Doug Sohn, owner of Hot Doug’s, was busted on the morning of Feburary 17th for disobeying Chicago city law by continuing to offer foie gras-laced hot dogs at his restaurant. Dough Sohn had been defying the city’s anti-foie gras ruling since it passed last year on August 22nd and has disregarded a number of warnings by city health inspectors. Mr. Sohn was issued a citation on Feb. 17th and is facing a maximum fine of $500. This is just another step of an ever expanding police state.

Being a University of Florida Sophomore, the Rolling murders strike very close to me. Yesterday evening the state of Florida put to death the notorious murder Danny Rolling. Though there is little evidence that Rolling didn’t murder the students, there is still much debate with respect to capital punishment. Capital punishment is by no means the most gruesome form of state punishment. There may be other forms of punishment more degrading that may not cross the line of “cruel and unusual” but I am not here to discuss which type of punishment for serious murder crimes there should be but instead why capital punishment is incorrect.

There have been many individuals who have been executed by the State just so that a few years down the road investigators find out the accused did not commit the crime. The State, I believe, does a clumsy job of almost everything it tries to take control of. If we are to believe that monopoly privilege of law should remain in the hands of the State then we must understand the fact that the system is not flawless and that there will be tragedies. That said, we can not look the other way when addressing the problem of the State executing innocents. Instead, we must look for alternative ways to punish those convicted of heinous crimes without stripping them of life so that if evidence emerges that they did not commit the crime, perhaps they can at the very least regain their right to life.

Rolling was an evil man and quite haunting. His dying words was singing a Christian hymn in a way that witnesses found demonic and eerie. There is little question that Rolling did the crimes and that he received the proper punishment. That said, there have been far too many individuals put through this pain due to the State’s carelessness and inefficiency. Capital punishment, especially when it is unmerited, does not only effect the victim but also their families. It must be difficult to deal with the fact that your son or daughter was executed by the State for a crime they did not commit.

It is time to leave execution behind and embrace a more sensible solution, possibly plans that involve hard labor and restitution. In addition, this should also call for a loosening of the government’s tight hold on gun rights. There is no doubt in my mind that if these kids were allowed to own handguns or if the ownership of firearms was more easily accessible to the law-abiding citizens that Rolling would not had to have been executed by the State but instead would had received just punishment by his would-be victims. When a killer comes through the door it is going to be my gun, not the State, the will protect me.

The Caribbean island of Cuba has recently been experiencing a strange outbreak of dengue. This may have resulted in hundreds of deaths throughout the island, something the Castro regime has done little to acknowledge the outbreak. Doctors at hospitals have also been dying from this disease leaving fewer individuals to properly treat patients. José Antonio Fornaris of writes that

In the end, no one can say for certain; the government-controlled media have not acknowledged the spread of the disease while many claim to know of at least one case of the mosquito-borne illness.

Last Monday, Carlos Campos, a 61-year-old physician who was director of the Luis de la Puente Uceda hospital died; some say of heart disease, others claim dengue was the cause of death.

Campos was the chief of the team of doctors performing medical tests on Cubans migrating to the United States.

This is a perfect example of the type of cover-ups associated with these tyrannical communist governments. Castro has refused to comment on the outbreak and has given little aid to the island in order to facilitate the treatment of patients. While the communist elite are in their mansions consuming thousands of dollars in luxury goods a day, the citizenry can not even fight the spread of a preventable disease. Communism is not equal wealth distribution, it is wealth confiscation.

Fidel Castro, the ruthless dictator of Cuba, was recently ill with severe internal bleeding, bringing the media’s spotlight on the island. Castro’s physicians managed to bring the him back to good health but doubts have arisen as to how much longer the dictator will be in power. Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and successor to the “presidency,” has openly admitted that he desires to see a more open economy in Cuba. Raul has showed much sympathy towards the Chinese economy and their mixture of communist rule with quasi-free markets. That said, questions have surfaced as to the possibility of counter-communist revolution when Fidel “buys the farm.” Cuba has seen some civil unrest recently, mostly due to repressive labor laws and the government’s failure to pay workers. In this article, Liannis Meriño Aguilera writes of graffiti that has appeared at a bus stop in Holguin which has caught the immediate attention of the communist regime. The article states that

someone wrote anti-government slogans on the walls of a bus stop across the street from a military post in Banes, Holguín municipality last weekend.

The graffiti read “Down with Fidel” and “We don’t want Raúl,” in chalk. A detachment from the political police, headed by Major Wilson Ramírez, of the Department of State Security, converged on the site in the early morning and cleaned up the wall after thoroughly photographing it.

Later in the day, the local contingent of the “Rapid Response Brigades,” the government directed mobs who prosecute all those not in agreement with government policies, were gathered at the fire station and told to “be watchful of acts of disobedience like this one.”

There may not be a radical libertarian revolution when Fidel kicks the bucket but one thing is for sure, the coming years will be quite interesting. My family is Cuban and suffered tremendously under Castro. My mother was driven out of the country and my father was placed in a concentration camp for eighteen months cutting sugarcane for the regime. It would be a relief for my family as well as millions of exiled Cubans to see a significant change from a repressive communist regime to a much freer market.

Though Benjamin Franklin may have contributed much to various fields of science and knowledge, one branch he did lack in was economics. He accepted the labor theory of value, misunderstood the nature of interest rates, was confused on the quantity of money, and believed in a proto-Keynesian theory of investment. FULL ARTICLE

This story is a little older but it shows the path down which Chicago is going. It is quite saddening to see our cities becoming increasingly regulatory and Fascistic. In this article, Fran Spielman writes about the incredible drive one alderman has to ban fatty foods from the streets of Chicago. This comes after a report listing Chicago as the one of the most obese cities in the United States. The alderman is attacking one specific type of fat, Trans-fatty acids. The proposed ban may only apply to restaurants yet it could very well continue into grocery stores. Many restaurant owners are protesting the ban arguing that it will raising costs significantly, driving out any marginal businessmen.

If the City Council can ban foie gras, a fatty liver delicacy that most Chicagoans have never tasted and cannot afford, why not ban a product that’s known to cause obesity and heart disease? Chicago’s most powerful alderman raised that question Wednesday, then began to answer it — by thinking out loud.

Sometimes some people, especially politicians and bureaucrats, should think to themselves.

With the Dr. Cantor seminar up and running, various individuals have asked me to forward one of my articles to the Mises blog. Dr. Cantor will be speaking shortly on Friday’s lecture concerning video games and how they are quickly becoming a new form of art. That said, last week my article “The Economics of ‘World of Warcraft’” was published on LewRockwell.com and I can only hope this will aid individuals in understanding the economics present within “virtual reality.”

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