Right On: California’s looney left

May 9, 2018 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — A petri dish is “a shallow, circular, transparent dish used for the culture of microorganisms.” California is a giant petri dish teeming with all the latest liberal political, social and environmental microorganisms.

All three branches of its state government are a cautionary tale as to what happens when the looney left controls government.

California’s elected executives at both state and local levels actively work to ignore, thwart and undermine federal law. So much for the rule of law on which democracy depends.

Years of supermajority have allowed California’s Democratic Legislature to tax and spend without restraint: Liberal nirvana. The state is home to the country’s highest state income tax rates while spending the proceeds on things like its $98 billion bullet train to nowhere.

A California court showed what happens when liberal judges interpret the law to suit the latest radical left whim. The case shows that even companies who are liberal darlings are not exempt from arbitrary punishment.

Here’s the story.

Always health conscious, California voters approved the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986. Sounds good; after all, who wants toxins and unsafe water?

But like the federal Environmental Protection Agency, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment was taken over by zealots and morphed into a bureaucratic monster.

Both agencies were created to tackle the real environmental and health hazards of their day. But once these problems were addressed, both agencies looked for ways to justify their existence and expand their reach by finding evermore obscure supposed-problems.

California’s OEHHA proudly announces on its website that some 800 chemicals have been found to cause cancer or birth defects. Any product sold in California must be labeled as a cancer risk if it contains even miniscule amounts of any one of these chemicals.

It’s fair to ask why California merely labels rather than bans these carcinogens. The answer: Far too many mainstream products available in the other 49 states wouldn’t be found in California stores.

To see how liberal good intentions evolve into an over-the-top nanny state, take one of the state’s cancer sources: coffee.

Coffee causes cancer? Maybe those Mormons are onto something.

Like a number of previous health scares – are eggs healthy or not? – the coffee/cancer connection is clearly tenuous. Studies have found that acrylamide found in coffee increases the risk of cancer in rats and mice at doses “1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the levels people might be exposed to in foods.”

Want to be safe? Don’t drink 1,000 cups of coffee a day.

But before you sell all your Starbucks stock and swear off your morning cup of joe, take comfort in any of a number of studies that claim coffee is (mostly) good for you. (Full disclosure: I am not a coffee drinker.)

Click here for a list of common foods – many that you eat regularly – and the amount of acrylamide they contain, compiled by the Canadian government. Look for coffee at the bottom of the list. Worry instead about Ritz crackers, Oreo cookies, McDonald’s french fries and all the rest.

Not discouraged by the facts, nonprofit loonies sued Starbucks saying the chain had failed to provide a cancer warning starting in 2002 when acrylamide first found its way onto California’s cancer list. They want a $2,500 penalty for every person exposed since then. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars.

The judge required Starbucks to prove a negative: that coffee wouldn’t cause cancer in more than 1 of every 100,000 drinkers. Never mind that most coffee studies found no connection between coffee drinkers and cancer.

Confirming that California is governed by the screwball left, Starbucks lost. In addition to a possible fine of hundreds of millions, it must label its coffee as carcinogenic.

The unnamed beneficiaries in this fiasco are the lawyers. California’s law is a gold mine for the tort bar, the Democratic Party’s biggest campaign contributors. More nanny-state regulations equal more lucrative lawsuits.

Coffee joins thousands of other products carrying the ominous cancer warning in California. But with so many products labeled as cancer risks, can any reasonable person think the warnings are effective or useful?

Then again, effective and useful are not criteria the far left applies when micromanaging the behavior of the benighted masses like you and me. Liberals know what’s good for us.

Is there a lesson for Utah in this?

Suppose an analogous criterion was applied to marijuana. I don’t know how many joints a very mellow lab rat would have to smoke to contract cancer, but there are a variety of competing studies on marijuana’s other effects on users, especially the young.

Should a Utah judge be able to pick and choose between studies? Should she be able to prohibit marijuana sales if its proponents couldn’t prove that less than 1 in 100,000 users would be adversely affected in some way? Should growers and sellers be liable for massive fines?

The next time you visit California be sure to stay away from all 800 cancer-causing chemicals. And for sure, stay away from Starbucks, McDonalds and Ritz crackers.

Howard Sierer is an opinion columnist for St. George News. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: hsierer@stgeorgeutah.com

Twitter: @STGnews