Nader on Bloomberg

As third party mania continues to take my blog by storm, check out my friend Dave Weigel interviewing Ralph Nader about Michael Bloomberg:

From a Reason magazine perspective, it seems to me that a Bloomberg Administration is likely to be substantially more libertarian than either a Democratic or a Republican one would be. Bloomberg, however, is specifically identified with a brand of trivial nanny-stating -- indoor smoking ban, trans fat ban -- that seems to be to aggravate libertarians in a manner that's out of proportion to the actual significance of the policy issues.

Comments

Bloomberg, however, is specifically identified with a brand of trivial nanny-stating -- indoor smoking ban, trans fat ban -- that seems to be to aggravate libertarians in a manner that's out of proportion to the actual significance of the policy issues.

Now you're onto something, though in truth these are the kind of things that effect people's lives everyday, and feel particularly, well, nanny-ish. Much more so than OSHA rules, the EPA or the SEC, all of which are trying to protect you from someone other than yourself.

Posted by AJ | June 20, 2007 11:15 AM

eeeeeeeeeeeew Nader. You're blog is officially infected with cooties.

Posted by PK again | June 20, 2007 11:16 AM

bloomberg a libertarian? he's much too smart to think that people doing their own thing is a good idea. he's new york administration just enacted a policy that will pay the city's poorest families up to $6,000 a year for completing routine tasks (i.e. getting a library card, maintaining good attendance rates in school, getting health insurance, going to parent/teacher conferences, etc...). he's definitely a meddlesome guy.

Posted by what? | June 20, 2007 11:18 AM

Also the slightly less trivial greening-by-statute.

Posted by jhupp | June 20, 2007 11:19 AM

Libertarian? As in imprisoning bicyclists?

Posted by Marshall | June 20, 2007 11:21 AM

As I predicted yesterday, Matthew appears to have slept through Hillary Clinton's 8:00 AM speech this morning at progressives' annual "Take Back America" conference.

Else we would not have to go to the drudgereport or national review blogs to read about how the progressives BOOED Hillary.

Or maybe Matthew hopes to work for Haim Saban someday and doesn't want to embarrass Haim by pointing out that Haim's shabbos goy is looking somewhat ..er.. "shopworn".

Rode hard and put up wet, if you catch my drift.

Posted by Don Williams | June 20, 2007 11:24 AM

Come to think of it, maybe Hillary being booed explains Bloomberg's sudden resignation from the Republican party and Matthew's sudden fascination with the virtues of Bloomberg that have largely escaped the notice of the world until now.

Matthew Yglesias -Kingmaker.

I like it. Has a certain ..uh..comic quality about it.

Posted by Don Williams | June 20, 2007 11:30 AM

Bloomberg' nannystating, which affects many people, is far, FAR more authoritarian than, e.g., the NSA surveillance program, which affects hardly anyone. You would have to be an extreme authoritarian to even consider voting for Bloomberg.

Posted by Al | June 20, 2007 11:30 AM

Matthew's point is that if we take libertarianism seriously as a philosophy, the real issues are state-level - the welfare state, the military-industrial complex, the regulation of industry - far, far more than the regulation of bicycle riding. Libertarians, however, as demonstrated by this thread and others, seem not really to care about the structural issues if a candidate doesn't "feel" like a libertarian with stylistic touches like allowing smoking in bars. They're as irrational as everyone else.

Bloomberg' nannystating, which affects many people, is far, FAR more authoritarian than, e.g., the NSA surveillance program, which affects hardly anyone.

Breaks new ground for delusion.

The best is the way Al takes on libertarian rhetoric to make this point. As a general rule, defenders of the illegal surveillance program are probably not going to be effective ventriloquizers of libertarian sentiment.

Posted by DivGuy | June 20, 2007 11:39 AM

Bloomberg, however, is specifically identified with a brand of trivial nanny-stating -- indoor smoking ban, trans fat ban -- that seems to be to aggravate libertarians in a manner that's out of proportion to the actual significance of the policy issues.

Case in point: Instapundit, who doesn't really have much of a problem with Bush or Giuliani's civil rights records (except Giulian's gun policies, of course) but compares Bloomberg to the ruler of Singapore.

Posted by Sean | June 20, 2007 11:48 AM

Now you're onto something, though in truth these are the kind of things that effect people's lives everyday, and feel particularly, well, nanny-ish. Much more so than OSHA rules, the EPA or the SEC, all of which are trying to protect you from someone other than yourself.

The trans-fat ban sure (ban? Wha? it's called labelling, and knowing what's in the food I'm going to eat is actually important, but there's no need to ban the stuff), but the smoking ban protects ME (non-smoker) from smokers. It isn't meant to protect smokers from themselves. I don't understand why smokers are such selfish people that they can't understand that not everyone around them wants their smoke in their faces. And why their choice to smoke should somehow have more weight than my choice not to smoke (especially given that the default state is "non-smoking").

Anyway, most libertarians I know who still call themselves libertarians are philosophic lightweights who harp on exactly these types of smoking ban issues while simultaneously defending illegal wiretaps of everyone in the country. The ex-libertarians I know who refuse to call themselves libertarians (except maybe "civil libertarians") now tend to think of smoking bans as trivial idiocy compared to warrantless wiretaps and a Muslim concentration camp off the coast of Florida. But then, they always were the more intellectually honest of that crowd.

Posted by NonyNony | June 20, 2007 12:03 PM

Anyway, most libertarians I know who still call themselves libertarians are philosophic lightweights who harp on exactly these types of smoking ban issues while simultaneously defending illegal wiretaps of everyone in the country.

Then the libertarians you are hanging out with are morons. Reason/Hit and Run has written approximately 84,000 articles about illegal wiretapping, Patriot Act, etc. These issues are at the forefront of any serious libertarian's concerns.

Posted by Jason | June 20, 2007 12:11 PM

That's interesting, Sean, because for all his claims about being a "libertarian," I would have guessed that Glenn would adore the Singapore regime. It's libertarian in the same style that he is, delivering the low, low taxes and routine prisoner-beatings he craves.

But maybe he's fond of trans-fatty foods and likes to spit his chewing tobacco on the sidewalk.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | June 20, 2007 12:13 PM

Um, nonynony, the trans fat ban is in fact a ban on trans fats, and has nothing to do with labelling.

Posted by Al | June 20, 2007 12:23 PM

What's with the women singing in the back-ground on the video? And what were they singing about? They sound a little bit like Larouche protesters I've heard singing at other similar events. In any case, it totally distracted me from Dave and Nader.

Posted by sara | June 20, 2007 12:28 PM

I agree with Al? It's not right that the government is regulating what fatty substances I can or cannot put in my food. Overall I think Bloomberg has been a good mayor but his nanny-state fetish is way out of line.

Posted by Korha | June 20, 2007 12:39 PM

Actually, Korha, you have it wrong. The ban applies to restaurants - not food that you prepare yourself - for the precise reason of labelling. No one should have to eat something that has been proven to be harmful simply because they don't know that it is an ingredient.
The trans-fat police aren't going to come around busting down your door if you choose to self-indulge.

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | June 20, 2007 1:08 PM

"I agree with Al? It's not right that the government is regulating what fatty substances I can or cannot put in my food. "

Hmm. And I assume that, taking this to the logical limit, you think it is wrong that the government will not allow you to put cocaine and heroin into your body,
that the government should not prevent other people from putting penises (human or otherwise) into the recta of their bodies,
that the government should allow women to do what they want with their bodies (including, for example, taking RU-486)?

Step right up, Al. Tell us all how you plan to support the candidate with these views on the issue of what a person can and can't do with their body.

Posted by Maynard Handley | June 20, 2007 1:48 PM

The trans fat ban is good policy. Some people may complain about it based on the principle of the matter, but not because they actually want their restaurant food to contain trans fat. In fact, most people will not notice the difference and will not care. The ban works as a small tax on restaurants that will pay for the health benefits of a better diet in the populace. The liberty being infringed is minimal at best.

Posted by blah | June 20, 2007 1:57 PM

"[his] new york administration just enacted a policy that will pay the city's poorest families up to $6,000 a year for completing routine tasks (i.e. getting a library card, maintaining good attendance rates in school, getting health insurance, going to parent/teacher conferences, etc...)."

This isn't such a bad idea. In principle, I think it's a stretch to call paying someone to do something a form of authoritarianism (not that Bloomberg doesn't favor other policies that are authoritarian). Brazil has had some success with its recent policy of making welfare contingent on positive behavior (e.g., keeping kids in school versus sending them out in the streets). There was also an article in the WSJ last year about a similar program to pay to promote positive behaviors among poor blacks in Chicago.

Of course, Chris Rock might object to these sorts of incentives to get parents to keep their kids in school, etc. ("You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker!") but IMO it makes more sense to give poor people money to do smart things than paying them to do stupid things.

Posted by Fred | June 20, 2007 2:43 PM

I look at the trans-fat thing as akin to government regulation/inspection of restaurants for sanitation and cleanliness. No one would argue that a restaurant should be allowed to run an open sewer line through their kitchen, yet how would patrons know what was in their food that could possibly be deadly if there was. Do libertarians also condemn restaurant inspectors?

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | June 20, 2007 2:45 PM

Matt, it's not just the smoking and the trans-fat issues. Bloomberg is a big supporter of gun control and micro-managing environmental regulations.

But the more fundamental problem is that he's got the same problem as Rudy and Ross Perot before him: an infatuation with centralized decision-making and technocracy. You see this in his support for NCLB, in his love of "targeted" tax cuts rather than across-the-board tax cuts, and his more general hostility to ideology.

Most libertarians realize that we're not likely to get a full-blown libertarian in the White House. So what we're looking for in a politician is somebody with attitudes and instincts that will cause them to do the least damage while in office. None of these issues are that important in and of itself, but they're signs of a set of attitudes toward government power that I think will lead him to do very unlibertarian things once he's in office.

Posted by Tim Lee | June 20, 2007 3:01 PM

Of course, Chris Rock might object to these sorts of incentives to get parents to keep their kids in school, etc. ("You're supposed to, you dumb motherfucker!") but IMO it makes more sense to give poor people money to do smart things than paying them to do stupid things.

I'm hard on Fred but I respect him for taking the high road here. It's so easy to demagogue this sort of issue (remember midnight basketball?), but at the end of the day it does nobody any good. The alternative to these incentive payments, after all, isn't going to be more money returned to the taxpayer; it's simply going to be welfare programs with no incentives involved.

Posted by Steve | June 20, 2007 3:08 PM

Bloomberg did a lot to subvert the right to free expression in public places.

There was systematic denial of permits to use venues like Central Park, police invigilation (with special units operating outside NYC), and a lot of nasty tactics centered on harrasment and false arrest.

NYC had a huge buildup of police force followed by admirable drop in crime, resulting in 40k+ of police that apparently is bored silly and need extra occupation like hunting bicyclists or making fun of motorists foolish enough to enter Manhattan during a parade (a neat trick: let them drive through the Central Park, only to block the street at the other end of the park, thus trapping the hapless motorist for about an hour). Out of town intelligence detail collecting info on potential demonstrators also seem like fun.

On the positive side, Bloomberg is not banning ferrets, making war on pedestrians and serially insulting people. After Guliani, fascism with human face.

Posted by piotr | June 20, 2007 3:22 PM

Ethel to Tilly is incorect. If the issue is labelling, Bloomberg could have addressed that specifically - after all, Bloomberg required restaurants label calorie counts (and just as prominently as prices), so Bloomberg certainly knows how to make restaurants label something. He chose not to do that, and instead chose to ban trans fats in restaurants altogether, regardless of whether the restaurant disclosed what it used.

Posted by Al | June 20, 2007 4:11 PM

Also, I don't get Maynard's point. Drug criminalization is authoritarian, and so is anal sex criminalization. In that respect Bloomberg is just like the drug criminalizers and the anal sex criminalizers.

Posted by Al | June 20, 2007 4:16 PM

Al,

I think Maynard expects you to agree with the right-winger in his head. It confuses him when you don't hold stereotypically conservative views on everything.

Posted by too many steves | June 20, 2007 4:47 PM

Bloomberg' nannystating, which affects many people, is far, FAR more authoritarian than, e.g., the NSA surveillance program, which affects hardly anyone.

I don't know about this. No one knows how wide a net was cast with the NSA. If it's anything like the no-fly list, the NSA probably just said "let's listen in on everyone whose name appears in the voter registry."

Regardless, smoking bans and, especially, trans-fat bans irritate us libertarians specifically because they are such trivial matters for the State to involve itself in.

And it's insulting to think someone I've never met, who likely eats a far less restrictive diet and likely spends a fraction of a fraction of the time at the gym that I do, can tell me what I must and musn't do to be healthy, under penalty of law.

About smoking bans, we used to say: what's next, junk food bans? We didn't actually expect them, but they happened.

Now that they have: what's next, mandatory exercise journals to be submitted to the FBI on a quarterly basis?

Bloomburg's health bans are at least as big a disqualifier for this libertarian Republican as Hillary's idiotic "It Takes a Village" book and petty calls for the censorship of irrelevant videogames. Ditto for Giuliani's War on Jaywalking and any artist who makes ugly paintings out of road apples.

Bloomburg may do well, but it won't be because libertarian swing voters are pulling the lever for him.

Oh, and his gun control instincts certainly aren't going to help.

Posted by One more guy named Steve | June 20, 2007 5:30 PM

You're incorrect Al. It is a labelling issue in the same sense that providing information is a labelling issue. Bloomberg didn't require all restaurants to provide calorie specifics - he was unable to because it would be too burdensome on all the little mom-and-pop lunchcounters and coffee shops and small restaurants and bakeries and hot dog stands and everything else serving food that dot NYC. The calorie rule solely applies to fast food restaurants and major chains - the vast majority of eating/food establishments in NYC are completely unaffected by the calorie law.

This is from the NYT article (12/30/06):

"The rules would apply only to restaurants with highly standardized menu items and portions that already make their caloric content available on the Internet, in brochures or in some other format.

Health officials say that only about 10 percent of the city’s restaurants would be affected. But those include many popular chains, like McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Dunkin’ Donuts, that have mechanized American fast food, designing systems ensuring that each component of every serving is the same."

Try getting your facts straight next time, dude.

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | June 20, 2007 5:46 PM

Personally, I'm more free because of the trans fat ban. Labelling wouldn't help me get trans-fat-free fast food, but banning trans fats does.

The big question is whether McDonald's biscuits will be as good after the ban. Last I heard they still didn't have an acceptable substitute.

Posted by AlanC9 | June 21, 2007 4:46 AM

Labelling wouldn't help me get trans-fat-free fast food, but banning trans fats does.

If you were concerned about nutrition, you wouldn't be eating fast food in the first place, trans-fat or no.

But I do understand your reasoning. You want to eat McDonalds and want them to use unhealthy ingredients you haven't read about yet. And you don't care whether or not other McDonalds eaters agree with you, since some mayor (who doesn't, himself, eat at McDonalds) does.

I'm going to the Olive Garden, tonight.
I'm craving tacos.
The Olive Garden doesn't sell them.

The only just solution is to have the State force the Olive Garden to sell tacos.

Do you know why McDonalds started using vegetable oil to make their fries (instead of sludge)?

Because customers complained, not because the great Bloomburg was looking out for us mindless plebs.

Posted by One more guy named Steve | June 21, 2007 2:28 PM

"I'm going to the Olive Garden, tonight.
I'm craving tacos.
The Olive Garden doesn't sell them.
The only just solution is to have the State force the Olive Garden to sell tacos."

Why do idiots insist upon creating false analogies?

Posted by Dareano | June 21, 2007 9:15 PM

I really, really, hate smoking bans, and I suppose if I really, really, tried I could get worked up about trans-fat if it was actually something anyone wanted to eat. Trans-fat tastes worse and got crammed down peoples throats because it keeps better.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 21, 2007 9:19 PM

One exception: Movie popcorn.

I'm not sure what you could use to replace the fake butter. Real butter doesn't work worth a damn.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 21, 2007 9:22 PM

Arresting bicyclists etc. is far more intrusive than the wiretapping. The vast majority of wiretappees don't even notice it.

But imagine if Bloomberg had national office. You think he'd leave the national issues alone?

The only reason he doesn't seem worse is that he followed Giuliani.

Posted by Robert | June 26, 2007 7:43 PM