CONCORD, N.H.―In an effort to ensure a transparent, fair and constructive resolution to the ongoing dispute with the GOP State Committee chairman position, the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire urges the Executive Committee to delay its decision and call the full Republican State Committee to order.

“When Republicans campaigned in 2010, they promised to balance the state’s budget just like families do when they sit around the kitchen table,” said Andrew Hemingway, chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. “In Concord this year, elected Republicans under the leadership of House Speaker Bill O’Brien and Senate President Peter Bragdon were able to write a budget that spends no more money than the state collects, fulfilling that promise.

“Unfortunately, now that the hard work of balancing the budget has concluded, some internal Republican Party disputes have surfaced, putting ongoing party unity at risk,” Hemingway continued. “Just like a family settles disputes by sitting around the kitchen table and talking through its problems, so must the Republican Party come together to air its grievances and find common ground. I am confident that a state committee meeting will foster the conditions necessary for a united, strengthened party, which is essential to continue the people’s work through 2012.”

On Thursday, the Executive Committee is planning to vote to remove Party Chairman Jack Kimball from his position. Besides the potential for serious party division that this type of top-down decision would engender, there is currently no legal succession plan in the party by-laws following the removal of a party officer. The by-laws specifically mention a succession plan for the “resignation” or “death” of an officer, but they do not have any plan for the “removal” of an officer. Clearly, a resignation is a voluntary action, and a removal is involuntary—two different actions that require a different resolution.

“To prevent continued upheaval and division in the party, it is imperative that the State Committee meet to pass an emergency by-law allowing the state committee to elect a new chairman in the event of a chairman’s removal,” Hemingway said. “Such a plan would ensure a legitimate succession, if one is necessary, and create a stronger Republican Party that recognizes the importance of all of its members.”

Traditionally, State Committee meetings are expensive and take time to put together. Sitting chairmen and any challengers spend months reaching out to all the state committee members, giving them the chance to build coalitions and prepare for the vote. The Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire is urging an outside-the-box approach to quickly and effectively resolve the ongoing chairman dispute in a way that will bring the party together.

“We’re proposing that the state committee members come together and nominate chairmen candidates from the floor,” Hemingway said. “We think chairman candidates should stand up in front of the state committee and discuss all the problems facing the party among its members, and then we think they should propose how they intend to resolve the party’s disputes and unite the party for an effective First in the Nation Primary and victory in the 2012 elections.”

In an effort to cut costs, the state committee meeting should be held at Representatives Hall at the State House, which has more than enough seats for all the state committee members to meet. To further control costs, state committee members should be encouraged to bring or buy their own lunches.

“While it is true that this approach has never been tried before, I am confident that it will work, because it is the same approach that works to resolve family disputes,” Hemingway said. “We will come out of this state committee meeting as a stronger party united under a leader whom everyone will be able to stand behind.”

Like Governor Rick Perry I was a cheerleader, and I’m excited about the opportunities to lead the growth in the liberty movement during the coming election year.  So I sent out a letter to our state chapters to stir things up a bit and get us rolling as we go into this new season of amazing possibilities – DN

State Chapters, Let’s Get Moving! RLC State Chapter Leaders: It’s time for me to check in with some news and important opportunities. First the news.  As you may have heard, RLC Vice Chairman Aaron Biterman resgined last week.  Aaron has a been a huge asset to the RLC in recent years, but he decided to leave so that he could pursue other interests which were incompatible with a prominent role in the organization.  We really appreciate his contributions and we’ll all have to work harder to make up for his absence.  A lot of that slack will be taken up by our outstanding Regional Directors who will be providing enhanced direct support and assistance to chapters in their regions. In this long election season there are great opportunities and we need to step up on the state and national level to take advantage of them.  A good example of this comes from the recent efforts of the Texas chapter to publicize some of the problems with Governor Rick Perry’s record through a press release which we picked up and promoted on the national level.  The timing was excellent and it resulted in extensive media coverage, about 6000 shares of the press release on social media and a spike in traffic to the RLC website which has more than doubled the number of hits we’re getting per day. To take advantage of the added exposure and potential for organizational growth we want to upgrade the national RLC website in a couple of ways. First, we’re undertaking a redesign to make the site more accessible and more interractive.  You can see the first phase of this in our new front page at www.rlc.org, though it’s still a work in progress and we’d welcome your suggestions. We also want to upgrade the content on the site and this is where you come in.  We need more news and more articles and more coverage of our chapters, with photos and videos if possible.  If you’ve got some skilled bloggers in your area who write on liberty issues, we want to run their articles in our opinion section, so put them in touch with us.  Even more important, we want news about your chapter and events in your state so we can promote them through the site and get your chapter the kind of attention our Texas chapter has been getting over the last week.  Coverage on the national site drives traffic back to your site and helps grow your chapter. We’re making this easy to do by configuring the national site to pick up any news you post on your state website from your RSS feed.  For this to work you need to post new content to your state site on a regular basis and you need to have a site with a functional RSS feed.  Right now too few states are updating their websites with news and other content on a regular basis and that needs to change.  Nothing discourages interest in the organization more than going to the local chapter site and finding out of date information and old news. Your chapter should be engaging in activism and promoting issues and you ought to be publicizing your efforts through your website.  If you’re not doing this aggressively that’s a serious problem.  If you’re only doing it face to face or through social media, then you need to take the time to put activity reports and important items on your website too.  If you don’t have anything to report, then you need to start getting more involved in local activism and speaking out on issues.  Don’t tell me there’s nothing to protest and nothing to raise a ruckus over.  Government is exceeding its proper authority in every state and liberty is always under threat somewhere nearby. Every chapter ought to have a member whose specific job is to promote the activities of the chapter, posting to the website, posting to social media and getitng the word out about what you’re doing.  You also ought to be cultivating contacts in the local press.  I’m tired of reading about Andrew Hemingway of the New Hampshire chapter on Google News every week.  I want to see articles about other chapters and their prominent activists there too.  If you need help with this, drop me a line and I’ll be glad to give some advice. One very important opportunity for chapter activity is promoting the campaigns of liberty candidates in your state.  We had over 400 state and federal endorsees in 2010 and from what I’ve seen so far we’re going to see even more promising candidates running for office in 2012.  We need to get off our asses and start working on endorsements right now.  There are going to be so many candidates to assess that we’re going to need every chapter working as hard as they can to find the good candidates, get them interviewed or have them fill out your state or national surveys and get the good ones endorsed before the primary season gets too far along. If you don’t already have a survey to give to candidates running for state office, check out the examples from some of our other state chapters.  And start getting the national survey out to candidates for federal office right away.  We want to take at least as many seats in Congress as we took in 2010 and ideally twice that many more, so we need to find the candidates, sign them up and get them endorsed.  A very useful resource in finding candidates in your state who have declared for office is politics1.com. Not only does it have pretty up to date candidate listings for top offices, but it also has links to your state governments pages which list filings for lower level office. It’s time to do more than talk about liberty.  This election is a time of extraordinary opportunities which we can’t afford to pass up.  If we can’t grow the RLC into the dominant force in the liberty movement in the next 18 months we will have thrown away the greatest opportunity we’ve ever been given.  As the RLC grows, liberty grows and it starts in the grassroots and rises to the national level.  It all depends on you and your chapters.  You are the movement, so get moving. Dave Nalle National Chairman Republican Liberty Caucus

The 2012 election cycle is getting started, and the race for the Republican nomination for President is heating up. It is exciting to see that two members of the RLC's Board of Advisors are seeking the Republican nomination. They are Texas Congressman and 2008 Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. Candidate Ron Paul will speak at an RLCCA event at the fall CRP convention in Los Angeles on Saturday September 17. The event will be held at the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE 900 West Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles. The exact time of the event is TBD, so please check our website at RLCCA.org in the weeks ahead for updates about this event. The event is free and open to the public. Your membership dues and other financial support help the RLC bring liberty Republican speakers like Congressman Paul and Governor Johnson to state party conventions in California and other states. Our outreach helps introduce mainstream Republicans to the exciting ideals of liberty and individual freedom. Thank you for your support! Attending this event is a great opportunity for Paul supporters to learn about the opportunities for spreading the ideas of liberty inside the Republican Party. So mark Saturday September 17 on your calendar today!

Don’t Believe the Hype.  Meet the Real Rick Perry
Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas Sends Warning to Republicans Nationwide About Perry’s Tax and Spend Record

AUSTIN, TX – Texas Governor Rick Perry may be the flavor of the day for a lot of Republicans, but Texas Republicans who are familiar with his record are a lot less enthusiastic about his presidential run.  “Perry has a unique talent for finding new ways to raise taxes and loves to use taxpayer money to subsidize his business cronies,” says Secretary Dave Nalle of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas.  “His supposed belief in limited government and states rights conveniently disappears whenever it conflicts with the demands of the special interests and corporate cronies who he serves.”

Governor Perry’s record of big government, big spending, big taxing and attacks on the fundamental rights of Texas citizens is a familiar to Texans, but seems to be much less well known to Republicans outside of the state, which may explain his high initial showing in the polls.  The Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas is compiling a complete dossier on Perry to share with fellow Republicans outside their state so that they can be informed about what they are being sold in a Perry presidential candidacy.

The file on Perry’s abuses of power, insider deals with cronies and tax and spend policies is thick, but for a start here are what Texas RLC members voted as the top five Perry scandals which GOP primary voters need to know more about:

1. Business Slush Funds: Perry made heavy use of business incentive “slush funds” which used taxpayer dollars to subsidize selected businesses, many of them run by his major campaign contributors.  Just two of these funds, the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Emerging Growth fund, spent over $700 million to subsidize businesses to move to Texas or expand operations in Texas, with little evidence that these handouts of taxpayer money produced job or revenue growth anywhere near sufficient to justify the expense.  In fact, many of these businesses eventually downsized or relocated long before they had earned the money Perry gave them, or even went bankrupt with $25 million fund dollars like Countrywide Financial. source

2. Toll Roads and Land Seizures Perry has never met a toll road project he wasn’t willing to seize huge amounts of private land for and then give the exclusive management contracts to foreign corporations.  Perry’s time in office has set records for eminent domain land seizures – over a million acres have been seized.  His toll road projects have confiscated family farms and torn communities apart.  Toll roads have been used as a massive off-the-books tax program, taking money from Texas drivers and feeding it to foreign financial interests and management groups which lobbied the governor for special deals which produce much higher tolls and higher profits than are typical in other states. source

3. Forced Vaccinations: In 2007 Perry issued an executive order which would have forcibly vaccinated every girl in Texas entering the sixth grade with Merck’s Gardasil vaccine for Human Papilloma Virus.  This massive violation of the privacy rights of Texas teenagers and their parents would have come at a cost of $360 in taxpayer money per shot.  It would have been a huge windfall for Merck, which had paid Perry’s former Chief of Staff $250,000 to lobby the governor and legislature to promote the forced vaccination program. source

4. The Job-Killing Franchise Tax: Knowing that it would be impossible to pass an income tax against popular opposition in Texas, Perry promoted the idea of a special business tax called the “Franchise Tax” which taxes businesses at different arbitrary rates set by the government.  This tax expands business taxes to types of businesses which are not taxed in most states and in many cases taxes small businesses more than large corporations they compete with.  For example it taxes small car repair shops at double the rate it taxes large dealerships for car repairs.   It’s a small business and job killer. source

5. Scuttled the Anti-TSA Bill When Rep. David Simpson led the Texas legislature towards passage of an enormously popular bill (HB1938) to hold the TSA accountable for intrusive searches of airline passengers, Perry played a key role in making sure that the bill was not passed.   When the TSA and the Justice Department began pressuring him, although Perry had promised to submit the bill to the special legislative session, he delayed submitting the bill until it was so late in the session that it was virtually impossible to hold the constitutionally mandated votes necessary for passage.  That way he could score points with the public for submitting the popular bill while at the same time making sure that it wouldn’t pass.  It’s a classic example of Perry’s insincere pandering. source

Don’t be fooled by campaign hype.  If Perry says he’ll cut taxes or get government off our back, look up his real record.  Look up his past statements.  He supported TARP.  He supported the bailouts.  He was even Al Gore’s Texas campaign manager back in 1988.  A vote for Perry in the Republican primary is a vote for more big government and more taxes and more of the the same deficits and irresponsibility we had for 12 years under Bush and Obama.  The Republican Party and the nation need real leadership, not more of the same with a nicer head of hair.

RLC of Texas Chairman Judson Vandiver asks, “Let’s hope Republicans outside Texas see through all the hype.  Let’s all say to to Perry what he said to a Texas state trooper when he tried to bully her after she pulled him over for speeding YouTube: ‘Why don’t you just let us get on down the road?’”

Some self-proclaimed libertarians and constitutionalists maintain that crime merits prosecution at the federal level.  With rare exception, there is no constitutional support to justify their claims.

Yes, the government is supposed to protect life, but there is no specific amendment of the Constitution that empowers the federal government to have jurisdiction on common crimes like theft, fraud, or murder.

Instead, the Founders explicitly warned against giving the federal government the power to deal with common crimes.

According to the late libertarian icon Harry Browne, “All crime is local. It occurs in the jurisdiction of a police department or sheriff’s department somewhere. The Founding Fathers wisely provided no Constitutional role for the federal government regarding common crimes of any kind.”

Browne concludes that a federal police force makes you less safe. In fact, the Founding Fathers would be shocked to see today’s federal police forces — such as the FBI, the BATF, and the DEA.

Of course, there are a select few crimes that the federal government does have jurisdiction on. National defense is a specifically outlined constitutional function of government, so acts against federal employees are punishable. Additionally, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 10 gives the federal government jurisdiction on piracy and this same section (Clause 6) gives the feds jurisdiction on counterfeiting. And Article 3, Section 3 gives the federal government authority on treason.

However, the federal government should have no jurisdiction on abortion. The RLC Statement of Principles says about abortion, “We support a resolution of this issue through the proper judicial and legislative channels specified in the Constitution.”

The proper constitutional channel is the Tenth Amendment, which gives powers not outlined for the federal government to the states and to the people. Thus, overturning Roe v. Wade would not only return authority to their proper jurisdiction, but it would also empower states and individuals to decide the proper course of action on the controversial issue of abortion.

If you support limiting the size and scope of government, then you can’t rely on the federal government to protect us from crimes like abortion. Crime and the protection of life should not be federal issues.

Think about it this way: The federal government does not deliver your mail on time. Why would you want to trust them on issues of life or death?

More importantly, they have no constitutional authority to protect your life, other than via national defense.

We're very pleased to see the success at the polls this week in Wisconsin.  Despite an overwhelming amount of outside money, the Republicans were able to hold onto the State Senate.  RLCMN is proud to have played a part, albeit a small, grassroots one.  See our mention in this press release.

Beyond control of the WI state senate, the election victories are significant as a repudiation of the outside influence as well as the precedent of recalling an elected official because people disagree with him or her.  Although the Wisconsin Constitution doesn't specify grounds for recall, i.e. criminal activity or malfeasance, those are more common and more reasonable causes for removing someone from office.  It does not appear that much thought went into the consideration of the precedent of a recall election due to disagreement or dissatisfaction with positions or votes.  It has the effect of negating the last election and thereby disenfranchising the majority (sometimes the plurality) of the voters who selected that candidate.  Congratulations Wisconsin Republicans - and its citizens.

 

MNGOP Congratulates Wisconsin Republicans on Recall Election Success

Scores of MNGOP activists supported Wisconsin Republicans

St. Paul – The Republican Party of Minnesota congratulates Wisconsin Republicans on maintaining control of the Wisconsin Senate by prevailing in the majority of recall elections across the state.

“Tonight’s election results are vindication that Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators have the support of the people of Wisconsin when it comes to making tough decisions necessary to reduce the cost, size and scope of state government,” said Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman Tony Sutton. “Like our Minnesota Republican legislators, Wisconsin Republicans are not just talking the talk of structural reform of state government; they are walking the walk.”

College Republicans, the Republican Liberty Caucus, area Tea Party organizations and scores of MNGOP activists have been in Western Wisconsin for the past three weeks making get-out-the-vote phone calls, doing literature drops and door-knocking on behalf of Wisconsin Republicans.

At Republican National Committee meetings last week, Gov. Scott Walker noted the contribution of the MNGOP to the Wisconsin Recall effort.

WAUSAU – At the 2011 Campaign For Liberty Annual Conference, which was held at the Patriot Center in Wausau, WI. on April 30, 2011, RLC-WI Chairman, Michael S. Murphy, was invited to be a panelist to discuss “Outreach in the Liberty Movement.”  Murphy’s co-panelists were ACORN Whistleblower, Anita Moncrief, and Wisconsin State Secretary of  the Libertarian Party, Paul Ehlers.

CONCORD, N.H.―To build on the triumph of common sense in this year’s House of Representatives, the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire endorses Honey Puterbaugh for state representative in a Strafford District 3 special election on Tuesday, Aug. 9.

Trading Massive New Debt for Unenforcable Promises of Future Cuts is Grossly Irresponsible

AUSTIN, TX -  The plan to raise the debt ceiling agreed on by the House this weekend is a total fraud, a vessel of broken promises, and a gross evasion of congressional responsibility to spend within its means, according to the Republican Liberty Caucus, a national organization of activists with official affiliates in 42 states. The Caucus Board of Directors blasted the latest deal as an insult to the basic American principles of individual liberty, limited government and private enterprise.

“The details will probably be secret until after the law is signed by the President,” says RLC Director Bill Westmiller of California, “but it is certain that it will authorize enough additional debt  to pay the costs of last year’s bailout, the Democrat’s stimulus, all the expenses of ObamaCare, and the continuation of extravagant federal programs implemented by both Republicans and Democrats over the past decade.”

The nearly three trillion dollar increase in the Debt Ceiling will take away all pressure on Congress to implement responsible spending policies for the next eighteen months, ensuring that spending and debt issues will not be prominent during the 2012 campaigns.

“This deal is a blatant violation of the promise from House Speaker John Boehner that every dollar of new debt would be matched by a dollar of cuts,” noted RLC National Chairman Dave Nalle. “All of the cuts are stretched over ten years, while the deficit spending will occur in less than eighteen months,” explains Nalle, “which means that we’re actually getting less than ten cents of current cuts for every dollar of perpetual debt. That’s not a deal, it’s a blank check for bigger government.”

The final plan includes unspecified spending cuts, which would be spread over ten years. For the coming fiscal year, there will be real cuts of less than $100 billion dollars. Since the bill assumes that the same level of reduced spending will continue for ten years, the “savings” are simply added together, for the supposed $1 trillion  of cuts.  There’s no real plan for specific long term cuts.

“Whether it’s one trillion or three trillion, it’s meaningless,” explains RLC Northeast Regional Director Vic Berardelli of Maine. “The Supreme Court has already ruled and all legislators acknowledge, that one Congress cannot impose any obligations on a future Congress,” says Berardelli. “That means that all of the promised cuts are not binding on the federal government after the next election.  They might as well not even exist”

The Supreme Court threw out the Gramm-Rudman Balanced Budget Act in July 1986, as a violation of the Constitution, by a 7-2 vote. Every prior budget authorization must be renewed by the new Congress, or it simply expires.

“There are no real cuts in the debt ceiling compromise,” says California RLC Director David Johnson. “Instead there are just promises of cuts to ‘projected spending,” which is another way of saying they’ve eased up slightly on the accelerator of the car heading for the cliff. These guys aren’t even trying.  I fully understand that the big cuts needed from defense and entitlement are controversial. But where are the smaller uncontroversial cuts? Why are there no cuts in corporate welfare? Why no cuts in foreign aid?”

The main source of added revenue is more than a trillion dollars obtained by auctioning off cell phone frequencies. All of those costs will be passed on to clients of the cell-phone companies with increased prices. Although technically not a “tax increase”, it will produce additional federal revenue that can be applied to new programs or expansions of old programs.

“This authorization, applauded by leaders of both parties, does absolutely nothing to reduce the debt,” says RLC Director Aleq Boyle of Georgia. “The deal actually allows a 50% increase over ten years, from $14.3 trillion to at least $21 trillion by 2021. Even if annual budget deficits were reduced by 100% over the coming decade, the actual public debt and annual interest due will increase more than it has in any prior decade. The pretense that the debt problem is solved is a perverse charade.”

“The fear-mongering about this issue is truly craven,” says RLC Vice Chairman Aaron Biterman.  “Telling people that failure to adopt this huge debt increase will result in U.S. bond rating downgrades, higher consumer interest rates, and possibly cutting entitlement payments. That’s all pure fantasy. The reason that the monopoly federal agencies cut bond ratings is because the interest demanded by the consumers of government bonds has increased, not because an agency lowers their rating.”

Currently, U.S. Federal Debt is nearly 100% of GDP, comparable with Italy (120%) and Ireland (114%). Those countries have had their debt ratings downgraded simply because of the level of their debt in comparison to their GDPs.  Two of the major U.S. ratings agencies say that adding more debt will not prevent a ratings downgrade: the Congress must show an earnest effort to reduce the outstanding debt, not merely the deficit.  This bill does not include enough cuts to offset the massive increase in debt.

“In any case, there is no reason to default on bond debt or interest,” adds Westmiller, “since the government has more than enough incoming revenue to pay all public debt, all pension checks, and everything else enumerated in the Constitution as a federal power. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment requires that the U.S. Treasury honor all debt instruments and pensions ‘without question’,” says Wesmiller.  “Contrary to the claims of some Democrats, nothing in the 14th Amendment gives the President any power to borrow money at his sole discretion.”

“The most grievous flim-flam in this deal was trashing the requirement that Congress send a Balanced Budget Amendment to the states,” notes RLC Secretary Corie Whalen, “which simply won’t happen. The deal was modified to simply require one vote on the issue, which Democrats will easily defeat in the Senate. That ends any hope that Congress might actually allow the states to make a decision on balancing the federal budget.”

“The entire budget deal is a shameful fraud,” says RLC Chairman Dave Nalle. “It doesn’t do what our leaders say it will do; it allows increased revenues demanded by the President; it only pretends to cut spending, and it gives Democrats the power to force tax increases and other revenue raising measures through a Super Committee before the end of the year.”

“Although this agreement was a failure and a fraud,” concluded Nalle, “some praise goes to the small cadre of newly elected fiscal conservatives in the House, most of whom were endorsed by the RLC.  They at least spoke up for fiscal respnsibiity and forced a change in the terms of the debate. They stuck to their principles in the face of hysteria and doomsday threats. The RLC will be looking for more responsible candidates to join them in the House and the Senate in 2012.”

-30-

The Republican Liberty Caucus is a nationwide grassroots organization which promotes individual liberty and limited government within the Republican Party.   You can find more information about the Republican Liberty Caucus at www.rlc.org

The decision by Jack-in-the-Box to nix the toys in their kid’s meals was the latest illustration of America’s nanny state gone wild. Following on the heels of the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Happy Meal toy-inspired lawsuit against McDonald’s, it is becoming clear that American’s bulging waistlines are in the crosshairs of the food police’s snipers. At least these instances were done without governmental decree; the decision by San Francisco to ban the inclusion of Happy Meals with toys should disturb even the most health-conscious. These sorts of absurd acts make clear the direction this public policy debate is headed.

True, the roughly one in four obese Americans (with percentages even higher in Louisiana) serve as a testament to lack of dietary self-control. But does this call for governments to mandate restaurants serve items their customers might not want? Issuing public health guidelines is one thing; using coercion to force them on us is something else entirely.

Endurance and weight training as well as proper nutrition are excellent contributors to looking and feeling great. But shouldn’t engaging in these rewarding activities be a decision individuals make on their own accord? The cries for government action to combat the obesity crisis assumes both that Americans are too foolish to practice restraint and that private advocacy groups are too incompetent to educate consumers on the perks of healthy living.

If a critical mass of Americans began demanding nutrition labels on menus and sought to cut down on their processed food and sodium intake, establishments would respond to this as swiftly as possible before their competitor across the street did so. That is how a free market operates, not by twisting the arms of fast food companies to act contrary to their customers’ wants. One must wonder how much of a stretch it would be before carrot intake is required to combat blindness or Jack Johnson tunes in the car made mandatory to fight the War on Road Rage.

Likewise, it is inconclusive whether government intervention into its citizens’ diet actually produces the intended results. Lectures from the First Lady are not a guaranteed method of turning couch potatoes into Boston Marathon qualifiers; that is something each person has to want bad enough for themselves. Frankly, some are simply content being several pounds overweight.

The greatest irony of the debate over governments becoming involved in nutrition is the double standard of those agitating for it. There is often an overlap between those who embrace the pro-choice label and those leading the charge against choice in the dietary realm. Being in favor of “choice” apparently does not apply to weighty matters such as calorie counts or salt intake at lunch; apparently, in the minds of some, the masses are not to be trusted with the composition of their diet.

A citizenry truly in favor of choice would recognize that a country free to gorge itself into obesity is infinitely preferable to one where they are legislated into fitness.