Kevin Boss: Control yourselves, city council

On July 31 the Santa Barbara News-Press published the letter to the editor by Santa Barbara restauranteur and Power Line reader Kevin Boss. For the reasons Steve suggests in the adjacent post, we think his letter is generally applicable and deserves the widest circulation. Mr. Boss writes:

This month, our elected City Council representatives spent quite a bit of time and energy deciding to end the scourge of plastic straws. Think about that. For some reason, the people we elected to manage the city felt the most pressing issue of the day was to “ban” a product that was partly developed originally to prevent illness and cross contamination. After a lot of virtue signaling, our fearless leaders indeed voted to ban something the marketplace had already begun to reject.

Did unmanageable public employee pension obligations come up at the meeting? Did the very real public health threat of feces and urine in our streets come up? Was the crisis of empty storefronts on State Street discussed? No. They banned plastic straws. And they were proud of themselves for doing so.

Unfortunately, Councilmember Jason Dominguez lowered the veil on the real reason our City Council (like others across this crazy state) felt it imperative to act. Mr. Dominguez was quoted as saying of his constituents, “we need to regulate every aspect of people’s lives.” In other words, “people” are too stupid or too venal or too deplorable to do so themselves. In case you missed it, that’s us he was referring to.

Because of the ridiculous new district elections in the city, Mr. Dominguez is in the position of regulating “every aspect” of our lives because he received a whopping 1,100 votes in his district. This amazing demonstration of democracy in action has given him the power he craves. He really thinks we need to have “every aspect” of our lives regulated by smart and sophisticated people like him and his fellow progressives on the council. We know this because he said so openly.

Maybe it is unfair to focus on Mr. Dominguez’s comments, since it is so clear that the majority of our City Council has the same opinion of our ability to manage our own affairs. Does anyone else wonder at the totalitarian mindset behind such a comment?

What makes these people think they were elected to “regulate” the lives of free Americans? Why do we elect people who have such contempt for our intelligence and creativity? Here’s a newsflash: The city, the county and the state of California already regulate us to death. They tell us what kind of light bulb we can use. They tell us how much water we can use to flush our toilets. There is hardly a facet of our lives that is not regulated or taxed by them. Any Californian who has to interact with government on any level knows this.

Here is a message to those council members and our other elected officials who believe their duties include regulating “every aspect of people’s lives” – to hell with you people.

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