With Trans Fat Banning, Los Angeles Has Found Its Hot-Button Political Issues

Two Laws about Burgers, Fries & Celebrities Are Totally L.A

Besides last week's earthquake, which was one of the strangest I've been in the middle of since coming to the land of fruits and nuts after arriving from that desert town of nothingness called Arizona around ten years ago, Los Angeles made other headlines for suggesting a couple of strange, only in L.A., laws.

Why was the earthquake strange? I was nude and getting ready to jump into the shower when it went down. Standing in the buff, while your red-nosed pit-bull stares at you, tongue-wagging, everything around you shaking, was not the way I figured I'd go out. Then again, I probably should have taken the opportunity to leave my apartment in the buff. I mean, it's getting harder and harder to find a date in this incredibly finicky town. Maybe it's time to go to the extreme.

Anyhow, I, like everybody else in Los Angeles, survived which means I got to concentrate on other Los Angeles issues like the two laws I mention above. The first was proposed to Los Angelinos by our former police chief, now city councilman, Bernard Parks. Although the law proposed by Bernard would only affect South Los Angeles, mainly South Central, it's an interesting idea that needs to be looked at.

The law, and it might be a good one for one simple flaw, pretty much bans fast food restaurants from setting up shop in South Los Angeles. Actually, the best way to describe the law is by calling it a year moratorium on allowing fast food restaurants to open new stores in an impoverished part of South Los Angeles.

It's a good idea. Bernard Parks and his fellow council members are trying to do something that could shake up South L.A. By giving the city a year to find other restaurants, healthier restaurants, to open up stores in South L.A., the city council is saying that they are trying to fight obesity. Of course, the flaw in this thinking is obvious. Fighting obesity has a lot to do with fighting poverty. In fact it might have everything to do with fighting poverty.