In an effort to keep up with the times and serve a profitable market segment,  southern-style comfort-food restaurant chain Cracker Barrel recently added a new item to its menu.

“Experience the out of this world flavor of Impossible [TM] Sausage,” the “Old Country Store” announced in an August 1 Facebook post, accompanied by a photo of two of the plant-based patties.

Responses across thousands of comments vary from gratitude to “meh, I’ll stick with the real thing” to … well, here’s a somewhat representative sample from commenter “Barry Deaton”:

“I just want to know why all these companies feel that they have to follow the leader on all of this crap. Cracker Barrel is a great company and they got great Without Woke Meat. Get the message most people don’t want this crap. You are only appealing to a small percentage of people. I still love Cracker Barrel but please stick to your roots.”

Yes, there are even calls going around for a boycott.

My priors were, thankfully, not confirmed when I clicked on a link to a piece by minister Brett Younger at Baptist News Global titled “Are left-wing radicals pushing Cracker Barrel to the edge of the slippery slope?”

“They call it ‘comfort food’ for a reason, writes Younger. “It makes us feel comfortable. The latest silliness is not about sausage but fear of change. Social media magnifies our foolishness, so we need to think about which wars are worth fighting.”

Can I get an amen?

Cracker Barrel isn’t “going woke.” Cracker Barrel is noticing a market opportunity and hoping to profit from it.

Somewhere between 5% and 10% of Americans (depending on which poll you look at) consider themselves “vegetarians” or “vegans.”

More than one in five Americans say they’re eating less meat, mostly for health reasons.

That’s a lot of people buying and eating a lot of food.

If I had to guess at Cracker Barrel’s demographic focus, I’d guess it’s on the high side — lots of early Gen Xers and Boomers, many of whom have been told by their doctors to cut back on the meat (especially red meat) for heart health, to reduce cholesterol levels, etc. — and families with internally diverse dietary needs and preferences.

That’s why Cracker Barrel’s menu already includes options like chicken sausage links and egg whites.

Let me emphasize: Options!

You can still get “Grandpa’s Country Fried Breakfast”:  “Two eggs with choice of Breakfast Side plus Country Fried Steak or Fried Sunday Homestyle Chicken. Served with Biscuits n’ Gravy.”

You can still get the “Country Boy Breakfast” — three eggs, sirloin steak AND ham, and biscuits with gravy.

They’re not going to chain you to a chair and force-feed you egg whites and Impossible [TM] Sausage.

You could also drive through Burger King and order an Impossible [TM] plant-based Whopper, or the original with a beef patty.

Or you can sit at home and eat spinach, or chocolate-covered pork rinds.

Relax. Variety and choice are the spice of life. And the exact opposite of “woke.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On August 2, voters in Kansas rejected an amendment to the state constitution which would have increased the legislature’s power to regulate (or ban) abortion.

Pro-choice groups hailed the outcome as evidence that abortion rights are a “winning issue” this year; partisan Democrats have reason to look more hopefully toward their chances of holding on to majorities in the US Senate, and maybe even the House of Representatives, this November.

More interesting, I think, is what the result tells us about where the “moderate center” is in American politics. Letting people vote on one specific issue often produces very different outcomes from letting people vote on “representatives” based on the candidates’ baskets of multiple issues.

In order to understand where Kansas is going after the referendum, it’s useful to consider where it started prior to the referendum and what passage would have changed.

Per existing Kansas law, abortion is already banned after 22 weeks. Parental consent is required for minors seeking the procedure. There’s a 24-hour waiting period for the procedure.  Government funding for abortion is only available if the pregnancy threatens the mother’s life.

In other words, Kansas without the amendment was neither paradise for the “ban it from conception” crowd nor Utopia for the “it’s an absolute right up to the moment of birth” crowd.

Had the amendment passed, the constitution would have explicitly stated that abortion is not a “right” and that the state legislature could impose additional restrictions on it.

By defeating the amendment, Kansans chose to keep things just as they already were.

Had this been a legislative election, the voters would have likely faced a binary choice between Republicans who wanted more government regulation of abortion, and Democrats who wanted less government restriction of abortion.

The voters comprising the big “center” — those who may or may not be comfortable with abortion, but resemble neither of the polar “ban it” or “don’t touch it” ends of the issue — wouldn’t have had an option there. They’d likely have gone with one of the two parties based not on (or at least not JUST on) abortion, but on a whole raft of issues and personalized identity affiliations.

In a close election, the “extremist” voters on either side might  provide the margin of victory to one side or the other, and would certainly claim that victory as indicating support for their positions, but that claim would ring hollow.

In this single-issue referendum, “extremist” voters were swamped by “moderate” voters who might or might not support the existing restrictions, but see no reason to expand those restrictions — or at least no reason to trust legislators with that power.

As someone who doesn’t always trust the collective judgments of “the people,” but who trusts the judgments of politicians even less, I find that result quite pleasing.

Unfortunately, this outcome highlights why a “centrist” party can’t win in “representative” elections. Our system is designed to divvy up the “center” into large, roughly equal partisan blocs so that “extremists” control the balance of power.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

With inflation rampaging across the US Economy, USA Today reports, Social Security recipients can expect a 2022 cost of living adjustment (“COLA”) of up to 10.5%.

For victims of the New-Deal-Era Ponzi scheme, which offers a measly return on “investment” (paid for, like all Ponzi payouts, from new revenues), and which mostly functions as a way of subsidizing the retirements of longer-lifespan white middle-class women at the expense of shorter-lifespan black low-income men, a raise is always good news.

Well, almost always.

Other things will likely be going up as well, including those same seniors’ Medicare Part B and Part D payments, (Part D increased by 14.5% this year, while the Social Security COLA was only 5.9%).

And other things won’t go up. For example, the amount of income seniors can have before that income starts getting taxed, or the amount below which they receive adjusted Medicare and prescription drug benefits for “low-income” retirees.

In at least some cases, the COLA may end up costing seniors more than they get. As Martin Luther observed of certain people in his Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, government’s “giving is of such a character, that the right hand gives, but the left hand takes.”

The best solution to this problem, of course, would be to get America off government “giving” merry-go-round, including but not limited to the Social Security scam.

But until we can figure out how to get there (or, more likely, the system collapses), there’s another worthwhile solution — not just for Social Security recipients, but for everyone.

That solution is “indexing” tax rates and benefit thresholds to inflation.

With “indexing,” every year, the personal exemption and/or standard deduction for the federal income tax would increase by the same percentage as the previous year’s inflation (or, better yet, a little more, so that we can get real tax cuts). Maximum income levels to qualify for government benefits would likewise increase.

“Indexing” only seems fair. After all, inflation is itself a tax, and a highly regressive one that hurts the poor far more than the rich. It occurs when the government creates new money out of thin air faster than the productive economy produces goods and services to buy with that money, making your existing dollars worth less, so that it can have more to spend on its priorities rather than yours.

Not “indexing” taxes and benefits for inflation is, essentially, taxing you … on your taxes!

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY