enterprise can offer insurance against events over whose outcome the insured possesses no control. One cannot insure oneself against suicide or bankruptcy, for example, because it is in one’s own hands to bring these events about.

Because a person’s health, or lack of it, lies increasingly within his own control, many, if not most health risks, are actually uninsurable. ‘Insurance’ against risks whose likelihood an individual can systematically influence falls within that person’s own responsibility.

All insurance, moreover, involves the pooling of individual risks. It implies that insurers pay more to some and less to others. But no one knows in advance, and with certainty, who the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ will be. . . . I would not want to pool my personal accident risks with those of professional football players, for instance, but exclusively with those of people in circumstances similar to my own, at lower costs.

Because of legal restrictions on the health insurers’ right of refusal — to exclude any individual risk as uninsurable — the present health-insurance system is only partly concerned with insurance. The industry cannot discriminate freely among different groups’ risks.

As a result, health insurers cover a multitude of uninsurable risks, alongside, and pooled with, genuine insurance risks. They do not discriminate among various groups of people which pose significantly different insurance risks. The industry thus runs a system of income redistribution — benefiting irresponsible actors and high-risk groups at the expense of responsible individuals and low-risk groups. Accordingly, the industry’s prices are high and ballooning.

To deregulate the industry means to restore it to unrestricted freedom of contract: to allow a health insurer to offer any contract whatsoever, to include or exclude any risk, and to discriminate among any groups of individuals. . . On average, prices would drastically fall. And the reform would restore individual responsibility in health care.

4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate such subsidies, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living. In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.” (Read more from mises.org)

THE INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE

Happy 4th or July. Today is a good day to recognize some heroes – the Institute for Justice. These guys are like super heroes to me.

From their website: “We challenge the government when it stands in the way of people trying to earn an honest living, when it unconstitutionally takes away individuals’ property, when bureaucrats instead of parents dictate the education of children, and when government stifles speech. We seek a rule of law under which individuals can control their destinies as free and responsible members of society.”

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Minnesota’s eminent domain abuses

“Following stiff opposition from the nearly 50-year-old company, its employees, unions and the Institute for Justice – a public interest law firm that battles eminent domain abuse nationwide – the Port Authority decided not to use eminent domain to take the company’s property. . . .

For the past 50 years, Advance has built its equipment-leasing business without government subsidies. Its 43 employees, 20 of whom are members of Local 120 of the Teamsters and Local 49 of the Operating Engineers, provide cranes, scaffolding and shoring equipment to construction projects. Advance has played an instrumental role in constructing and restoring of landmarks in the Twin Cities, including the Xcel Energy Center, the Cathedral of St. Paul and Regions Hospital. ‘You cannot look at St. Paul’s skyline without seeing the contribution that our family business has made,’ Haug added.

Last September, the Port Authority stated its intention to acquire by eminent domain 10 acres of Advance’s property near Interstate 35E and Maryland Avenue in the Arlington-Jackson section of St. Paul. In October and November, Advance’s owners and allies asked the City Council not to authorize the Port Authority’s plan to destroy this successful business for a yet-to-be-identified business and an unspecific use requiring more than $10 million in government subsidies.” (Read more at ij.org)

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Banned in Boston: Erroll Tyler’s Fight for Economic Liberty as Boston protects tourism cartel

(Read more at ij.org)

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Developer colludes with state for eminent domain abuses. Anyone who fights back is guilty of defamation:

“Dallas, Texas – The author and publisher of Bulldozed: ‘Kelo,’ Eminent Domain, and the American Lust for Land today asked a Dallas state court to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed against them by Dallas developer H. Walker Royall. Published in 2007, Bulldozed chronicles events in Freeport, Texas, where Royall signed a development agreement to have the city take land owned by Western Seafood – a generations-old shrimping business – and give that land to Royall’s development company for a luxury yacht marina. Royall sued the book’s author, Carla Main, and its publisher, Encounter Books, in October 2008, seeking monetary damages and a permanent prohibition on further printing or distribution of the book.

Royall’s lawsuit is part of a national trend. Similar suits have been filed in Tennessee, Missouri, Washington and elsewhere by developers and government officials looking to silence critics of eminent domain for private gain. Earlier, when the Gore family – owners of Western Seafood and the original victims of Royall’s eminent domain abuse effort in Freeport – complained against Royall’s actions, he sued them for defamation.” (Read more at ij.org)

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Free to Design: Florida Entrepreneurs Take On the Interior Design Cartel

(Read more at ij.org)