Posted on 04/26/2005 9:05:05 AM PDT by John Jorsett
California’s ruling class has determined that the state’s residents are too fat and it wants to use the legislative process to slim them down. This has happened before but this time we are really in trouble, according to Dr. Richard Jackson, the state’s public health officer.
“I’ve seen an absolute tipping point in public awareness of the epidemic,” he told reporters.
According to some reports, residents of California gained 180,000 tons during the past decade, which works out to 11 pounds each. How this bloat was quantified remains unclear, like the charge that flab and inactivity will cost California $28 billion this year. True or not, lawmakers are taking aim.
Some want to hike taxes on cigarettes by $1 a pack and use the money for programs related to nutrition and exercise. Others want the food that is sold in schools to meet nutrition standards. State education superintendent Jack O’Connell believes this will increase student achievement. Lawmakers also want to ban the sales of sodas in high schools — except for extra-curricular activities. And they don’t like junk-food advertising.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former bodybuilder, reportedly wants to lead the charge against lard. He’s asked that $6 million be set aside in next year’s budget to fight obesity (Jay Leno is calling it the governor’s “No Child Left with a Big Behind Act”). But even some Democrats are dubious that any of the various measures will help people, particularly students, make wise choices about food.
Eating, unlike smoking, is not an optional activity, and people generally eat what they want. Californians have at their disposal vast knowledge about nutrition. How they use that knowledge is up to them. They can also choose whether to exercise or sit around playing video games.
Personal responsibility is the cornerstone of a free and civil society. Human beings are independent moral agents with the ability to think and to choose. But that concept is missing from the medical model of human behavior, evident in Dr. Jackson’s comment, which portrays Californians as helpless victims of an “epidemic” sweeping the state like influenza. Thinking of, and then treating people this way dehumanizes them, and pretending that government can solve obesity misleads people by seeming to remove the onus from individuals while encouraging them to blame scapegoats.
Fleeing responsibility, scapegoating, and using life’s difficulties as an excuse for rifling other peoples’ wallets are always wrapped up in anything emanating from the left: people suing deep-pockets fast-food chains for making them fat, for instance. Or, in 1999, California’s department of health issuing a report criticizing Californians’ eating habits: a state bloated with waste and bureaucratic redundancy lecturing Californians about over- indulgence.
And, of course, the state remains grossly overweight, with many legislators bent on further binging: calls to expand the beltline with universal pre-school, a dubious program that would require massive spending and hiring, or government- (i.e., tax-payer-) financed health care on a grand scale. These are the political equivalent of endlessly gorging at an all-you-can-eat restaurant — at other peoples’ involuntary expense.
When state government recognizes the importance of personal responsibility in any area, it may then gain some measure of moral authority to lead people with some hope toward trimming the fat.
Rob Reiner accounts for at least 25% of the population's weight increase. His head keeps getting fatter and fatter.
America, where even the poor are fat.
http://www.neoperspectives.com/foodpyramid.htm
A rebutal of all this nonsense about fitness and the food pyramid.
America, a land of plenty where the poor are even fatter then the rich.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Yesterday on a local radio station here, they played a 911 call to the cops. The woman was calling because a burger king wouldn't make her hamburger a certain way? ONLY IN KALIFORNIA FOLKS!
Some want to hike taxes on cigarettes by $1 a pack and use the money for programs related to nutrition and exercise.
How about a $2.00 tax on sodas instead. You would collect 10 times the money. Same crap, tax someone else to solve their problem. If you want them slimmer cut their food supply or tell them to keep their mouth shut.
Yesterday on a local radio station here, they played a 911 call to the cops. The woman was calling because a burger king wouldn't make her hamburger a certain way? ONLY IN KALIFORNIA FOLKS!
There is no guess as to how ignorant and selfish society will become.
I thought it was a hit piece on Cruz.
... a state bloated with waste ...
And, of course, the state remains grossly overweight...
...the political equivalent of endlessly gorging at an all-you-can-eat restaurant...
Fleeing responsibility, scapegoating, and using life's difficulties as an excuse for rifling other peoples' wallets are what it takes to get you elected in California.
The only thing that will lose any weight are people's wallets.
It should be illegal to legislate under the influence of alcohol and drugs...drug test politicians now!
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