Obama on Health Care, Solar Feuding in the Desert and Julia Child’s Legacy

President Obama prepares for a major speech on health care.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. feuds with fellow environmentalists over the creation of a major solar power facility in the Mojave Desert.

“Julie & Julia” star Meryl Streep trashes her inspiration, the late Julia Child, for her views on politics and food.

Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.

1. HEALTH

President Obama prepares for a major speech on health care.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Gregory Conko on the problems with the current health care system:

“Many of the problems with run-away health care costs can be traced to the third-party-payment system and a maze of complex federal and state insurance regulations. More government intervention will only add cost and complexity to the health care system without solving the underlying problems.”

 

2. ENVIRONMENT

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. feuds with fellow environmentalists over the creation of a major solar power facility in the Mojave Desert.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis on the story behind the story:

“On the surface, it looks like a conflict between those, like Kennedy, who believe that no merely ‘local’ concern should interfere with the quest for a ‘clean energy future,’ and those, like [Wildlands Conservancy Executive Director David] Myers, whose loyalties are divided between saving a particular species and saving the planet. Two tidbits…reveal that the situation is a bit more complicated. One is that Kennedy has a financial interest in Brightsource, the company that would be building the solar plants if the Mojave project is approved. The other is that Kennedy opposes a major renewable energy project in his own backyard — a wind farm in Nantucket Sound, near the family compound in Martha’s Vineyard.”

 

3. CULTURE

“Julie & Julia” star Meryl Streep trashes her inspiration, the late Julia Child, for her views on politics and food.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs John Berlau on Streep’s questionable history on food safety:

“Streep apparently still has a grudge against Child for refusing to lend her support to Streep’s fringe enviro group Mothers and Others for Pesticide Limits. That group was one of the leading promoters of the discredited scare about the pesticide Alar that was spread on apples. In a low point for Congressional hearings on science, Streep, despite her lack of any scientific credentials, was invited to testify in 1989 before a Senate Labor and Human Resources subcommittee. She proclaimed: ‘We don’t know what’s on our food . . . I no longer want my children to be part of this experiment.”

 

Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.