The New Republic: Elaine Teng: Congress Blocks Washington-DC Marijuana Legalization

Source:The New Democrat 

I’ve lost count how many times Republicans and so-called Conservatives talk about the need for federalism, state and local control, but that as long as states and locals governing what the way they approve. Doing things that they approve of. And of course they are going to make the exception that Washington is the nation’s capital and that the Federal Government, including Congress has a role in their affairs, because Washington receives federal aide to conduct it’s city business. But Washington is still a city, a local city with their own government. Their voters legally approved marijuana legalization and they have the right to enforce that.

Now big fat Uncle Sam who apparently doesn’t have enough to do like minding their own business and managing the affairs and business of the Federal Government, should figure out how to govern themselves and make their own big fat government work. Before they try to run someone’s else’s government and manage their affairs. It’s no secret why the U.S. Congress has approval rating somewhere around ten-percent that the Republican Party is going to own in the next Congress now controlling both the House and Senate. Because they are bunch of incompetent assholes, who see compromise as a sin and don’t know how to work with people who don’t always agree with them.

It is a good thing that out Founding Fathers, our founding Liberal set up our Federal Republic with our federal system. Perhaps they were physic and knew that big government statists in the future may try to run the entire country from Washington DC and treat the individual states like children and tell them that Uncle Sammy knows what is best for them and what they can and can’t do and how to govern themselves. If we did have a unitary system and not a federal system, and Washington State along with Colorado and now Washington DC passed their own marijuana legalization laws, big government statists in the Republican Party would try to throw out those laws as well.

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The New Republic: Cass R. Sunstein- ‘Why Paternalism is Our Friend’

Source:The New Republic– New York City Nanny, I mean Mayor (call it a slip of the tongue) Michael Bloomberg.

Source:FRS FreeState

“The nanny state is in the news. A lot of people have been outraged by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to restrict soda sizes, recently overturned by a state court, and some people do not much like his proposal to ban cigarette displays in New York stores. If you share the outrage, you should recognize that various forms of paternalism are all around you, and at least some of them aren’t so bad.

Last year, new government regulations required automobile companies to increase the fuel economy of their cars, to a point where the fleet-wide average must exceed 50 miles per gallon by 2025. True, those regulations will reduce air pollution and promote energy independence, but the majority of the benefits come in the form of gas savings for consumers. For those who abhor paternalism, here’s the problem: Consumers can already buy high MPG cars, and many of them just aren’t doing so, even though they might well save money over the life of the vehicle. If the government is making the fleet a lot more fuel-efficient than consumers demand, is it operating as the national nanny, or the Gasoline Police? Should people be outraged about that?

Paternalism comes in a lot of shapes and sizes, and to come to terms with it, we need to offer a working definition. What seems to unify paternalistic approaches, however diverse, is that government does not believe that people’s choices will promote their welfare, and it is taking steps to influence or alter people’s choices for their own good.”

From The New Republic

“New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a two-time Nanny of the Month and 2009’s Nanny of the Year, is back to save us from ourselves yet again!

In order to promote breastfeeding, Bloomberg has ordered all public city hospitals to lock up free samples of baby formula. New mothers who are unable to breastfeed – or simply choose not to – can still get formula, but only after enduring a lecture from a hospital employee on the benefits of the boob over the bottle.

Reason TV’s Kennedy spoke with Susan Burger, a certified lactation consultant, who supports the mayor’s initiative on the grounds that “the real intent of that law is to protect breastfeeding mothers [and] their freedom of choice to breastfeed.”

Source:Reason Magazine– New York City Nanny, I mean Mayor (call it a slip of the tongue) Michael Bloomberg.

From Reason Magazine

Before I get into what I really want to talk about, I’m going to start this post off with a question: What the hell happened to the New Republic? Because before they got new management and Chris Hughes became its new editor, this was a real liberal democratic magazine. The official liberal democratic magazine in America that had a healthy skepticism about governmental power. That all seems to be gone now and now they are sounding like defenders of the state, especially the nanny state.

The current version of The New Republic seems to believe that freedom is dangerous and that it shouldn’t be our goal or the job of government to protect our freedom, but literally to protect the people, as if we are morons or little children and can’t do that for ourselves. And even if that means protecting people from themselves and even locking them up for their own good when they make choices that aren’t in their best interest.

Reading the New Republic now, except for Jeff Rosen who is a real Liberal, is like reading the The Nation magazine or the AlterNet, or listening to the political commentary on MSNBC: it’s “big government knows best and has all the answers and individual freedom and choice are dangerous”.

They are paternalists on the far-left, people who I really don’t even call Progressives any more but paternalists or prohibitionists. Prohibition is a statist idea by the way, but I generally what I call people who think like this whether they are on the Far-Left or Far-Right, are nanny statists or nanny staters. People who believe that it’s the job of government to protect people even from themselves.

And when you combine paternalism when it comes to personal or social issues with socialism as it relates to economic policy and you believe in things like nationalizing the healthcare and health insurance systems, as well as the retirement system and perhaps even the banking system, maybe even the energy industry and you combine that nanny statism on social issues, you really have what looks like communism. You got a King Kong size big government there to protect people from themselves: “Because big government is our friend and freedom and freedom of choice is our enemy”. That it’s not big government that’s the problem, but that big government is our friend and should direct how we live our own lives.

Paternalism whether it comes from the Far-Left as it relates to the War on Drugs, alcohol prohibition, tobacco, junk food, soft drinks, or whether it comes from the Far-Right as it relates to violent video games or pornography, or trying to outlaw pre-marital sex, or adultery or divorce, it doesn’t work. Because if people want to do things bad enough, they’ll find a way to do it and damn the consequences.

One of the reasons why we have taxes and regulations in America is to encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior. Not to manage people’s lives for them. That if you want people to make healthy choices, you subsidize that and penalize them when they make unhealthy choices.

To respond to the argument that Cass Sunstein is trying to make which really sounds like he’s trying to pick up the pieces for the nanny state proponents: the regulations he’s talking about are regulations regarding businesses, not individuals. Businesses are also not allowed to hire people to whack out the competition for them. That’s also for the welfare for the general public, but that doesn’t help his case.

 

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Associated Press: Raw Video- ‘New York Debates Proposed Ban on Sugary Drinks’

Source:Associated Press– a spokeswoman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Independent, New York)
Source:FRS FreeState

“New York faced the next step in a bitter battle over large sugary drinks Tuesday, with the soft drink and restaurant industries protesting the mayor’s proposed ban and the public lining up to have its say.”

From the Associated Press

NYPD: “Son, you need to put that slurpy before it eventually kills you or rots out your teeth.” No, I don’t know if that cop in this cartoon actually said that to this little boy, but that’s the attitude that nanny statists on the Far-Left represent in America: “Big Government knows what’s best for the people. The people are too dumb to make their own decisions.”

Source:FRS FreeState– Welcome to Mike Bloomberg’s New York Nanny.

Another example of blogging on a slow news day, I’m probably just a step away from bloggers block if there’s such a thing. And if there isn’t, I just invented it.

I know I covered this back in June (but like I said, it’s a slow news day) but New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg apparently has had some vision that he knows how New Yorker’s and perhaps Americans in general, how they should live better than the people themselves. He has the classic one- size fits all to governing, that if this works for him or other people, that it must work for everyone.

In 2008 the prospect of Mike Bloomberg running for President as an Independent, didn’t bother me. He seemed like a classical Northeastern Republican: “keep big government out of our wallets and bedrooms” Republican. But now he seems not only believe that big government should be in our wallets, like calling for all the Bush tax cuts to expire on everyone, including the middle class, but Mayor Bloomberg also wants big government down our throats. Telling us what we can drink and how much we can drink, he’s becoming a hero in today’s so-called progressive (communist, in actuality) politics.

What New York is attempting to do with soft drinks is another example of prohibition. If New Yorker’s can’t get large sodas in the city, then they go to Long Island, North Jersey or Connecticut, someplace where people have the freedom to decide how much they can drink and eat. Of course as long as they have the money to pay for it and then if that jurisdiction has a sales tax, they’ll end up paying taxes on those products that they buy. Which will go to help that jurisdiction pay for schools, roads, hospitals, everything that communities need to be vibrant.

Tax money that could’ve otherwise been spent in New York is now helping local jurisdictions outside of New York, pay for those services. That’s what leftists and religious fundamentalists have never figured out about prohibition, that just because you tell people they can’t do something, doesn’t mean they stop doing it. It’s just done in other ways and in other areas.

If you think people are living unhealthy and you believe that this unhealthy living is somehow negatively affects the rest of society as a whole and you want to correct that bad behavior, what you should do is incentivize people to correct that behavior. Have them pay a price for living unhealthy, short of putting them in jail. And have them pay a financial cost for living unhealthy. Like taxing soft drinks extra than what you would tax water or milk.

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The Onion: Stan Kelly- ‘Behind The Pen- Nanny State, Ninny State’

Source:The Onion– Big Brother is watching you (to paraphrase Sting)

Source:The Daily Press

“What’s wrong with a young person going to the Big Brothers to find a role model? Plenty, says Cartoonist Stan Kelly in this week’s “Behind The Pen” video.”

From The Onion

The guy narrating this video sounds like a pervert. Perhaps how Jerry Sandusky sounds in private or how some of these religious fundamentalists sound in private. The people who bash homosexuals and believe homosexuality should be outlawed.

Stan Kelly (or whoever the guy in the video is) does make a valid point of what a nanny state looks like: “Don’t bother to think for yourself and to take care of yourself, because we Nanny-Statists will do that for you. And not only that, but when you do things that are considered unhealthy, we’ll punish you for hurting yourself. So you don’t do that in the future.”

This whole nanny state episode is a self-inflicted wound that Nanny-Statists on the Far-Left have done to themselves, by trying to outlaw large soda drinks in New York. And they have their brand new hero in Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who I guess has replaced Karl Marx in leading the charge and have opened up themselves to satires like this and I referring to this video by The Onion.

Whether it’s outlawing plastic bags in Los Angeles or trying to outlaw tobacco or hate speech, because Nanny-Statists are worried about people’s feelings getting hurt. Well, people who agree with them. They add to the notion that so-called and self-described Progressives (Socialists and Neo-Communists, in actuality) want to control people’s lives for them, because in their Americans who don’t have a Northeastern or West Coast education, aren’t intelligent enough to manage their own lives, so they need some left-wing, hippie Uncle Sam to do that for them.

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AP: Raw Video- ‘U.S. House Rejects Sex-Selection Abortion Ban’

Source:Associated Press– U.S. Representative Phil Gingrey (Republican, Georgia) presiding over the U.S. House of Representatives.

Source:FRS FreeState

“The House on Thursday fell short in an effort to ban abortions based on the sex of the fetus as Republicans and Democrats made an election-year appeal for women’s votes.”

From the Associated Press

I guess one of the disadvantages of having a two-party political system is that you get all the fringes stuck into two political parties, with one party having their own vision of big government and the other party having there’s. Which is what we have now in the Republican Party and Democratic Party.

Source:The Daily Press– I just wish every sane, sober, intelligent American (which seems to be a shrinking list of people everyday) would just say hell no to the nanny state. And let free people live their own lives.

I would never get an abortion myself (and not just because I’m a man, which makes that biologically impossible) because even if I didn’t want the baby, I prefer options like adoption over aborting potential human lives.

And I sure as hell would never abort a fetus because I didn’t like the gender of the baby. If gender equality (which is what leftists used to claim to care about) means anything, you don’t abort fetuses simply because of the fetuses gender.

But to pass a law out of Congress (even if it’s just in the House) banning abortions because the parents don’t like the gender of the baby, I mean you can say that they’re stupid for doing that, crazy even, but to put them in prison for simply being crazy idiots and perhaps their crazy idiot doctor for doing that, looks like Big Government with way too much free time on his hands, living such a boring life that he feels the need to tell other people what to do, to fill his time and days.

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