License to blog?

By William R. Toler

I love North Carolina. It’s a beautiful state, from the miles of beaches on the Atlantic Coast to the hazy hills of the southern Appalachians. But sometimes the idoacy the “powers that be” make me sad to be Tarheel born and bred.

A blogger could be facing jail time. His crime: wrting about the Paleo Diet.

After Steve Cooksey was hospitalized with diabetes in 2009, he decided to fight his ailment by changing his diet, the Carolina Journal reports. After experiencing positive results from the low-carb, high-protein regimen, Cooksey decided to start a blog.

Depsite having a disclaimer at the bottom of his blog stating, “I am not a doctor, dietitian nor nutritionist… in fact I have no medical training of any kind,” Cooksey received a letter from the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition.

Isn’t that nice? We have a Nanny State agency to “protect the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of North Carolina from harmful nutrition practice by providing for the licensure and regulation of persons engaged in the practice of dietetics/nutrition and by establishing educational standards for those persons.” How did we survive before 1992?

Stimulating the GTP

By William R. Toler

Gov. Bev Perdue announced Tuesday that $64 million from the president’s stimulus package will be dedicated to the construction of a parkway connecting U.S. 70 to the Global Transpark, according to the Kinston Free Press. 

The Free Press reported that the four-mile connector will consist of 12 bridges and should be completed within four years. This road is one of several of the “state’s ‘shovel-ready’ transportation projects” funded by the $466 million in federal dollars provided by the so-called stimulus.

At the announcement, Perdue also used one of the president’s newest catch phrases stating that extension could “save or create 1,900 secondary or primary jobs.”

To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, how do you calculate a saved job?