US VP Candidate Jeremy "Spike" Cohen: Ideal Administration and Your Health

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All right gut check project fans, it is now time for a very special episode. I'm joined here with my co host, Dr. Kenneth Brown. And we're here on episode number 43 with the 2020, libertarian vice presidential candidate Jeremy Spike Cohen spike, thank you so much for joining us here today here in conroe, Texas. 

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Absolutely beautiful. conroe, Texas, Eric. Ken, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

0:20  
It's an honor to have you This is so exciting.

0:22  
Absolutely. And sorry, for the brevity, we're going to have to move kind of quick because a lot of people want to talk to spike. So we're gonna get straight to it. Okay, if you were elected, and you have the opportunity to change the way that we handled lobbyists, specifically the corn lobby, the corn farmers Association battles to make certain that we keep high fructose corn syrup in all of our foods, we know that it can lead to disease. What is your position on how to handle things like that? 

0:47  
Well, the short answer is the government shouldn't be picking winners and losers in the market, it leads to this very type of thing we need to look at corn is a perfect example high fructose corn syrup. And the corn lobby in general is a perfect example of cronyism leading to actual death and harm as a direct result. So why is corn so heavily used in our foods? Why is high fructose corn syrup so heavily used in American foods and not really heavily used in other countries foods? It's because in the 1970s, the Nixon administration was approached by the corn lobby, which is a very powerful lobby, because they're based in Iowa, which is the first state that has primaries, in every election cycle, they were approached with an idea of stabilizing and lowering the cost of food in this country and the fluctuations in the change of the price of food in this country. By heavily subsidizing corn products. Corn is a hearty crop, it grows year round, it is a great way to provide an ever steady supply of food. Well, here's the problem. High fructose, high fructose corn syrup, is a great way to lead to larger rates of obesity, and diabetes and other issues because it is not processed the same way as other sugars. It is a very, very concentrated form of fructose, it can potentially lead to autoimmune issues, I have multiple sclerosis, I have not been eating corn or corn products for quite some time. And that's a big part of it. Anything that is high in carbs like that. And in general, this is another perfect example of what happens when government has the power to choose a winner and to choose a loser instead of the market. And which in this case would be consumers of food and health consumers deciding what is safest and healthiest for them and creating demand for that thing, which would mean an increased supply of it. Instead, the government goes in and says, No, everyone's eating corn, we're gonna lower the price drastically, it leads to those who have the least those who are the lowest income having to eat more of that because it's what they can afford. And it leads to what we have right now, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to be obese, the more likely you are to have diabetes, the more likely you are to have autoimmune issues, the more likely you are to deal with depression, the more likely you are to deal with a host of health issues that are directly related to the diet, and that the harm the poison that it's caused.

2:57  
That is exactly what we just talked about. Wouldn't it be fascinating if on a more local level, we could subsidize fruits and vegetables? Get those farmers doing that?

3:07  
And while that sounds good, here's the problem with that you're now picking another winner right? True. And so while that may be better than corn, without fail, you know, here's the thing. Fruit also was high in sugar. So I could very well conceive you know, a situation where now we're eating Apple syrup, or some other type of high fructose syrup that's coming from another fruit as a direct result of what was originally a well intentioned idea. This thing with the corn lobby, the I fully believe that the politicians who signed off on this Yes, they were getting their their you know, campaign coffer kickbacks from the corn lobby, they also probably thought it was a good idea. They're probably also thought that it was a good idea to be able to stabilize the food, in food pricing in the food industry in this country, it's led to massive harm. We don't know how many hundreds of thousands, millions, possibly 10s of millions of lives have been prematurely ended. And and and and the quality of life been reduced as a direct result of just another bad crony policy, what we believe is free markets, we believe that when people are empowered to be able to make their choices based on their best informed consent of what is the best way for them to eat, we're instead of trying to artificially lower the price of this and artificially increase the price of this. You let people make their choices with their themselves, their families, their health providers, what works best for them, and allow the market to dictate pricing and the market to dictate supply and demand, then you end up with a much more equitable, fair and healthy situation.

4:28  
So while we're talking about lobbies, we can't ignore the fact that when we're looking at the corn refiners Association, and of course you have the sugar Producers Association, which includes RJ Newman, Archer, Daniels, Midland, Cargill, etc. They obviously have a big push to do sweeteners and then sometimes they work together and sometimes they battle for their own piece of the pie of this of these crony dollars. So with all of that said, so we know that there's this lobby for sugar, but we can't ignore the fact that there's Monsanto and Bayer so they have a lobby also, in essence, what is it that a liberal herion platform or a different platform, our ideal platform for that matter would look like handling lobbyists that essentially make us dependent upon things that are inherently bad for the core

5:09  
issue here is that you have lobbyists and cronies stepping up to the federal trough to write themselves blank checks of your money that is stolen from you. The answer is to look at the root problem was the existence of that trough to begin with, get rid of the trough, give you your money back stop the cronyism at its core. And the demand for this these crony favors goes away. If the government can't give away crony favors, if they can't pick winners and losers, not just in the health care market. In the energy market, the corn industry is pushing for more and more higher levels of percentages of ethanol in your gasoline. And we now know not only is that know better for the environment, it's actually worse for the environment. It also was corrosive to car parts, which means it makes your car die faster. It makes your car require maintenance faster, turns out to corrode your insides too, right. So here's the situation that we have. This entirely exists because of the lobby system that is built around cronyism around the government's ability to hand out favors in the form of regulation subsidization taxes, mandates, and other red tape and bureaucracy and lobby favors that they create for their favorite cronies that by and pay for them to be in office, the libertarian platform across the board, whether we're talking about health, whether we're talking about education, whether we're talking about energy or anything in between, we are talking about completely dismantling the system and putting the power and the money and the freedom that was stolen from you back in your hands so you can make better choices, better energy choices, better health choices, better nutrition choices that are clearly have been made on your behalf b...