Nanny Staters

You know you live in a socialist state when they complain that the failure of mothers to breastfeed their children costs the country $13 billion a year.  

No, it's not cash-strapped Cuba or totalitarian Venezuela where every radio and television station is required to carry Hugo Chavez' speeches or face  seizure.   It is a study carried in a recent issue of Pediatrics.  The study's lead author is Dr. Melissa Bartick, an instructor in medicine with the Cambridge Health Alliance and  Harvard Medical School.  

To understand the origins of the study, you need to know about the Cambridge Health Alliance. The CEO of the Alliance serves as commissioner of public health for the city of Cambridge, MA. The Alliance has a contract with the city to provide public health services for the city. In fact, they ARE the Cambridge Health Department. Their regulatory Activities page is illustrative of their ambitions. They regulate, as well as the usual Health Department interests, "Laboratory Animals," "Bodywork Therapy," "Tattoo and Body Work," "Tanning Salons," "Tobacco Control," and "Indoor Ice Rinks." And anything else they want -- the Department "has the statutory authority to make and enforce new public health regulations within the city of Cambridge." (Their words.)

The Alliance is so  financially strapped that they needed to be helped by  stimulus dollars.   (Another example of our tax dollars being used to subsidize universal healthcare in Massachusetts.)

The journal, Pediatrics, is something else.

Pediatrics is the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics that, in addition to promoting breastfeeding to coercive levels  wants to regulate when children should be taught to swim (criticized here as politics, not science), want the hot dog redesigned and advocate a ban on teenagers using tanning beds  The Academy has a whole "breast-feeding section headed by Dr. Ruth Lawrence." (How's that for specialization?) They also advocate gun control and gay adoptions and a number of issues most people would categorize as controversial.

In all, the Academy has 390 employees trying to dictate social policy to the unwilling in this country by manipulating government policy.   If they didn't work here in the U.S., Chavez would employ them for their advocacy that rationalizes a growth in government authority.  

It is essential for the Nanny State to demonstrate the gross ignorance and widespread ineptitude of parents.

Infantilizing populations is necessary to undermine individual responsibility and self-confidence so that government can grow unimpeded by objection. It simply is not enough to convince people on the merits of the issues. Emphasizing the cost to the State will be used to justify extending government policies.

Governments, state and local, won't adopt and dictate a policy mandating breastfeeding, but they will use the excuse to require small businesses to give women time off to breastfeed their babies at work. (A guaranteed job killer.) Or require tolerance of women breastfeeding in inappropriate places. (An assault on societal norms.) They will hound and pressure women, labeling them by implication as 'uncaring' or 'unfit' for choosing not to follow the better sense of the Educated Class who prop up so much of Liberalism and Socialism.

It is East Germanization, spreading a culture of low expectations, hopelessness and acceptance of bureaukrats, those particularly pedantic officials appointed on the basis of having no knowledge whatsoever, their sole qualification being their choice of political party. The Children's Commissioner in the U.K. has this wonderful page for children that illustrates the Commisar mentality. Just "tell Maggie Atkinson, how she can make life better for you." ("Piss off" would be a good response.)

The population those Academy-proposed policies will affect in this country are mostly those captives living on the Liberal Plantation in largely deserted urban centers where the only people left are those who have no initiative to help themselves. Not-so-carefree Peter Pans for eternity, never to grow up. They are demoralized to the point that they can't even vote out the most egregious corruption. And they will have no choice but accept yet another intrusion on their lives.

END NOTE: No wonder the American Pediatric Association endorsed ObamaCare. Look what was in it for them. (Besides a chance to be a guest of Nancy Pelosi for the Health Care vote.)