Fausta's Blog

Don’t get injured in New York City, because Nanny Bloomberg knows better than your doctor:
New York City to Restrict Prescription Painkillers in Public Hospitals’ Emergency Rooms

Under the new city policy, most public hospital patients will no longer be able to get more than three days’ worth of narcotic painkillers like Vicodin and Percocet. Long-acting painkillers, including OxyContin, a familiar remedy for chronic backache and arthritis, as well as Fentanyl patches and methadone, will not be dispensed at all.

How often is Oxycontin prescribed in emergency rooms anyway, and why is Bloomberg sticking his nose on this?

And lost, stolen or destroyed prescriptions will not be refilled.

After I came up with this post’s title I found out Stephen Green had it, too.

A mayor’s job is shovel the snow, catch criminals. Not this stuff.

If NYC has a problem with junkies and painkillers, I suggest they start dealing with the junkies. Instead, Bloomberg will crack down mostly on people who aren’t breaking the law, by doing what governments do best: Creating shortages of vital goods.

But fear not, the short, plump mayor knows what’s best for you.

UPDATE:
Howard Portnoy:

Michael R. Bloomberg isn’t a doctor, and he doesn’t even play one on television. But that hasn’t stopped him from practicing medicine. Last July, he ordered New York City hospitals to begin hiding baby formula so that mothers of newborns would be forced to nurse their infant children. A month earlier, he enacted a ban on soft drinks larger than 16 fluid ounces, seeming to understand that if he didn’t take action, his patients – er, subjects … er, constituents … would drink themselves to an early, sugary death.

Look up “Bloomberg” in the latest illustrated thesaurus & his photo pops up under “officious little pr*ck” faustasblog.com/2013/01/nanny-… @elbloombito

— Fausta (@Fausta) January 11, 2013

No joy in bloombergville! Nanny Bloomberg shut down the free Trojan’s Vibrator giveaway.

Mental Recession has video and plenty of puns,

Hundreds of people lined up for their chance to receive a vibrator, but the gathering quickly grew flaccid as city officials came in and told promoters to shut down due to the big crowds.

The hot dog carts had a sign that read, “relish the moment.”

Trojans was giving them away at BlogHer12, and were a huge success shaking up the place. The two guys manning the booth were young (very young – do their moms know they do this?) and very cute.

The rumor was that an enterprising BlogHer attendee stole a case – probably to sell on eBay.

It was the most popular booth, outdoing the free make-up, shoulder massages, manicures, and Jimmy Dean’s Mr Sun.

Trojans gave away 4,000 at BlogHer. They’ll be back in Manhattan today, from “mid-town to the meat packing district.”

Let the good times roll!

Couple handcuffed, jailed for dancing on subway platform

It was nearly midnight when Stern and Hess, a film-industry prop master, headed home last July from Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night’s Swing. As they waited for the train, a musician started playing steel drums on the nearly empty platform and Stern and Hess began to feel the beat.

“We were doing the Charleston,” Stern said. That’s when two police officers approached and pulled a “Footloose.”
“They said, ‘What are you doing?’ and we said, ‘We’re dancing,’ ” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You can’t do that on the platform.’ ”

The cops asked for ID, but when Stern could only produce a credit card, the officers ordered the couple to go with them — even though the credit card had the dentist’s picture and signature.
When Hess began trying to film the encounter, things got ugly, Stern said.

“We brought out the camera, and that’s when they called backup,” she said. “That’s when eight ninja cops came from out of nowhere.”

Hess was allegedly tackled to the platform floor, and cuffs were slapped on both of them. The initial charge, according to Stern, was disorderly conduct for “impeding the flow of traffic.”

“There was nobody on the platform. There were, like, three people,” she said.

First Smoking, Then Sodas, Now There’s No Dancing in Mayor Bloomberg’s New York…, so don’t let the bedbugs bite!

UPDATE,
Linked by Moe Lane. Thanks!

Linked by the Pirate’s Cove. Thanks!

#NannyBloomberg’s appointees want your popcorn and your latte, too:

Health panel talks about wider food ban

The board hand-picked by Mayor Michael Bloomberg that must approve his ban of selling large sugar-filled drinks at restaurants might be looking at other targets.

The New York City Board of Health showed support for limiting sizes of sugary drinks at a Tuesday meeting in Queens. They agreed to start the process to formalize the large-drink ban by agreeing to start a six-week public comment period.

At the meeting, some of the members of board said they should be considering other limits on high-calorie foods.

One member, Bruce Vladeck, thinks limiting the sizes for movie theater popcorn should be considered.

“The popcorn isn’t a whole lot better than the soda,” Vladeck said.

Another board member thinks milk drinks should fall under the size limits.

“There are certainly milkshakes and milk-coffee beverages that have monstrous amounts of calories,” said board member Dr. Joel Forman.

Obviously they think we’re all helpless children who must be told, or, in Mikey’s own words, “forced to understand” what’s good for us.

Phinneas:

Other than a public comment period (and how much good do we really think that will do?), there is no check on their power to regulate the most basic behaviors of NYCers; the elected representatives of the residents of New York City, the city council, apparently have no say. It might take an act of the legislature to tell Mikey to “knock it off.”

As Dan Riehl says,

It must be wonderful living in a city like New York, where all the serious problems have been solved and all bureaucrats have to do is sit around worrying about what citizens eat and drink.

Yeah…I wonder how many “monstrous amounts of calories” it takes a bedbug to propagate.

And,

UPDATE,
In NYC, The Government Needs To Ban Soda For Adults, But In the Schools, Adults Have Nothing to Teach Children
A Blue Man Group school??

Gary Taubes has an op-ed in the NYTimes,

four years ago, Italian researchers began publishing the results from a series of clinical trials, all of which reported that, among patients with heart failure, reducing salt consumption increased the risk of death.

Those trials have been followed by a slew of studies suggesting that reducing sodium to anything like what government policy refers to as a “safe upper limit” is likely to do more harm than good. These covered some 100,000 people in more than 30 countries and showed that salt consumption is remarkably stable among populations over time. In the United States, for instance, it has remained constant for the last 50 years, despite 40 years of the eat-less-salt message. The average salt intake in these populations — what could be called the normal salt intake — was one and a half teaspoons a day, almost 50 percent above what federal agencies consider a safe upper limit for healthy Americans under 50, and more than double what the policy advises for those who aren’t so young or healthy. This consistency, between populations and over time, suggests that how much salt we eat is determined by physiological demands, not diet choices.

One could still argue that all these people should reduce their salt intake to prevent hypertension, except for the fact that four of these studies — involving Type 1 diabetics, Type 2 diabetics, healthy Europeans and patients with chronic heart failure — reported that the people eating salt at the lower limit of normal were more likely to have heart disease than those eating smack in the middle of the normal range. Effectively what the 1972 paper would have predicted.

Are you listening, Nanny Bloomberg?

Just in time for summer heat, New York Plans to Ban Sale of Big Sizes of Sugary Drinks

New York City plans to enact a far-reaching ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity.

Obviously Mike thinks it’s up to him to do something, no matter how meaningless, to bring in more government regulation,

The proposed ban would affect virtually the entire menu of popular sugary drinks found in delis, fast-food franchises and even sports arenas, from energy drinks to pre-sweetened iced teas. The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited under the first-in-the-nation plan, which could take effect as soon as next March.

The measure would not apply to diet sodas, fruit juices, dairy-based drinks like milkshakes, or alcoholic beverages; it would not extend to beverages sold in grocery or convenience stores.

So, after all, to answer my question in the post title, it looks like you’ll still be able to get a Big Gulp, if they sell them in Manhattan?

What will happen is that businesses will offer free refills, people will spend more money, and producers will find a way around it, as it happened with candy bars,

The company has replaced the King Size Snickers with the so-called “2toGo,” which is two bars in one package. Each of the bars is 220 calories. The company said the package can be resealed “to save one for later.”

By the way,
I have had chronic hypoglycemia for well over a decade, and do not tolerate anything with any sugar added, so I simply do not have anything with added sugar. The thing is, it’s up to you, not to Mike Bloomberg, to decide what you eat. Upcoming sugar taxes are even more of an insult than these “bans on sugary drinks”, since the government spends huge amounts of money in sugar subsidies, including corn syrup.

What it all adds up to is, we live in a much less free society than we did 100 years ago. 50 years ago. in fact, 20 years ago, thanks to Mike Bloomberg, among others.

Michael Bloomberg: turning the Empire State into the Nanny State, one diet item at a time.

UPDATE:
Mike wants to save you from yourself but endorses Charlie Rangel. Culture of corruption indeed.

“We’re forcing you to understand“?

And,
NYC Council: Ban Of Large Sugared Sodas ‘Seems Punitive,’ ‘Won’t Yield A Positive Result’

In today’s spam basket,

George Dennison Prentice: “What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease.”

If only Nanny Bloomberg would read that. He’s against trans fats, salt, liquor, and even sat on the couch to speak against guns,

since, of course, criminals, by definition, will abide with gun laws, or something.

Now I can’t wait for Nanny Bloomberg to ban perfume:
Wearing Scented Products Like Perfume or Cologne in Public Could Become Regulated

The fragrance issue could put businesses on the hook for legal liability. The head of the human resources department here at FOX Chicago said all employers need take it seriously.

What’s next? Will government send someone to make sure you shower and use antiperspirant daily?

—————————-
And, by the way, the Giants home stadium is in New Jersey. Bloomberg is not their mayor.

The Daily has this headline,
Paula’s big fat secret
TV chef famous for Southern-fried decadence to reveal she has diabetes

Paula Deen — the queen of high-calorie, Southern cooking — is about to come clean and confess that she can’t eat her own dishes anymore because she has diabetes.

The Georgia-born chef — a Food Network star who has written five best-selling cookbooks — has been trying to keep her condition a secret, even after the National Enquirer reported in April that she has Type 2 diabetes, which is often associated with fatty foods and obesity.

Sources say Deen, 64, who never addressed the diabetes question, has worked out a multimillion-dollar deal to be the spokeswoman for a pharmaceutical company and endorse the drug she is taking.

The unnamed “sources” were wrong: James Joyner’s commenter PJ clarifies

Novartis, the pharmaceutical company, denies that she has signed a deal with them:

The rumors that Novartis has signed a multi-million dollar spokesperson deal with Paula Deen for a Diabetes treatment are not true. Novartis is not working with Ms. Deen.

If Deen has made a lot of money frying Twinkies, that’s fine by me.

There are two things that bother me about this type of story:
1. The outrage over Paula Deen making money from her own private enterprise. Face it, she’s a self-made successful entrepreneur who didn’t ruin a state and lose $1.2 billion of her client’s money.

That she became morbidly obese is her own responsibility, too, which brings me to
2. Deen’s not at your house making you fried twinkies (or whatever), and putting a gun to your head to make you eat them. You and no one else is responsible for what you ingest. Somebody go tell that toNanny Mike Bloomberg.

Added:
Recommended reading,

UPDATE,
Linked by Peach Pundit. Thanks!
Linked by Georgia Slate. Thanks!
Linked by Cynthia. Thanks!

Police Clear Zuccotti Park of Protesters; the protestors must have been adding transfats and too much salt to their food since Bloomberg finally got around to it,

The mayor, at his news conference, read a statement he had issued around 6 a.m. explaining the reasoning behind the sweep. “The law that created Zuccotti Park required that it be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day,” the mayor said in the statement. “Every since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with” because the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”

For Bingley and Wall Street!

A look at the Zuccotti Park zoo on Columbus Day:
Millionaire celebrities Kayne West, Russell Simmons, Mark Ruffalo and Penn Badgley (never heard of Penn before) – and, what would a protest be without Susan Sarandon and Al Sharpton? – joined the affluent and effluently odorous crowd. The Daily Mail has the details, plus fashion show,
A very privileged protest: Wearing $300 jeans and from some of the most exclusive schools, the children of the one per cent out for a good time at Occupy Wall Street
Teens from Bard and Parsons show their solidarity in NY
Chicago protesters heckle financial industry events
Dozens are arrested, including girl, 14, in first Des Moines protest
Mayor Bloomberg blames protest on warm weather
Wall St demonstrators plan march today on millionaires’ mansions

Does that mean they’ll stop by Bloomberg’s own abode? He’s The Man, after all. He says he won’t throw out the occupiers “as long as they’re not breaking any laws“, so one must guess that in Mike’s book loitering, drug use, public defecation, and what in olden days was called “creating a public nuisance” are not against any laws. Makes me pine for the days of Giuliani.

But to answer the question of whose houses, who’s heading there, Matthew Vadum reports,
Radical labor organizer Stephen Lerner of SEIU intends to terrorize the families of bank executives in their homes as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

The rest of the occupiers are best represented by this character (click here for larger version),

The NYTimes says the Protests Offer Help, and Risk, for Democrats. Help! I’m being repressed!

If anything, the self-esteem generation ought to just shut up, shower, and stop bothering people. In the meantime, here are a few #OWSPickupLines: What time do you get off not working? More at Twitter.

On a personal note,
For years I worked in downtown Manhattan, but had never heard of “Zuccotti Park” until this latest fiasco. As it turns out, I walked past the “park” every morning and every evening but never stopped to find out if it had a name. It’s mostly a plaza.

Better there than at Louise Nevelson Plaza down the street. I’m rather fond of Louise’s sculptures.