Friday, August 1, 2008

No Fast Food for You!

Slate has an excellent article up about the insanity of banning new fast food restaurants from poor areas:
The war on fat has just crossed a major red line. The Los Angeles City Council has passed an ordinance prohibiting construction of new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area inhabited by 500,000 low-income people.

We're not talking anymore about preaching diet and exercise, disclosing calorie counts, or restricting sodas in schools. We're talking about banning the sale of food to adults. Treating French fries like cigarettes or liquor. I didn't think this would happen in the United States anytime soon. I was wrong.

The authoritarian nature of this ordinance is breathtaking to me. The government ought not to even have this kind of power--regulation, yes, flat-out bans such as this, absolutely not.

Seriously, who do the Los Angeles city councilors think they are? And what do the think they're doing? Protecting poor people from making bad decisions? Why don't we just assign them jobs, housing, and ration cards already? Is there any part of their lives the nanny state shouldn't control?

On a side note, I'm no longer a metro reporter. Thus, I'm free to go off on as many anti-nanny state tirades as I see fit. Brace yourselves!

(Via Radley Balko.)

1 comment:

jaf said...

"Why don't we just assign them jobs, housing, and ration cards already?"

Imagine the lines in the hood, though, if word got out that someone was going to show up and say here's your job, your house and your food. Enjoy.

Big lines, dude. Big.