They're Tragically Delicious
Confronting Big Cereal, unregulated garage sales, and other evils
How can Americans be expected to wrestle with the myriad dangers that confront them each day? Insalubrious cereal? Unregulated garage sales? Pools of death? Sometimes it's too much to process.
You know what we desperately are crying out for? An army of crusading federal regulatory agents with unfettered power. Who else has the fortitude and foresight to keep us all safe?
Mercifully, as The Washington Post recently reported, many of President Barack Obama's appointees "have been quietly exercising their power over the trappings of daily life … awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace, 15,000 consumer products, and most items found in kitchen pantries and medicine cabinets."
If there's anything Americans are hankering for in their everyday lives, it's a vast regulatory apparatus. Hey, it's dangerous out there.
That's why the new chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission recently unleashed 100 agency inspectors to investigate whether swimming pools in America were equipped with drain covers to prevent children from entrapment.
Nearly 0.9 children fall prey to this sadistic killer each year. With the compassionate guidance of federal officials, we almost surely will see this number plunge to 0.8 children per year.
It should be noted that in each tragic year that passes, an estimated 300 children younger than 4 drown in swimming pools. Why our government sits idly by as this watery assassin targets the most vulnerable among us is a mystery.
Don't get me started on food. Washington will not rest until every one of our children is forcing down some gravel-based Mueslix after morning calisthenics in the name of a glorious preventive care revolution. I get it. They're fat.
This is why I am grateful that one courageous soul finally has stood up to the menacing influence of Big Cereal. Yes, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg has had enough of deceitful infiltration of Cheerios, demanding that General Mills cease and desist a marketing campaign that peddles the fallacious claim that the oat-based cereal can lower cholesterol.
Why stop with oats? Trix are not only for kids, you know. Lucky Charms are nowhere close to being "magically" delicious.
What Lucky Charms does do is perpetuate the stereotype that the Irish are a bunch of oft-inebriated jerks—which everyone knows is only true about 70 percent of the time.
Isn't there a statute we can pass in Congress to end the hate?
Then again, it's not only those scheming Irish who are hawking their wares—unregulated—on concrete suburban driveways and inner-city thrift shops across this country.
The "Resale Round-up," launched by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, finally limits the power of the merchants of death who recklessly barter secondhand toys to unsuspecting civilians at low prices. Consider that Tonka truck -- the one that you somehow outlasted -- contraband. If not, you could be fined thousands of dollars.
The only question now is: How did any of us survive this long?
Michael Livermore—executive director of the Institute for the Study of Regulation, at the New York University School of Law—points out that "in the Bush administration, the problem was that the political folks were hostile to the mission."
It is no surprise that the Bush administration—a close second to Big Cereal in wickedness—was hostile to regulating the rhinestones on your kids' denim jackets. Apparently, the depths of its depravity knew no bounds.
The mission? Simple. Keeping you safe. Because everyone knows that parents aren't equipped to keep their children safe until a bureaucrat explains exactly how it's done.
And those parents who are neglecting their children's safety, well, they always care more once government gets involved. Right?
David Harsanyi is a columnist at The Denver Post and the author of Nanny State. Visit his Web site at www.DavidHarsanyi.com.
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