“Progressives have run Detroit for many decades.  Progressives, with considerable assistance from conservative Republicans on the state and national levels, are responsible for the numerous policy failures that combined to turn a once great city into ruins.  Those policies include: government schools and busing, welfare, the drug war, public employee unions, oppressive taxes and regulations on business and citizens, and the overall concept of government as the political means of acquiring wealth as opposed to the old-fashioned approach of productive work. This is a great opportunity for libertarians to explain, as the media will not, how progressivism destroyed Detroit.  It is a great opportunity to promote libertarian solutions to Detroit’s problems.”

As with his books, his solutions involve acting outside the government system. The schools are terrible? Then put your kids in private or parochial schools, or home-school them.

The cops won’t protect you? Get a gun and a concealed-carry permit, which is easy to do in Michigan (unlike repressed California).

Ostrowski:

“We need to respond to the collapse of Detroit and other large Americans cities not by electing reform candidates or lobbying or circulating petitions but by direct action and entrepreneurship.  We need to withdraw from failed government institutions such as government schools and urge others to do likewise.  We need to encourage people to figure out how to solve their own problems without looking to politicians.  We need to figure out how to start business firms that compete with the failed government “services” such as the police.

“As Karen De Coster has documented on this site, this movement is already well underway in Detroit.  The State’s collapse is the Liberty Movement’s opportunity.  Let’s not waste a crisis.”

De Coster’s blog, Detroit: From Dust to Riches, details the wonderful ways entrepreneurs are turning the massive failure of government in Detroit into opportunities to provide a service — and to make money doing it.

Government failure is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. It’s an opportunity to brush aside our oppressors and begin a life that’s new and free.

Soon we’ll be doing the same when California goes bust…

If you want a treat, drink some raw milk. It’s tastes so much better — and is better for you — than the chalky pasturized stuff. The same with raw cheese and butter. It does cost more.

That is, if you can find this delicacy. Sometimes Mother’s Market and other health-food stores have it in stock. Usually they don’t.

That’s because the government heavily regulates raw dairy products. And they just raided a major raw milk producer in California. Writes Karen De Coster of LewRockwell.com:

Infowars and the Huffington Post are reporting that a combined army from the LA County Sheriff’s Office, the FDA, the Dept. of Agriculture, and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) raided Rawesome Foods — again — and three people have been arrested and “are being charged with conspiracy to sell unpasteurized raw milk products.” One of the detainees is Sharon Palmer of Healthy Family Farms, a woman who “terrorizes” the population by selling whole, fresh, farm products to buyers who willingly transact for her fresh, non-indusrial supply foods. Oh, and yes, if you look at the cell phone video on Huffington Post, the vandals in black were wearing full-armor monkey suits.

In today’s America, even for a raid on farmers the government shows up in full SWAT-team regalia to terrorize innocent citizens.

And can Los Angeles County spare the funds for this raid? Their budget is in massive deficit too — $220 millon. Meanwhile, crime has been increasing in Los Angeles.

And the federal agents on this raid are part of a government that just raised its debt ceiling to the unimaginable $16 trillion. That’s $16,000,000,000,000.00.

If Congress is serious about “balancing” the budget, it should start by entirely eliminiating the budgets of the FDA, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control.

Healthy Raw Milk

According to the government, raw milk isn’t healthy. Actually, it’s the government-approved milk that isn’t good for you. A reader wrote to De Coster:

Thank you so much for blogging about the raid on Rawesome today.  My family in particular is devastated.  My family buys (bought?) half our groceries from Rawesome, including milk for my baby boy, who is not even two years old and cannot tolerate processed milk. You might remember me from a year ago; it was your blog that led me to Mark’s Daily Apple, turning me from a lifelong fatty into a strong athlete and paleo evangelist.  So you know I am highly sensitive to the issue of food quality.  Rawesome was by far the best source for food in our entire city and I am beside myself wondering what we will do now.

De Coster adds:

I get so many emails from folks like Timothy who have turned their health and weight right-side-up after reading my blog and Lew’s blog, and yet, so many folks think we just preach to the choir. If you saw my emails each day, you’d say “not so.”

Ron Paul’s Bill

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, has introduced HR 1830, a bill to protect raw-milk farmers from the government’s attacks. He’s also running for president.  He said:

Hard as it is to believe, the federal government is actually spending time and money prosecuting small businesses for the “crime” of meeting their customers’ demand for unpasteurized milk! Recently the Food and Drug Administration conducted a year-long sting operation targeting Rainbow Acres Farms in Pennsylvania. As a result of this action, Rainbow Acres’ customers will no longer be able to purchase unpasteurized milk from this small Amish farm.

Mr. Speaker, many Americans who the government wishes to deny the ability to purchase unpasteurized milk have done their own research and come to the conclusion that unpasteurized milk is healthier than pasteurized milk. These Americans have the right to consume these products without having the federal government second-guess their judgment about what products best promote health. If there are legitimate concerns about the safety of unpasteurized milk, those concerns should be addressed at the state and local level.

August 4, 2011