White House adviser: 'Heavier people' bad for economy

[They know so much, they have all the answers, why aren't we smart enough just to listen to them?]

Friday, March 05, 2010
DOCTOR'S ORDERS
WorldNetDaily
White House adviser: 'Heavier people' bad for economy
Rahm Emanuel's bioethicist brother suggests government intervene in eating habits
Posted: March 05, 2010
10:05 pm Eastern

The U.S. economy would be in better shape if people weren't so heavy, according to Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the older brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a presidential health care adviser in his own right.

"I mean, we're all focused on health care, diabetes and heart disease," he said in a recent appearance on the New York Times "Freakonomics Radio" program. "But, there's all sorts of things like the simple that, you know – heavier people – transportation is more, so there's more spent on gasoline, more on jet fuel."

The White House is aggressively pressing for passage of the Democrats' trillion-dollar health-care reform plan while First Lady Michelle Obama has taken up the issue of childhood obesity.

Jeff Poor of the Business and Media Institute says Ezekiel Emanuel's perspective should be taken seriously.

"In all the obesity hand-wringing some bizarre remarks from an important person were overlooked," the institute reported.

Emanuel, the report said, confirmed that "this condition has a broader impact on our lives, specifically the economy."

"People have had to change, ah you know, the size of doorways, the size of chairs on airplanes and at sports stadiums," said Ezekiel Emanuel in the Feb. 25 appearance. "So there's a lot of hidden costs as well as to the increasing girth of Americans."

Emanuel, a bioethicist at the American National Institutes of Health, said people's size impacts both energy and infrastructure costs.

At the Freakonomics blog, author Stephen Dubner noted Ezekiel Emanuel advises the White House on health-care reform.

He said Emanuel made "a strong case for government intervention in Americans' eating habits. When I asked, however, if it was time for a cheeseburger tax, he made clear his limitations. 'That's a political question,' he said. 'I think you got the wrong Emanuel brother.'"

WND has reported that should the Democrats health-care plan be adopted, there will be immediate legal repercussions.

Larry Klayman, a legal firebrand whose work fighting government corruption left both Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney on the defensive, already has a lawsuit pending over the president's secret meetings with Planned Parenthood and other lobbyists on the plans for health care.

Klayman, who founded Judicial Watch and, more recently, Freedom Watch USA, has a case in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking information from Obama under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires disclosure of records of meetings between the executive branch and outside industry lobbyists. It also requires access to meetings.

"Freedom Watch's lawsuit against the Obama administration to open up the story behind the backroom deals with lobbyists now takes on greater significance," he said.

"I will not rest under the dark veil of secrecy is removed to this entire process, designed to enrich the friends of both political parties, at taxpayers expense," he said.

Klayman said his lawsuit against the White House raises some of the same issues he raised during the early years of the Clinton administration, when his work contributed to the demise of the health care proposal championed by Hillary Clinton.

The lawsuit charges that in Obama's "haste to socialize medicine in the United States, and increase government control generally," he has "violated his commitment to transparency."

Klayman said Obama and his "surrogates" have been "holding behind closed door meetings with health care industry lobbyists, cutting deals to win passage of his health care legislation."

Klayman's case contends the president's conduct falls within the scope of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which "requires the president to come clean on why he has caved in to the pharmaceutical industry, preventing the importation of prescription drugs that would lower prices for consumers, why he has become the lackey of Planned Parenthood in championing government financed abortions, and why the AMA (American Medical Association) and AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) are now his great friends."

WND also reported when Liberty Counsel President Mathew Staver confirmed his organization is preparing to challenge the constitutionality of "Obamacare" in court.

"Congress has no authority to require every person to obtain insurance coverage and has no authority to fine employers who do not provide the coverage standards that are required in the bill," he said at the time.