My DC Examiner column this week focuses on Barack Obama’s transformation into our National Noodge, nudging, shoving, poking and prodding Americans into healthier lifestyles via the powers of the federal government.

A year ago, the New York Times got all excited about the “new age of regulation” the administration was busy ushering in. The president had elevated “a new breed of regulators”: folks like regulatory czar Cass Sunstein, who wants to “nudge” Americans toward healthier consumption choices, and CDC head Thomas Frieden, who, as NYC health commissioner, proclaimed ”when anyone dies at an early age from a preventable cause in New York City, it’s my fault.”

Today’s column tracks how this killjoy crusade is playing out:

Quitting smoking was “a personal challenge for [Obama],” the first lady explained recently, and she never “poked and prodded.”

Of course not. It’s obnoxious to hector your loved ones. “Poking and prodding” is what good government does to perfect strangers. And that’s what the Obama administration has been doing, with unusual zeal, for the past 2 1/2 years.

You’re not a real president until you fight a metaphorical “war” on a social problem. So, to LBJ’s “War on Poverty” and Reagan’s “War on Drugs,” add Obama’s “War on Fun.” Like the “War on Terror,” it’s being fought on many fronts…

Among them: graphic warning labels for cigarettes; a ban on clove cigarettes and possibly menthols; shutting down online poker sites; banning caffeinated malt liquor; mandatory menu-labeling and ratcheting down allowable sodium levels in food to “adjust the American palate to a less salty diet.” Even healthy “real food” aficionados can find themselves in the crosshairs, as Dan Allgyer, an Amish farmer selling raw milk discovered last month, when FDA agents and federal marshals raided his farm.

Last year, in a remarkably silly column entitled “Obama’s Happiness Deficit,” Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt wondered whether the president’s political difficulties stemmed from the fact that “he doesn’t seem all that happy being president.” I couldn’t care less whether Obama’s enjoying his job. He asked for it, he got it. But if he isn’t having fun, he shouldn’t take it out on the rest of us.

President Obama’s ‘War on Fun’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• A Financial Super-Regulator: The dangers of giving the Fed too much power.

• The financial regulators’ pipe dream: “Most new regulation will do nothing to limit crises because markets will innovate around it. Worse, some regulation being considered by Congress will guarantee bigger and more frequent crises.”

• The shape of things to come? More war will come before peace in the Middle East, says journalist and foreign affairs analyst Leon Hadar.

• The illegal cigarette trade in Ireland reaches “epidemic proportions“  after the government imposes draconian regulations on tobacco products.

• Podcast: “Too Big to Fail Is Just Too Big“

Thursday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

President Obama broke his pledge not to raise taxes on lower- and middle-income families with his large tobacco tax increase back in February. It appears that the increase is not just hurting tobacco consumers, but also hurting workers in the cigar industry. From Tampa Bay Online:

Tampa will lose part of its cigar heritage in August when Hav-A-Tampa shuts its factory near Seffner and lays off about 495 employees, closing a factory that has been operating since 1902.

Several things conspired to hurt Altadis’ sales, McKenzie said, including the recession and the growth of indoor smoking bans. The bans have especially hurt sales in cold-weather states, where it’s impractical to smoke a cigar outdoors in the winter, he said.

However, the company attributed much of its trouble to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, a federal program that provides health insurance to low-income children. It is funded, in part, by a new federal tax on cigars and cigarettes. McKenzie couldn’t say how much sales of Hav-A-Tampa cigars had fallen off, but the numbers have dropped significantly, he said.

Previously, federal excise taxes on cigars were limited to no more than a nickel, said Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America trade group. The tax increase, which took effect April 1, raises the maximum tax on cigars to about 40 cents, Sharp said.

This health-tobacco legislation raised taxes $65 billion over 10 years. Imagine the damage that would be caused by the giant health bill currently moving through Congress, which will cost $1 trillion or more over 10 years.

Hat Tip: Tad DeHaven

Higher Taxes for Health Care, Fewer Jobs is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Handing tobacco regulation over to the FDA, as Congress is poised to do, is an epic public health mistake. It is tantamount to giving the keys of the regulatory store to the nation’s largest cigarette manufacturer, Philip Morris.

The legislation that will be voted on shortly in the Senate was cooked up out of public sight by Philip Morris, Sen. Ted Kennedy, Rep. Henry Waxman, and anti-tobacco lobbyists. Philip Morris staffers themselves even wrote large portions of the bill.

There are significant, and numerous, problems with the FDA regulating tobacco, and virtually no benefits to public health. Kennedy, Waxman, and the public health establishment present their legislation as a masterful regulatory stroke that will end tobacco marketing, prevent kids from starting to smoke, make cigarettes less enjoyable to smoke, and reduce adult smoking. But FDA regulation of tobacco will do none of these things.

The bill fails to correctly identify the reasons why young people begin to smoke, and concentrates almost exclusively on restricting tobacco marketing, while leaving the other risk factors for adolescent smoking unaddressed. There is nothing in the proposed legislation that shows the FDA understands the well-documented connections between education, poverty and smoking status, connections that provide the key to helping adults stop smoking.

FDA to Regulate Tobacco? Big Mistake is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

A federal tobacco tax hike took affect today, raising the price of cigarettes by 62 cents per pack.

Appearing on CNN today, Cato’s Chris Edwards says this tax will hit the poor more than anybody.

The Tobacco Tax Hike is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

It is curious that President Obama keeps claiming that he is not raising taxes on lower-income Americans, yet a tax hike that will impose a disproportionately large burden on the poor goes into effect Wednesday. 

In February, Obama signed into law a large tax hike on cigarette consumers. The federal tax on cigarette consumers is jumping from 39 cents per pack to $1.01 per pack — a huge 159 percent increase. If you smoke two packs per day, President Obama has raised your taxes by a $453 annually.

Next on the Obama low-income tax hike agenda: global warming taxes of about $80 billion per year, as revealed in the Obama budget, which equals an annual tax boost of $700 for every household in the United States.

Obama’s First Tax Hike Hits the Poor is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog