Nationalized Cheerios

Bobby Portray at Tennessee Eagle Forum) sent this in an email to me. It is just too good not to share....

COMMENT (from Bobby): I never liked Cheerios (I prefer raisin bran or shredded wheat), but is this really necessary?? The federal government tells us what light bulbs we must use, what kind of toilets we must have, what kind of TV we must have, the kind of cars we must drive, the kind of gas it must use, in some places 'plastic or paper' is now being taxed at the grocery store. It has been suggested that sugared drinks be specially taxed. Is there any end to what the government wants to control? Apparently not!Now if they start talking about messing with my popcorn, Snyder's Cheese Pretzels, or Breyer's Fat Free Double Churn Chocolate Fudge Brownie extra creamy ice cream, it WILL BE all out war! Nationalized Cheerios?

by Ernest Istook(more by this author)
Regular superheroes save us from villains. Liberal superheroes save us from ourselves.
The power-hungry always try to control the big things. It takes extra effort to go after the little things as well, but President Obama and his team are trying.
The Obama administration is talking about new gun controls… a federal ban on smoking in public places... controls on advertising, to make sweets as verboten as cigarettes. Their proposed sin taxes go far beyond alcohol and tobacco, demonizing whatever fizzes or appeals to a sweet tooth.
And of course they are cracking down on Cheerios. Literally.
We’ll know we’ve passed the point of no return when the national motto is officially changed from e pluribus unum to est pro vestri own beneficium.
In a world where General Motors becomes Government Motors, banks are nationalized and billions in bailouts become routine, federal takeovers of lesser things are overshadowed. Obama’s desires for government-run health care, government-designed cars and government-approved and auctioned energy may dominate the headlines, but little things mean a lot, too. And Obama’s desire to micro-manage lifestyle decisions is another symptom of the belief that only government can fix what ails us.
Obama’s choice to head the Centers for Disease Control is a leading indicator. CDC for years has been accused of mission creep, with its controversial forays into the gun control arena and its recent surveys about cell phone usage. The new director, former New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden, would take CDC even farther. As Newsweek notes, “he has enraged restaurant owners, drawn fire from religious leaders, driven smokers into the streets and created a whole new category of souvenir: the official New York City condom.”
"Dr. Frieden has a Messiah complex," claims the Center for Consumer Freedom. The New York Post dubbed Frieden's department "the Ministry of Culinary Righteousness." Why? As William Saletan wrote in Slate:-- “It’s for your own good.”
The food police are closing in on their next target: a soda tax. New York City's health commissioner, Thomas Frieden, is leading the way. He's the guy who purged trans fats from the city's restaurants and made them post calorie counts for menu items. Lately he's been pressuring food companies to remove salt from their products. Now he's going after soda. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Frieden and Kelly Brownell, the director of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, propose a penny-per-ounce excise tax on "sugared beverages." That's nearly $3 per case. Why so much? Because this tax, unlike the petty junk-food taxes of yesteryear, is designed to hurt. Its purpose is to discourage you from buying soda, on the grounds that soda, like smoking, is bad for you. Frieden refers to tobacco as "legalized drug pushing, and adds, "Terrorists will never kill as many New Yorkers as smoking." Statistically true to date, but isn’t the Administration discouraging use of the word “terrorism”? The mindset seems to be that government’s job is to protect us from our own behavior more than from misbehavior of others.
During the primary season debate at Dartmouth, Obama was asked about a national ban on smoking in public places. He answered, “If it turns out that we're not seeing enough progress at the local level, then I would favor a national law.” Since the President doesn’t smoke in public, why should anyone else?
To combat childhood obesity, Obama told the Washington Post that he believes "guidelines for advertising and marketing foods and beverages must be finalized…" If voluntary adoption of industry guidelines proves ineffective, he said, the Federal Trade Commission should then monitor and enforce additional restrictions on ads targeting children.
And who has Obama made his “regulatory czar”? Cass Sunstein, the Harvard professor best known for trying to change human behavior with “nudges.” He calls it “libertarian paternalism; it works by limiting people’s options. Others, including columnist David Broder, describe it as “help[ing] you make the choices you would make for yourself -- if only you had the strength of will and the sharpness of mind.” When government does this, most of us just call it “Big Brother.”Read more here

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