Like most people who reside outside the boroughs of NYC, I believe to some degree that New Yorkers are a bit crazy. All the various aspects that make NYC what it is cause outsiders to both love the novelty of the place and loathe the idea of actually living there. Much like a theme park it can be fun to visit, but you want to be able to get off when the ride is over.
Now there is an even greater reason to loathe living there. Enter Mayor Bloomberg, the self-anointed nanny of the legions of the miserable. The mayor has been consistently extending the reach of his governance far beyond city administration and deep into the festering private lives of his constituents. In fact, he has such a low opinion of the average New Yorker’s ability to make quality life choices that he is taking them away.
What a wonderful, beneficent leader! You voters of NYC are so lucky to have such a brilliant, compassionate man in the corner office of City Hall. His personal virtues are so enlightened that he is going to bless the entire city with them, in the form of countless regulations governing the minutiae of your lives. How you have been able to remember to breathe so far without the Hizzoner’s personal intervention is simply blind luck. Just ask him.
So far, the mayor of Gotham has enacted policies restricting your portion size choices at fast food restaurants (no more “supersize me“), your ability to smoke (puff on that), the amount of trans-fats and salt in your dining selections, limited the size of fountain beverages you are permitted to purchase (no Big Gulp for the Big Apple), and proposed even tighter restrictions on firearms in the nation’s already most-restrictive city. This is the kind of power overreach that would make Hugo Chavez blush, if he were still able.
Lord Bloomberg has only just begun to ratchet down individual freedoms of choice. His newest “cause celebre” is to go after music enthusiasts. According to the New York Post, the mayor’s public health officials are planning a “social media campaign to warn young people about the risk of losing their hearing from listening to music at high volume on personal MP3 players.”
City Health Department assistant commissioner (read: political hack) Nancy Clark said, “With Public and private support, a public education campaign is being developed to raise awareness about safe use of personal music players … and the risks of loud and long listening.” The quarter-million dollar campaign is being financed through a grant received from the Fund for Public Health, which is the fund-raising arm of the Department.
This raises two issues. Fist, why does a department of municipal government have a “fund-raising” arm? When did ANY level of government in this country become authorized to raise its own funds outside of taxes and fees, and who contributes to such “funds” and why? What favors are these contributors buying with all this philanthropy, and is any of it documented? Taxpayers have EVERY right to an answer on that one.
Second, who the hell does Bloomberg think he is? Parents have been telling their kids to turn down the music for over fifty years! Since when does the power of City Hall reach into your diet, your volume knob or your personal habits, ultimately superceding your own right to make lifestyle choices? How about just doing your damned job, Michael? Why not use your almighty Health Department to reduce a few more incidents of botulism, or even better, hose down the filthy Occupiers and clean up their public defecation? New York voters who empowered this megalomaniac deserve him. He holds you in highest contempt, considering you too stupid to run your own lives. Stop proving him right by reelecting him.
Bloomberg is the poster-boy of nanny-state Liberalism, the doctrine of the elitist Democrat Left. Their inherent distrust of the “common man’s” ability to manage his own affairs compels them to use the power of government to impose their bossy, busybody agenda on voters. This is exactly the kind of arrogance that cannot be tolerated in elected government.
In the kids’ television Christmas classic, the Burghermeister Meisterburgher tried to outlaw toys in Sombertown …. a foolish and pointless gesture by an overbearing boor. Mayor Bloomberg needs to focus on the real problems in NYC, and confine his actions to the limits of his office, lest he write for himself a similar legacy.
Image: The Greek Crown Jewels (also called the Greek Regalia); author: Andreas.megos; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
