Monthly Archives: May 2023

Not At All

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California’s Proposition 12, which sets animal-welfare standards for meat sold within the state, has been upheld by the Supreme Court. It’s a ruling that should have been expected, and appellants’ claim that the California law violates the Commerce Clause notwithstanding, the ruling is proper. What a State requires of products sold entirely within it is not interstate commerce—which is the province, and the only aspect that is the province, of the clause.

All Prop 12’s law does is place requirements on the meat sold within the State; it imposes no requirements on how other States comport themselves, including how they raise their food animals. Nothing in the law forces other States to incur the costs of complying with it.

It is true enough that

Californians account for about 13% of the country’s pork consumption but raise hardly any pigs. That means that the costs of complying with Proposition 12 fall mostly in states like Iowa, which raises a third of the country’s pigs.

The Prop 12 law often is viewed as an attempt by California to dictate regulate what other States do regarding their own production requirements. The decision to accede to California’s “regulatory” efforts, though, is a purely business one and not at all a legal one. In fact, the ruling also makes it easier, from a legal standpoint, for states like Iowa to not sell their pork products in or into California at all.

And that’s what I recommend. There are a lot of markets other than California, including export markets, that would easily absorb those 13%. It’s long past time producers in the other 49 States, and our several territories, start ignoring California and its foolishnesses.

Stepping Up

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Great Britain is sending Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has said that the missiles are now going into or are in the country itself, although it’s unclear how many are being sent or whether there are more in the pipeline.

The export version of the cruise missile (which I ass-u-me is the version being sent) has a range of 155 miles, cruises at 100 feet above ground, and carries a 1,000lb warhead.

Wallace also said that We simply will not stand back while Russia kills civilians. The missiles will allow Russian launch sites to come under attack, and they will facilitate deeper interdiction of the barbarian’s supply lines, fuel and ammunition depots, and troop staging areas.

Now the question remains, especially in light of Wallace’s overt refusal to simply abide while the barbarian commits his atrocities: Where in the world is Joe Biden?

Teachers Union Disinformation

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In response to a collection of education-related laws recently enacted in Florida, Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said in his news release,

This new law grossly oversteps in trying to silence teachers, staff, professors, and most other public employees. We will not go quietly….

Here’s some of what those silencing laws do:

  • allow teachers to require students to hand over their phones at the beginning of class
  • ban the use of TikTok on school Wi-Fi and networks
  • does not allow students to use school internet to access social media (with some exceptions)
  • block classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity for all grades
  • bar availability of certain sexual books in school libraries
  • prevent students and teachers from being required to use certain pronouns
  • prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in state colleges
  • allow teachers to leave school unions for any reason
  • State budget provides an increase in teacher pay—fourth year in a row

Not misinformation—disinformation. Go quietly, or go noisily, but maybe Florida’s teachers unions need to go. Let the teachers themselves form new unions from the ground up, or not, at the teachers’ own discretion.

Cowardice

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And yet another reason to not buy any Anheuser-Busch beer.

Anheuser-Busch…sent a letter to jittery distributors telling them it had cut ties with the firm responsible for the concept that has led to Bud Light sales cratering since Mulvaney last month posted a video on TikTok touting the best-selling beer in the country, multiple sources said.
The Belgian-based conglomerate said the beer can at the center of the firestorm, which features Mulvaney’s face, was not produced by Anheuser-Busch or in any of its facilities, several distributors told The [New York] Post.

To an extent, the Bud Light producer’s managers are right. John Skeffington, family-owned Skeff Distributing CEO:

The single can was produced by a third-party ad agency, not Anheuser-Busch.

However. Anheuser-Busch’s managers have final approval of its ad agencies’ advertisement campaigns, whether or not the campaigns then are produced in house or by third-parties. A-B’s managers already have placed “on leave” Bud Light’s Marketing VP, Alissa Heinerscheid, and A-B’s Group Vice President for Marketing, Daniel Blake, over their failure to exercise their control over advertising done in Bud Light’s name.

Even if the unidentified-by-A-B “third-party ad agency” had produced and released the advertising move without that prior approval, A-B’s managers had after the fact approval/disapproval, and those worthies chose not to speak up at all. If they actually disapproved of the ad, they would have blocked it in the first place, or immediately after the fact spoken against it.

Only in the aftermath of the hooraw that’s threatening company sales, are those managers, from A-B CEO Michel Doukeris on down, speaking at all, and they’re still refusing to acknowledge straightforwardly their mistake, and they’re still refusing to say what they’re going to do to not repeat their mistake in future. They’ve only issued weasel-worded remarks that don’t even pretend to address the matter in any serious way.

Their latest move, now, is to insist “twarn’t us” and blame an anonymous “third-party” agency and throw it under the bus.

They still won’t accept their own responsibility for the fiasco.

Their company’s products still are not worth our purchase money.

And They Accused Trump of Being Soft on Russia

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s Janet Yellen-run Treasury department has—once again—extended a waiver to a rule barring import of Russian oil and gas that was instituted ‘way back in March 2022. Even at the time of the rule’s institution, Treasury created a waiver to allow financial institutions to continue processing dollar-currencied payments for Russian energy in other countries.

The waiver was supposed to expire by that June, but Yellen extended it to early December. She said, through a Treasury spokeswoman,

This license [extension] will provide for an orderly transition to help our broad coalition of partners reduce their dependence on Russian energy as we work to restrict the Kremlin’s revenue sources[.]

After that she extended the waiver again, until the middle of this month.

Now Yellen is extending the waiver yet again, to November, and this time she’s not even pretending she has a reason:

Treasury didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday [5 May 23].

Biden and his cronies in Party and his supporters on the Left all zealously decried former President Donald Trump’s playing to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ego with all of Trump’s pretty words about Putin.

Here is Biden and his Treasury person actively propping Putin’s energy economy by not closing off payments for Russian energy. Any orderly transition has long since been effected, or should have been; there no longer is any reason for extending the thing beyond Biden’s concrete softness on Russia.