Great Moments in Local Government, the New York City Edition

I’m periodically dumbfounded by the bizarre actions of government.

Indeed, I even put together a post comparing amazingly stupid policies in the United States and United Kingdom. And I later updated that post with new details of brainless bureaucracy.

Top U.K. entries included an effort to stop children from watching Olympic shooting events and (what must be) the most pointless sign in the history of the world, while leading American entries included preventing a girl from boarding a plane because her purse had an image of a gun and a local school calling the police because a little girl kissed a little boy in gym class.

But I don’t mean to just pick on the anglo-sphere. I’ve also noted the idiocy of the Greek government, which thinks it’s appropriate to subsidize pedophiles and collect stool samples as a condition of getting a business license to set up an online company.. And let’s not forget Italy’s new government of technocratic experts, which managed to appoint the wrong person to be Junior Agricultural Minister.

Saving NYC from the scourge of toy guns

But don’t overlook New York City, which really is in a special category.  And what are the “leaders” of the city that never sleeps doing to demonstrate their blundering incompetence? Well, read it and weep, courtesy of the New York Post.

The owner of a discount store in Brooklyn says the city is holding him up for $30,000 in fines he can’t afford — all because he stocked six toy sheriff sets that included plastic guns. And now the .44-caliber fines for the orange-tipped, obvious fakes are forcing him to close for good.

Isn’t this wonderful? These reckless politicians and bureaucrats will bankrupt an entrepreneur and destroy jobs, while achieving no legitimate public policy purpose.

But don’t be surprised. This is the same crowd that does things such as help prisoners sign up for food stamps, ban bake sales for spreading unhealthy food, and fine you $2,000 for idling your car for more than three minutes.