Saturday morning roundup

The hotel industry is not surprised by the DSK incident. Also: Juliet Williams articulates that very essential distinction that I alluded to the other day between the DSK and Schwarzenegger cases: though they both represent alpha-males gone wild, the former is a (very serious) crime.

Why does Kathleen Parker want my head to explode? This common refrain from the right--that it's up to the families to decided what's best for their kids--is indisputably true. It's also not the point. You can't extrapolate from your own upper-middle class, educated family to the demographics bearing the brunt of the obesity crisis. Going from "I wouldn't go near trans-fats and neither would anyone with half a brain" to "the government has no business banning trans-fats" is more of leap than she lets on. Has she ever spent time with families where the parent(s) work(s) multiple jobs, can barely afford to feed their family, and has no nutritional literacy whatsoever? Do you think that the kids I've tutored and their parents have any idea about trans-fat? Am I being elitist by arguing that nutritional literacy and awareness is largely correlated with class?

I'm not going to argue with her about banning potatoes from school lunches, from the angle that there's nothing wrong with potatoes. I am going to argue with her from the alleged nanny state angle, because the government pays for school lunches, therefore the government has every right to decide what it does and doesn't want to pay for.

I'm all over imposing the free market on our food system. If conservatives want government out of food and agriculture, let's quit subsidizing corn, soy, and sugar. Let's take a very close look at the sea of perverse incentives embedded in our Farm Bills.