First volley in the war on obesity

BY STEVE JANOSKI

I've got to give New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg credit: the man's got…nerve.

I'm sure he knew the firestorm was coming last week when he announced his plan to combat obesity by banning the selling of sweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces at places like restaurants, movie theaters, and fast food places, and he went ahead with it anyway.

And, as was expected, the naysayers have sprung from the woodwork with a glut of "reasons" why this is an awful idea. It won't help, they claim, because people will buy the same amount of soda, just in smaller containers.

They say it's "Nanny Bloomberg" once again overstepping his bounds, and call it a restriction on personal choice, on freedom itself!

Relax. It's nothing of the sort.

Make no mistake about it: Bloomberg is doing nothing that's going keep you freedom-loving Americans from guzzling gallons of soda, thereby retaining that inalienable right to die slowly and painfully as a result of diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and all the other illnesses associated with obesity.

What it is, however, is a public health initiative that's going to accomplish the same goal that his ban on smoking in bars, restaurants, and public parks has done over the past 10 years: make it exceedingly hard to ingest a thing that is truly, truly awful for you.

According to a recent New York Times report, a spokesman for the New York City Beverage Association — an arm of the soda industry's national trade group — criticized the city proposal, calling it a product of the NYC health department's "unhealthy obsession with attacking soft drinks."

"It's time for serious health professionals to move on and seek solutions that are going to actually curb obesity," said spokesman Stefan Friedman in the piece.

Right. Serious health professionals…you know, unlike the city's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, who blames sweetened drinks for up to half of the increase in obesity rates over the last three decades.

According to the article, the city reports that obesity rates are higher in neighborhoods where soda consumption is more common; this must be simply a coincidence, eh Mr. Friedman?

The brutal reality — which is a place where industry lobbyists for things like Big Tobacco and now Big Soda don't operate — is that over half of the adults in the Big Apple are either overweight or obese already.

But if you were a spokesman for an industry that sells sugary poison, why would you give any credence to that?

Let us be real about this: obesity is the greatest problem facing this country right now. You can live without a job, you can live without being able to read, you can live without knowing algebra, but you cannot live without your health.

This has nothing to do with vanity, and nothing to do with self-esteem: as one writer once put it, "Diabetes doesn't give a (expletive) about your self-esteem."

The health problems that fat people have (I often refuse to use that softening sobriquet "overweight") are amongst the most vicious, and when they come to fruition, they toss their weight onto the already-strained healthcare system, costing untold millions every year.

Obesity reduces life expectancy, and is one of the leading causes of preventable death worldwide. Yes, you read that right: eating too much and moving too little is a major, major problem for the entire world, and it's every bit as serious as addictions to tobacco, alcohol, or heroin.

And what do good governments do when citizens are massively addicted to such things? They take steps to curb that addiction. If half the population of NYC were out-of-control drinkers, there would be an outcry followed by proposals on how to fix it.

Back in 1965, the smoking rate in the U.S. was about 42 percent. As the decades went by, however, many governments (especially New York City's) began placing heavy taxes and restrictions on cigarettes and smoking. Miraculously, the rate began to drop.

Now, the smoking rate in New York is just 14 percent, 6 percent lower than the national average. In West Virginia, where few limits are placed on the habit, the rate is 26 percent. Clearly, America needs that same kind of societal shift in the way it views obesity, and needs to be aggressive in fighting it.

So don't think of this proposal as a case of the government overstepping its bounds… think of it as the government trying to be something of a good shepherd.

A shepherd that watches large cows instead of sheep… and is watching them eat, and eat, and eat until they vomit, only to keep eating after that, to the detriment of themselves and everything around them, until they literally drop dead.

And whether you agree with the exact tenet of the law or not, credit must be given to Bloomberg for moving on it. He is one of the few politicians willing to take a tough, unpopular stance on an issue that is affecting more and more Americans every day.

Maybe, when this law succeeds and eventually spreads to the rest of the country (as so many NYC health initiatives have), you can write him a letter and thank him because you were able to watch a whole movie without needing an insulin shot.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/157690925_First_volley_in_the_war_on_obesity_.html?page=all

Spilt champagne from occupied Wall Street

BY STEVE JANOSKI

I was not paying attention, I admit it. But then again, neither was the rest of the media.

It's not on the New York Times home page, it hasn't been plastered across television screens, and nobody seems to want to speak on it - but it's happening, whether we all want to report on it or not.

These protestors who have been “occupying” Wall Street for the past three weeks, I'm not even sure who they are. The lone common thread appears to be that they are all young, liberal, and… well, that's it.

The few news outlets paying the protest any serious attention have said that some are protesting corporate greed, while others are protesting the undue influence that Wall Street holds over our politicians; recent statements released by the group have added such concerns as police brutality, union busting, and the economy to the list.

Chants have risen up in the concrete valleys of New York, with the refrain of “We are the 99 percent” and “They got bailed out, we got sold out,” and it's clear that the protestors are drawing inspiration from the freedom protests born of the Arab Spring.

For a while, they were easy to dismiss as a few hundred radical hippies trying to make something out of nothing, but as liberal celebrities like Michael Moore and Cornel West joined the fight, it began to garner more attention through, of course, social media outlets.

One particularly inflammatory video on YouTube shows Wall Street's elite dressed in their Sunday finest, drinking champagne and laughing dismissively while watching the protestors; Hunter S. Thompson himself could not have written that script any better.

And so this week, that rag-tag bunch of kids will be joined by the real heavyweights as several prominent unions embrace their cause, and endorsements from the AFL-CIO, the Transport Workers Union Local 100 (representing 38,000 New York city transit workers), and the United Federation of Teachers (amongst others) have come rolling in.

It is a safe bet that other labor organizations will follow their lead. People in other cities certainly have - protests in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C. either have occurred or are being planned.

What this odd combination of old hippies, young hippies, union workers, and anyone else who is out of work and angry about it seems to be tapping into is the silent rage that those of us in the middle class hold because our prospects for the future were left for dead in the ashen wreckage of the “financial crisis.”

They're not socialists, but they don't want every government safety net torn from under them, and don't want corporations to be deregulated to the point of no return.

They're the ones who realize that while American manufacturing lies in hazy ruin, union membership - which helped create the vaunted middle class - has fallen to record lows, and the prodigious wealth disparity is growing every day.

They're the ones who are angry that, unless you're a CEO, there are no jobs, no money, and no raises - not now and, from news reports, it seems not ever.

This is not the first time this happened; a dozen years ago, there was a fight in the streets of Seattle that caught the world by surprise when the nascent anti-globalization movement announced its arrival by bringing tens of thousands into the streets to protest the World Trade Organization and the unbridled power that the massive, multi-national corporations were gathering.

The attacks of September 11 effectively undercut that movement, and the foreign wars of retribution that followed it made citizens focus more on the external threats than the internal.

But now, as those perils begin to fade and America stares down the barrel of yet another recession, it seems that Americans are finally beginning to cast their gaze inward and wonder what happened to the nation that they once knew.

It seems like it was a lifetime ago, but it's only been nine months ago since the now-legendary Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire in the middle of the street in Sidi Bouzid.

His final words before committing that single act of defiance that ignited revolution across the Middle East?

“How do you expect me to make a living?”

Well, give Wall Streeters enough champagne, and I bet they'll come up with an answer for you.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

Bin Laden's backhanded victory

STEVE JANOSKI

When I drive through the heart of my state on the ever-chaotic Route 3 and the New York City skyline rises up in the hazy distance, it just doesn't look right without them.

I have never gotten used to the sight. At this point, I doubt I ever will.

The memories from that day are vivid — huddled around the cab of an old Chevy S-10 on our lunch period, listening to the car radio in astonishment as announcers caterwauled between updates on the Twin Towers and warnings about further attacks.

We may as well have been crowded around an arch-topped table radio listening to the first reports on Pearl Harbor as far as I was concerned.

"Jesus Christ," I said between pulls of a cigarette. "We're going to war with… somebody."

New York was our city, my city, the place I'd been brought every weekend since I was old enough to walk, and now it sat shrouded in a billowing fog of destruction that had been catapulted into the air as the ashes of firefighters and office workers mixed with the chalky dust of 220 floors' worth of sheetrock.

The psychological effect it all had on me was incalculable.

Ten years later, I suppose that gazing at that lacking skyline is the ultimate solemn reminder that nothing in life is permanent and that we are not all the heroes of our own movies.

Some of us go quietly, some gallantly, some with a whisper and some with a roar, but in the end, we all die, and every time it's a tragedy.

And sometimes the things we've built up around ourselves, our bridges and our skyscrapers and our countries, they die too — 9/11 taught us that much, and nothing has been quite the same since we learned that lesson.

And I don't mean that in the "9/11 changed everything!" way that some politicians do when they're seeking approval to invade this country or that country, but more that in 2001, America was robbed of its characteristic optimism, and without that, it seems to be hurtling toward a devastating end.

For years after 9/11, we turned into a crooked-back ogre, glaring with untrusting eyes and balled fists at every nation, a recalcitrant bully all too ready to call for war in the deserts of the Middle East or on the floors of our own Congress.

The scars are still there — now, a decade later, we are reluctant to help the people of the Middle East as they brawl in the streets for their own liberty, which we supposedly championed back then.

And 10 years later, we are not better off.

On the best of days, the country is going bankrupt, the infrastructure is crumbling, and our foreign wars are bleeding us dry. On the worst, we are told it's our last day on the job, that the rivers are rising, or that the bank is foreclosing.

Still, we have not learned. We call for war to prevent war, we build more to prevent flooding, we elect people who hate government to fix government; as a country, we seem in dire need of a logic class or two.

Sometimes, for all of our flight deck rhetoric about how we "stand strong" and "never forget," I wonder if Bin Laden actually succeeded.

Maybe, just maybe, he figured out that his strikes would foment a need for revenge that would so thoroughly consume America that it would recklessly charge down the path to massive debt and a crippled economy just for the chance to kill him, willingly suffocating itself in pursuit of "victory."

Maybe he knew us better than we thought — maybe, better than we knew ourselves.

Or maybe I've just lost that September 10 optimism I once had.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

New York crashes Jersey’s Giant party

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

BY STEVE JANOSKI 

I’ve heard it on the radio waves, on TV, and seen the excited announcements on Facebook for the past week— our very own Giants Stadium is finally going to get the Super Bowl in 2014.

This is a good thing for both the area and the NFL. It’ll bring business to the state, and it will also be nice to see football being played once again as the real men used to play it—outside in the brutal elements, come snow, sleet, or rain.

With the right weather conditions (or the wrong ones, if you’re playing), we might even have a repeat of the legendary Ice Bowl—the 1967 NFL title game played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the temperature was a balmy negative 13 degrees at game time and the referees couldn’t use their whistles because they froze to their lips on contact.

That’s some manly stuff right there.

Of course, even with all of the excitement over the game, there’s one thing that bothers me—people, it seems, need a geography lesson on where exactly Giants Stadium is.

Say it with me boys, all you announcers and pundits and sportswriters across this great land—it’s in "New Jersey."

I know you want to forget about us except when making your poor jokes about the shore or big hair or any of the other…stuff…that has floated around about us over the years, but now, you’ve got to acknowledge us.

Too long have we taken the back seat to that shining city across the Hudson, and this latest affront on the part of the national media in referring to it as a "New York Super Bowl" is recklessly belligerent toward our state.

This won’t be a "New York Super Bowl" any more than the Knicks are a New Jersey disgrace—we will be dealing with the traffic, we’ll be putting up with the tourists, and most importantly, we’ll be bringing in the cash from it.

And rightfully so.

New York has long claimed the Giants as their own, even though the team played in three different states at various times before finally settling in the Meadowlands in 1976; while East Rutherford is only 7 miles from Times Square, you’ve still got to cross one big state line to get there.

Although I can only talk as a Giants fan, even the New York Jets, by far a more "New York" team, have played at the Meadowlands for 26 years after hustling out of Shea Stadium.

What’s that say about the city and football?

What says even more is that in all of the Giants games I’ve ever been to, I have yet to hear any kind of New York accent or talk to any fancy folks from Manhattan or Queens who made the trek out to the swamps to come see "their" team play.

It’s folks from Wayne or West Caldwell, Bayonne or Belleville, that go the games, pay the exorbitant parking fees, and trade their less-used appendages for the $10 beers.

I’ve accepted that the team that plays in New Jersey in the stadium built for no other purpose than to house them still has that damned "NY" on their helmets—some things just aren’t going to change.

But at least for the next four years, I want it tattooed on these announcers’ foreheads that East Rutherford isn’t New York, and that this game will be among New Jersey’s shining moments whether they like it or not.

So no more "New York Super Bowl."

No more "NY/NJ Super Bowl."

No more "New York Area Super Bowl."

It’s New Jersey. Get it right, especially you New Yorkers.

Otherwise, I might just have to start confusing Manhattan and Long Island…and we all know how much you’ll like that.

"Manhattan? Mastic? It’s all the same to me."

http://www.northjersey.com/sports/pro_sports/95480194_New_York_crashes_Jersey_s_Giant_party.html