Top Ten Nanny Cities.

Fargo ND. Definition of a Nanny State is a derogatory term that refers to state protectionism, economic interventionism, or regulatory policies, and the perception that these policies are becoming institutionalized as common practice. Policies such as mandatory helmet laws and bans on smoking in public places, high taxes on junk food, bans on recreational drug use, gun control, a legal drinking age or legal smoking age that is higher than the age of majority, political correctness, censorship, and content regulation are criticized as nanny state actions.[citation needed] Such actions result from the belief that the state (or, more often, one of its local authorities) has a comprehensive duty to protect the citizenry from their own harmful behaviors, and assumes that the state knows best what constitutes harmful behavior.

1.CHICAGO

Chicago wins the booby prize for most meddlesome metropolis by a wide margin. After more than a century of Big Apple envy, the Second City now has the honor of finally beating New York in at least one contest.

2.SEATTLE

Seattle has always had an identity conflict. Gay bathhouses are allowed, street protests are legendary, and marijuana is, by voter initiative, the police department’s lowest enforcement priority. Each summer a two-day event called Hempfest draws some 150,000 people who openly smoke weed in a city park with the blessings of the cops and the local government, which regards the festival as protected speech.

3.NEW YORK

New York competes with Chicago as a trailblazer for bad new ideas, whether it’s the 2003 ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, the 2006 decision to create and maintain an active, involuntary database of the blood sugar levels on every resident diabetic, the 2007 ban on trans fats in restaurant cooking oil, or the 2008 rule that fast food chains must show calorie content on their menus. New Yorkers pay higher cigarette taxes than anyone else in the country, $4.64 per pack in combined city, state, and federal excise taxes as of June. The city has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, requiring official permission for possession of any firearm and reserving handgun carry permits for the well-connected.

4.SAN DIEGO

San Diego combines the progressive paternalism of more liberal California cities with a more strict social conservatism on drugs, sex, and even gambling. (With its recent proliferation of Indian casinos and card clubs, California has more access to gambling than any state except neighboring Nevada.) Worst of all, San Diego recently joined an unfortunate statewide trend by banning alcohol on public beaches under all circumstances.

5.EL PASO

In the bottom five for drugs, sex, and, somewhat surprisingly, tobacco (due to a stringent smoking ban and Texas’ relatively high excise tax on cigarettes).

6.NASHVILLE

Four cities in this survey finished in the top 10 for tobacco and guns but in the bottom 15 for sex and alcohol: Nashville, Memphis, Indianapolis, and Jacksonville. Add some gun restrictions, and you get Charlotte. Free up the alcohol, and you get Louisville and Kansas City. Substitute sex for booze, and you have Atlanta. And each city is within 600 miles of the Grand Ole Opry. It’s a sort of Southeastern Conference of mixed red state liberalism—a mirror image of the coastal San Francisco cluster of blue state nannies.

7.HOUSTON

If zoning restrictions were included in this survey, Houston would vault up the list, because it famously has none. Another modern feature Space City lacks is gambling: There are just two legal gaming establishments within 50 miles of the city

8.CHARLOTTE

The least-friendly city in our survey for gays.

9.PHILADELPHIA

In April, Democratic Mayor Michael Nutter signed five new gun laws that, among other things, banned certain “assault weapons,” limited handgun purchases to one per month, and authorized the forcible removal of licensed guns from “persons posing a risk of imminent personal injury” to anyone (including themselves). “Almost 232 years ago, a group of concerned Americans took matters in their own hands and did what they needed to do by declaring that the time had come for a change,” Nutter said in front of the historic City Hall, somehow equating the declaration of an armed rebellion by citizens against their government with a modern-day government’s decision to disarm its citizens. “We are going to make ourselves independent of the violence that’s been taking place in this city for far too long.” The only problem: As Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham told reporters a few days later, the new laws ran afoul of the Pennsylvania constitution. “If there are wholesale arrests which turn out to be illegal, this city is going to get its pants sued off them,” Abraham said. “I cannot, as a matter of law, arrest people for illegal possession of guns.”

10.LOS ANGELES

If there ever was a good excuse to further criminalize smoking in tobacco-intolerant California, the May 2007 Griffith Park fire was it. According to fire officials, a homeless man fell asleep in a bone-dry patch of brush on a park hillside while smoking a cigarette, setting off an 800-acre inferno that torched about one-fifth of the largest urban park in the United States, coming within singeing distance of homes in the city’s upscale Los Feliz neighborhood.

The city with the most relaxed regulatory policies in the United States is…..You Guessed it Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Nanny State is here to stay.

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