New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been justifiably ridiculed for his banning of large sugary drinks — refusing to allow adults to make such choices for themselves. Despite the overwhelming criticism of the soda ban, his health board appears emboldened rather than chagrined by the controversy. It is now moving to ban certain sizes of popcorn and milk.
At the meeting discussion of the soda ban, some of the members of board said they should be considering other limits on high-calorie foods. Bruce Vladeck wants to see limits on the sizes for movie theater popcorn — noting that “The popcorn isn’t a whole lot better than the soda,”
Board member Dr. Joel Forman has a pet peeve with milk – calling for limits on “milkshakes and milk-coffee beverages that have monstrous amounts of calories.”
The members seem to be struggling to confirm the worst expectations of a food police — once the government gains of taste of food limits, they develop an insatiable desire for more. It becomes a slippery slope . . . if soda, why not popcorn . . . if popcorn, why not milk. The board seems to want to fulfill every stereotype of a nanny state.
By the way, many of us with multiple kids buy large popcorn and split it to save money. Will the Board require certification of a multiple person purchase or just force families to pay the higher price of multiple small popcorn sizes?
We have seen the same phenomenon in California and other states. Once the taste of the nectar of nanny laws takes hold, officials demand more and more control over the diets and choices of citizens. New Yorkers are not known for withholding their opinions in traffic or any other forum. I would hope that they would be heard loud and clear about this board and the need for some new members.
Source: Fox
http://goo.gl/Tqsjh
So long as they leave the coney and it certainly cream alone….. I don’t care…..
F’ing busybodies! Good grief
I think the following should be of more concern to residents of New York City:
New York to Repeat Chicago’s Parking Meter Catastrophe
By Matt Taibbi
June 13, 2012
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/new-york-to-repeat-chicago-s-parking-meter-catastrophe-20120613
Excerpt:
Readers of my last book, Griftopia, might recall a chapter about the city of Chicago leasing 75 years of its parking meter revenue to a coterie of private investors, some of them from the Middle East. The end result was and is a political obscenity: Native Chicagoans are now completely at the mercy of private interests when it comes to parking rates, collections, even holidays. When elected officials in Illinois can’t shut off the parking meters on Abe Lincoln’s birthday because a bunch of sheiks in Dubai don’t want the revenue stream turned off even for a day, you know something has gone seriously sideways in the national body politic.
Well, Chicago isn’t alone anymore. Hizzoner Michael Bloomberg in New York has decided to do his own version of the Chicago infrastructure bake sale; the city announced that it is putting up nearly 90,000 parking meters for lease. They’re expecting to get over $11 billion in upfront money from the deal, which is great news if you’re Mike Bloomberg, who gets to use that money to patch current budget holes instead of making tough cuts or raising taxes. The news is less awesome for the next half-dozen New York City mayors, or for the citizens of New York, who now will get to spend most of the 21st century grappling with its increasingly monstrous deficits with a major tributary from the city’s revenue stream shut off.
A New York parking meter deal, like the Chicago deal, would be a perfect example of the deeply cynical short-term thinking of many American politicians these days. These deals involve a sitting executive selling off a valuable piece of city property at a steep discount to private financial interests (often, to friends or campaign contributors), in order to solve a current cash flow problem that, surprise, surprise, will still be there the year after you finish spending the proceeds of your sale.
In Chicago’s case, Mayor Richard Daley sold 75 years of meter revenue – worth an estimated $5 billion – for $1.2 billion. So he gets 20 cents on the dollar for the city’s parking meters in 2008, and then in 2009 the city still has a budget problem that’s now worse, because there’s no parking meter revenue anymore, ever. Meanwhile, a bunch of private investors rounded up by Morgan Stanley – these bankers go on road shows here at home and abroad to places like Geneva and the UAE to hawk discount American infrastructure to foreign billionaires and sovereign wealth funds – get to enjoy the fruits of raised rates. In some Chicago neighborhoods, the meter rates went from .25 cents an hour to $1 an hour in the first year of the deal, and then to $1.20 after that.
The city of New York is insisting that it won’t make the same mistake Chicago made, at least when it comes to rates. Bloomberg helpfully quoted Julie Wood, a spokesperson for the news agency’s namesake, i.e. the mayor:
“We are taking a careful and deliberate approach to avoid mistakes others have made,” Wood said. New York would retain “full control” of rates and violations enforcement, she said.
We have to hope she’s telling the truth, because meter rates in some New York neighborhoods are already at $5 an hour. A Chicago-style price hike for fat-cat investors might leave us paying thirty bucks an hour to oil barons in Qatar and Saudi Arabia in order to park for dinner in the West Village. Unlikely, sure, but how likely was the city of New York selling its parking meters ten years ago?
I think these weird attempts are happening because the P’sTB are not the P’sTB anymore. Courts and Constitutions and Law have failed against the special interests of the Corporate Gollums. We can’t be ‘protected’ by the courts so they will settle for a) not offending the corpulant , eh, corporate overlords b) ‘controlling’ us….. in any case, a dysfunctional, failed state vs a greedy, violent bully. I’m gonna NEED my ice cream…..
http://www.occupypolice.org/2012/05/31/a-look-at-the-players-involved-in-the-modern-worlds-first-attempt-at-mass-police-privatization-occupy-polices-40-page-report/#comments
And my brother wants to know why I don’t want to move to LA, and my sister wants to know why I don’t want to move to NY. Yech.
Back to topic: Banning specific sizes of popular articles is silly. As Prof Turley pointed out, the largest sizes are made to share.
Mesposer: “Like, “We the people …’?
John Locke: “We have already proved that the care of souls does not belong to the magistrate. Not a magisterial care, I mean (if I may so call it), which consists in prescribing by laws and compelling by punishments. But a charitable care, which consists in teaching, admonishing, and persuading, cannot be denied unto any man. The care, therefore, of every man’s soul belongs unto himself and is to be left unto himself. But what if he neglect the care of his soul? I answer: What if he neglect the care of his health or of his estate, which things are nearlier related to the government of the magistrate than the other? Will the magistrate provide by an express law that such a one shall not become poor or sick? Laws provide, as much as is possible, that the goods and health of subjects be not injured by the fraud and violence of others; they do not guard them from the negligence or ill-husbandry of the possessors themselves. No man can be forced to be rich or healthful whether he will or no. Nay, God Himself will not save men against their wills.”
Once again Mark, man exists in state of nature with ALL RIGHTS. Man leaves the state of nature and enters into a social compact. Man gives up certain rights to society, such as the power to tax and other sovereign powers, so that society will protect the other rights he retains. BUT, in order to prevent the possibility of the state deciding it will do whatever the hell it wants, e.g. compel the people by force of penal law to live healthy lives, the social contractarians distinguished ALIENABLE RIGHTS from INALIENABLE RIGHTS. They defined the exercise of power over alienable rights as USURPATION and the exercise of power over inalienable rights as TYRANNY.
Locke: “AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to”
See “The Declaration of Independence”
Duties of virtue, i.e. duties towards self, exist as sticks in the bundle of an individuals inalienable right of self ownership. Thus when the State attempts to exercise power over an individual’s duty of virtue and promulgate it as a duty of right, or duty owed to the state, that is AN EXERCISE OF POWER OVER AN AN INALIENABLE RIGHT AND IS THEREFORE TYRANNY PER SE.
Tell us again about your reverence for Thomas Jefferson.
Ok, they’ve gone too far. They will not get my Hardee’s peach milkshake in extra-extra-large banned!
Here I
standslouch. I can do no other.mark:
“Tyranny starts with one word – we.”
********************
Like, “We the people …’?
“http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/city-health-experts-weighing-extend-potential-big-soda-ban-fattening-snacks-article-1.1094600”
I’ve expressed my dislike of the Bloomberg mayoralty many times here. I must say though that this story, at least from the link I’ve posted above, is more speculative than reflective of what will actually happen. That various members of the board made independent comments, possibly quoted out of context by an eager reporter. That this type of story fits in with the meme about the “nanny state” spread by conservatives and libertarians is suspicious considering the source is the NY Daily News, a tabloid only moderately less right wing than Murdoch’s NY Post, raises my suspicions. The fact that the articles link to FOX also causes me to wonder if it’s real or just more propaganda?
The dichotomy being seen under these near-surface layers of the onion indicates a nation, the U.S.eh?, that is anything but united.
It is a no-brainer to see that war is becoming predominant in one sector of national policy, but since that requires physically fit warriors on the conveyor belt, it would seem that the 1% have no where to run on this one.
Perhaps that explains the advent of the drones?
The laws proposed against popcorn & milk are not just preposterous, they are the worst things law can be: USELESS CONTROL. I pointed out in a comment about the soda pop law that a parent with 3 kids could buy one drink for them to share on an outing; popcorn at the theatre is no different but all these minute ramifications aside, the point is this: WE NEED GOVERNMENT, not control freaks, whether they dress up their bullshit in guise of “care/improvement” or not. Naturally, once you allow the regulation addiction to go unchecked, it will zoom out of all proportion to the needs of the governed and enter the virtual reality of “big brother” and this happens to the fat, the thin and the ugly!
Tyranny starts with one word – we. We need to x, we need to y. etc.
What you need to do is leave people alone. And tell your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers etc the same.
Shano, don’t worry, it shouldn’t be for long! have you seen the studies (can’t remember if it was mice or rats) where 3rd generation descendants were sterile? (I don’t believe it was a Monsanto study–they just say that studies on the GMOs aren’t necessary!)
Funny that milk popcorn and sugar drinks are getting so much attention…..but this drecht is A.O.K…..
Big Ag makes us sick so Big Pharma can sell us drugs.
I do not like this system at all.
arsphd: too bad the laws do not get to the heart of the matter of our obesity problem. Our whole food system has to be changed.
We need to stop subsidizing HFCS and move that money over to fruit and vegetable production. We should break up the giant monocultures and grow a greater variety of crops in rotation. We should stop the production of CAFO meats altogether, change completely the way meat is produced in this country.
If we adopted the EU standards for food, body care and chemicals we would be much better off. We must stop subsidizing and pushing Monsanto all over the world. It is ridiculous that the government has anything to do with this giant Multinational besides regulating their agribusiness.
We should end this fascination with GMOs, at least by labeling them so people can choose to avoid them. They are going to create a huge public health issue in the future, no doubt in my mind about that. More allergies, more sickness, more death.
Slippery slope.. slippery slope.. 😛
I must be in the extreme minority here. But I believe the obesity problem has become a public health issue, and he may be ahead of his time in treating it as such, but I applaud him for trying.