There are plenty of reasons why politicians and government bureaucrats have no business telling you what you should eat. The Constitution grants the federal government no authority to do so, for one thing. Even if it did, it is simply wrong to force people to pay taxes so that other people can hand down nutritional advice or — God forbid — mandates.

A terrific article by Jane Black in The Washington Post illustrates why, furthermore, the government’s advice isn’t likely to be very good:

[H]istorically, the government has shied away from offering controversial advice. And with food, everything is controversial: A boost for one type of food in the guidelines can be viewed as a threat by providers of competing products. The result, critics say, is a nutritional education system so politically influenced that it is ineffective.

This year’s process appears to be no exception. In public comments, the meat lobby has opposed strict warnings on sodium that could cast a negative light on lunch meats. The milk lobby has expressed concerns about warnings to cut back on added sugars, lest chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milks fall from favor. Several members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation also weighed in against added-sugar restrictions in defense of the cranberry…

In 1977, a Senate select committee led by Sen. George McGovern (D‑S.D.) was forced to beat a hasty retreat after it initially recommended that Americans could cut their intake of saturated fat by reducing their consumption of red meat and dairy products. Its revised guidelines suggested choosing “meat, poultry and fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.”

McGovern, whose constituents included many cattle ranchers, lost his seat in 1980. Since then, in case after case, the guidelines have refrained from suggesting that Americans eat less of just about anything.

Public health advocates say that kind of vacuum is precisely the problem: By avoiding blunt messages about what not to eat, the government has spoken in a way that baffles consumers.

“The only time they talk about food is if it’s an ‘eat more’ message,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University and a longtime critic of the food industry. “If it’s a question of eating less, then they talk about nutrients.”…

[A]s in the past, translating scientific data into clear and useful recommendations poses political pitfalls. The advisory committee’s emphasis on a “plant-based” diet, for example, has caused much consternation among the powerful egg and meat lobbies who say the term might be misunderstood as advocating a vegetarian diet.

This problem trips up all big-government schemes. Right-wing and left-wing statists think they have a terrific idea: give the government power to do this or that, and Experts will use that power to improve mankind. But then the people with a financial stake get involved, and the effort ends up serving them more than mankind. See also health care, national defense, etc..

Eli Lehrer has an article on the FrumForum entitled “Five Revenue Raisers the GOP Should Back.” He argues it would be good to get rid of preferences such as the state and local tax deduction and the mortgage interest deduction, and he also asserts that there should be “user fees” for things such as transportation.

As an avid supporter of a flat tax and market pricing, I have no objection to these policies. Indeed, I would love to get rid of the state and local tax deduction so that taxpayers in Texas and Florida no longer have to subsidize the fiscal profligacy of politicians in California and New York.

But there is a giant difference between getting rid of certain tax preferences as part of revenue-neutral (or even better, tax-cutting) tax reform and getting rid of tax preferences in order to give politicians more revenue to spend.

The former is a noble goal. Who can argue, after all, with the idea of getting rid of the corrupt and punitive internal revenue code and replacing it with a simple and fair flat tax? Lots of loopholes are eliminated, so there are plenty of tax-raising provisions in tax reform. But every one of those provisions is offset by provisions that lower tax rates and get rid of double taxation of saving and investment.

The latter, by contrast, is an exercise in trying to lose with minimal damage — sort of the “French Army Theory” of taxation, surrender gracefully and hope that your new masters give you a few crumbs after their celebratory feast.

What is especially strange about this approach is that the Republicans who advocate higher taxes claim that they are political realists. Yet if we look at real-world evidence, the moment Republicans show their “realism” by putting taxes on the table, the entire debate shifts.

Instead of the debate being tax-hikes vs. no-tax-hikes, it becomes a debate over who-should-pay-more-tax. Republicans win the first debate. They get slaughtered in the second debate.

Remember when the first President Bush agreed to enter into tax-hike negotiations in 1990? He set out two conditions — that there should be a reduction in the capital gains tax and that there should be no increase in income tax rates. So what happened? As everyone with an IQ above room temperature predicted, the capital gains tax stayed the same and income tax rates increased.

Last but not least, this conversation only exists because some people have thrown in the towel, acquiescing to the idea that there is no way to balance the budget without higher taxes. Yet the Congressional Budget Office data shows that the budget can be balanced by 2020 simply by limiting annual spending growth to 2 percent.

The details of Tyler Clementi’s case are slowly revealing themselves. He was the Rutgers University freshman whose sex life was exposed on the Internet when fellow students Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei placed a webcam in his dorm room, transmitting the images that it captured in real time on the Internet. Shortly thereafter, Clementi committed suicide.

Whether Ravi and Wei acted out of anti-gay animus, titillation about Clementi’s sexual orientation, or simply titillation about sex, their actions were utterly outrageous, offensive, and outside of the bounds of decency. Moreover, according to Middlesex County, New Jersey prosecutors, they were illegal. Ravi and Wei have been charged with invasion of privacy.

This is what invasion of privacy looks like. It’s the outrageous, offensive, truly galling revelation of private facts like what happened in this case. Over the last 120 years, common law tort doctrine has evolved to find that people have a right not to suffer such invasions. New Jersey has apparently enshrined that right in a criminal statute.

The story illustrates how quaint are some of the privacy “invasions” we often discuss, such as the tracking of people’s web surfing by advertising networks. That information is not generally revealed in any meaningful way. It is simply being used to serve tailored ads.

This event also illustrates how privacy law is functioning in our society. It’s functioning fairly well. Law, of course, is supposed to reflect deeply held norms. Privacy norms—like the norm against exposing someone’s sexual activity without consent—are widely shared, so that the laws backing up those norms are rarely violated.

It is probably a common error to believe that law is “working” when it is exercised fairly often, fines and penalties being doled it with some routine. Holders of this view see law—more accurately, legislation—as a tool for shaping society, of course. Many of them would like to end the societal debate about online privacy, establishing a “uniform national privacy standard.” But nobody knows what that standard should be. The more often legal actions are brought against online service providers, the stronger is the signal that online privacy norms are unsettled. That privacy debate continues, and it should.

It is not debatable that what Ravi and Wei did to Tyler Clementi was profoundly wrong. That was a privacy invasion.

Free-marketers often point to the varying success of pairs of countries — the United States vs. the Soviet Union, West vs. East Germany, Hong Kong and Taiwan vs. China — to illustrate the benefits of markets over planning, regulation, and socialism. Some even point out the closer but real differences in GDP per capita between the United States and Western Europe. In his 1984 book Endless Enemies (p. 380) Jonathan Kwitny added the less familiar pairs “Morocco versus Algeria, Malaysia versus Indonesia, Thailand versus Burma, Kenya versus Tanzania.” Now Rama Lakshmi reports in the Washington Post that we can see the results of two systems of political economy in one country:

It didn’t take long for the first athletes arriving in New Delhi last week for the upcoming Commonwealth Games to catch a glimpse of modern India’s two faces.

Their gateway to the country was the capital’s gleaming new international airport terminal, built by a privately led consortium and opened in June four months ahead of schedule.

But the official wristbands that the visitors were handed at the airport turned out to be an emblem of India’s famous red tape and government inefficiency. When the teams reached the athletes’ village, the police guarding the facility refused to recognize the IDs, saying that the Games Organizing Committee had not sent the required authorization order.

The jet-lagged athletes stood about under a tree for hours with their luggage, calling their embassies for help, and the problem was not finally resolved for four more days.

To observers, the incident illustrated more than just the well-documented sloppiness that has marked India’s preparations for the Games. It also underscored the gap that has emerged between a government rooted in a slower-moving, socialist era and a private entrepreneurial class that is busy building global IT companies, the world’s largest oil refineries and spectacular structures such as the $2.8 billion airport terminal.

“It is about two aspects of the India story,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an entrepreneur and member of Parliament. “India’s private sector has been exposed to competition and therefore has developed capability. Accountability is firmly built into the entrepreneurial mind-set. But the government structure is a relic of the colonial past and continues to plod along.”…

For the Delhi [airport] project, [Grandhi Mallikarjuna]Rao said, his company worked with 58 government agencies.

“Our nation is in the process of transition from a command-and-control economic system to a more efficient market-driven structure,” he said. “It will take some time till this transition is complete.”

Given all this history, the interesting question is why some people in the United States want to continually transfer such vital functions as energy and health care from the competitive, accountable, capable entrepreneurial sector to the slower-moving, plodding, command-and-control bureaucratic sector. (Of course, the already-government-influenced health care and energy industries are not the most entrepreneurial sectors of the economy. But as the examples above demonstrate, even imperfect markets work better than government direction. Nor are the government-run local schools very competitive or accountable, but they are more so than they will be under tighter federal control.)

The trendy thinking might be that you’re loopy if you call for ending the U.S. Department of Education, or if you think the Constitution should actually have some bearing on federal education policy. Reality, however, strongly suggests that you’d be crazy not to think that way. If you have doubts, I urge you to read Pork 101: How Education Earmarks School Taxpayers, a new report on federal education “help” from the office of Sen. Tom Coburn (R‑OK). 

To start things off, the report succinctly summarizes the role the Constitution gives the feds in education: “The U.S. Constitution provides no role to the federal government in education.”

That’s not entirely accurate—the 14th Amendment empowers Washington to prohibit state and local discrimination in the provision of schooling, and the feds can control education in DC—but otherwise Washington really has zero constitutional authority to meddle in education.

Right after stating this, the report lays out the big ball of nothin’ we’ve gotten from decades of federal meddlin’ and spendin’. Some of the charts might be familiar…

Finally, the paper shines a light on the root problem with federal involvement: It ultimately serves the interests of politicians and special interests, not children or the public. Indeed, by focusing on education pork—legislative earmarks that go directly to favored constituencies—the report highlights politicians literally glorifying themselves with “education” dough.

There’s $1 million, for instance, to establish the Howard Baker School of Government at the University of Tennessee. Another $6 million for the William F. Goodling Institute for Research and Family Literacy at Penn State. There’s $5 million for the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Global Affairs Institute at Syracuse University. $1 million for the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University. $2 million to the City College of New York for the now-infamous Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service. And tens-of-millions for “Harkin Grants,” which are named after Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chairman Tom Harkin. That’s the same Tom Harkin who has been raking for-profit colleges over the coals for, basically, serving themselves with taxpayer dollars. 

Maybe they learned it by watching you, Senator Harkin.

There are many more examples of taxpayer-funded politician-aggrandizement in the report, as well as lots of other cuts of pig. Take it all in if you can stand it, then give some thought to who’s really nutty when it comes to federal education policy. The answer should be pretty clear.

Over at Downsizing Government, we focused on the following issues this week:

• With the release of its “Pledge to America,” House Republicans largely fell back on limited government platitudes.
• Are subsidized child care services being provided by sex offenders? Apparently, nobody knows.
• Head Start has a fraud problem. And by the way, the program doesn’t work.
• The U.S. Postal Service’s latest financial woes are a reminder that Congress should start focusing its attention on getting the government out of the mail business once and for all.
• Liberals and libertarians agree: it’s nonsense to suggest that a little belt-tightening and reductions in wasteful government spending will solve our fiscal problems.

Earlier today I saw a CNN report about the O.J. Simpson case—15 years ago the verdict was announced and the entire country was tuning in to hear the result. The case was all over the news for a year—first the shocking news of the murder of Simpson’s former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, then the televised “white Bronco chase” around Los Angeles, then Simpson’s defense attorney “Dream Team” and prosecutor Marcia Clark’s life and looks, and then, at last, the verdict. 

White America had a hard time accepting the fact that the police would lie about their actions (at one point early on, the police testified that they invaded Simpson’s estate because they were concerned about his “safety”—instead of admitting that they were tracking a suspect and trying to gather evidence). 

Black America had a hard time explaining away the evidence of Simpson’s guilt. As I discussed in a 2003 Reason article, here are three examples of the incriminating evidence:

First, after the nationally televised slow-speed chase, the police recovered a “To Whom It May Concern” note written by Simpson’s own hand after he was charged with the murder, but before he was arrested. Defense attorney Robert Shapiro said he had little doubt that it was a suicide note. But an innocent person would very likely be outraged about being charged with a murder and eager to find the real killer. Prosecutors never presented the note to the jury.

Second, after the chase, the police also recovered several key pieces of incriminating evidence, but the prosecutors failed to use them during the trial. Officers found a fake mustache, a fake goatee, and, most damning, a receipt that showed the items were purchased two weeks before the murders — yet the prosecutors never asked jurors to consider why Simpson would need the elements of a disguise just prior to the murder of his wife and Ron Goldman.

Third, detectives tape-recorded an interview with Simpson just a day after the murders. Simpson, asked about a wound on his hand, admitted that he had cut himself the previous night and that instead of immediately applying a bandage, he dripped blood around his estate. When a detective asked him the cause of the cut, Simpson’s reply — again, on audiotape — was, “I have no idea, man.” Unbelievably, the jury never heard this audiotape or his bizarre admission that he was bleeding all over the place right around the time of his wife’s murder. Instead, prosecutors took weeks to present DNA evidence — and then, in response to the defense claim of a police frame-up, offered up a lame, “Yes, racist cops exist in the LAPD, but this case is not a frame-up.”

When the trial was over, the lead defense attorney, the late Johnnie Cochran, was hailed as a miracle worker, but the truth was that the prosecutors did an incredibly lousy job.

The blunders that are recounted above are just a few those that are set forth in the best book about the case, Outrage, by the legendary trial attorney Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson. Bugliosi concludes that a competent prosecution would have very likely secured a conviction. More here.

Simpson was later sued by Goldman’s family for wrongful death and was found liable by the jury. The civil attorneys found more evidence of Simpson’s guilt, such as photographs of Simpson wearing Bruno Magli shoes matching shoe tracks at the crime scene. Simpson was nonetheless able to avoid paying any money to the Goldmans and is now in prison for other crimes.

A good Frontline documentary about the criminal case can be viewed online.