To combat the metastasizing obesity epidemic, the wise people that make up the Los Angeles City Council contemplate cracking down on the poor folk.
The club they wield this time is aimed ostensibly at the evil fast food business. In reality the victims will be the residents of South Los Angeles, the poorest section of the city inhabited mostly by Latinos and black people. The city council pretends that their plan of banning new fast-food restaurants there will correct food injustices and that the residents are completely on board.
"The people don’t want them [fast food joints], but when they don’t have any other options, they may gravitate to what’s there," says one of the ultra-"progressive" city council members.
Let’s look at the facts. The residents don’t have options because council-approved restaurants don’t find South Los Angeles conducive, for various reasons, to their business needs. They don’t open restaurants there because they cannot make money. Forbidding fast-food restaurants will not miraculously transform South Los Angeles into a neighborhood into which restaurateurs will invest.
The council also decries the fact that grocery stores are rare in South Los Angeles. Forbidding yet another Kentucky Fried Chicken will not ignite an explosion of grocery stores, bursting with organic produce. Large grocery stores are lacking for the same reasons that classy (and nutritious) restaurants give South Los Angeles a pass.
The council’s social engineering merely means that the fast-food restaurants already there will become more crowded. The business climate for the area will take a hit, another in a serious of hits that have troubled it for decades.
The council members, however, will feel good about themselves and they will stroke each other and purr from the pats on the head delivered by "health" oriented special interests. The people who live there, as is always the case when paternalistic elites "take care" of them, will have less choices and more hassles added to their already difficult and hazardous lives.
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