The lemon's long tail

A few months ago, I posted a complaint about a thin bit of anecdotal sub-journalism by Nicholas Martin. In it, Martin complains that his daughter can't open a lemonade stand in a park, or at home, without getting permits for commercial food prep. Or so he says.

I pointed out that the laws were unlikely to be enforced — the same thing he was told by the person he says he spoke to — and that they have a broader purpose that supports the public good, and that complaining that the zoning laws technically prevent food stands is pretty weak sauce.

Martin, having apparently just gotten around to googling himself, complained in my comments. Because I know that literally no one reads comments on months-old entries unless they're googling themselves (or tapirs, which has been my number one search term for about a month), I've decided to move it up here, out of fairness to Martin. (If anyone else has comments they think I missed, let me know).

Nicolas Martin said...
There is nothing misleading about my piece, which you could have verified by contacting me. Through some painless googling you could also have discovered that the Consumer Health Education Council has been around since the 1980s.

Since the piece ran there have been several incidents of lemonade stands being shut down by authorities. But more importantly, the regulations prevent adult entrepreneurs from offering services and selling products. Unfortunately, there are reactionaries who oppose the liberalization of consenting economic activities among adults.
7:10 AM

Josh said...
Well, there was plenty misleading about your piece, which I verified by reading it.

And just because the Consumer Health Education Council has been around since the 1980s doesn't mean it's not astroturfing, a phrase that's been around since the '80s.

In fact, the first result of a painless google search is Sourcewatch's article on the American Council on Science and Health, an astroturf organization.

As far as lemonade stands being shut down, well, you know, one of those things about being a journalist and not a flack is that you could provide at least a couple of links to support that.

Further, as long as we're talking — those regulations also prevent health risks and deaths. Reactionaries, a term usually reserved for conservative revanchists, generally want to remove regulations in order to socialize risk and privatize profit.

But I'm glad that the Consumer Health Education Council will be fighting to overturn drug laws that prevent consenting adults from enjoying economic and recreational activities.
12:48 PM


(EDIT: Corrected spelling of "flack" from "flak," a typo.)

If any of you several readers have comments on this, this post is probably the most likely place to get them read.

George Monbiot on mercenary trolling destroying the internet

Rightwingers can't win on evidence or ideas, so they seek to game the conversation

What Brown has done to them

I clicked on a Google Ad asking me to help stop the "Brown Bailout". I'd never heard of it, and I assumed it was something that Scott Brown (R-Mass.) was pushing.

Actually, it's an astroturf campaign run by FedEx, over changes to labor law in the FAA re-authorization bill. I scoured the site, but I couldn't find out anything about what the bill would actually do, except, you know, be good for UPS and bad for FedEx. It'd theoretically take away the ability of FedEx to provide reliable air service for packages, which does sound bad. It relies repeatedly on descriptions of FedEx and UPS as wholly different, and includes things like unsourced quotes labeling UPS the “biggest giver to U.S. lawmakers,” which seemed pretty fishy. Call your legislators?

No, not really. What the bill would actually do is shift FedEx ground employees to the labor regulations used for all other ground employees save railways, making them able to discourage local organizing—the RLA explicitly requires national votes. That's pretty far afield from the "Brown Bailout" claims:

Since the company’s founding in 1971, FedEx has worked hard to be a great place to work and build a career, as thousands and thousands have done, and some FedEx Express employees have chosen to be represented by a union, others haven’t. Unionization is still a matter of personal choice in America. Most FedEx employees like our existing partnership and open-door relationship, and want to keep things as they are. Under current rules that apply to both UPS and FedEx, employees can choose to join a union and unionized employees can leave their union based on the majority decision of the workforce. That’s America. So it’s clear that the labor argument is only a smokescreen for UPS’ true worries.

It's no secret that FedEx and most corporations are anti-union (to be fair, it's no real secret that I'm generally pro-union). But that's a pretty slick gloss on the systems that make union organizing possible. And the consistent drumbeat from FedEx is that they're entirely different in form than UPS (because UPS is slow and trucks and yucky and FedEx is fast and planes and awesome), but given the BusinessWeek article (hardly from a liberal source), the FAA Reauthorization Act wouldn't apply to people like pilots, but rather workers in local depots and trucks. Which are, sorry to say, exactly like the trucks and depots that UPS runs, though in a kickier color scheme.

So, I'm off to write my legislators (something I can do lying here on the ground with a bad back), asking them to ignore FedEx and their astroturfing and to broaden the protections for the American worker. I'm doing this for two reasons: first, I don't think that a 1927 law forced through by railroad barons should be the default for labor in America, and second, I really hate misrepresentation and faux-populist smear jobs, and I'm afraid that my legislators don't have the time or inclination to distinguish real concerns from sculpted, well, brown.