Most people get it. It’s not a good idea to text and drive. You can’t look at your phone and drive at the same time. I’m all for awareness. Although if people are too stupid to know they shouldn’t drive and text I’m not sure awareness will work either. Nanny government has a better idea: ban cellphones completely. Yep, completely ridiculous.
Several states already prohibit the use of cell phones in cars because governments have nothing better to do than pass laws. If talking on the phone while driving is distracting so is listening to the radio, reading billboards and talking with a person in the passenger seat. Accidents happen all the time. If we’re going to continue to ban things let’s start with useless agencies in the federal government.
Finally, if the government really wants to prohibit dangerous people from the highways they should come study Florida where half-blind people drive around at 30 miles an hour below the speed limit. Please ban them, if you insist on banning things that are hazardous.
If you give lawmakers enough time they’ll come up with a law for anything. Brooklyn Senator Karl Kruge has decided that people walking and talking on cellphones are a problem. It’s time to ban the practice.
Brooklyn Sen. Karl Kruger is looking to ban things like cell phones and iPods for pedestrians crossing the street.
“We have people who are literally dying in the street,” Kruger said.
Dying, Kruger said, not because they are distracted drivers but because they are distracted walkers. Charles Tabasso, 14, admitted he’s one of them because he listens to his iPod constantly.
Really, stuff like this is beyond parody. People are “literally dying in the street?” When I forwarded this article to Club Soda he responded with an even better idea. How about just banning people? Well, 39 percent of pregnancies in New York City already end in abortion so it appears that some of the population is behind the idea. I doubt Senator Kruger is going to pass a law about the children literally being murdered.
Send in the SWAT team.
If you didn’t know any better you might believe there’s an epidemic of Fat Kid Syndrome, or put in politically correct terms: childhood obesity! Many on the left are clamoring for government intervention. As I’ve posted before, the city of San Francisco had gone as far as banning Happy Meals in order to squash the gluttony. The War on Fat is upon us! Who better than the bloated, corrupt, debt burdened state to take care of the problem!
Progressives are unable to “cut the fat” when it comes to government spending, but damn the torpedoes on the fat kids eating cheeseburgers. Before anyone complains that I’m unconcerned about fat kids, it should be noted that nowhere has government intervention reduced obesity. Well, I take that back. I’m pretty sure prisons reduce obesity. Prisons outside the United States I mean. Even the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have gained weight. Oh, and let’s not forget one of the greatest wars on fat ever: the collectivization of farms in the Soviet Union shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. It was awesome. Millions starved to death! Yeah for big government! But I digress… Julie Gunlock wrote on The Corner today about the obesity issue.
This year, Ohio State University released a major study on childhood obesity. The study revealed that only three activities help reduce childhood obesity: eating dinner at home with your family, watching less television, and getting enough sleep at night. These are all basic parental responsibilities.
Gunlock also points out that according to the Centers for Disease Control, obesity rates for children haven’t budged in over ten years. What?!?! How can this be possible in a world full of Happy Meals? There is a great deal of of hyperbole about the long term health effects of obesity.
More recent research on obesity has found only a very slight (and statistically insignificant) increase in mortality among mildly obese people, and that in fact it is underweight individuals who have a higher rate of death than those in the “healthy” weight category. [emphasis added]
I guess being too skinny is a bigger problem. Now that’s a problem the federal government can solve immediately. The State cannot force people to be good parents. My parents made me go to sleep at a regular time every night, the heartless fascists. I wasn’t allowed to eat fast food very often and we didn’t drink gallons of soft drinks, Kool-aid or whiskey. In other words, they cared.
The First Lady will claim a lot of great headlines with her obesity initiative, but little will be done to combat the real problem. The real problem is parental responsibilty.
San Antonio has declared war on fat, according to a recent article in the San Antonio Express-News. Aided by $15.6 million in federal stimulus dollars to combat obesity in this restaurant-heavy city that has also been tagged as one of the fattest cities in America, San Antonio is spending our tax dollars with wisdom.
Remember Doritos! Remember Dr. Pepper! Remember the Alamo!
First up is the elimination of sugary and fatty confections and beverages in the city’s 250 beverage vending machines and 75 snack dispensers. Instead, San Antonio residents will get to choose from a delicious smorgasbord of waters and diet drinks. Yummy! But that’s not all! Bags of chips will have to be less than 1.5 ounces.
Fortunately for city employees, the article notes, they won’t be banned from consuming fatty foods and drinks at work. But one wonders how far off that ban is, and when government will begin regulating a citizen’s intake of fatty foods and drinks. It’s a Utopian future of organic whole grain rice cakes harvested locally by illegal immigrants, washed down with government-approved water.
“I asked the staff to remove the high-calorie soda drinks from our vending machines,” [City Manager Sheryl] Sculley said. “I’m a fitness person, and I care about our employees, and I want them to be healthy. And I think this is a very small gesture.”
I have a small gesture in mind as well. It involves the strategic deployment of the middle digit of my hand in the general direction of City Manager Sheryl Sculley and the other nanny ninny busybodies who want to confiscate my sugar, fat and calories. You can have my Doritos and Dr. Pepper when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Going forward, the list of unintended consequences of ObamaCare will be endless. One part of the bill includes a federal requirement for restaurants to publish calorie counts for each menu items. For smaller restaurant chains with large menus this is going to be a very detrimental law and will discourage expansion. For consumers it’s going to mean less choice because restaurants will be forced to reduce the size of their menus.
The pressure of this law will eventually force restaurants like Davanni’s to reduce consumer choice as a way of managing the overwhelming burden of maintaining their disclosures. Smaller chains that succeed in satisfying their customers and managing their business used to be rewarded with growth, but this law will put an artificial cap on expansion at 19 locations. That means that fewer people will find jobs, and even in existing stores, money that may have funded more jobs will instead go to reprinting the same menu boards over and over again. And all of this comes because political elites think that people are too stupid to know that a pizza is fattening or how to access information that already exists in much more efficient formats than menu boards.
Is this law really worth the cost? Are Americans really going to benefit from having calorie counts on their menu at Chili’s? As what point does the nanny state end? Have calorie counts discouraged people from buying unhealthy food at grocery stores? If people want healthier choices at restaurants the market will take care of it. However, progressives do not believe Americans can think for themselves. Daddy Federal Government has to take care of us, or we’ll hurt ourselves.
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