Thursday

Skid Row Street

If you didn't hear, Sesame Street has a new muppet: Lily. Her niche? Poverty. Her "family faces an ongoing struggle with hunger issues." Link. The goal is to raise awareness of hunger in the United States.

Pretty nice, huh?

Well, by coincidence, Tom Sowell published a piece yesterday entitled "The Hunger Hoax." Link. The gist of the essay: There is virtually no hunger in the U.S., but the federal government wants you to think there is. Why? So it can justify the expansion of its power. It's the same old story: Government creates a crisis, so it can hire more cronies to fix it and, in the process, ensconce itself with another segment of the populace.

But let Sowell tell it:

Ironically, the one demonstrable nutritional difference between the poor and others is that low-income women tend to be overweight more often than others. That may not seem like much to make a political issue, but politicians and the media have created hysteria over less.

The political left has turned obesity among low-income individuals into an argument that low-income people cannot afford nutritious food, and so have to resort to burgers and fries, pizzas and the like, which are more fattening and less healthful. But this attempt to salvage something from the "hunger in America" hoax collapses like a house of cards when you stop and think about it.

Burgers, pizzas and the like cost more than food that you can buy at a store and cook yourself. If you can afford junk food, you can certainly afford healthier food. An article in the New York Times of September 25th by Mark Bittman showed that you can cook a meal for four at half the cost of a meal from a burger restaurant. So far, so good. But then Mr. Bittman says that the problem is "to get people to see cooking as a joy." For this, he says, "we need action both cultural and political." In other words, the nanny state to the rescue!

It's no coincidence that Sesame Street is produced by PBS.

Drinking Corner

Donald Trump bought a winery. He's expanding it and changing the name to "Trump Winery." Link.

The winery is in Virginia, which has 200 wineries. That's a ton. I also know Michigan has a ton, and the Lake Erie belt in Ohio has forty or so. It got me thinking: How many wineries does this nation have?

According to this site, 6,200.