The Bloomberg administration in New York is at it again.  Last time, it was oversized fountain drinks.  This time it’s buckets of movie popcorn, milkshakes, and coffee/milk concoctions that are drawing their attention.  You see, we cattle can’t be trusted to decide how many calories we take in or what sources we utilize for those calories.  Mr. Bloomberg and his cronies believe that it’s the responsibility of the city to dictate what its residents eat and in what quantities.

Now, I’m not saying that huge buckets of buttery popcorn, super-sized milkshakes, and banana nut choco-swirl iced cappuccino are good for you.  They’re not.  A steady diet of sugar, fat, and whatever may be delicious, but it will eventually kill you.  But that’s not the point.  I left my mother’s home when I was 18, and I don’t care to have a new parental figure in the form of Michael Bloomberg ensconced in my life.  If I want to live on a diet of bark and nuts, I will.  If I want to live on a diet of bacon, Coca-Cola, and milkshakes, it’s no-one’s business but my own.  Don’t tell me that it’s the state’s business because I will eventually be on Medicare for my health care.  If I have to choose between giving up a ‘free’ government healthcare plan and living my life as I see fit, I’ll jettison Medicare in a heartbeat.  I’m not even convinced it will be an option by the time I will be old enough to take advantage of it, so why let them use it as a cattle prod to get me back into line?

This isn’t really about public health.  If Bloomberg was worried about public health, he’d just outlaw the products in question, then deal with the inevitable Starbucks smuggling rings that would spring up across the city.  This is about control.  In order to enhance his delusion of being a great leader, he wants to control what his subjects eat and drink so that when he finally gives up the reins of power, he can point to whatever insignificant drop in heart disease or diabetes his health department gins up for him and say “See, it was all worth it!  Wasn’t I a great mayor?”.

In another case of government overreach, the city of Alhambra, California, has decided that a church cannot turn itself into a temporary homeless shelter a few times a year.  The Baptist congregation wanted to use its church to, you know, do something Christian for those in its community who have fallen on hard times.  The city says that doing so would violate health and fire codes, which to me means “It’s better they sleep on the sidewalk where they are exposed to the elements and whatever predator happens to stumble upon them than to sleep in a building that isn’t purpose-built to be a homeless shelter.”  This also smacks of “Not In My Back Yard” syndrome to me.  I would be interested to see just how many beds are available for families in the homeless shelters that already exist in Alhambra, and if the city is going to authorize any more to be built to handle the load it is trying to take off of the churches willing shoulders, or if they just expect the unfortunate to move on to the next community in search of a hand up.

What do the two stories have in common?  To me, they both illustrate what happens when tinpot dictators get themselves just enough power to be a pain in the tuckus.  In New York, Mayor Bloomberg is ignoring the very real problems of crime, poverty, and education in an effort to keep his citizens from eating too much popcorn at the theater.  In California, the city of Alhambra is trying to stop an independent charity effort that it can’t control from happening.  In both cases, the ham-fisted efforts of government are making things that are none of its business harder to do, and they’re wasting precious time and money to do it.

These are just two examples of busybodies in the government keeping ordinary people from living their lives as they see fit.  This is what we get from going over a century without clipping the wings of government in a meaningful manner.  Both cities ought to be thumped on the head in the courts a couple of times, and both administrations ought to be ridden out of town on a rail at the next election.