Now, You Can't Even Watch Your Own Children at the Playground

...because you might be a pedophile.

This is in the U.K. Thank God we haven't gone quite this nutty here.

Parents are being banned from playing with their children in council recreation areas because they have not been vetted by police.
Mothers and fathers are being forced to watch their children from outside perimeter fences because of fears they could be paedophiles.
Watford Council was branded a 'disgrace' yesterday after excluding parents from two fenced-off adventure playgrounds unless they first undergo criminal record checks.

Children as young as five will instead be supervised by council 'play rangers' who have been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Councillors insist they are merely following Government regulations and cannot allow adults to walk around playgrounds 'unchecked'.

Food Police to Prevent Waste?

Bismarck has a link to a story out of the U.K. on the food police.

Householders are to be visited by officials offering advice on cooking with leftovers, in a Government initiative to reduce the amount of food that gets thrown away.

Home cooks will also be told what size portions to prepare, taught to understand "best before" dates and urged to make more use of their freezers.

The door-to-door campaign, which starts tomorrow, will be funded by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a Government agency charged with reducing household waste.

The officials will be called "food champions". However, they were dismissed last night as "food police" by critics who called the scheme an example of "excessive government nannying".

It bears repeating that this is the sort of silliness that happens when we assume the government should be in charge of everything. Food police? I just sat through a lecture last night at the P.T.A. meeting from a doctor telling us not to make our kids clean their plates. And while some people like leftovers (I don't), most of us remember mushy reheated veggies and meat that tasted terrible after a warm-up or two.

I'm not saying that preventing food waste is a bad thing. You can run a public service announcement if you want, or try to get on Oprah. But do we want to go down this road, paying people 16 bucks an hours to lecture people on not wasting food?

Why Obama Will "Own" The Recession

Basically, because his policies are destined to prolong the downturn.

Now today's Obamacrats are apparently going to try and Hooverize President Bush in an effort to shield themselves from the potential political fallout of a prolonged recession. It will take years to fix the American economy, Obama says, and years of trillion-dollar budget deficits to do it. And everyday it seems that Team Obama tries to lower economic expectations, such as bearishly predicting that unemployment would hit double-digits.

The not-so-subtle message in the middle of all these pessimistic prognostications: When ya'll go to vote in 2010 and 2012 and a) unemployment is still as high as it's been in decades, b) income growth is sluggish at best, c) the budget deficit is running at a trillion bucks a year, and d) stock prices remain stubbornly low -- hey, don't blame us, you can't rebuild Rome in a day or even in a first term. Remember, Bush really left us a mess.

That's precisely the strategy behind leftwing lunacy like this, where Democrat control of Congress is dismissed as unimportant to the overall point that every bad thing that happens is because of Republicans.

The fact is, Obama is already warning Americans (and doing everything short of getting on his knees for Democrats in Congress) that the recession is going to get much, much worse before it gets better. I suppose he thinks if he warns Americans before January 20, they won't hold him accountable in four years when he reminds them that he warned them.

Alas, such will not be the case. If Obama and the Democrats don't see a turnaround within a year, I suspect most voters will dump Democrats in 2010 and Obama in 2012, history-making presidency or not. Americans are an impatient lot, and if unemployment gets even close to double digits, voters will be panic-stricken. We haven't seen 10% unemployment in a generation, and there's a whole bunch of 20-somethings who think having a job is a constitutional right.

The problem with Obama's stimulus recovery plan manifold. First, the jobs his We Piddle Around programs will product are ill-suited to today's work force. Office workers aren't skilled in the building industry, and most women simply can't do the sort of physical labor required to build bridges and roads (sorry, Amanda). Worse yet, Obama's plan is predicated on the idea that the unemployed American is a 20-year-old male. But with women making up nearly half the workforce, you have to wonder how many of them will want to operate backhoes and cranes. This isn't to bash women; we just tend to work in offices, service industries, and other less labor-intensive jobs.

Secondly, the amount of money involved may not be enough to encourage spending. Our economy runs on consumption, and consumers aren't doing that right now. We've heard nothing but how terrible the economy is, how bad jobs are, and how we're going to hell in a handbasket for a couple of years. What do these morons who say these things think is going to happen? Outside of the hapless idiots taking out interest-only mortgages, most people have spent the last year reducing their expenses. That's what people did with the 1,200 bucks they got last spring.

If Obama wants people to spend, he's either going to have to let the cycle go (with it's obvious pain and suffering) or he's going to have to pass out such huge checks that people are comfortable spending it. I'm thinking in the neighborhood of $5,000 to $10,000. Not because I think the government should be passing out welfare to everybody, but if Democrats honestly expect people to buy refrigerators and cars, then they have to make the payoff large enough to overcome people's reluctance to let go of any extra money right now.

Finally, Obama's plans include so much radical restructuring of our economy that even people who support some of his ideas are going to balk. Lots of people lurv the idea of a single payer health care system (well, until they live with it, that is), but remaking 1/7th of the U.S. economy would cause even more turmoil, expense, and unemployment than leaving things as they are. What happens to all the insurance company employees when insurance is no longer needed? Are they all supposed to become health care workers? What happens to all the doctors and nurses who don't want to work under socialized medicine? How do we handle the radical change that's being discussed?

And, really, how can Obama avoid taking responsibility when he will be so actively meddling in the economy? It will be his decision to forego deep and permanent new tax cuts, his decision to not extend the Bush tax cuts, his decision on how to spend the remaining $350 billion in TARP money, his decision to quasi-nationalize healthcare, his decision to push a cap-and-trade carbon emission program and his decision to spend hundreds of billions on a "green" industrial policy. It might even be his decision to try and reunionize the American laborforce. Obama will "own" the battered economy, perhaps almost literally, given Uncle Sam's bailout binge.

Liberals think that every unemployed person can go work in "green technologies" and that this will fix the economy. But not all Americans will either want to work in those industries or have the skills to do so (not to mention not living where these industries develop). No matter how much the useful idiots try to blame George Bush, this recession will be Barack Obama's come January 20.

Maybe Obama needs a little help.

Saving You From Yourself

Much of liberalism revolves around the idea that individuals are too stupid to know how to make decisions, so it is up to the noble State to ensure you don't make bad ones. This infantilization of adults leads to all sorts of bad outcomes, including ridiculous laws, the banning of desired products and infringement upon individual liberty.

Take this dumb post on legalizing sports betting in Delaware.

The state needs money, but if we pass sports betting to raise money it is a stone cold lock that four out of every 100 new gamblers created in this state will become addicts.

Are we really that morally bankrupt?

Studies show that sports betting is the type of legalized gambling most likely to hook young people.

Bottom Line: Whatever money the state brings in by being a party to this tax hike on the least among us will be going right back out in order to deal with the wrecked families and lives that are a direct byproduct of this “industry.”

Vowing to veto sports betting was Ruth Ann Minner’s finest moment in office.

Well, studies also show that liberals are angrier and make violent (and idiotic) threats against others for political reasons, but I don't think we should be restricting their ability to make asses out of themselves because of it. It's way too fun to laugh at them.

Ah, where to begin with the idea that we shouldn't legalize things because someone, somewhere, won't exercise self-control? Well, to start with, Delaware allows a variety of other betting options, including the lottery and slot machines. Why should those interested in betting on sporting events be denied that privilege?

Besides this, Delaware is a tiny state. If a person unfortunate enough to live there wanted to bet on a football game, it wouldn't take them a day's drive to find a state happy to take his or her money. The idea that, somehow, by banning sports betting, Delaware is preventing some shlub from betting the rent money is ridiculous. We're not talking about a big state like, say, Texas, after all.

I've never even bought a lottery ticket because I consider gambling to be a voluntary tax that I don't care to volunteer for. But if some idiot gets a thrill up his leg losing 50 bucks on a basketball game, I don't see why he shouldn't be allowed to do so.

The Nanny State Strikes Again

If you needed evidence of nanny state encroachment, Highland Park, a tiny, well-to-do enclave in Dallas, has enacted a cell phone ban in school zones which took affect yesterday.

Is there really nothing more important to do in Highland Park than worry about people talking on cell phones in school zones? How many people have been killed in school zones by people talking on cell phones?

There's no information supporting the idea that children in school zones are in more danger from someone talking on the phone than from someone changing CDs in their stereo or eating a Whataburger taquito, but that didn't stop University Park (another Dallas suburb) from enacting the same stupid ban today.

What has happened to my wonderful state? I mean, Texans tend to support smaller, less intrusive government and more individual freedom. You can carry a shotgun in plain sight here as well as kill intruders on your property...even if it's twice in the same month.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of busybodies (cue David Harsanyi here) who think we're too stupid to take care of ourselves. That's why you get sites like this one trying to rationalize yet another attempt to legislate common sense.

Personally, I see these new nanny laws as utterly unworkable. How do the police prove you were on the phone? Are they really going to subpoena your phone records for a $75 ticket? I doubt it. It seems like it would be easy enough to beat this ticket.

The truth is, you can't legislate common sense, and some people are not logical when they are behind the wheel of a car. That's why you periodically see the stories about people eating, hunting CDs, swatting their children, reading, applying makeup, or doing any of a dozen other things while driving a car. It's simple There's already laws against reckless driving. Just enforce those and you won't have to worry about whether the person was refereeing a fight in the backseat or talking on the cell phone.

Nanny State

So, it's come to this: we need warning labels of milk cartons.

We are rapidly approaching that time of year when people gather with family and friends to celebrate holidays, complete with extravagant meals that may leave some participants feeling just a bit queasy. Perhaps, some lawyers might wonder in between bites, more food warning labels are needed for the day after such festive occasions?

That thought may not be as farfetched as it seems. Only last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided an appeal from the dismissal of a class action lawsuit against nine sellers of milk. The class was defined as consisting of individuals who consumed milk before becoming aware that they were lactose intolerant. As a result, the lawsuit alleged, they experienced stomach discomfort and flatulence. The class action sought, among other things, to have the sellers put warning labels on milk containers to warn consumers that some may experience these symptoms.

The case was dismissed for a lot of legalistic reasons, but the nut graf is here:

In affirming the trial court's dismissal of the case, the D.C. Circuit ruling relied solely on the second of these two bases in dismissing the suit. According to the appellate court, "we hold as a matter of law that a reasonable consumer today would be well aware that milk may adversely affect some people." The appellate court concluded its rejection of the plaintiffs' tort claim under D.C. law by stating: "the risk that milk will cause temporary gas and stomach discomfort to lactose-intolerant individuals who do not yet know of their condition cannot support a failure-to-warn tort claim under D.C. tort law."

Ahh, yes. We have to warn people they could be lactose intolerant because not warning them is a tort. Or, at least, our litigious society has brought us to this point.

This case made me think of David Harsanyi's new book Nanny State, which discusses the do-gooders in our society hellbent on saving us from ourselves.

I was prepared to love and embrace Nanny State; after all, as a conservative, I'm against most government intervention into the lives of its citizens. The problem is that Harsanyi doesn't focus on the sorts of laws that make conservatives crosseyed; he spends only about 1/4 of the book discussing stupid laws about ridiculous warning labels or the Consumer Products Safety Commission, which essentially thinks everything is dangerous.

Nanny State spends a huge amount of time railing against anti-smoking measures and alcohol limitations. I suppose from a true libertarian viewpoint, this is a good place to start, but for the average person, drunk driving laws and nonsmoking workplaces are a good thing.

There are, of course, excesses, even in these good things. For example, a "zero tolerance" law regarding alcohol is ridiculous and preventing people from smoking in their own homes is absurd. But this seems to me to be more of a matter of degree rather than kind. A .08 alcohol level isn't snot-slinging drunk, but it lets people know that society doesn't tolerate public drunkeness and the dangers that go with it.

Harsanyi saves his greatest wrath for seatbelt laws, which he seems to absolutely loathe as the granddaddy of our nanny state woes. But this is where he and I part company; I think government has the duty to its citizens to demand reasonable safety measures in public places. This includes health inspections of restaurants, safety restrictions for professionals and behavior requirements for drivers. Harsanyi doesn't rail against speed limit laws, but he might as well; the argument would be the same. Why should the government tell anyone what to do?

I think the premise is simplistic. Citizens expect a certain degree of regulation from government regarding the safety of certain situations. We want clean drinking water and we like to know what is in the food we eat. Many of us dislike smoking and are concerned about its effects both for firsthand and secondhand users. We know that certain promotions (such as 3-in-1 drinks, which were legal until the mid-1980s) encourage irresponsibility and can harm a sizable amount of society. These are the sorts of restrictions most people consider to be reasonable regulations of behavior.

It would have been more convincing had Harsanyi spent more time on the "do not eat" labels on obviously inedible products or excessive warning labels and the reasons for these things. The reason, of course, is that, just like the class action wanting warning labels on milk, too many people are sue-happy, looking for an easy buck from a bleeding-heart judge who might give it to them. In other words, we need a warning label on our court system.

Because People Are Too Stupid to Pay Attention

A New York state senator is proposing a ban on "using an MP3 player, cell phone, Blackberry or any other electronic device while crossing the street in either New York City or Buffalo."

NewsChannel 4 reported that Sen. Carl Kruger is proposing the ban in response to two recent pedestrian deaths in his district, including a 23-year-old man who was struck and killed last month while listening to his iPod on Avenue T and East 71st Street In Bergen Beach.

"While people are tuning into their iPods and cell phones, they're tuning out the world around them," Kruger said. The proposed law would make talking on cell phones while crossing the street a comparable offense to jaywalking.

I guess people in Albany are still smart enough to listen to music and pay attention to traffic.

Should This Be a Government Function?

I've been wrestling in my mind with how to approach the story about Texas Governor Rick Perry issuing an executive order mandating that all girls receive the human papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccine. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that causes cervical cancer.

I am of two minds on the issue. The first is that requiring vaccines for public health reasons is a normal government responsibility. My children have received many vaccines in their lives for everything from measles to chickenpox without ill effects. And I've never understood the anti-vaccine people, although I do understand there is some concern among them about increased rates of autism (which I'm not convinced is related).

The second mind is this: why is the governor getting involved in what amounts to a parenting decision? One doesn't get HPV, which can also cause genital warts, by casual contact but through intercourse. In other words, HPV isn't like getting measles or chickenpox. A person has to engage in certain specific behavior to get this. Is it really up to the government to protect young girls from behavior they shouldn't be engaging in in the first place? And if we are going to protect them from this disease, what about other sexually transmitted diseases? Should we require all girls to have protection against them as well? Does pregnancy fall into this category?

According to Pandagon (where I originally read about the vaccine), parents who don't want their daughters getting this vaccine would rather they die of cancer than admit they will have sex one day. Read that sentence again. Parents who don't want their daughters to get the HPV vaccine would rather they die of cancer than admit their daughters will have sex one day. This is just another example of the Amanda Marcotte way of discussing a topic. I wonder if the Edwards campaign is going to ask her to clarify this one. Here's more:

Under the opt-out policy, however, if you want to keep your daughter in danger of getting cervical cancer, you have to get an opt-out form, fill it out, sign it, and make your daughter take it back to school and then the school officials will know that you’re the kind of creep that would rather have your daughter be dead from cancer than to face up to the fact that she is going to grow up and have sex one day. On top of that, you run the risk of having your daughter get cancer or even just genital warts one day and remembering that you took action to deny her treatment that would spare her this pain. I don’t know about you, but if I found out my parents had a chance to spare me from a disease but they went out of their way to make sure that I wasn’t spared, I’d be furious. I may even refuse to speak to them again. I’d blame them for my cancer. And I’d be right to do so.

Amanda has no children, of course, and as Patterico said, doesn't plan on any any time soon.

That is her right, naturally, but if people who haven't served in the military don't have a right to comment on the war in Iraq, shouldn't people without kids not be allowed to say stupid things about parenthood?

After reading Amanda's screed, here's what I was wondering: is there any reason women can't get the vaccine once they reach adulthood? There's no indication that only teenagers are eligible for the vaccine. Worse yet for the pro-vaccine people, the vaccines available only work on some HPVs, not all that cause cervical cancer. So women would still need to get regular Pap smears (one Pandagonista said parents who didn't want this vaccine must want their daughters getting a Pap smear every year because otherwise they wouldn't need one).

In other words, while the vaccine would have some beneficial effects, it isn't a cure-all against cervical cancer and the vast majority of teens aren't having sex anyway.

I guess Amanda doesn't understand that just because one's daughters might have sex one day doesn't mean they will be teenagers when they do so. If my adult daughter chooses to engage in sexual activity, that's her business. If she does it as a teenager, that's my business.

I don't think the people who object to this vaccine think that giving girls the vaccine will make them go out and have sex (the strawman argument Amanda constructs). But rather, they think it is a gross intrusion on their right to determine health care for their children. We're not talking about easily communicable diseases here. That's when it should be a government concern. It appears to me Governor Perry is stepping over the line.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

UPDATE: There are charges that Gov. Perry has a conflict of interest in making this vaccine mandatory for sixth grade girls.

Texas Eagle Forum president Cathie Adams believes "corruption" is at play. Adams explains that Governor Perry's former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, is now a lobbyist for Merck, the manufacturer of the vaccine.

"Not only that," continues the family acvocate, "his current chief of staff is the daughter-in-law of the chairman of the health committee in the State House of Texas -- and she's also a member of Women in Government." Adams describes that group as a "Merck-supported, -funded, and -organized group of legislators."

The Nanny State Takes Over for Parents

There are several stories this week about government interfering with parenting issues (via ifeminists.net):

The jail-for-spanking plan has been put on hold.

"This home-invasion bill has been stopped cold by parents and grandparents who know that to love children is to discipline them and show them the way to live," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families, a non-profit, non-partisan pro-family group in California.

"Because so many people have spoken out, the Democrats in Sacramento realize that their liberal agenda is offending a whole lot of people."

Don't miss those parent-teacher conferences if you live in Texas.

A Republican state lawmaker from Baytown has filed a bill that would charge parents of public school students with a Class C misdemeanor and fine them for playing hooky from a scheduled parent-teacher conference.

Excuses are allowed, but be prepared to have a good one...

Rep. Wayne Smith said Wednesday he wants to get parents involved in their child's education.

"I think it helps the kids for the parents and teachers to communicate. That's all the intent was," Smith said, adding he talked to teachers, including his daughter, who teaches in junior high, before filing the bill.

I'm all for parents being involved but fining 'em for missing a parent-teacher conference (which are frequently scheduled at bad times and/or run wayyyy late) isn't the way to foster that involvement.

In the U.K., social workers are putting fat kids on the same child protection register as children suffering from sexual or physical abuse.

The intervention of social services in what was previously regarded as a private matter is likely to raise concerns about the emergence of the “fat police”.

Some doctors even advocate taking legal action against parents for illtreating their children by feeding them so much that they develop health problems.

Don't feed 'em too much but make sure they get their contraception early.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.