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THE VILLAGE CHOICE - Volume 4, Issue 31
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Manhattan Libertarian Party
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Aug 12, 2005 12:03 PDT
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THE VILLAGE CHOICE
A Weekly Rundown of News, Views and Events Affecting Freedom in NYC
Volume 4, Issue 31 * August 12, 2005
THE VILLAGE CHOICE is brought to you by the Manhattan Libertarian Party.
http://www.manhattanlp.org
In this issue:
* Defending free speech from political welfare queens!
* Frieden versus French fries!
* Spitzer says women don’t own their bodies!
* Your calendar of pro-freedom events!
* Much more!
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* News Bites *
Libertarian in the Court
James Lesczynski entered the state supreme court recently and told Judge
Paul Feinman, “I don’t want to pay for speech I object to.” The chair of
Manhattan’s Libertarian Party was objecting to the city’s campaign
finance rules that subsidize political campaigns with taxpayers’
dollars. This constitutes “coercive speech,” he told the New York Sun,
and violates the free-speech clauses of the state and federal
constitutions.
http://tinyurl.com/b9gth
Fat Chance
New York City restaurants, famed for offering an endless variety of
foods, could soon be narrowing their selections. In an effort to fight
the city's biggest killer, heart disease, the New York City Department
of Health and Mental Hygiene is urging restaurants to voluntarily
eliminate trans fats from their menus. That would mean banning many
margarines and frying oils from professional kitchens _ and could
require some chefs to rework long-held recipes for baked goods.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--restaurants-trans0811aug11,0,3913949.story
Slap-Happy Spitzer
The New York State attorney general's office, which usually busies
itself with white-collar crime, took the time this week to announce a
crackdown on a face-slapping contest. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer
said at a news conference that the parent company of a New York radio
station, WQHT-FM, known as Hot 97, had agreed to pay $240,000 in
penalties for its "Smackfest" competition, in which two contestants,
usually young women, slap each other while standing several feet apart
in the station's studio in Greenwich Village. The station also agreed to
end the contests. The station crossed a legal line by advertising and
profiting from the contest, said Francine James, the deputy attorney
general who led the investigation. [In other words, it’s okay for Eliot
Spitzer to use the Smackfest to promote his gubernatorial campaign, but
the radio station can’t use it to promote its programming.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/nyregion/09slap.html
Sanitation Agents Out to Lunch
A citywide sanitation law has residents of one tony Brooklyn street
crying foul. Emily Wasserman, of 151 De Kalb Ave., was shocked to find a
pink violation ticket near her front door, charging her $100 for a
"dirty sidewalk" a little more than a week ago. When she received
another Wednesday, she hit the roof. On both occasions, she said,
producing photos as confirmation, there were a few leaves and a couple
of small slips of paper — the consequence of living on a major local
thoroughfare. "He told me that we are targeted daily between 8 and 9
a.m. and between 12 and 1 p.m. I said, 'We're working people. There's
nobody here between 12 and 1!' " In other words, Wasserman could sweep
her walk spotless at 9 in the morning and be held responsible three
hours later — to the tune of $100 on up to $300 for repeat offenders.
Ironically, the two one-hour slots are the result of a compromise on a
bill sponsored by Brooklyn Councilman Simcha Felder, intended to curb
around-the-clock ticketing by overzealous sanitation agents.
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/51045.htm
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* Rant of the Week *
Schmaltz and Shmucks
by Jim Lesczynski
One of my all-time favorite restaurants in New York City – and I’ve been
to Peter Luger’s, Le Cirque, Petrossian, Café Boulud, and many of the
other five-star eateries – is Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse, the Jewish
comfort food emporium on Chrystie Street. It’s a short walk from my
lower east side apartment. After a night of high-cholesterol indulgence
at Sammy’s, I need that walk. The Zagat review cautions that “you should
get a permission slip from you cardiologist” before dining there.
Apparently, it won’t be long before a permission slip from Mike
Bloomberg and his oily Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden is in order.
The thing about Sammy’s is that the only greens you’re likely to see are
the complimentary pickles and sweet peppers at every table. Each table
is also equipped with a carafe of schmaltz – i.e., chicken fat. You
spread the schmaltz instead of butter on your bread. The waiter also
liberally pours schmaltz into the chopped liver appetizer that he
prepares tableside. When your side of mashed potatoes arrives, it is
doused with more schmaltz. The delicious grilled skirt steaks are
smothered in schmaltz and garlic. The entire schmaltz-fest is washed
down with endless rounds of chilled vodka; the jovial waiters walk
around with a bottle of Belvedere encased in a block of ice, and refill
your empty glass before you can set it down.
If Bloomberg and Frieden ever laid eyes on the shameless gluttony taking
place at Sammy’s, they would likely have heart attacks on the spot. As
far as I’m concerned that would not necessarily be a bad thing.
The health Nazis tipped their hand this week with the announcement of
Frieden’s insane new program to use our tax dollars to bully New York’s
restaurants into eliminating partially hydrogenated oils from their
menus. It should be more obvious than ever that their specious claim
about the smoking ban protecting the health of innocent bystanders was a
baldfaced lie. Surely even the most gullible New Yorkers can agree that
there are no second-hand victims of high cholesterol. It was never about
helping the poor waitresses and bartenders who are “forced” to work in
smoky taverns. It was and always will be about controlling _you_ and
limiting _your_ freedom. Why? Because they can. As Orwell noted, the
purpose of power is power.
Actually, Frieden further revealed his total ignorance of (or
indifference to) the concept of “public health” several weeks ago. Alert
readers of THE VILLAGE CHOICE will recall that in July, Frieden proposed
a scheme for the mandatory government monitoring of citizens with
diabetes. A century ago, New York became the first American city to
track people with infectious diseases as a way to halt epidemics. But
tyrants like Bloomberg and Frieden cannot – or more precisely, refuse to
– distinguish between infectious diseases and those diseases that are
nobody’s business but the unfortunate folks who suffer from them. The
state arguably has a legitimate role in preventing a smallpox outbreak.
It has no business invading people’s privacy to prevent diabetes, which
poses no public health threat at all. Nor does it have any business
trying to fight high cholesterol, or even lung cancer.
The unhydrogenated oil that Frieden wants to impose on New York
restaurants is more expensive than the partially hydrogenated variety,
it doesn’t taste the same, and it makes soggier French fries, according
to many cooks. The science regarding its health benefits is dubious.
Most importantly, it is simply none of the city government’s business
how a restaurant cooks its food (assuming Typhoid Mary isn’t working the
grill). You want to eat health food? This is New York City. There are
literally thousands of restaurants, at least hundreds of which serve
health food. Leave the rest of us the fuck alone to enjoy our fried food
in peace.
And before anyone objects that Bloomberg and Frieden are just giving
friendly advice to the restaurants, and that their guidelines are not
mandatory, I have three words for you: You’re an idiot. How do you think
we got to the smoking ban? They didn’t come right out of the gate and
try to ban smoking in every public place and most private places. They
started out by (wrongfully) positioning smoking as a public health
issue. If this waste of taxpayer money is allowed to continue, the
do-gooders will quickly accept that the oil a restaurant uses is a
legitimate public health issue, and then it’s all downhill from there.
Hell, the mayor of Detroit just proposed a sin tax on fast food. Give
Bloomberg another four years, and I guarantee this “advisory” program
will evolve into mandatory restrictions on the food-service industry,
resulting in even less freedom for all New Yorkers.
The regulars at Sammy’s would have a term for cretins like Bloomberg and
Frieden – shmucks.
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* Upcoming Events *
Sunday, August 14, 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Emergency Contraception and the Politics of Health
Learn about the politics, policy and science behind NYS's emergency
contraception bill.
To rsvp, please call (212) 353-8070, ext. 10, or email in-@wccny.org.
Women's City Club office, 33 West 60th Street, 5th Floor
http://www.wccny.org/events/events.html#ec
Monday, August 15, 10:30 p.m.
"The Libertarian Alternative"
A Libertarian political talk show
Time Warner Cable Ch. 34, RCN Cable Ch. 110, MNN Ch. 1
http://www.libertarianalternative.org
Thursday, August 18, 7:00 p.m.
SCOPE-NYC meeting
Monthly meeting of the New York City affiliate of the Shooters'
Committee on Political Education, a pro-RKBA organization
Jade Mountain Restaurant, 197 Second Avenue
http://scopeny.org/NYC
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* Manhattan Libertarian Party Honor Roll *
Benefactors (have given at least $1,000 to the MLP in 2005)
Ron Moore
Victor Niederhoffer
Founders (have given at least $500 to the MLP in 2005)
Your Name Here?
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* News tips, rants and events wanted! *
Help us improve THE VILLAGE CHOICE. Send news bites, rants and event
announcements to village-@manhattanlp.org. Please include a web
link whenever possible. We will occasionally consider broader topics,
but our strong preference is for items pertaining to freedom (or the
lack thereof) in New York City.
THE VILLAGE CHOICE is edited by Jim Lesczynski.
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If you're offended by anything in this newsletter, you're obviously a
humorless socialist of either the right-wing or left-wing variety.
See you next week!
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