Quotulatiousness

March 11, 2010

Food follies: the pinNaCle of idiocy?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Food, Health, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:15

The food police are after your salt:

Some New York City chefs and restaurant owners are taking aim at a bill introduced in the New York Legislature that, if passed, would ban the use of salt in restaurant cooking.

“No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises,” the bill, A. 10129, states in part.

The legislation, which Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced on March 5, would fine restaurants $1,000 for each violation.

I can only assume that Rep. Ortiz has no tastebuds, as the diet he’s prescribing would be bland, bland, bland. There’s also little chance that it’ll be passed into law, but you can consider it a shot across the bows of the restaurant trade . . . or a ranging round for the next salvo.

March 9, 2010

If persuasion doesn’t work, raise the taxes

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Food, Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:12

New York City is moving ahead in their war on junk food, with a new proposal to add a significant tax to the sales of carbonated pop:

[Mayor Michael Bloomberg] described the soda tax — equivalent to an extra eight pence on a can — as “a fix that just makes sense”, saving lives and cutting rising health care costs.

“An extra 12 cents on a can of soda would raise nearly $1 billion (£663 million), allowing us to keep community health services open and teachers in the classroom,” he said on his weekly radio programme on Sunday.

“And, at the same time, it would help us fight a major problem plaguing our children: obesity.”

David Paterson, the mayor of New York state, has already proposed a soda tax but it was dropped last year following a public outcry.

H/T to Chris Greaves for the link, who said “Let’s see now, prohibition didn’t work, so let’s try something different!”

Of course, the proposed tax would be very popular in some areas: all the retailers outside NYC who would be able to reap significant additional sales to New Yorkers who didn’t want to pay the sin tax.

November 8, 2009

Over-exuberant celebrations

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 18:51

Ticker tape? Heck, I’m just going to dump all these financial records out the window to celebrate the World Series:

Auditor Damian Salo attended the Manhattan parade honouring the baseball World Series championships. He tells The New York Post he found all sorts of personal financial documents in the mountains of shredded paper tossed from skyscrapers as the players rode up Broadway.

They included pay stubs, banking data, law firm memos and even some court files.

The founder of one financial firm, Alan Sarroff, says his company reprimanded one “overzealous” employee for throwing records out the window that should have been shredded.

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