Way back in 1848, the Boston Public Library became the first publicly supported municipal library in America. Imagine what a joy that was for the residents of Boston to check out books free of charge to read in the comfort of their home.

Could you imagine the response today’s conservatives would have had to that news if they were living in Boston back then? I wonder what would have been said if they had conservative talk radio?

I could hear the argument now: “Libraries, ha! since when is government in the business of supplying books for people? What next, libraries with tables and chairs like at home?” The cries of “nanny state” would have been heard throughout the city.

Couldn’t you easily imagine the tirade of the 19th century version of Rush Limbaugh: “Think of the cost of one of these places. You have to hire folks to run them, and if you think the library lovers will stop with only one library in Boston, think again. Oh no my friends, they will want one in each town and city across the country.”

But as dumb as the anti-government gang are, they have, to some extent, successfully created an image of those arguing for government involvement as weak kneed, bed-wetting liberals in need of a nanny to make things all better.

To be sure, many hair brained laws have been introduced by well meaning legislators which have given their critics lots of ammunition. For example, In Illinois, Democratic state legislator Ken Dunkin has introduced a bill that would make texting while crossing the street a misdemeanor. Needless to say, talk radio picked it up and ran with it.

But to lump the absurd in with serious problems such as the disregard for the health, welfare and safety of our citizenry by corporate America is outrageous.

Take for example our food industry. Anytime a peep is mentioned about laws regulating food, the cries start. Words like food fascist, food police, diet dictators, tea totaling do gooders resurface.

It is as if panic set in. Like there is a phobia to nannyism. But who is panicking. The public? No. I don’t see mass demonstrations against the nanny state. I see no mothers demanding their children should not be denied of a Whopper or Big-Mac. I see no community meetings on how to prevent the nanny state from closing down the local Burger King.

The fact is that those panicking are not Jane and Joe six-pack. Those in panic mode are the fast food corporate board rooms and the hired guns they buy to push this ruse of the nanny state.

This is where folks like Rick Berman enter the picture. Berman, a Washington lobbyist works to protect the food and restaurant industries annual profits of $500 billion.

Berman runs the Center for Consumer Freedom that is financed by the food and restaurant industry. CCF’s 2005 IRS return states that Berman works 23 hours a week for the group for which he is paid $18,000. Also, he is the sole owner of Berman & Co., which sponsors many front groups that defend his corporate clients’ interests by attacking their critics, allowing his paying clients to remain out of public view.

According to a July 31, 2006, profile of Berman in USA Today, his company has 28 employees and takes in $10 million dollars a year, but “only Berman and his bookkeeper wife” know how much of the $10 million ends up in their own pockets.

To give you an idea of how well financed his group is, in April of 2005, after a report in a leading medical journal cast doubt on several assumptions about obesity, he pounced. His group ran $600,000 worth of full-paged adds in 6 different newspapers, gloating that the study showed that obesity was not an “epidemic” but rather a lot of hype.

Records show that in 2002 contributors to the group were not concerned citizens worried about the nanny state but large corporations protecting their profits: Coca-Cola, Wendy’s and Tyson Foods, each of which gave $200,000. Cargill gave $100,000, according to the documents, and Outback Steakhouse gave $164,600.

Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston and an occasional target of Mr. Berman’s group, summed up the CCF well: “They make a lot of noise, but nobody in academia takes their arguments seriously, they stand for food industry freedom, not consumer freedom.”

The folks in the corporate offices want you to believe that today the nanny state will regulate your food, smoking and drinking, and tomorrow it will be something else. Soon we will all be goose stepping to the new liberal fascism. To that I say hogwash! I have confidence in folks to make sound decisions, especially if they ignore the corporate whores who will sing any song for the big bucks.