New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has ideas about how his constituents should live their lives, and he is taking steps to ensure that they comply.
This weekend Bloomberg ordered the mandatory evacuation of 370,000 people from low-lying areas of New York City — which technically made it a crime to stay in the parts of the city he shut down. (RELATED: Irene fails to flush Old Guard from Tomb of the Unknowns)
Despite Bloomberg’s assurance that “nobody is going to get fined and nobody is going to go to jail, but if they don’t evacuate they could die,” the episode was reminiscent of Bloomberg’s other dictates over the years. As Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, pointed out, Bloomberg has made a name for himself as one of the most overbearing mayors in the country.
“Bloomberg is a national symbol of ‘for-your-own-goodism,’ if you want to call it that,” Olson said. “The idea that where we used to think you had rights to run your own life it turns out the government has a right to correct and second-guess you for your own good.”
via Michael Bloomberg | Nanny Bloomberg | New York City Evacuation | The Daily Caller.
