Here’s a chart I found at My New Roots’ Facebook page. I don’t want to pick on them, if only because it looks like they have some delicious recipes to offer. I suspect they didn’t create it themselves, but passed it on to their fans.

This particular item appears to be an object lesson in oversimplification. The point is that subsidies to meat and dairy and grain producers make their products relatively cheaper, thereby lowering input costs for McDonald’s or other so-called restaurants, thereby making you fat by making terrible food so very cheap.

But subsidies aren’t the only factor that goes into the price of fast food. One, it’s harder to freeze fresh vegetables, especially seasonal vegetables, than it is to freeze meat, dairy or grains. Two, vegetable crop yields are less dependable than they are for dairy, grain and meat products. The fact is that fresh (read: extremely perishable) foods just tend to be a bit more expensive for large-scale uses at fast-food restaurants.

I appreciate the intention of the chart. Subsidies make bad foods easier to consume, and so they may well contribute to all sorts of ill health effects. This chart doesn’t make that point very well.

(As a side note, does anyone believe that the largest share of our diet should be made up of grain?)

Starring Randolph Bragg. Produced by The Big Honkin’.

Former Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner (and University of Kentucky baller) Richie Farmer filed for unemployment when his term ended. The Courier-Journal reports:

As agriculture commissioner, a position he held eight years, Farmer earned $110,346 when his term ended. But Kentucky unemployment compensation law lists “a public elected official” among the types of employment not eligible for benefits.

And state officials said they could not remember a previous instance when an elected state official had applied for unemployment benefits.

Farmer did not return numerous phone messages seeking comment on this story.

While it’s a juicy story of an elected official with an inexcusably poor understanding of the most basic purpose of a government-run insurance program, it’s also an indictment of Farmer’s lack of planning for his own future employment. Note to future candidates for state office: Please try to think past the next election. Thanks.

Video produced by Caleb O. Brown, Austin Bragg and Lester Romero.

“Did you know that I am president because of you?” – Vaclav Havel to Lou Reed, 1990

“Kentucky is my favorite Red State because its economy, rather like Cuba, is entirely vice-based. With Cuba, it’s cigars and rum and sugar and in Kentucky it’s horse racing and bourbon and tobacco.” – Christopher Hitchens

Internet censorship is not the answer to problems of piracy online. Cato Institute research fellow Julian Sanchez explains that internet censorship won’t effectively address the problem of piracy and will threaten innovation and the liberties of Americans by engaging in unconstitutional prior restraint.

Video produced by Caleb Brown, Austin Bragg and Julian Sanchez.

I like Ron Paul a whole lot. As politicians go, he’s definitely in the top percentile. But this ad is dirty pool.

You don’t compare annual income to net worth in the same chart. You just don’t. It’s inapt and it’s beneath Ron Paul. It should be taken down.

That being said, Newt Gingrich has no moral center, no regard for liberty and deserves every truthful attack sent his way. Carry on.