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"SODA JERK"

I haven’t had a Slurpee since my kids were small. I don’t super size anything. In fact you can count on one hand the number of carbonated sugary drinks I consume each month, and still have a couple of fingers left over. I haven’t lived in New York for 5 years. So, why is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s latest nanny gram an announcement that he wants to ban the sale of large sized soft drinks bothering me. That’s easy, it’s another example of some form of government telling its citizens what it can and cannot do. Limiting ones freedom to choose. Ones freedom to consume. One’s freedom to pursuit happiness. If happiness is a 24 ounce cup full of Mountain Dew or Root Beer or Coca Cola. Michael Bloomberg is a billionaire who got rich, long before Gates and Jobs and the Google gang packaged technology for the masses, by inventing a trading terminal that became standard equipment on Wall Street. Historians might argue that he only became Mayor of New York because of 9-11. A local politician named Mark Green was a shoe in for the job, but the primary that would have propelled him to the democratic nomination and a likely general election win later was cancelled, because the polls were opening just as the hijacked earlier slammed into The World Trade Center. In the chaotic aftermath…Green’s popularity wilted. Giuliani moved on and Bloomberg picked up the pieces. He’s become the ultimate strong mayor…and nanny in charge. He’s banned smoking almost everywhere, steered tax hikes to make cigarettes affordable only the wealthy or the addicted. He’s even banned food donations to the homeless, fearing the down and out will get too much salt, fat and cholesterol unless the well intentioned and often well cooked meals are vetted by the city health department. I suppose if you drink too much soda all those calories will add up, but a lot of people sit around with their heads in Bloomberg’s money terminals…making money while sedentary, but he hasn’t banned those machines. You can still get a corned beef sandwich at a NY Daily with enough calories for a week and you can get enough Guinness at most any Irish bar to float a battle ship. No bans there either. It seems to me Bloomberg’s picking on the fast food industry, unfairly. You can get fat consuming a lot of milk to. And if you get even a moderate amount of exercise you can offset the calories from a large soft drink. Speaking of calories, that morning latte has more caloric content that a can of soda. So, does a plain bagel. Or a glazed doughnut. Bloomberg and other do-gooders who think political office is a license to dictate what they think is good for us…should lead by example…moderate consumption of almost anything is ok, unless it’s politics, the rhetoric will kill ya.