When Will Lloyd Levine Stop Playing Nanny?
The Nanny State kicks into high gear on July 1st.Its not good enough that when I shopped at HOWS Market the other day I voluntarily bought their cloth grocery bags and bypassed plastic and/or paper to carry my purchases home. Nope, Lloyd Levine - "the guy guy who got his name in the papers by asking pets to be neutered and lights to be fluorescent" also known as the Bachelor who screws over his friends had to pass a law to MAKE YOU recycle your grocery bags.
Thank God for Lloyd being my Assemblyman, my daddy, my mommy and nanny all in one. Perhaps you would like to pass a law to provide for the collective wiping of our asses?
Memo to Fran Pavley: PLEASE wipe the floor with this clown.
Labels: Fran Pavley, lloyd levine, nanny state
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 6/14/2007 12:13:00 AM
23 Comments:
I must respectfully disagree with you, Your Honor.
"Nanny state" is when the government enacts laws to protect you from yourself, e.g., cities banning transfats.
Levine's proposals, by contrast, are to protect you, future generations and innocent pets from other persons, who aren't as responsible as you:
1. Reducing the waste from plastic bags can help the envirnoment and reduce the price we pay for land-fill and disposal.
2. Mandatory spaying and neutering is to prevent the birth of unwanted pets to irresponsible people, who don't take care of them. Result? The City kills innocent, perfectly adoptable pets, and burns up big tax dollars doing so, year after year.
3. The light bulb thing -- which even I now reject for technical reasons -- would ideally reduce our need for power plants and, thereby, the related pollution (e.g., electricity from coal) and, possibly, dependence on foreign oil.
So I'm with you in opposing "nanny state" BS laws, but I don't think these three items qualify.
intelligent people generally don't need to be told what to do.
they're already recycling, spaying, and enjoying CFL power savings.
Walter is right, these laws won't really bother us.
I don't have a problem with this. Those plastic grocery bags are a major component of land fills. I'm all for it. Yes, I already recycle and use canvas bags but some people do need to be forced to do this. I agree with Moore and Dowd. I don't have a problem with the government telling me what to do if it's good for the environment and our future.
Walter and Matt make the case that I make - we don't need government to make us do these things.
Walter, Nanny State to me is anytime the government overreaches to control our personal behaivor on everyday living issues (I am not talking about things like beating people, murdering them, stealing from them, etc.)
On some of these things like the grocery bags, the light bulbs, etc. the jury is out on whether or not its really hurting anything. Plastic bags MAY be filling up landfills but I would posit that other items fill them up even more. How do you focus on one item (the bags) and not the other?
I also believe that the market has the effective tools to effect the personal behaivor of people on these things. For example - you can buy a 99cent cloth bag at HOWS and it holds more stuff than a paper or plastic bag (and doesn't rip). I can leave the store with fewer bags to carry. That's a benefit to me to pay 99 cents one time and continue to reap over and over. Trader Joe's takes it one step further and everytime you use their cloth bag you get a free raffle ticket. I think that for the supermarkets there is a strong cost savings for them to encourage people to use cloth bags and do things like give coupons or points everytime you use one. In the long run that's cheaper than the stores having to buy plastic and paper bags, account for them, inventory them, stock them, have someone transport them from the warehouse, etc.
Concerning the new light bulbs, if it can be demonstrated to people they will save money and have more convenience by using a light bulb that uses less energy and lasts longer, people will buy them.
I definitely think that spaying pets is a good thing. I'm not an animal person but I have had pets and do like them. If you're going to have a living thing in your care you should be responsible. I don't have as much of a protest against this as the other items, but to be consistent I think its still outside the scope of what governemnt is supposed to be, at least what the framers had in mind. However, I would love to see the same energy applied to irresponsible people who have children and don't care for them. That harms society and costs government more than too many puppies and kittens. Perhaps we need mandatory spaying and neutering of humans too. Seriously though we should be just as outraged at the parents of gang members, thugs, etc. who just keep popping out kids. Not that all people whose kids turn bad are irresponsible parents but probably 90% of them are.
The bottom line however is that politicians like Levine pursue these laws banning light bulbs, banning pet sex, banning grocery bags, banning french fries, banning peanut butter cookies whatever, in a cynical ploy to advance their own careers. Levine in particular and on top of it he's a major lightweight.
When these politicians address some meat and potato quality of life issues (and the issue isn't trying to ban meat and potatoes), maybe then we can talk about light bulbs and grocery bags.
918 -
Your comments are scary!
Maybe Lloyd can come over and wipe your bottom for you, sounds like you need it.
Higby --
Levine might be more inclined to wipe Berman's =X
yes, thanks to levine, we are moving toward a cleaner valley .
ban plastics . ban foam containers. put litterers and loiterers in jail. put graffiti taggers to work cleaning gutters and walls .
Michelle are you being funny or are you truly simple minded?
mayor sam, 9:18 here. I already spay neuter my animals. I already use canvas bags. I'm already doing what Levine has made into bills. I'm obviously wiping my own ass and don't need his help but some others do. A few people disagree with you and you call them "scary." That's nice.
Wow, Mayor Sam, you stand to los a ton of credibility when you link an edited blog about Waldman.
Some very interesting and humorous comments are now missing from the original...
Shame on you.
Uh, make that "lose" as in you have now completely lost my interest in blogging or reading this site by your rewriting history.
Pathetic and unethical.
...of course, in a couple of weeks, this will probably be edited out too...
lol, talk about a "Nanny State"...
Mayor Sam -
I can tell you that its Lloyd Levine posting that you edited the Waldman story. They're trying to discredit you because you have pissed them off royally.
The Pavley people are printing off and xeroxing your blogs though.
Warm regards,
A real Democrat
michele6933 is well known Lloyd groupie
When he becomes a real man.
He is just a sissy boy who depends on his old hag father.
Levine is better off shining shoes.
Then that would be an honest living.
He cant do that because his old dad depends on taxpayer money.
Actually, the posts that were deleted were unflattering to Stuart Waldman. I noticed they were missing too. What gives, Mayor Sam? Doing a little creative historical revisionism?
Where is the one that was signed "Runner"?
Why is every post on June 4 after 10:47 a.m. and before 9:20 p.m. missing on the "Big Doin's" Blog?
Please put them back, Mayor Sam.
No posts were deleted unless one of the other admins (Zuma, Walter or Joe M.) deleted them.
Nice grasping at straws!
918 - what's scary is you say you don't mind government telling you what to do. If you're already doing what you think is right, why do you need a nanny?
11:29p, It's called "plausable deniability" -- in other words, "I didn't do it, but someone else may have."
Nice work, Mayor!
some countries charge for plastic bags at grocers, and almost everyone reuses theirs. but eventually they et too gross and have to be thrown away -- re: those idiotic $400 bags featured on front page LAT while ago, do you really want to put leaky milk and food in there? How stupid and vain. offer the bags at a price like even a dime or quarter and that would cut down significantly right there.
another levine feel-good bill: he's persuading the UC system to change fall move-in dorm dates, cuz they're conflicting w/ Jewish high holidays. that's fine, i don't have a problem w/ it, but has the guy ever come up w/ anything useful or just stuff to get his PR in with his constituency?
Levine has only begun to hit the panic button.
After being absent from his own district for four years, they're going to be seeing a lot more of and - suddenly - hearing a lot more from him.
Unfortunately, while he's been a good Dem, he has been a pretty useless representative to his district, never noticing the gang issue.
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