Nanny statism strikes again

Financially, California is over the guardrails and plunging down the cliff side towards the rocks and booming surf. Businesses and productive citizens are fleeing as fast as their U-Hauls can take them. So, the stewards of Santa Clara felt that this was high time to do something about...Happy Meals. Nevermind how popular McDonalds is with people of all ages. The granola-gobbling hippies (I can't help but presume) running that county have deemed that the public cannot be trusted to use their own judgment of what to put into their reckless tummies.

Happy Meal toys and other promotions that come with high-calorie children's meals will soon be banned in parts of Santa Clara County unless the restaurants meet nutritional guidelines approved Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors.

"This ordinance prevents restaurants from preying on children's' love of toys" to sell high-calorie, unhealthful food, said Supervisor Ken Yeager, who sponsored the measure. "This ordinance breaks the link between unhealthy food and prizes."

Legislation like this is not intended to right any wrong. It is not intended to ameliorate any ill, although it is necessarily pitched as such. Rather, it is intended to remake the world more to the suiting of people who feel it to be their calling to remake the world. Just because. It's a picture-perfect example of what has been termed Punitive Liberalism, a way to cut down to size one of those big players that everyone hates, except for the public.

We are frequently told by our new masters that we simply don't understand our place in the functioning of society. In former times, it would have been this kind of society that didn't understand its place in the functioning of us. Yet, here we are. They won.