Louis XIV is supposed to have declared, "L’état, c’est moi" when his absolute authority over France was challenged.
"The state is us," echoes the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, capturing Louis’s absolutism if not his great taste in art. It’s doubtful moreover that Louis XIV made law or enacted policy based upon the absolute nothingness that gets the Board of Supervisors excited. He certainly wouldn’t have belittled himself or insulted his subjects by micro-managing their affairs as the Board is always happy to do.
To no one’s surprise the Board passed a law that will require chain restaurants to post detailed calorie information on its menus. While this law furthers the Board’s practice of treating citizens as infantile dolts and furthers its goal of cracking down on evil corporations, even those in favor of such interference admit that there is no compelling evidence that calorie counts on menus play any role in reducing obesity. Combating the "obesity epidemic," of course, is the stated reason for enacting a law that will be impossible to follow.
The "experts" on whose wisdom the Board relies when dealing with weighty issues are laughingly incoherent on whether strident menu labeling will give fatsoes pause when lining up at the fast food counters. Maybe yes, maybe no, they say. Certainly "more research is needed," and anyway, doing something, anything is better than doing nothing. Ah yes, social experimentation is always so much fun, except for the harassed, taxpaying slobs who pay for the privilege of being bossed around by cretins such as those sitting on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Laugh at their signs, and eat hearty, till they send the cops in to monitor your every forkful.
0 Comments