Politics with Humor: What happens when you elect a health-freak/businessman as your mayor?

What happens when you elect a health-freak/businessman as your mayor?

Mayor Bloomberg who is in fact a health-freak, is the healthiest mayor New York City has ever had. Frankly, I don't mind. I am, after all, a gym-loving-healthy-food-craving citizen of this rather indefinable city myself.

But my appreciation for the mayor's personal belly-busting fixation does not mean I support his unremitting effort to impose ALL his habits on the city.

Yes, I can’t help but like that he spearheaded the effort to get rid of trans-fat from chain restaurants; or his efforts to reduce sodium use in foods. In the long run I haven’t heard anyone complaining about the way KFC tastes different –and I assure that here in Brooklyn you hear every type of complaint. And I can attest to the fact that replacing the salt in your morning omelet, say with olives and garlic, becomes as obvious as the "watery" fat-free milk that after two weeks is just better milk.

All that said, I can’t help but gripe about Bloomberg's anti-cigarette, tax-revenue boosting methodology.
Yes that’s right, I’m taking a break from the usual and ranting about local, relatively unimportant, issues.

I concede cigarettes are cancer sticks; the crutch some use to escape social-settings; and even functions to wash down that grainy morning cup of Joe.

And I agree that ads like the one with the Marlboro man (he is now dead from lung cancer) should not be displayed in public. At the same time I strongly disagree with the latest episode of The Simpsons being interrupted by disturbed middle-aged men who explain to you in a mechanical voice the reason that they speak out of their neck is cigarettes. Most of us know how bad cigarettes are from the unavoidable poster at the corner bodega, with a blown up but vividly clear image of a yellow/green lung, if not from the sanctimonious, never-tried a cigarette, “I don’t get it…” person -yes we all agree cigarettes are terrible.

However our mayor has taken the fight against cigarettes to a whole new level. Enter the “Bloomberg Business Approach” (BBA, an acronym only found here) to raise revenue.

You see when the city was riding a wave of pre-housing-bubble wall-street revenue, Bloomberg argued that a big tax increase on tobacco products would help convince people that now was the time to get off the cigarette and onto free nicotine patches offered by the city.

Now Bloomberg, after somehow managing in the interim to make three dollar packs of cigarettes into 10 dollar bills, pushed and got a one dollar plus tax hike on cigarettes. This time to fund anti-cigarette ads in a time when we can longer rely on Wall Street to pay for our big fat -except for Bloomberg- bureaucracy.

On both occasions Bloomberg added “besides smokers are a burden on our public health-care costs”. Never mind that it mostly individuals on private health care, or young people with no health care smoking 10 dollar packs. I am still waiting for Bloomberg’s attempt to rain in the epidemic of old people already adding significant fat, no pun intended, to our health care costs.

Mayor, many otherwise healthy people enjoy an occasional cigarette, just like they enjoy an infrequent beer, or a rare saturated with saturated-fat burgers for that matter. If you want to drive cigarettes off the streets -because it is a public health threat- then make it illegal, but don't make us, or the hard core smoker, your personal cash cow. Remember that the cigarettes are bad not the people smoking them!

Then again this is what happens when you make a businessman/health-freak your mayor.