Jonathan Swift - Sarcasm = California

Ask any Tea Partier; there is plenty to dislike in the details of health care reform.

But we of the tinfoil hat brigade have long insisted that the principal problem with government-subsidized health insurance is broad: When government pays for health care, government will inevitably regulate anything and everything that can be even tenuously linked to health.

By ceding the responsibility for the cost of health care, we have sacrificed the freedom to make our own decisions about our health. A nauseating argument to be sure, but that doesn't make it any less true. We saw it happen with seat belts; we saw it happen with motorcycle helmets; we saw it happen with cigarettes. Now, just to prove that no caricature or paranoia could ever be as asinine as reality, we will witness within our lifetimes the end of Happy Meal toys.

...[C]ounty officials in Silicon Valley [Calif.] are poised to outlaw the little toys that often come with high-calorie offerings.
...
Believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, the proposal would forbid the inclusion of a toy in any restaurant meal that has more than 485 calories, more than 600 mg of salt or high amounts of sugar or fat. In the case of McDonald's, the limits would include all of the chain's Happy Meals — even those that include apple sticks instead of French fries.

Ken Yeager, president of the authoritarian nitwits Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, knows unequivocally that you are too stupid and/or incompetent -- all of you -- to spurn the siren song of a Shrek IV wind-up toy, so he is stepping in.

"People ask why I want to take toys out of the hands of children," said Yeager.... "But we now know that 70% of the kids that are overweight or obese will be overweight or obese as adults. Why would we want to burden anybody with a lifetime of chronic illness?"

Did you see that leap? Fast-food toys are responsible for a lifetime of chronic illness. Unless the McDonald's in Yeager's neighborhood has been offering polio pops or asbestos action figures, then he can take his hyperbole and insert it posteriorly.

Even then, whence does Yeager draw his justification for the crackdown? You guessed it:

"We're responsible for paying for healthcare in the whole county," Yeager said. "We pay close to $2 billion annually on healthcare, and the costs have done nothing but rise." A big part of the increase, he said, is costs related to obesity.

The slippery slope is not a logical fallacy; it is the undeniable nature of government power.