Mayor Bloomberg is a wretched human being. He’s an ultra-rich limousine liberal who wants to impose his views on ordinary people.
I’ve previously written about his statist efforts to ban bake sales, and I’ve noted with mixed feelings his proposal to tell food stamp recipients what they’re allowed to buy.
Now he wants to criminalize large sodas. Holman Jenkins writes about this silly idea in the Wall Street Journal.
Mike Bloomberg’s move to regulate the size of sodas sold in his city illustrates why it’s a good thing he is a mayor of New York and not the czar of all the Russias. American big cities tend to be one-party states to begin with, but at least their totalitarian impulses end up being merely cute because they’re so easy to evade. Under the Bloomberg plan, any cup or bottle of sugary drink larger than 16 ounces at a public venue would be verboten, beginning early next year. You’ll still be able to buy as much Coke as you want in a supermarket. Go home and pour yourself a bucketful. As Mr. Bloomberg himself was the first to note, you’ll also still be free to buy two medium drinks in place of today’s Big Gulp at ballgames, theaters, delis and other venues where the ban would be in effect.
But Mr. Jenkins doesn’t just mock Bloomberg for being a food nanny. He also makes an important point about public policy.
Here is the ultimate justification for the Bloomberg soft-drink ban, not to mention his smoking ban, his transfat ban, and his unsuccessful efforts to enact a soda tax and prohibit buying high-calorie drinks with food stamps: The taxpayer is picking up the bill. Call it the growing chattelization of the beneficiary class under government health-care programs. Bloombergism is a secular trend. Los Angeles has sought to ban new fast-food shops in neighborhoods disproportionately populated by Medicaid recipients, Utah to increase Medicaid copays for smokers, Arizona to impose a special tax on Medicaid recipients who smoke or are overweight. …So perhaps the famous “broccoli” hypothetical during the Supreme Court ObamaCare debate was not so fanciful after all. It flows naturally from the state’s fiscal responsibility for your health that it will try to regulate your behavior, even mandating vegetable consumption.
Or, to summarize, the view of politicians is that the government can tell you how to live because it is paying for your healthcare. This is Mitchell’s Law on steroids! One bad government policy leading to another awful government policy.
And it’s not just Mayor Bloomberg pushing these policies. Other politicians have similar proposals, though it’s quite likely that their main motive is to collect more tax revenue since they are focused on how to tax various “bad” foods.
But let’s try not to be overly depressed. Here’s an amusing cartoon on the topic.
I’m glad that people are mocking Mayor Bloomberg and the rest of the Food Nazis. And it’s good to see that the soft drink industry is fighting back, as seen by this Super Bowl commercial.
Maybe some day we’ll get to the point where people have to smuggle food past government agents. This may sound absurd, but it’s already happening in Norway.
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[…] we have a Lisa Benson cartoon, showing the very unhealthy meal we’re expected to digest. Where’s Mayor Bloomberg when we actually need […]
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[…] One of the frustrating aspects of this debate is that failure will be used to justify even more intervention (aka, Mitchell’s Law). Politicians in New York City have already banned bake sales, for instance, yet that didn’t stop Mayor Bloomberg from unleashing a nutty new plan to prohibit large sodas. […]
Future news:
At the press conference, Bloomberg commented on his non “war against soda”:
“We are not waging a war against soda. We merely suggested through the force of law that people should think about how much soda they were drinking. As our slogan said Count the cups, don’t slurp it up.”
The political backlash has been dramatic. An informal “Trash ‘Em” campaign left thousands of 16 ounce cups littering public buildings, each one spilling a few ounces intentionally left in the cup. The sticky mess was amazing.
One protestor yelled from across the street “You don’t think we have any discipline Mr. Bloomberg? We are happy to drink less soda and leave it on your doorstep.”
Bloomberg continued:
“We will not be stopped by these childish protests, punishable as Class C felonies by 2-4 years in the state penitentiary. The cup size limit will be enforced.
Further, we have mandated that cheeseburgers may no longer be accompanied by any paper products such as plates or napkins. If you want to eat your fattening cheeseburger, bring your own napkin.
Plain hamburgers are not affected. Rules are being drafted for which toppings may or may not trigger the paper ban.
Really, people. Just think a moment before fattening youselves up. Government cares about you. I care about you.”
No Obesity Link to Junk Food in Schools
01/24/12 – NY Times [edited]
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The researchers compared children’s weight in schools where junk food was sold and in schools where it was banned. The scientists also evaluated eighth graders who moved into schools that sold junk food with those who did not, and children who never attended a school that sold snacks with those who did. And they compared children who always attended schools with snacks with those who moved out of such schools.
No matter how the researchers looked at the data, they could find no correlation at all between obesity and attending a school where sweets and salty snacks were available.
Jennifer Van Hook is the lead author and a professor of sociology and demography at Penn State. “Food preferences are established early in life. The problem of childhood obesity cannot be placed solely in the hands of schools.”
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Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Next, Mayor Bloomberg has police make sure you cut your meat into small pieces…