The Nanny State Is On Its Way
As reported on Politico.com:
The president is filling top posts at Health and Human Services with officials who, in their previous jobs, outlawed trans fats, banned public smoking or required restaurants to provide a calorie count with that slice of banana cream pie.
Why would anybody be surprised? These are folks whose life ambition is to tell everyone else what to do.
There’s probably no aspect of your life, Joe, that these guys think they could not improve.
A recent Wall Street Journal article (Uncle Sam Enters the Great Nanny State Debate; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124570917254538707.html claims Obama’s people see their job as one to “nudge” people into making the right decision rather than mandating behavior. “Still smoking? The Food and Drug Administration will clamp down on marketing practices designed to encourage the habit…” says Eric Patashnik, associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia. I wonder if this means not only will restaurant menus have to post calorie counts for banana cream pie, but they may be prohibited from advertising its availability on the menu.
The U.S. government is past master at “nudge”: That is why the government forces our employers to be its unpaid tax collector, subtracting its dues from our paychecks every month. If we each had to write a check for our income tax every year (payable on election day), do you really think the government would have become so big?
(This is also why the president wants to give us the “choice” of letting the government do our tax returns for us. A colleague of mine says that the Dutch government introduced this for seniors, and it resulted in massive over-payment of taxes. I regret I cannot cite the research.)
But back to the nanny state. The new FDA has seriously suggested that Cheerios be regulated as a drug (http://tinyurl.com/q6qw5h); and it will soon have who knows how many dozens (hundreds?) of new employees reviewing cigarette packages, just to make sure we all know that they are dangerous.
And they seriously expect us to believe that they will not be telling doctors how to practice medicine!
Feels eerily similar to junior high, where everyone is told where to sit, what to eat for lunch, and when to use the bathroom.
Juan, try grade school.