Sunday, July 7, 2013

Signs Of A Broken Society Part One





Law professor calls for ban on parents drinking

The proposal was presented at a seminar organized by temperance society IOGT-NTO's at the Almedalen political week and is specifically designed to tackle "everyday drinking".

The law currently has no scope for punishing parents who drink in the company of their children and Leijonhufvud argued that the proposal is an attempt to prompt a discussion on the issue.

She compared the offence to minor assault which currently carries a penalty of up to six months imprisonment.

While the proposal is aimed at "everyday drunkenness" it in effect suggests that parents would not be able to share a glass of wine at dinner.


Humorless Ohio AG mugs ‘prescription’ coffee cup

Here’s the issue:  does a coffee mug that mimics a prescription bottle and says “Prescription Coffee, RX#: VRY-CAF-N8D, Drink one mug by mouth, repeat until awake and alert” make fun of prescription drug abuse?
DeWine thinks so.
“People die from accidental drug overdoses in this state every day, and these products make light of the problem,” DeWine said in a May press release.   “We don’t find these products funny at all.”
“These products” referred to the Prescription Line produced by Urban Outfitters, Inc., a national company listed on NASDAQ with revenues of $2.8 billion and three locations in the state.
May was when DeWine and 22 other state attorneys general asked the company to pull the Prescription Line of glasses, coasters, mugs and drink holders.  On June 10, the American Association of Poison Control Centers and 57 local poison centers wrote a similar letter asking that the products be removed.
Most agree, dandelions are a notorious weed. But some recognize that dandelion greens can contribute to a tasty and nutritious meal.
Among the fans of the food is John Taris, a 75-year-old retiree who lives in the Chicago area with his wife on a $1,500-a-month social security payment. When the couple's food supply was a bit low recently, he volunteered to go pick some to provide a vegetable, writes columnist John Kass in the Chicago Tribune (sub. req.).
But, caught in the act of picking the weeds by a Cook County Forest Preserve cop, he was issued a $75 ticket. His court date is July 9.
A spokeswoman for the forest preserve district noted that foraging is prohibited there and called the practice "unsustainable, especially when it's done for commercial purposes," the article reports.
“This is risk aversion to an unsustainable extreme. What lesson should a company like Stride Right take from the recall? It’s impossible to manufacture a shoe, or for that matter any product, that’s completely incapable of causing any level of danger. A recall like this doesn’t promote safety so much as it promotes hiding behind a wall of lawyers, crossing your fingers, and hoping that the risk of a product recall doesn’t put you out of business.”
He’s so right. Any product can, under some circumstances, turn lethal. That’s a  fact  we can’t seem to get a grip on without running to issue a new warning or law, making everyday life seem ever scarier to parents. That’s one of the reasons for helicopter parenting — we are told that almost everything is out to kill our kids unless we are exceedingly vigilant.