SF Weekly: The Weekly's cover story leads off with this sentence:

"In August 2010, San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar decided that city intervention was needed to help him raise his daughter."

Which is how Benjamin Wachs (can we call you Ben?) and Joe Eskenazi introduce the laundry list of things our city government has banned: Happy Meals, plastic bags, cigarettes in drugstores, bottled water, etc, etc... We're already hitting the "ad nauseum" point with those so there's no need to go on, but Ben and Joe do point out that the Foie Gras ban didn't catch. Perhaps San Francisco's love of food supersedes our love of animals.

Amidst the raging against unnecessary legislation, is the idea that local government (particularly our local government, but also other lefty cities like New York and Seattle) feels it needs to do something to combat "big problems like pollution or rampant obesity" because state and federal legislators are afraid to take on such problems. The nutty, whole wheat point:

As is so often the case in San Francisco, everyone has the best of intentions. But now that we've reached the point where city officials have meticulously worked out what quantity of multigrains and fruits must be present in a meal in order for a restaurant to earn the privilege of including a toy with it, it's reasonable to wonder if San Francisco's elected leaders believe there's anything they shouldn't be deciding for you.

City legislators have "supersized the role of local government." - if you will. And you should because even if you're as weary as we are from all these bans, it's interesting to tease out their actual impact.