Bloomberg's latest anti-obesity effort encourages New Yorkers to take the stairs (anti-elevator)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has gone after supersized sodas and transfats in his quest to curb obesity in New York. Now, in his final months in office, he’s targeting elevators.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg unveiled a new initiative that would encourage office workers to take the stairs instead of the elevator and promote the idea of “active design” in new and renovated buildings in the city, including open stairwells and floor plans that would force people to walk more during the day.

“Exercise is good for you,” Bloomberg declared at a press conference announcing the new design initiative.

The plan includes the creation of the Center for Active Design, a nonprofit group partly funded by the city that would suggest design changes in New York buildings and around the world to promote more physical activity.

For existing buildings, the mayor said he would also introduce legislation that would relax city codes that usually require doors leading to stairwells to be closed or locked in case of a fire. Officials suggested building owners could install a magnet that would hold a door open but automatically close it during an emergency.

City officials want occupants to be able to use the stairs instead of an elevator if they choose—though Bloomberg, who pointedly noted that he takes the stairs when he can, insisted he wasn’t trying to force exercise on people.

I think that many patriots with good intentions do not understand the following. The Founding Nanny States never intended for our constitutonal privileges or immunities to be absolute. This is evidenced by the fact that historical materials pertaining to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Justice John Marshall and John Bingham, the main author of Sec. 1 of 14A, all clearly indicate that prohibitions of government power in BoR did not apply to the states.

John Bingham’s clarification is especially important because the only reason that many patriots now regard our constitutional freedoms as absolute is because FDR’s activist justices wrongly swept the 10th Amendment under the carpet so that Congress could overstep its limited Commerce Clause powers.

That said, regardless that the states have never delegated to Congress the specific power to regulate healthcare, for example, it remains that the Founding States made the 10th Amendment to clarify that the Constitution’s silence about such issues means that such powers are automatically reserved uniquely to the states. So Bloomberg’s health ideas, as long as they respect 14A-protected freedoms, compliment 10A-protected state powers.

In fact, unlike the federal government, voters who put Bloomberg in office have the option of putting a stop to Bloomberg’s official actions concerning their health via state recall laws if they decide that they don’t like Bloomberg sticking his nose into their personal affairs.

Carrying recall ideas a step farther, recall laws for federal lawmakers are arguably unnecessary if citizens would get a grip on the idea that many federal laws are based on wrongly usurped state powers anyway.

Bloomberg’s rantings are just the admonishments of a Khmer Rouge commissar telling us to forget the “before-times” and adjust to “Year 0” where everyone is forced on a diet doled out by the village elders, then bikes to work and uses the stairs instead of consuming precious electricity or gasoline that would be put to better use by the ruling class.

He can go to Hell.

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