https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/8/sughed-michael-bloomberg-suggests-disarming-minori/
So, for their own good, we should disarm those black and brown people. Not based on prior criminality, but based on race. For their own good, of course.
This is not out of character, everything from sodas to exercise to automobile ownership should be subject to the wisdom of the all powerful State.
Whether you are Republican or Democrat, you should join with Libertarians to outright reject this view of the State as our caring Mommy and stern Father.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
The nanny state is probably unworkable. Yet there is an outrageous part to our food supply-marketing-Big Agra triangle.
We subsidize corn. Corn oil is one of the main ingredients in a myriad of high calorie and “addictive by design” snack and convenience foods.
Advertising and marketing are highly effective at creating desire for anything and everything. Snack foods have been perfected to take advantage of our DNA with regards to cravings. Much like cigarettes became an extremely effective nicotine delivery system when blended with precise chemicals and potencies. Heroin should be so well constructed.
We know for a verifiable fact that obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and other maladies are serious enough to be a literal epidemic. So much so that it affects recruiting for the military and is causing a rise in healthcare costs that will skyrocket when the affected children reach adulthood.
Given that, and the fact that the food industry could give a rat’s ass about those impacts so long as money is to be made, we have a problem.
Is the problem much different than the drug companies that purposefully flooded the market with opioids to make money from the addicted.
Is there ever such a thing as corporate responsibility to the nation? If not, why not?
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It is perfectly reasonable for the government to provide the public with up-to-date health information to help them in making their decisions(though for the last 40 years, the FDA recommendations were totally wrong) but it is NOT OK for the government to force such choices on us ‘for our own good.’
What you seem to be missing is that Bloomberg has no concept of the proper role of government.
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Forcing our choices?
You have low regard for the power of marketing and the lack of decent nutrition education. The power of persuasion is a science that many cannot resist.
Yes, the FDA has blundered here and there. Probably from pressure by the food industry. And the science of nutrition is evolving. But Cheez Doodles and Coke were never on the FDA recommendations.
Do we have to subsidize the crap and put sodas and snacks in schools just to please Big Agra? We can’t even stop the sale of flavored vaping chemicals, which is directly marketed to children no matter what BS the industry is spewing.
Industry knows that tobacco, alcohol and fatty, sweet and salty foods are habits and addictions best started with children. Is that a good thing?
Would you allow a salesman into your home who sells that stuff to your kids?
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OK, assume you have perfectly good nutritional advice to offer.
Does that justify you putting a gun to someone’s head to force them to take it?
If not, then it does not justify your using government to do it either.
That is what Bloomberg does not understand. We have no right, either as individuals or collectively, to force people to take our good advice so long as they harm only themselves by not accepting it.
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We don’t have to force people to eat good food. But we can limit what is marketed.
Per an earlier discussion, we might even make it an insurance idea. Like UL for appliances. Or whoever allows airplanes to fly so they don’t kill people.
We don’t allow fentanyl. But permit marijuana. Or will eventually. .
And I seriously doubt Cheez Doodle cartels will risk importing crap when the options are just as tasty, but without the addictive construct.
If NYC banned sodas, fat chance of making headway. But if we could pressure our food industry to clean things up, maybe so.
Black market? No big deal. Drugs have those because $1000 gets a few ounces of a drug. Easy to transport, smuggle and cut for consumption. Sodas and Cheez Doodles are not small enough or profitable enough.
We are facing a major problem with the obesity, diabetes and other medical issues because the richest country in the world can’t provide mostly nutritious foods. Somethings not right.
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“We don’t have to force people to eat good food. But we can limit what is marketed.”
There is no difference.
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“ There is no difference.”
Well then let’s just open the trade in fentanyl and let the market decide. It’s probably good for weight loss anyway.
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Are you seriously equating a Big Gulp with fentanyl?
But even so, would there be as many overdose deaths today if people were getting their heroin from a reputable source and knew how much fentanyl had been added?
But even forgetting the futility of the War on Drugs, is it really your position that government should determine how big a soda I should be able to buy or if I want fries with my burger?
Aren’t there some choices you are willing to let me make for myself?
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“ Are you seriously equating a Big Gulp with fentanyl?”
I knew you’d say that. Actually, obesity and diabetes kill and disable a lot more people than fentanyl. But that’s beside the real point.
Your children and grand children are going to pay dearly for the growing epidemic of childhood obesity with its issues of early onset diabetes, strokes etc.
If that is ok with you, I see your point.
Tobacco, alcohol and snack foods are all private profit, public risk products. And they are all addictive, purposely so in most cases. At some point, we all pay for the abuse.
We have managed to at least make tobacco and alcohol restricted to underage consumers. Which, of course, the tobacco industry has fought for decades because they know that if you did not start smoking by the age 25, you never would. The vaping battle is the latest iteration in the nicotine business.
In the battle for reducing smoking, lawsuits against tobacco companies were quite successful since the companies knew, and lied about, the dangers of cigarettes, and it became public.
Now we know about diet and it’s effects. Lung cancer, emphysema were smoking legacies, and now obesity and diabetes are dietary ones. Both kill and both cost an enormous amount of public money.
Now we can do nothing, as you propose. Or we can start to at least recognize that there is a serious problem that won’t disappear by itself.
I am suggesting pressure on the food industry. Publicity and lawsuits…the American way.
Banning a Big Gulp is not the way, obviously. Corporate responsibility is a source based solution. And sometimes companies need a nudge to realize that.
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RE: “At some point, we all pay for the abuse.”
Not necessarily. A typical economy has both wasteful and productive elements. You can’t extrapolate a general rule from just one.
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seatbelt, helmet laws included? How about DUI? There are tons of laws that protect the general public by criminalizing non-direct effects.
BTW, the state really doesn’t give a ratzass if you don’t wear a seatbelt. The insurance companies do and injuries resulting indirectly affect all of us in the form of increased rates.
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DUI puts others at risk, and is a legitimate topic for government to address.
Failure to use seatbelts and helmets should be considered contributory negligence in an accident and limit or eliminate your cause to sue another for liability or recover from your own insurer.
It is OK to require one to be responsible for the risks of their bad choices, but it is not OK to force a good choice.
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You’re on a slippery slope with this topic, but it is a matter of degree. I think providing warnings, information and education are appropriate, but banning “certain” things we ingest because it MAY lead to health issues if abused is over the line.
It’s a free (mostly) Country, if someone wants their Big Mac, big gulp, or heroin that’s their business and their choice.
Of course this assumes they also pay the cost of their bad choices.
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Read my last reply to Don if you would. I made parallels to the tobacco industry and how we have at least dealt with another product.
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OK, I read your post. Restricting those things we consider dangerous/harmful from non-adults is entirely appropriate.
Beyond that, I’d ask you re-read my post.
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There you touch on the real problem, in that we allow people to make bad choices and then force others to pay for the consequences.
We can choose freedom, and let the cost of consequences fall on those making the choices or we can choose socialism and allow people to impose the costs of their choices on the public, but then take control of those choices.
We can’t have both freedom and dependency.
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Are you serious? You are fine with Big Pharma and it’s distributors sending millions of opioid pills to tiny pharmacies in Appalachia because those folks are making bad choices.
Most of the problem among the Trump country addiction started innocuously with an over prescription for a workplace injury. Plus Big Pharma telling doctors that they were not addictive if used for pain.
Bad choices were listening to their doctors I suppose.
That’s why states are successfully suing the drug companies which sold that story line.
The friggin’ drug companies were purposefully making huge private profit and we were stuck cleaning up the mess.
The snack food industry spent decades getting just the right formulas for salt, fats and sugars to cater to our evolutionary cravings. Great for them. Now we are paying to clean up that mess.
Who is making the bad choices?
Or put another way, science has perfected ways to exploit human habits, weaknesses, physiology and psychology for product sales. And when the results are detrimental, that is just fine and dandy.
Sorry, that just does not pass the taste test.
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Banning is tough. Making the sale of addictive drugs and foods less profitable is one approach.
Opioids have their place in medicine. It has been known for decades that the opioids were very addictive. So why do we shrug at Big Pharma and their distributors when they ship millions of pills to a tiny pharmacy in the hill of West Virginia? It was obvious that false information created a market of desperate addicts. A person going through withdrawal from prescription pain killers is not going to make rational choices.
So now the states are suing…and winning. There was more than enough evidence from internal memos and communications that profit from the addiction was the motive and not the furtherance of pain amelioration.
Big Macs and sodas are not so much the point. The snack food industry has perfected the most addicting recipes based on science for the sale of fats, salts and sweets. They also benefit from taxpayer subsidies of corn and sugar which are the primary sources of some of the products. I predict that some time in the near future as childhood obesity, diabetes and other medical issues become hugely expensive that companies will be asked, then sued, to clean up their act.
As an added bonus, much of the basic science in drugs and foods is funded by the taxpayer. Kind of a “fine howdy do” Big Pharma and Agra have done with our dough.
Bottom line for me: it’s more complicated than just blaming people for bad choices. Either that or we have the weakest humans on earth with crappy morals.
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I note that no one has responded to Bloomberg’s position that we disarm minorities for their own good.
If Trump had said that you’d all be screaming racism, and be correct.
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Bloomberg thinks he’s the smartest person in every room (probably correct most of the time), but his views on the role of Government are myopic and over-reaching.
Yes, his comment was clearly radical. And the fact that he may have god intentions does not change that fact.
I guess the difference is, Bloomberg is trying to help, and trump is a bigoted narcissistic asshole.
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“Racist, not radical” and “god intentions do” may have been a Freudian slip…
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The way it was worded is ripe for screaming. But you have said many times that most of the murders are by gangs in the inner cities. So if you are not in a gang or buying drugs the odds of getting shot are tiny.
Bloomberg just said the same thing. That is, “that’s where the guns are that are killing Americans”.
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Not the same thing at all.
It is true that most murders are committed by black gang members, it is not true that most, or even a large part, of blacks are murderers.
Disarming all minorities because a subset commit murders is racist.
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Good point.
Now how do we get the guns out of the hands of gang members?
And, more importantly, the people who are supplying them? For the North East, Virginia is a big supplier. If straw purchasers are a big source, why aren’t gun dealers reporting them.
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Gun stores do report them, but the straw buyers are rarely prosecuted.
But as a practical matter, you can’t keep firearms out of the hands of gang members. They are sufficiently motivated to have one that they will do whatever they have to to get one.If Gang A has firearms and gang B does not, gang B dies. So gang B will do whatever it takes.
And, they already have a smuggling pipeline in place.
Consider the Mexican cartels. Mexico’s gun laws are more restrictive than Britain’s. There is only 1 gun store in the whole country and even with a year’s worth of paperwork and a spotless record, a civilian can only buy a few less effective calibers and can only keep them in their home.
Yet the cartels have enough heavy weapons and machine guns to battle the police effectively, they can get all the machine guns and RPG’s they want from Cuba and Venezuela.
There is no law you could pass that would disarm the gangs, all you would do is provide another lucrative black market for the cartels.
The most you could do is pass laws that left ONLY the criminal s armed.
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“The most you could do is pass laws that left ONLY the criminal s armed.”
The great fear mongering from the 2A folks resonates once again. Overstating things does not help the argument.
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“… position that we disarm minorities for their own good.”
I believe MOST modern day gun control laws began with this picture…
Where are da white wymens?
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Modern gun control started in Alabama with laws intended to prevent former slaves form arming themselves against the KKK
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A radical suggestion from almost 5 years ago? Wow, someone jumps in the race and the digging as deep as possible for something like this starts in earnest.
Yes, a radical suggestion. Unconstitutional, at best. Bad idea at worst. However, by digging things like this up you leave no room for evolution of thought. Not that I am supporting Bloomberg. (My NYC-area father would probably disown me if I did). And yes, he supports gun control. Not always in the right way. But, sheesh, Don. A five year old article? You couldn’t come up with something more recent?
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Kavenaugh was almost blocked form the Supreme Court with false charges from 30 years ago.
I would think wanting to deny an entire race a Constitutional right would be a disqualifier forever.
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Kavanaugh was possibly a sexual predator and has shown no evolution of thought. The charges were unproven, but not necessarily false. Bloomberg has radical ideas on some things, but has evolved. Again, I do not support him or this idea of his. But again, 5 years ago? Comparing Kavanaugh to Bloomberg is apples and kumquats.
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“ false charges ” ??
In the words of Senator Kennedy (current), “you don’t know that…”
Do you know something NO ONE else does?
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They are false until proven true. The presumption of innocence is not just a legal principle, it is a logical position.
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Disappointing Response William…
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@tabor
I apologize, I thought for when I was typing the AG was posting…
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No one ever proved they were false.
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Of course you know that accusations must be proven, not disproved.
I could accuse Ruth Bader Ginsburg of flagellating frogs for sexual gratification and demand her resignation. After all, she hasn’t proved she doesn’t.
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I have always suspected she was kinky.
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ARe you old enough to remember where that comes from?
Back when Nixon was in office, before Watergate, and before social media, he was nevertheless unpopular on many college campuses. A sociologist seeded a rumor that the President flagellated frogs and then waited to see how fast it became “common knowledge” on campus. It took less than a week.
It proves that people will believe anything, no matter how ludicrous, about a politician they don’t like.
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Wait, she wouldn’t happen to have a much younger sister, would she? A daughter, perhaps?
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“I would think wanting to deny an entire race a Constitutional right would be a disqualifier forever”
Does that also apply to the North Carolina GOP that the courts lambasted about their voting laws that altered voting access mainly to blacks “with surgical precision”.
I am sure it does.
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Of course the big difference is that Bloomberg suggested it, the North Carolina GOP did it.
As did a lot of states in the grips of the GOP when SCOTUS overturned some of the Voting Rights Act.
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How does that in any way excuse Bloomberg’s condescending intent to deny the 2ndn Amendment to blacks ‘for their own good?’
If we assume the accusations against NC are true, does that make Bloomberg’s Nanny State attitude OK?
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Not excusing Bloomberg. Pointing that what he said once does not equal the condescension and brutal stripping of voting rights the GOP actually did.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/north-carolina-voting-rights-law/493649/
“In what comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times, the State’s very justification for a challenged statute hinges explicitly on race—specifically its concern that African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise,” wrote Judge Diana Gribbon Motz.” (The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals)
The NC GOP apparently thought the black voters didn’t deserve a voice. They’re just going to vote Democrat anyway. Screw ‘em.
She later commented that the laws passed target blacks wit “surgical precision”.
Bloomberg’s words may have been hurtful and sweeping in it’s telling, but NC Republicans were pretty much “human scum” as our president likes to say.
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