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Christine Quinn Leading from Behind the SoundProof Room: When Five Paid Sick Days are Not Enough

A sad bit of history was made this week when New York City finally passed a law that requires businesses with at least 15 employees to provide five paid sick days a year.  Five.  Days.  Five days are not enough days to be out sick in a single year, especially in a living space jam-packed-with-people New York City — but at least its a start in a City that clearly has cared more about your cigarettes and sugar consumption and your Big Gulps than ever it did about actually giving you a few days off to heal while still being able to make the rent.

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Why Shaming Speeders Will Not Work

The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, has passed some excellent legislature in his time in office. As a person interested in good health, I was pleased to see the ban on trans fat in restaurant food as well as the bans on smoking in an increasing number of places and the proposed ban on the sale of larger sizes of soda, which serve no purpose other than to expand the pocketbooks of the sellers and the waistlines of the consumers while cutting down on their lifeline.

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Bloomberg to Fat New Yorkers: "No Soda for You!"

Last night, New York City Mayor Bloomberg announced a new plan banning the sale of sugar soda over 16 oz:

In New York City, where more than half of adults are obese or overweight, Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner, blames sweetened drinks for up to half of the increase in city obesity rates over the last 30 years. About a third of New Yorkers drink one or more sugary drinks a day, according to the city. Dr. Farley said the city had seen higher obesity rates in neighborhoods where soda consumption was more common.

The ban would not apply to drinks with fewer than 25 calories per 8-ounce serving, like zero-calorie Vitamin Waters and unsweetened iced teas, as well as diet sodas.

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Faking Diabetes Amputation to Scare Healthy People

This month, the Bloomberg mayoralty took a stumble on a massive morality blunder with the release of an absolutely incredible public health campaign aimed at the heart of healthy people; and it was perpetuated in a fake amputation of a man’s leg in order to make some sort of warped point in print advertising about the perils if Type 2 Diabetes:

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Sugar Pimps Want Federal New York City Welfare Dollars

In an amazingly horrible PR spin — not unlike Renaming the Slaughterhouse — the big soda pop makers are fighting the New York City ban on using Federal welfare money on sugary drinks — because, I guess, the Sugar Pimps want our kids unhealthy and fat.

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Two Preening Snow Princes: Ten Sentence Story #108

Mike and Chris were are two elected — but self-anointed princes — who thought peopled lived to serve them instead of the other way around.

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A Stack of Smokes is Now $11.25 in New York City

The price of a single pack of cigarettes in New York City is now $11.25USD — and that’s just for an ordinary brand.  If you’re buying imported, you are going to pay a whole lot more.  Marshall Jamison — my friend, inspiration and mentor — used to smoke English Ovals by the fistful, and I’m sure he would be sickened by the high rise prices for a stack of smokes.

Continue reading → A Stack of Smokes is Now $11.25 in New York City