HERE COME THE FAT POLICE

Back in the early 1970s, the hippie culture chanted "down with the establishment." Today, they are the adults -- teachers, reporters, lawyers, judges, legislators, and they make up the membership of dozens of foundations and non-government organizations -- affecting the establishment. And still, each group, in its own way, seems to be working to dismantle our American establishment.

As far as the average American citizen is concerned, our judicial system has become lethargic, cumbersome and ineffective at protecting our rights. Often, the judicial system appears little more then the playground for corrupt lawyers and their partners, the judges.

One case in point was the fiasco of the tobacco lawsuits. The attorneys involved became instant multimillionaires. Judges completely trashed the rights of American corporations and consumers. Unscrupulous tax and spend legislators allowed the foolishness to go forward because it gave them permission to levy yet another heavy tax. Everyone won. Except the average American consumer, that is. Consumers got the bill in the form of yet another hidden tax.

Of course, we are supposed to forget those billions of dollars changing hands at our expense. The published excuse was that the nanny state was protecting the public health. Never mind that everyone involved, except the consumer, had a vested interest.

As we warned back then, that foolishness was just a test case by those unscrupulous lawyers. The corrupters of the courts wanted to see if unprincipled judges would allow the frivolous cases, and they did. Well, the sharks still smell blood -- easy money. So, here come the fat police. Their first scam worked. Now they plan to go after many successful major American corporations under the guise of public health. Even the liberal concerns, like Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, are targets.

They're getting plenty of help, too. In between crying about global hunger, the World Health Organization declares obesity a global epidemic. Reports state that, in the United States, 61 percent of adults aged 20 to 74 are considered overweight or obese. About a quarter of American youth are overweight or obese.

Obesity is determined by body mass index (BMI). That calculation takes into account a person's height, weight and age. According to the U.S. Surgeon General's guidelines for adults 20 years or older, a six-foot tall adult 20 years or older with a weight of 140 to 180 lbs. would be considered healthy, 190 to 210 pounds overweight and 200 pounds or more obese.

The lawsuits have already started. A lawsuit was filed in the New York Supreme Court on behalf of a New York City man who says he has been eating fast food since the 1950s. He has sued the country's four leading fast-food chains, blaming their food's fatty content for his health problems.

The 5-foot-10-inch, 272-pound maintenance worker said he had heart attacks in 1996 and 1999 and has diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. The suit asserts that it was the fast food chains that made him and others overweight. "They said '100 percent beef.' I thought that meant it was good for you," the plaintiff told reporters. "I thought the food was OK. Those people in the advertisements don't really tell you what's in the food. It's all fat, fat and more fat. Now I'm obese."

"There is direct deception when someone omits telling people food digested is detrimental to their health," his attorney said.

Three teenagers in New York City, aged between 13 and 19, have also filed a class-action lawsuit against McDonald's Corp., saying their fast food caused them to gain as much as 200 pounds and develop serious health problems, including heart disease and diabetes. The lawsuit seeks undetermined compensatory damages.

It appears that lawyers went hunting for these clients. The teenagers' parents are reported to be either unemployed or on disability. One question that cries to be asked is, if these parents do not have much money, how could these kids afford to eat so much at the fast food joints? Also, who fed the parents?

In another test suit, McDonald's and Burger King are being sued by a group that claims the fast food corporations have exposed customers to a cancer-causing substance in their french fries since 1990. This West Coast food police group asserts that the burger corporations' fries contain acrylamide, which they say is listed by California as a known carcinogen. The lawsuit argues that McDonald's and Burger King have sold millions of orders of fries, each containing "100 times more acrylamide than the maximum level permitted by the World Health Organization for drinking water."

Negligence can be described as the failure to exercise the degree of care considered reasonable under the circumstances, resulting in an unintended injury to another party. Is it negligent of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream to not

tell customers that, although their product is a food, it is not to be used as their complete diet? If not, then why should that be a requirement of any of the fast food chains?

With self determination comes responsibility for what you put in your mouth. If we allow these lawsuits to proceed, that is a direct signal that we Americans are willing to let government make most of our personal decisions for us. And, as with cigarettes, we can also expect huge taxes to be levied on anything bureaucrats wish to label potentially harmful.

If we are going to allow lawsuits "for the children," we should sue government schools. Not only do schools serve junk food to the children, most schools cut out recesses and even gym classes. Instead of letting kids burn off excess energy the natural way, the trend is to drug them into behaving. Clearly, that is detrimental to health.

Bringing this a little closer to home: As one who imbibed in a poor meat and potatoes and high refined carbohydrate diet -- made worse by the consumption of an excessive amount of adult beverages -- for way too long, I can attest firsthand to the resultant health difficulties. So, who do I blame? Was it those who sold me the foodstuffs for the poor diet or the producers of beer, vodka and bourbon?

Unlike those who call for the nanny state, I know damn well who is to blame: the one staring back at me in the mirror every morning. No person ever force-fed me anything. Nor has any person or concern ever tricked me into eating or drinking anything that was bad for me. I, as an adult, did it all myself. The problem, therefore, is mine to correct.

So, it is interesting that I could now add my name to a class action lawsuit and get paid for my own personal abuse. Appalling, actually! Excuse me if I fail to believe that is how our law is supposed to work.

It is time voters instruct their representatives in government to insure these legal actions do not go forward. The lawsuits are an insult to the liberty of a free people.

Often, the judicial system appears little more then the playground for corrupt lawyers and their partners, the judges.

Anyone who thinks this needs to look a little more closely.

The corruption of the judicial system, along with the educational system, is key to destroying the society we once knew. It's not a playground, it's a battleground -- or would be if there were a systematic, as opposed to sporadic, defense from the Right.

(Did I say "defense"? Where's the major effort to re-take lost ground?)

I have posted the following several times in the past few weeks; I hope those who have seen it before will forgive me for doing so once more. But it is so apropos to what the Right has been doing at least for a few decades, based on personal observation (and yes, some of that is hindsight):

"THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE: THE GERMANS, 1933-45"
by Milton Mayer
The University of Chicago Press

From the chapter, "But then it was too late" pages 169 to 172, 1966 edition.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' Why not?---well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty."

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, 'everyone' is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, 'It's not so bad' or 'You're seeing things' or 'You're an alarmist.'

"And you ARE an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh- pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have."

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to---to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait."

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worse act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked---if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately after the 'German Firm' stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in '33. But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying 'Jew swine,' collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in---your nation, your people--- is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibilty even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succesion of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably everyday, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany could not have imagined."

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done, (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the University when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair."

"You are compromised beyond repair"? I don't agree. You are not compromised beyond repair -- you can always change and work against what you supported, tacitly or actively. Saul the antagonist is better remembered as Paul the defender. (Need I add this is a Christian reference?)

Would that it were only you that were compromised.

What has really happened is that you compromised your society beyond repair. You stood by and did nothing when those with an agenda of destruction worked their changes, bit by bit, because it was always easier, it was always safer, it was less costly, at any one time to do nothing than to stand up.

And you did nothing when those who did stand up were attacked for their stance -- perhaps the time, or the issue, or the person wasn't right for you. But whatever the reason, the outcome is the same: your society is corrupted beyond repair.

Return for a minute to the judicial system: How is it that rights assumed to be inherent, or at least explicitly laid out in the constitution, somehow no longer exist? And how is that "rights" not found in the constitution somehow manage to be predominant in our society today?

The answer is, as I asserted earlier, that the judiciary is not a playground, it's a battleground.

And we're losing.

Because we're not fighting.

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