Category: nannyism

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nannyism too much government

Rationing Pain Relief

If you doubt that ever-expanding government control over medicine hurts people, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is eager to disabuse you. How else to explain his new requirement that city-controlled emergency rooms restrict supplies of painkillers in the name of the war on drugs?

The idea is that if emergency rooms shrink supplies below what medical practitioners think reasonable, then it’s harder for addicts to get their fix.

Have personnel known that certain patients were addicted to painkillers and treated them with painkillers anyway? Or are painkiller addicts stealing the supplies? Whatever the rationalizations, it’s evident that substandard supplies will make it harder to help non-addicts in serious pain.

What about days when demand is especially high? Or when delivery of new supplies is disrupted?

Like any central planner confident in his own omniscience, Bloomberg is sure that limiting the supply of painkillers below the level judged adequate by hospitals could never make it harder to help persons in pain. He also says, if so, so what? “[So] you didn’t get enough painkillers and you did have to suffer a little bit. . . . There’s nothing that you can possibly do where somebody isn’t going to suffer. . . .”

His rationale, here, would “justify” making it harder to obtain anything whatever that enhances our lives if that thing might also be used destructively. A counsel to impair life in the name of saving it.

Bloomberg adds callousness to his hubris, topping it off with absurdity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets nannyism

Food Freedom

In most areas of this country, selling raw milk is against the law, which puts folks like Alvin Schlangen into the black market. Schlangen, an organic egg producer when he isn’t being arrested for crimes against homogenization, recently stood trial in Hennepin County District Court, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on three misdemeanor counts: “distributing unpasteurized milk, operating without a food handler’s license and handling adulterated food.”

Why the prosecution? Why the milk police?

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, consumption of raw milk products caused a couple hundred hospitalizations and two deaths in the eleven years following 1998.

That shows a risk, but it’s a risk a lot of people are willing to take. Those who drink raw milk claim “pasteurization destroys important nutrients, enzymes and beneficial bacterial.” By drinking raw milk they are trying to improve the health and well-being of their families.

For millennia, people have thirstily consumed cow’s milk . . . like, right from the bovine udder. Pasteurization, wherein certain bacteria is killed, didn’t come along till the 19th century. Perhaps the fact that we’re alive today is evidence that raw milk can’t be all that bad for you.

Terry Flower traveled all the way from New Hampshire to see Schlangen’s trial. “I am very passionate about the fact that we need to be able to choose our own food,” Ms. Flower said. “In New Hampshire we can do that.”

Fortunately for Schlangen, a jury of three men and three women found him not guilty on all three counts. He now hopes to prevail against similar charges in another Minnesota county, where he’ll go to trial later this month.

Agree or disagree, but why not let free citizens educate themselves and make their own decisions?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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links nannyism

Townhall: Nannies with badges and guns

The enemies of freedom usually pretend to be engaging in their outrageous and over-bearing coercion “for the people’s sake.” Don’t believe them. See Sunday’s column at Townhall — and then come back here for links and hints on further reading.

One thing not made clear in the column (and it can’t go on forever, eh?) is that the big soda ban only applies to sugary drinks (not juices or diet drinks), and only applies to restaurants, targeting fast food joints, really. So Bloomberg’s ban is, in essence, a stab at the lower classes. Fancy restaurants don’t serve the big drinks, as I point out in the column, and you can still buy big non-fountain drinks at the store, and binge . . . sans the convenience of a fast food establishment, where dumb, stupid people are too easily swayed.

Do you ever wonder if much of the welfare state is just an excuse for well-off folks to rag on poorer folks, for being so, well, icky? “You obviously can’t run your lives — if you could, you’d be like us!”

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free trade & free markets nannyism too much government

Kids Demand Right to Chores

“The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child labor laws to children working on family farms,” Daily Caller’s Patrick Richardson reported on Wednesday, “prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.”

Somewhere, farm kids high-fived each other.Rusty tractor

But not Rossie Blinson of Buis Creek, NC. Now in college, Blinson expressed concern that the new rule would shortchange young people. “I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around eight,” Blinson declared. “It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.”

Minnesotan John Weber, 19, argued that the proposed regulation would “prevent a lot of interest in agriculture. It’s harder to get a 16-year-old interested in farming than a 12-year-old.” Weber is majoring in Agriculture at college and credits working on his grandparents’ and uncle’s farms with instilling a “work ethic” in him. “It gave me a lot of direction and opportunity in my life.”

In high school, Weber took out a loan to purchase a few steers to raise and sell. “Under these regulations, I wouldn’t be allowed to do that.”

Further, the regs would forbid groups like 4-H and FFA from providing safety training, mandating, instead, a 90-hour federal government course.

Oh, but wait a second . . . it must be an election year or something! “Citing public outrage,” informs a notice posted on the Daily Caller story after business hours last night, “the Department of Labor has withdrawn the controversial rulemaking proposal described in this article.”

My goodness, that’s actually common sense! I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
nannyism too much government

The Propaganda Diet

When the federal government gave up its goofy “food pyramid,” I thought it might be a sign that the USDA had given up. We’re not so lucky. The USDA just announced its new diet propaganda campaign, trading in the pyramid for a pie chart.

But, as noticed on Reason magazine’s Hit and Run, there’s no pie.

Actually, the graphic’s in the shape of a plate, with four categories broken down in pie-chart fashion: Fruits, grains, vegetables, and proteins. In a separate element to the side, a “cup” labeled “dairy” serves as a fifth food group.

The “eat your vegetables” mantra we’ve been hearing all our lives is now reinforced by the command to make half our “plate” (the graphic is available at ChooseMyPlate.gov) fresh fruits and vegetables, take half our grains as whole grains, avoid salt, and switch our milk to skim or 1 percent. Oh, and avoid sugary drinks; drink water instead. And eat less overall.

Good advice, I suppose, but at this point if the government tells me that the unclouded sky is blue, I’d check to verify, first.

And regarding our diets, “check to verify” is probably a good idea. We can hardly trust even the so-called experts without applying our own critical intelligence. Our eating habits are ours. And much of what the government’s said in the past has been nonsense.

As for me, I’d like to cut down on government itself. This campaign seems the place to start.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
nannyism too much government

Bloated Government Makes Us Fat?

Since the 1980s, America has undergone an epidemic: We’re fatter than ever. And a lot of people look to the government to solve it.

But what if the government itself jump-started the epidemic?

According to a growing number of researchers, doctors and successful dieters, the usual cause of obesity has long been known, but government-supported science, backed by Congressional committees and official dogma, inverted that wisdom. What government sparked was the “low-fat revolution,” which basically said that eating fats made you fat. Government propaganda and funding set industry off to replace fats in foods with . . . sugars.

And thus began a movement that ran right up against our endocrine systems, making us hungrier the more carbohydrates we ate, fatter the faster those carbs were turned to blood sugars, and diabetic in increasing numbers.

This is the point science Gary Taubes has been making for a decade, famously starting with a New York Times essay, “What If It Has All Been a Big Fat Lie?” He defends the approach of Dr. Atkins, famous for his high meat-and-fat/low-carb diet.

Since that essay, similar diets and research have pointed in that general direction. An economist has even touted a “cave man” diet.

You don’t have to turn to government to lose weight — though, interestingly, the USDA’s current advice isn’t as crazy as it once was, and the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign appears reasonable.

Ignore, instead, the government’s past bad advice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment initiative, referendum, and recall nannyism too much government

Greenlighting Red Light Cameras?

Politicians seem to love what are called “red light cameras” — cameras that take pictures of cars that run red lights. And then ticket the registered owners.

Citizens? Not so much. I’ve reported how Tim Eyman — an activist who usually sets his sights on tax increases — orchestrated a citizen initiative petition campaign to get rid of the red light cameras in his town. There are many other such movements.

But those who habitually side with government don’t get it. They see the issue as the Washington Post editors see it, as “common sense. Police can’t be everywhere, and officers should not be diverted from high-crime areas to police every high-risk intersection.”

A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety backs up this “common sense” with, uh, science. Sort of. The study’s method has been attacked pretty thoroughly.

More importantly, as Radley Balko notes, there are better alternate policies — more effective in saving lives at intersections, and far less creepy.

Like what? you ask. Well, bear with me. It’s hard to understand: Longer yellow lights.

Yes. Longer yellow lights save lives. What a shock. And yet it turns out that when politicians have red light cameras installed, they tend to decrease the time of the yellows — the very opposite policy.

For our safety?

No.

For their revenue.

People who “go into politics” show their true colors when they prefer to pump up surveillance state powers instead of enacting simple, decent reforms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies

Fat Lot of Good That’ll Do

It sounded like a good idea — Michelle Obama would get involved in a campaign to reduce childhood obesity. Obesity is a problem, yes, and a good cause for the First Lady. But, today, advocacy must always be paired with legislation.

An AP news story provides all you really need to know:

A child nutrition bill on its way to President Barack Obama — and championed by the first lady — gives the government power to limit school bake sales and other fundraisers that health advocates say sometimes replace wholesome meals in the lunchroom.

So now we are to have federal government’s micro-mismanagement reach far beyond the curriculum. The basic idea being . . . give up on parents. Give up on local control. Go, Washington!

Our national nannies took special care with the bill’s language, adding the category of school fundraisers as a special target of the regulations. Apparently, they can’t stand the fact that, on special occasions, mothers and fathers bake up sugary treats to sell, to support special school activities that affect their kids.

I guess they want us to sell broccoli.

Yup. That’ll send the school band to Disneyland.

The whole bill is a bad idea, and not just because Washington can’t tell special occasions from one’s day-in/day-out diet. The very singling out of special fundraisers for federal attention shows just how far into our lives Washington’s busybodies believe they can insert themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism too much government

A Tour of Over-Regulation

Want a measure of the regulatory state run amok?

Recently in the Washington Post, Robert McNamara of the Institute for Justice informed us that “In the 1950s, only about one out of every 20 Americans needed a license to pursue the occupation of their choice. Today, that number is one out of every three.”

Wow. A lot more hoops to jump through to get a job or start a business.

Want to add insult to injury? The actual regulation McNamara was writing about makes it illegal — punishable by three months in the local jail in our nation’s capital — to “describe . . . any place or point of interest in the District to any person” as part of a tour without first getting a license.

And the license process is no picnic, either. Sure, this past summer the city did repeal the rule requiring a doctor’s certification that the aspiring guide is not a drunkard. But there remain plenty of stupid regulations, including new ones that require guides to be proficient in English. And yes, that applies even to guides who talk to those benighted folk who speak foreign languages.

Applicants must also pass a test on their knowledge of “various facets of Washington life, including architecture, history and regulations.”

Tour guides must be expert in “regulations.”

Even the Washington Post headlined its editorial, “Tour de farce,” suggesting that a system of “voluntary certification” would work better than big government rules.

Yes. That’s right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
nannyism

The Skinny on Fat

Many Americans are overweight or even obese. I’m one of them.

You probably are, too. After all, the media keeps ominously hyping that nearly two-thirds of us fit these categories. Of course, being “overweight” and being “obese” are not exactly identical.

A plurality of 37 percent of us are overweight. Only 27 percent are obese. Said another way, 73 out of a hundred Americans are not obese.

Problem solved?

Not exactly. Obesity is still a very real health and well-being problem for a great many folks.

Plus, obesity provides politicians with a new reason to take and spend more tax money. The city council in Washington, DC, wants to spend $23 million additional dollars over the next four years to fight obesity. The program will be financed through a proposed one-cent per ounce soft drink tax. Funny, though, the soda tax will bring in $16 million a year, more than the $10 million needed for fighting the fat.

In the spirit of slimming down, you might think the city could have found something to cut to afford the new program. But politicians aren’t prepared to take their own advice.

I need to lose some weight. I figure I’ll exercise more, and stop allowing myself so many calories. The cost to me? Nothing. Heck, I’ll save money.

The cost to you? Not one thin dime.

Care to join me? Let’s call it the Starve-a-Politician Diet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.