How Expensive Is a Mug of Bacon?
MANCHESTER, N.H. | One Republican senator from the Midwest might as well be asking: Will taxes raise the sticker price of this mug of bacon?
The menu item at the iconic Red Arrow diner currently goes for $13.99 — and for six bucks more you can keep the mug. The diner is a must stop for any politician stumping in the Granite State. Your correspondent ate breakfast this week at a counter spot marked with a small plaque noting that former Sen. Scott P. Brown, R-Mass., (now a candidate for Senate in New Hampshire) had once graced the same seat.
But Sen. Ron Johnson’s office has a beef about government regulation of the porky breakfast product.
A new blog entry on the Wisconsin Republican’s website says, “the idea that government should be able to use taxes and regulations to make its citizens avoid the wholesome foods they prefer is repulsive.”
It references a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Oklahoma State professor Jayson Lusk about the promotion of a vegetarian diet by some as a means to combat climate change.
“You can’t visit many county fairs or the Wisconsin State Fair without realizing that many Wisconsinites make a living providing meat that Americans want to eat. Our farmers grow it. Our workers turn it into bacon or bratwurst. They all do it with incredible efficiency — which is why critics claim that meat is somehow ‘too cheap.’ The livestock are grown on farms Wisconsinites own and care for, land that often has been in their families for generations,” the Johnson blog post read . “The idea that they are abusing that land by feeding the country and that government must intervene to make meat less affordable is arrogant folly.”
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