The food-truck revival has stirred much enthusiasm, but now paternalists have begun to demand that goodie-laden vehicles — like drug dealers — be made to stay at a considerable distance from schools. [Bay Citizen]
Posts Tagged ‘nanny state’
Lawyers can’t safety-proof national parks
Timothy Egan, New York Times, on lawsuits over rogue mountain goats and other hazards of wild places:
My experience, purely anecdotal, is that the more rangers try to bring the nanny state to public lands, the more careless, and dependent, people become. There will always be steep cliffs, deep water, and ornery and unpredictable animals in that messy part of the national habitat not crossed by climate-controlled malls and processed-food emporiums. If people expect a grizzly bear to be benign, or think a glacier is just another variant of a theme park slide, it’s not the fault of the government when something goes fatally wrong.
More: Steve Chapman (most dangerous animal in the parks is the one “wearing your pants”); David Boaz.
Food law roundup
- Feds fund Boston campaign bashing sweetened drinks [Globe; see also on NYC] More on ObamaCare “Public Health Fund” subsidies to local paternalist initiatives on diet [WLF]
- Thanks to federal funding priorities, New York education department had 40 experts on school lunches, only one on science education [Frederick Hess via Stoll]
- Grocers hope to escape federal menu labeling mandate [FDA Law Blog] How regulations exasperate midsize restaurant operators [Philip Klein, Wash. Examiner]
- “The Eight Dumbest Restaurant Laws” [Zagat]
- Proposed federal standards on kid food ads extreme enough that many USDA “healthy” recipes would flunk [Diane Katz, Heritage] Do FTC’s guidelines violate the First Amendment? [WSJ]
- Compared with what? “Egg farm regulations still skimpy” [Stoll] Deer blamed for E. coli in pick-your-own strawberries [USA Today]
- U.K.: Your kids are too fat so we’re taking them away [Daily Mail; earlier here, here, etc.]
Rewarding officiousness
“Not every human problem deserves a law”
A veto message from Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, after the California legislature passed a bill imposing a fine on children or their parents or guardians for skiing or snowboarding without a helmet: “While I appreciate the value of wearing a ski helmet,” wrote the governor, “I am concerned about the continuing and seemingly inexorable transfer of authority from parents to the state.” [John Myers, KQED; text of veto message]
Mayor Bloomberg and for-your-own-goodism
I’m quoted in this article by the Daily Caller’s Caroline May on New York’s paternalist chief executive. Another memorable Bloomberg health-nanny moment: his health department’s edict ordering labs to report high blood sugar readings to the city whether patients want them to or not, the better to pave the way for “interventions.”
July 29 roundup
- Don’t: “Lawyer Disbarred for Verbal Aggression to Pay $9.8M Fine for Hiding Cash Overseas” [Weiss, ABA Journal]
- Loser-pays might help: “Dropped malpractice lawsuits cost legal system time and money” [Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe]
- “Kim Kardashian and the Problem With ‘Celebrity Likeness’ Lawsuits” [Atlantic Wire]
- Kim Strassel on the Franken-spun Jamie Leigh Jones case [WSJ]
- Peggy Little interviews Prof. Lester Brickman (Lawyer Barons) on new Federalist Society podcast;
- Worse than Wisconsin? “Weaponizing” recusal at the Michigan Supreme Court [Jeff Hadden, Detroit News]
- New York legislature requires warning labels for sippy cups [NYDN]
Happy Meals and Campbell’s Soup
This week has brought one nudge forward and one push back for the paternalistic “food policy” crowd, or so I argue in a new opinion piece for the New York Daily News (& welcome Instapundit/Glenn Reynolds readers, Center for Consumer Freedom “Quote of the Week“).
“Harvard Researchers Want Fat Kids Taken From Their Homes”
Infuriating: “a pair of Harvard scholars writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association advocate stripping away the custody rights of parents of super obese children. … ‘Despite the discomfort posed by state intervention, it may sometimes be necessary to protect a child,’ said Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard’s School of Public Health. The study’s co-author, David Ludwig, says taking away peoples’ children ‘ideally will support not just the child but the whole family, with the goal of reuniting child and family as soon as possible.'” [Atlantic Wire]
More: Ira Stoll notes the following sentence from the JAMA piece: “Even relatively mild parenting deficiencies, such as having excessive junk food in the home or failing to model a physically active lifestyle, may contribute to a child’s weight problem.” From M.M., via social media: “I’ve never seen better evidence for that old William F. Buckley, Jr. quote: ‘I’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 members of the Harvard faculty.'” And Ken at Popehat examines the possibility that the researchers were just, you know, trying to “start a conversation” about the need for more child-snatching.
The “pie chart that doesn’t want you to eat pie.”
I’ve got a new opinion piece up at the Daily Caller on the USDA’s new nutritional chart. And tune in to C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” on Monday morning at 8:30 a.m. Eastern when I’m scheduled to be a guest on this subject.
More: Link to C-SPAN video here, and more at Cato at Liberty.