First foie gras, then trans fat. Now they’re after our iPods?!

I noticed this story while browsing around Pat Cleary’s ShopFloor blog, and it took my breath away.

From the Independent (of London):

A member of the [New York] state Senate, Carl Kruger, has declared war on “iPod oblivion”, introducing a draft law that would make it an offence for anyone to be plugged in when they are crossing the street, punishable with a $100 (£51) fine.

I’m SO glad that the NY General Assembly is here to protect me from myself. Soon, they’ll have done such a good job of protecting us that we’ll be living in small, padded rooms, looking forward to our state-mandated 3 meals a day.

More coverage from Wired and the Associated Press.

Sheesh.

Jim: Has any local lawmaker ever lost their job for proposing a stupid nanny-state law?

Really, I hate to be such a nattering nabob of negativity, but are stories like this reinforce my cynical suspicion that a generation’s worth of failure in America’s schools has purposely generated an unthinking, sheeplike public that wholeheartedly believes that there is a legislative solution to every problem.

“This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it’s becoming not only endemic but it’s creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand,” said Kruger in a telephone interview with Reuters.

Okay… no. Hear that? No. NO. NO. We do not have “a major public safety crisis.” You want to see a major public safety crisis? Hurricane Katrina. 9/11. The L.A. riots back in 1992. The blackout. Anthrax in the mail. THOSE are major public safety crisis. People getting hit by cars because they don’t hear them coming is Darwinism at work.

In a decent society, state senator Kruger would be pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables during every public appearance for clogging the state legislature and wasting the public’s time with this inane psychotic power grab, that literally assumes the authority for the state government to approve of the way we cross the street. Mom and Dad gave up that regulatory authority when I was like, six.

Cam: From my cold dead ears, good sirs. From my cold dead ears.