It was right there on the label of the white tuna salad, an outlawed ingredient: "partially hydrogenated soybean oil." A customer filed a formal complaint with the authorities. A Montgomery County (immediately northeast of D.C.)
health inspector arrived on the scene. He reviewed the evidence and handed down his verdict: The fish was guilty. "Wrote them up for a labeling violation and made them aware that Montgomery County is a Trans Fat Free county," he wrote in his report. This time the deli would get off with a warning.
But is Montgomery County any healthier? Or safer? Or more equitable? The results are mixed. There have been significant improvements. The bag tax
on plastic bags, I guess
is generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for water-quality programs. Major traffic collisions are down, according to county police, and federal studies show that the rate of diabetes is decreasing in the county.
I think traffic incidents are down everywhere, for at least two reasons - safer roads, and less driving.
There are troubling signs as well. Obesity has worsened in the
That because the progressives are winning the propaganda war.
But the effect of much of the legislation remains a mystery, in large part because the county often does not measure whether the laws have any impact. Many of the health regulations "were put into place without much thinking about evaluation," said Ulder J. Tillman, the county's health officer.
Another problem is that, while the county has spent a lot of time and resources passing these regulations, there has been little to no enforcement of some of them.
Take the law passed in 2008 requiring residents to offer domestic workers a written contract. At the time, Council member Roger Berliner (D) said he was worried about "whether we would be deemed to be the nanny government of all time."
Still, the bill passed unanimously.
Since then, it's been enforced once.
California here we come!