Tag: nanny state

Global Age Verification Measures: 2024 in Review

EFF has spent this year urging governments around the world, from Canada to Australia, to abandon their reckless plans to introduce age verification for a variety of online content under the guise of protecting children online. Mandatory age verification tools are surveillance systems that threaten everyone’s rights to speech and privacy, and introduce more harm than they seek to combat.

Kids Experiencing Harm is Not Just an Online Phenomena

In November, Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, claimed that legislation was needed to protect young people in the country from the supposed harmful effects of social media. Australia’s Parliament later passed the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, which bans children under the age of 16 from using social media and forces platforms to take undefined “reasonable steps” to verify users’ ages or face over $30 million in fines. This is similar to last year’s ban on social media access for children under 15 without parental consent in France, and Norway also pledged to follow a similar ban.

No study shows such harmful impact, and kids don’t need to fall into a wormhole of internet content to experience harm—there is a whole world outside the barriers of the internet that contributes to people’s experiences, and all evidence suggests that many young people experience positive outcomes from social media. Truthful news about what’s going on in the world, such as wars and climate change is available both online and by seeing a newspaper on the breakfast table or a billboard on the street. Young people may also be subject to harmful behaviors like bullying in the offline world, as well as online.

The internet is a valuable resource for both young people and adults who rely on the internet to find community and themselves. As we said about age verification measures in the U.S. this year, online services that want to host serious discussions about mental health issues, sexuality, gender identity, substance abuse, or a host of other issues, will all have to beg minors to leave and institute age verification tools to ensure that it happens. 

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Is America Finally Having Its Raw Milk Moment?

American media is abuzz with news of President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Seemingly every story mentions his controversial views on topics from vaccines to fluoride in the water to raw milk—a longtime libertarian cause célèbre. Though it’s hard to envision a more unlikely catalyst, RFK Jr.’s nomination may be the final push that gets raw milk across the legalization finish line.

Until the late 1800s, raw milk was simply known as “milk” and was the only game in town for Americans desiring a delicious dairy beverage. But when it was discovered that heating up products like milk could reduce the presence of potentially harmful bacteria, the pasteurization craze was underway. Given reports of thousands of babies dying from bacteria-riddled milk around this time period, pasteurization was seen as a remarkable public health breakthrough.

This set off a wave of 20th century state and local government mandates that required milk to be pasteurized. Finally, in 1987, a federal court cemented a federal ban on all interstate raw milk sales. But not long afterward, the modern organic food movement was born, and raw milk became a cult favorite among the crunchy political left. Now, raw milk has increasingly been adopted as a sort of culture war status symbol on the political right.

“Long a fringe health food for new-age hippies and fad-chasing liberal foodies, raw milk has won over the hearts and minds of GOP legislators and regulators in the last few years,” writes Marc Novicoff in Politico. In addition to its inherent deregulatory appeal, Novicoff recounts that “conservatives discovered that raw milk fit neatly inside a worldview that was increasingly skeptical of credentialed expertise.”

Over the last decade, numerous states have passed laws to legalize raw milk, leading food policy expert Baylen Linnekin to declare that the “raw milk restoration is underway.” Could it now be about to kick into overdrive, potentially even spreading to an overturn of the federal interstate sales ban?

Whatever one’s views of RFK’s potential adeptness—or lack thereof—at navigating the federal bureaucracy to pursue his agenda, he may not be the only member of Trump’s cabinet to be a raw milk enthusiast. Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), who has run a bill in Congress for the last decade to overturn the federal ban, is heavily rumored to be the next Secretary of Agriculture.

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The Trojan Horse of “Public Health”

At the recent Mises Institute Supporters Summit in Hilton Head, South Carolina Tom Woods made some flattering comments about Yours Truly regarding my 2000 book coauthored with James T. Bennett entitled
From Pathology to Politics: Public Health in America (Transaction Publishers).  That’s the year 2000, not 2020.  Tom’s comment was the result of his discovery that my coauthor and I had smoked out the dishonesty and left-wing political gimmickry of the “public health establishment” nearly a quarter of a century ago.

The “public health” movement was created shortly after the Civil War with the creation of state and local government “health departments” that concentrated on sanitation issues, disease research, enforcing quarantines, inoculations, controlling mosquitoes, waste disposal, swamp drainage, immunizations, and attempting to control communicable diseases in general.  The American Public Health Association (APHA) was founded in 1872 as a trade association for public health professionals.  It is almost shocking today to read about how post Civil War cities in America were full of such things as pig pens, cesspools, privy vaults, and manure piles!

For the first several decades of its existence the presidents of the APHA were all people with scientific training – surgeons, medical statisticians, chemists, sanitarians, experts in bacteriology, hygiene, anatomy, and even botany.  Great progress was made in controlling diseases and eradicating some of them, like Yellow Fever, and improving mortality rates.  Economic growth surely played an important role as well, enabling Americans to attain better nutrition and living standards in general.

By the 1950s the dire problems that existed in the post-war years had pretty much disappeared, confronting the public health establishment with a major dilemma: With its mission essentially accomplished, how would it continue to justify its existence and its tax-funded support?

Lyndon Johnson’s “great society” explosion of welfare state spending during the 1960s provided the answer.  The federal government’s “Kerner Report” of 1968 on the “root causes” of poverty was fully embraced by the APHA.  In doing so the public health establishment changed its focus entirely from controlling disease to creating a healthy society through welfare statism.  The goal was no longer enhancing individual health but “curing” society’s ills.  That’s where the big tax money was.  Fewer and fewer medical and health professionals were among “public health” professionals, with more and more lobbyists, political activists, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists.  The public health establishment began crusading for increased welfare payments, a guaranteed annual income “for all Americans,” government housing subsidies, racial hiring quotas, and school busing.

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Kamala’s VP Wannabe Tim Walz Levied WHOPPING 95% Tax on Zyn.

Governor Tim Walz (D-MN), tapped as Kamala Harris‘s running mate in the upcoming presidential election, approved an astonishing 95 percent tax on Zyn, the popular tobacco-free nicotine product, in the North Star State this year. Previously, the tax on “moist snuff” did not include Zyn, as it contains no tobacco, but the law was amended to gouge users of Zyn and “similar tobacco-free product[s] containing nicotine” in May.

The tax on cigars, including premium cigars, smoking tobacco, chewing tobacco, e-cigarettes, and vapor products in Minnesota is also set at 95 percent.

As Governor, Walz has created a new payroll tax, raised taxes on retail deliveries, motor vehicle sales, corporate income tax, and net investment income, and reduced itemized deductions. He also greenlit local sales and purchase taxes in the seven-county metro area surrounding the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

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Free drink refills could be banned in Wales

Free drink refills could be banned at restaurants and cafes as part of new proposals by the Welsh government.

Health Secretary Eluned Morgan has launched a consultation to restrict “promotions of food products high in fat, sugar and salt”.

It also proposes to restrict retailers from putting forward offers, such as buy one get one free, on unhealthy food.

The Welsh government said it was “supporting people in Wales to make the healthy choice”.

The consultation outlines proposed legislation which the Welsh government said was “taking action to improve our food environment”.

  • It includes a proposal to prohibit retailers from offering free drink refills, which many high street restaurants including Nando’s and Five Guys offer.
  • Another proposal will prevent retailers offering promotions, including buy-one-get-one-free and three-for-two offers on unhealthy food products.
  • A third proposal will bar retailers from placing high fat, sugar and salt food products in certain locations in stores, including entrances, end of aisles and checkout or queueing areas.
  • It will also apply to online equivalents including website entry pages, shopping basket and payment pages.

The Welsh government said food products with poor nutritional value were promoted more than healthier products, which then influenced the food and drink people buy.

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FTC Opens a Backdoor Route to Age Verification on Social Media

I hadn’t heard of the app NGL until recently. But that’s not surprising. The anonymous questions app seems to be largely popular among teens.

Bark, the maker of parental content-monitoring software, calls NGL “a recipe for drama” and cyberbullying. But it seems like a fairly standard social media offering, allowing users to post questions or prompts and receive anonymous responses.

Now, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ordered NGL to ban users under age 18.

The FTC and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office say NGL “unfairly” marketed the app to minors. “NGL marketed its app to kids and teens despite knowing that it was exposing them to cyberbullying and harassment,” FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said.

To settle the lawsuit, the agency is not only making NGL pay $5 million, it’s also requiring the app to ban those under age 18 from using it.

This seems to me like a worrying development.

An administrative agency ordering a social media app to ban minors is effectively a backdoor way to accomplish what Congress has been failing to mandate legislatively and what courts have been rejecting when state lawmakers do it.

Granted, the FTC does not seem to be requiring NGL to check IDs. It’s merely “required to implement a neutral age gate that prevents new and current users from accessing the app if they indicate that they are under 18,” per the FTC’s press release.

But this is still the FTC setting minimum age requirements for some social media use, circumventing both parental and legislative authority.

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The UN Smothers the Peoples with Compassion

The United Nations (UN) Secretariat will hold the next Summit of the Future in New York on 22-23 September 2024. It is a vast political program covering the noblest of causes including poverty reduction, human rights, environment, climate change, development, and the welfare and rights of children, youth, and women. World leaders are expected to endorse a declaratory Pact for the Future, and commit to act toward its realization.

It all looks wonderful. As in days of old, the rich, powerful, and entitled are coming to rescue us from ourselves and make us live better lives. Freedom, after all, is intrinsically unsafe.

This is the first in a series that will look at the plans of the UN system designing and implementing this new agenda, covering implications for global health, economic development, and human rights.

Climate and Health at the WHO: Building the Authoritarian Dream

Amidst all the hype and posturing regarding the negotiations on pandemic texts at the recent 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva (Switzerland), perhaps the most consequential resolution before the WHA slipped through, approved, but virtually unnoticed. The Resolution WHA77.14 on Climate Change and Health was approved without debate, opening the door for the World Health Organization (WHO) ─ a UN specialized agency ─ to claim a broad swath of normal human activity as a potential threat to health, and therefore coming under the purview of the WHO’s detached business-class bureaucrats.

It was highlighted by a Strategic Roundtable on “Climate change and health: a global vision for joint action,” where speakers, moderated by the Lancet’s Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton, included WHO Director-General (DG) Tedros Ghebreyesus, former US Vice President Al Gore (by video message), and CEO of the 28th Climate Conference of States Parties Adnan Amin. 

The Resolution was proposed by a coalition of 16 countries (Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Fiji, Georgia, Kenya, Moldova, Monaco, Netherlands, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Slovenia, United Arab Emirates, and the UK) and passed without changes, mandating the DG to: i) develop a “results-based, needs-oriented and capabilities-driven global WHO plan of action on climate change and health,” ii) serve as a global leader in the field of climate change and health by establishing a WHO Roadmap to Net Zero by 2030, and iii) report back to future WHA sessions.

United Nations System’s “Newspeak” on Climate Change

There is little surprise in this. It is another predictable move on the global climate chessboard. In the last decade, activities and documents from the UN system have increasingly included climate change as a “newspeak” to signal full compliance with the official narrative. 

The head of the UN system, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, is known for pushing the narrative further. In 2019, he posed in water for a picture for Time Magazine’s coverage on “Our sinking planet.” Last summer, he announced that “the era of global warming has ended…the era of global boiling has arrived.”

On 2024 World Environment Day (5th June), he doubled down on his rhetoric: “In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger.” We are, it appears, a poison on our planet.

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Another “vaccine passport” bill FAILS to pass in New York where medical legislation is disguised so the nanny-state can impose vaccine mandates later

New York is the city and state where legislation to remove medical rights and privacy masquerades as “options” so the medical-police-state can later impose vaccine mandates and perform gender mutilation surgery on kids without parental consent. The latest attempt to remove medical privacy in New York comes as lawmakers tried to make it so that anyone 19 and older must “opt out” of having their vaccination information automatically recorded and shared with health departments on their vaccine registry. Currently, only patients under 19 years of age have this data in registries, as required by healthcare providers.

A civil rights attorney, Sujata Gibson, who represents New York plaintiffs who challenge vaccine mandates, calls this new legislation a “Trojan Horse” that paves the way for broader mandates, saying “The only reason to know every single vaccine given to adults in New York is to know who did not get them.” That type of database would be the “central nervous system” she said, for what would surely amount to a “state-wide digital vaccine passport system.”

Vaccine registries can lead directly to vaccine mandates and medical-police-state tyranny

If you did not recognize it, Big Pharma’s main goal of the whole pandemic was to get as many people injected with cell-mutating mRNA “technology” as possible, then you got swept up by the vax cult frenzy, like 270 million other Americans. The mad, mad push is far from over, even though the “novel” virus still barely lingers, supposedly. In New York, right now, vaccine-cult legislators are trying to get everybody on a database, vaccinated or not, so they can plan better for the next “plandemic.”

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Parents, Not Lax Regulation, To Blame for Tweens’ Excessive Screen Time

Instead of calling on the federal government to regulate tween and teen use of social media, perhaps we should look a little closer to home. A new study suggests parental policies and habits around screens are a significant predictor of problematic use among adolescents.

One major finding: Kids getting too much “screen time” are more likely to have parents who get too much screen time.

“One of the biggest predictors of adolescents’ screen use is their parents’ screen use,” pediatrician and lead study author Jason Nagata told The Washington Post.

This was a massive study looking at the screen habits of more than 10,000 kids ages 12 and 13. Published in the journal Pediatric Research, the study—”Associations between media parenting practices and early adolescent screen use”—looked at how often parents used cellphones or other screens around their kids and family policies surrounding technology, such as whether screens were often employed during meal times (35.6 percent said yes), whether kids had access to screens in their bedrooms (46.2 percent said yes), and whether parents monitored and/or limited screen time during the week (67.4 percent and 76.2 percent said yes). Researchers also examined how often the children of these parents engaged in tech-based activities (including using social media, playing video games, and being on a cell phone generally) and how this affected various aspects of their lives.

The researchers found that “parent screen use, family mealtime screen use, and bedroom screen use were associated with greater adolescent screen time and problematic social media, video game, and mobile phone use.”

In addition, “parental use of screens to control behavior (e.g., as a reward or punishment) was associated with higher screen time and greater problematic video game use.”

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California’s Tortilla Bill Threatens To Flatten Small Businesses

California famously became the first state to ban foie gras in 2004. Now, the Golden State is targeting another culinary tradition: the handmade tortilla. A new bill in Sacramento, if passed, would mandate adding folic acid to corn masa flour. Pushed under the auspices of public health, the costs of this well-intentioned idea—as always—will disproportionately fall on small businesses. 

Assembly Bill 1830, introduced by Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (D–Fresno), would require all masa manufacturers to fortify their products with folic acid. This will affect producers of tortillas, as well as producers of pupusas, tamales, and taco shells, to name just a few. 

The rationale is based on research showing that the ingestion of folic acid by women of reproductive age can reduce neural tube birth defects, such as spina bifida and anencephaly. 

Since 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has mandated folic acid fortification in enriched flours, which has resulted in a 35 percent reduction in neural tube birth defects, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

However, the FDA mandate does not apply to unenriched grain or corn masa flour. Evidence suggests that Latina mothers have lower folic acid intake than other demographics, resulting in higher rates of birth defects. California Department of Public Health data show only 28 percent of Latinas reported taking folic acid before pregnancy, compared to 46 percent of white women. A 2009 CDC study suggested that mandatory fortification of masa could boost folic acid intake by up to 20 percent among Mexican Americans. 

In 2016, the FDA implemented rules that allowed producers of masa flour to voluntarily add folic acid to their products. A 2023 report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest found that only 14 percent of masa products contained folic acid, prompting calls for mandatory fortification. 

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