Archives for the 'Banned' Category
Bag Tax Confuses, Dismays
Washington, DC’s 5¢ tax on plastic bags applies only to stores that sell food. But which ones are those?
The owners of Chocolate Moose, which sells quirky gifts and jewelry as well as candy, were certain the tax didn’t apply to them. Although they received the notice the district sent to all retail food establishments, candy accounts for just 10% or 20% of sales, says co-owner Marcia Levi. “I don’t consider myself a food establishment,” she says. When another store owner asked what she was going to do about the regulation, she decided to call the city, just to be on the safe side. “I explained to them the situation—that only a small part of my business is food,” she said. “They said it does not matter.”
I can’t imagine the headaches this bantamweight bean counting must be inducing in store owners:
Stores keep one cent of every five cents they charge for bags, and two cents if they give customers a credit of at least five cents for each bag (of any sort) that they bring to the store. That provision forced clerks at one local Giant supermarket to intervene in every purchase at every self-check-out terminal to authorize the credit. Under no circumstances, the law says, are stores allowed to pick up the five-cent fee for their customers.
Now imagine your check-out isn’t automated and you have to keep track of how many bags leave your shop so you know how much to pay John Q. Law — or be fined.
At least DC has the manzanas to call it a “tax.” In Connecticut, an identical “fee” was introduced last year by Representative Kim Fawcett but it fell by the wayside once Fawcett, a Democrat, pissed away her political capital voting against gay marriage — this in a state where the Republican governor signed it into law. Fawcett then promptly ran over her own daughter. Man, that was a crazy spring.
A victory for food freedom
Some great news yesterday for Michael Schmidt, an Ontario raw milk dairy farmer who risked jail time challenging Canadian regulators. In a remarkable ruling, the court decided that his program by which customers by shares in cow ownership in exchange for the milk they produce is a legitimate enterprise not covered by existing law. In broader context, it seems an encouraging precedent for allowing consumers to opt out of restrictive safety regulations:
Although it is not illegal to consume raw milk in Canada, selling or distributing violates laws that require pasteurization of most commercial milk products.
The Schmidt case, which began when his farm was raided in 2006, has captivated food-rights academics and advocates in Canada, and around the world, who argue the court’s decision will ripple well beyond the raw-milk community. At its crux, they argue, the case is really about the extent to which consumers should be free to buy foods, however rarefied, and whether constitutional rights stretch as far as the grocery basket, farmer’s market and the people who own shares in – but do not live on – food-producing farms.
[Thanks to Kimberly Hartke for the tip. My article on raw milk for Reason is here, and a visit to a Virginia cow share program here.]
Meat for me, but not for thee
Lord Stern of Brentford, the UK’s climate chief, hath spoken. And he sayeth, “‘Tis not meet for thee meat to eat, for you should not have it. But I have meat and I can it eat, so step aside you’re noshing on my roast and polluting the planet.” Lord Stern is, of course, not a vegetarian. He is , however, an economist.
Whenever I think I should, or in fact do, reduce my meat consumption, something like this comes out. Then I regret having contributed to both global warming and general idiocy by having had beans for dinner, and I go buy a steak ( which, incidentally, is supposed to be a deal now.)
Lord Stern, this steak’s for you!
“Some hae meat and cannae eat
Some would eat that want it
But we hae meat and we can eat
Sae let the Lord be thankit!”
HT: L. Coyle.
Nymph Mania
Just when Alabama’s gourmet beer bill was starting to make the state look like a reasonable place to buy alcohol, the local control board has stepped in to ban a wine’s suggestive label:
Wine and scantily clad women may sound like some cad’s idea of a good time, but the combo spells trouble in Alabama, which last week banned the sale of a California-made wine bottle adorned with a naked nymph — helping boost its sales elsewhere in the nation.
Pursuant to the state’s administrative code, the Alabama Beverage Control Board ordered Hahn Family Wines to remove its Cycles Gladiator wines from shelves throughout the state, calling its label “immodest.” According to Hahn president Bill Legion, a small state board in Alabama rejected the artwork last year, but the ruling did not catch Legion’s eye. His apparent defiance of the state’s decision — he claims the paperwork “fell through the cracks” — led to the ban.
“It’s turned out to be a great thing for us,” laughs Legion, who says he’s received calls of support from oenophiles around the world.
The bottle’s eyebrow-raising label was designed in homage to a classic 1890s print ad featuring a lithe, long-haired cyclist clinging to a bicycle shuttling through a starry sky. The belle époque illustration has since become a popular poster, affixed to bike-shop bulletin boards and wannabe road racers’ walls.
Click through to see the label, which I think is perfectly delightful. Maybe Free the Hops will take on prudishness next?
“Illegal Eggs Taste Amazing”
“Famously succulent” homemade summer sausage can only be had under the table in Toronto, reports Maclean’s, in a great quick article about locavore black markets in Canada:
The sausage is verboten because it’s made on the farm, and any kind of meat product must be prepared in a kitchen that adheres to provincial safety regulations, even if it uses meat slaughtered in a government-inspected facility.
The microbial risks taken by raw milk nuts are nothing compared to the legal risks faced by their suppliers.
The farmers who provide foodies with their fix are taking a risk. Last year, a man in eastern Ontario was fined $3,000 for selling un-graded eggs to restaurants. And the Saturday-morning farmer’s cows aren’t even part of the quota system. In Canada, dairy farmers must sell their milk through provincial marketing boards, not on the free market. If caught, she could face serious penalties.
A recent study found that $10 wine tastes better if the drinker thinks it’s $90 wine (”with the higher priced wines, more blood and oxygen is sent to a part of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, whose activity reflects pleasure”). The same phenomenon is probably at least partically responsible for raptures over illegal duck eggs and summer sausage. The price is only part of the cost, and an egg custard that might land you in the pokey is bound to be more delicious than a legit dessert make from supermarket eggs.
Still, I tried (legal) duck eggs last summer on Long Island, and (controlling as well as I can for my own neurological quirks) I think they they were legitimately above average in their sapidity. It’s shame Canadian farmers have to slip their best customers sausage on the sly.
Via Overlawyered
Screwed Leonard’s
Stew Leonard’s, a Connecticut-based grocery chain, is selling a parcel of property they bought with the intent to develop into a store — 13 years ago:
“I just put it on the market,” [Stew Leonard, Jr.] said Wednesday. “Why not see what happens? We want to leave all our options open. We’re not looking at opening anything in Connecticut.”
Instead, Leonard said, his focus is on opening new stores in New York and New Jersey, where the real estate market is booming.
Since 1996, the town of Orange, CT has been fighting Stew’s from opening the store, complaining it will bring increased crime, traffic, and infrastructure stress to the suburb. This despite the parcel being a cornfield adjacent to I-95, where customers could zoom off and on the highway without looting or flushing too many toilets while visiting, and despite Orange being full of such mom-and-pop stores like Lowe’s, Target, and Home Depot (I love Home Depot. They have everything — except the item you’re looking for). And also despite Stew Leonard’s being one of Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For eight years in a row or simply a great place to buy milk from local farms or coffee roasted right in the store.
So congratulations, town of Orange, CT. Your short-sightedness and buggering of local businesses and farms during an economic downturn is an inspiration to government everywhere. Hey! Want to be in charge of my health care?
Better Booze in Virginia, At Last?
Liquor stores in Virginia are terrible (so bad they probably caused fellow Crispy blogger Jacob to flee the area!). They’re owned and operated by the commonwealth’s Department Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), and if you’re looking for anything snootier or more unusual than Maker’s Mark, you’re probably SOL. The lighting is bleak. The clerks have all the enthusiasm for their product of middling DMV employees. (Come to think of it, DMV employees may actually be more enthusiastic about the work+hooch combo than ABC staff.) And the hours are inconvenient.
But serious Old Dominion boozehounds see a ray of hope in their tequila sunrises: Former state attorney general and current Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert F. McDonnell proposed privatizing the whole mess in a press conference yesterday, conducted (seriously!) in a parking garage.
The idea is win-win. End 75 years of incompetent state alcohol sales management and the state gets a bunch of cash for transportation spending when it sells off the rights to run a private liquor store.
In case you’re waffling on whether this is a good idea, go spend 5 minutes on Virginia’s weirdly self-congratulatory booze biz website. Historic photos celebrate milestones. Like 1970, when the first lady clerk, Betty Wilson, was hired. Thank goodness government was running that rum, how would we have achieved gender equality otherwise? (Note: I think the guy in my local liquor store in nearby Alexandria is still wearing her coat.) Lady boozemongers were an innovation that appeared just a couple of years after Virginia started licensing sales of “liquor by the drink” in bars.
In its early history, Virginia ABC agents were also enforcers of anti-bootlegging and moonshining laws, allowing the government run stores to deal very effectively with private competition.
Europe Lifts ‘Wonky’ Ban on ‘Bonkers’ Regs (or is it ‘Bonkers’ Ban on ‘Wonky’ Regs?)
British grocers and tabloids helped lead the charge to lift a decades-old European Commission ban on imperfect-looking foods, according to The Sun.
Sainbury’s spokeswoman Lucy Maclennan said: “We are delighted to have played a part in winning the wonky veg war against these bonkers EU regulations.”
Tesco spokesman Adam Fisher said: “It’s not before time. We welcome this move.”
And last night it was predicted the change could see some prices fall by 40 PER CENT.
More here. We here at Crispy let you know about plans to lift the ban last June.
DC Council’s Jim Graham Wants No One to Have a Piece of the Pie
DC councilman Jim Graham is one of the DC area’s most horrific left-wing moralists. Since it would be difficult to hide my contempt for him, I won’t.
I detest Jim Graham. He is a restaurant hater. He was instrumental in passing DC’s smoking ban, and since then has opposed such evils as the sale of single beers. Yet voters in his ward continue to elect Graham.
I have a feeling that might now change. Graham’s latest anti-restaurant play is so outrageous and so out of touch with reality that Graham’s supporters will have to see the light. Right?
Why is Graham’s latest ban attempt so unconscionable? I’ll tell you why. Jim Graham wants to ban the sale of pizza slices. Says their sale spurs violence.
This could mean the end of the jumbo slice–which along with the half smoke is one of DC’s few culinary contributions to the world. But this is just the continuation of a pattern the council–especially Graham–has been evincing for several years. As former DCist editor Ryan Avent wrote of Graham and the council in 2007:
In the past year as well, Council members, and particularly Ward 1 representative Jim Graham, have acted swiftly to close down District businesses connected with crimes, even when it appears that there was little the business could have done to stop the criminal act. Increasingly, it seems that the Council’s first inclination when faced with a problem is to restrict choice.
DCist has more on the proposed pizza slice ban here, and Graham’s anti-business grandstanding here.
Tell Graham how you feel about his proposal either by email (jim@grahamwone.com) or phone (202.724.8181). Tell him Crispy sent you.
Texas trans fat blues
This is a bad week for consumer freedom in my native Texas (where, incidentally, I enjoyed two chicken fried steaks, barbecue lunches, a Tex-Mex feast, several bottles of Shiner, and Dublin Dr Pepper this weekend). The statewide smoking ban looks very close to passing and the Senate is considering a bill to ban trans fats from restaurants. The AP lists the exceptions included in the latter bill:
But, fearing a backlash from the sweet tooth lobby, the lawmakers provided an exemption for trans fats used to make cakes, pies and other bakery items.
“The icing exemption,” is what Democratic Sen. Eliot Shapleigh called the loophole, explaining that cake icing doesn’t stay put without the hydrogen pumped into the oil – the very process that makes trans fats unhealthy.
Other exemptions were provided for food served by grocery stores, fire departments and certain caterers, and the ban would be slowly phased in. Initially, it would impact only chain establishments. It would apply to all Texas restaurants by late 2011.
Another loophole – for nonprofit organizations – was inserted in part to ensure that corn dogs and other fried goodies served at rodeos and state fairs could still be cooked with trans fat.
And, of course, consumers could still by entire tubs of shortening at the grocery store if they’re in the mood. All of which shows the absurdity of this ban. If trans fats are a dangerous toxin, they shouldn’t be allowed at state fairs or catering events. But they’re not toxins. They’re just another food ingredient, and there’s no justification for forbidding restaurant chefs to use them when they’re readily available elsewhere.
If the Texas legislature insists on doing something about trans fats, it should follow the lead of San Francisco. The city allowed restaurants to apply for seals certifying them to be trans fat free, thus preserving choice and giving consumers the information they might wish to know. Unfortunately, that sensible idea was made irrelevant by California’s statewide ban.
A “notoriously cryptic and unobtrusive family of birds”
More from the Dept. of Eating Strange Beasties:
A rare quail from the Philippines was photographed for the first time before being sold as food at a poultry market, experts say.
Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester’s buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.
Scientists had suspected the species—listed as “data deficient” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2008 Red List—was extinct….However, the buttonquail is from a “notoriously cryptic and unobtrusive family of birds,” according to the nonprofit Birdlife International, so the species may survive undetected in other regions.
He did not add: “Also, they are delicious with a little cumin, so I sort of understand why you’d want to eat the last one.”
The whole thing is reminiscent of the pretty great/terrible 1990 Marlon Brando/Matthew Broderick movie The Freshman, which features a club of the ’80s ultra-wealthy organized around consuming the final specimens of endangered animals while wearing velvet mini dresses and black tie.
Clark Kellogg (Broderick): But it’s an endangered species!
Carmine Sabatini (Brando): Not any more. It’s in New Jersey, it’s fine.
Rent it today, and enjoy the next best thing to roasted endangered buttonquail.
Sardinian Maggot Cheese? Geschmackvoll!
When beer pong is outlawed…
A few years ago the busybodies at the Virginia ABC — some of the busiest busybodies in the country — decided to ban beer pong and other drinking games in county bars. Naturally people didn’t stop playing beer pong, they just played the game at home instead. This upsets some of the area’s more staid residents:
County Board members have directed staff to look into complaints that drinking games are getting out of hands.
Bluemont resident James Thorne said that, since the Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) board banned drinking games (such as “beer pong”) from bars and eateries, they have gravitated toward outdoor areas, such as outside local homes.
“It affects our quality of life,” Thorne said of the resulting noise.
Thorne asked board members to consider an ordinance change that would give county police the ability to request that such drinking games be moved indoors.
Of course residents have a right not to be excessively disturbed by their neighbors. That’s what existing noise ordinances are for. A law specifically targeting drinking games would be superfluous and unfairly target young people, likely giving cops the power to shut down their parties without having to reasonably apply standard noise ordinances.
Stogie Guy Patrick Semmens is fighting the proposal at his new website, NoBoozeBan.org. Arlington residents should follow the issue there.
You say “tomato,” I say “foreign and evil!”
We’ve covered a lot of stupid bans here, but I don’t think any of them can match the absurdity of this one:
… the “foreign” kebab [...] is being kicked out of Italian cities as it becomes the target of a campaign against ethnic food, backed by the centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi.
The drive to make Italians eat Italian, which was described by the Left and leading chefs as gastronomic racism, began in the town of Lucca this week, where the council banned any new ethnic food outlets from opening within the ancient city walls.
Yesterday it spread to Lombardy and its regional capital, Milan, which is also run by the centre Right. The antiimmigrant Northern League party brought in the restrictions “to protect local specialities from the growing popularity of ethnic cuisines”.
From Bags to Riches
A representative wants to tax consumers in the Constitution State for using plastic bags:
Fawcett’s working concept, which has already been introduced in the environment committee of the state legislature, is to impose a fee of 5 cents for each plastic and paper bag used at retail checkout counters, creating a stream of revenue which could possibly be targeted to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
If such legislation is put into effect, Connecticut would be the first state in the nation to legislate a restriction on plastic and paper bags, said Fawcett.
Fawcett said that the recently approved ordinance banning the use of plastic bags in Westport “got the ball rolling” and “started a conversation” among state legislators who have been trying to come up with a restriction that would make sense on a statewide level.
On its face this seems well and good: It turns the hidden cost of plastic bags to a direct one that the consumer can then choose to pay or not. A 2007 report to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (pdf) estimated that each consumer pays $18 a year in hidden costs for plastic bags. Folks like me who already use a canvas bag for their groceries would seemingly benefit far better by paying for overall cheaper groceries than we do now with the nickel rebate we sometimes — sometimes — receive at the checkout for bringing our own bags.
Except that’s not what’s happening here. Fawcett’s plan forces the store to penalize the consumer, then turn the money over to the state. That’s called a sales tax. Anyone using reusable bags still pays higher prices for groceries because the store still has to pay for plastic bags; they’re just channeling money from consumer to government. If anything, the hidden costs go up due to administration.
But let’s pretend this isn’t about developing new revenue streams to pay for corpulent budgets during the downturn. Let’s imagine this really is about the environment, about making citizens use fewer plastic bags. Perhaps the state will allow the store to keep the cost of the bag — say, three cents — and pass the remainder over to Auntie Rell. Still a sales tax but not as high. What about the practical issues? The clerk at a manned checkout line can simply ring up the number of bags you use. But what’s supposed to happen at the automated counters? Should an attendant stand there and add the bags to your total? Defeats the purpose of automation. Bar codes on the bags that you scan as you would a gallon of milk or a box of spaghetti? More hidden costs of implementation. Am I shoplifter fit for arrest and prosecution if I take an extra bag? Costs of enforcement.
Memo to Rep. Fawcett: Some of us already use reusable bags of our own volition; some stores (like IKEA) have ceased offering them in response to consumer demand. Free will is some crazy shizzle.
