Barack Obama has earned plaudits for pushing universal health care at the national level, but the San Francisco Chronicle can’t help bashing local initiatives that promote a healthier City. At a time when all state employees will get paid minimum wage due to the Governor’s lack of leadership, the front page of yesterday’s Chronicle featured the hysterical headline (in all caps): “S.F. LEADERS GO ON BINGE TO LEGISLATE GOOD HEALTH.” We can only be so lucky that our local electeds are on this “binge.” Somehow, says the Chronicle, ordinances like banning the sale of cigarettes in pharmacies – or requiring restaurants to label how many calories are in their food – are another expanded tentacle of Big Brother. And if the Chronicle thinks that’s our biggest outrage worthy of a front-page Monday article, they must truly be living in a bubble.

Yesterday’s Chronicle was so bad that it looked like the paper had become a parody of itself. Rather than view recent ordinances (which generally share wide support among the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors) as promoting a healthier lifestyle, local officials are portrayed as power-hungry social engineers who want to impose a nanny state. Does it really make sense to sell cigarettes in the same place where people are picking up their prescription drugs for asthma? Should non-smokers have to endure second-hand inhalation when they made the conscious decision not to pursue this life-threatening activity? What about basic “right-to-know” information when you go out to dinner?

These questions aren’t raised in the article – as the Chronicle tells another “only-in-San-Francisco” story about our crazy lefty Board of Supervisors and their wacky ideas.

As Public Health Director Mitch Katz said in the article, “we're not dictating individual behavior. What we're trying to do is make the world a place where it's easier to be healthy.” Far from mandating San Franciscans to eat their broccoli and hit the treadmill 30 minutes a day (as the Chronicle snarkily suggested), many of these measures simply make it easier for busy people to practice good health habits. They’re not anti-business “job killers”: even the SF Chamber of Commerce supports Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi’s measure that requires most employers to give pre-tax “commuter checks” to employees – which will get more people out of their cars and start using public transportation.

Perhaps the oddest quote in the Chronicle article came from a Marina resident – a sixty-year-old real estate broker – who scoffed at the proposed local ban on cigarette sales in pharmacies. “It's not any of their business,” he said. “They’re not the Surgeon General or the Centers for Disease Control.” Maybe the interviewee needs some basic education in government civics: the inherent “police power” that all state and local governments have include promoting the health, safety and welfare of its citizens (as opposed to the federal government’s more restrictive enumerated powers in the Constitution.) In other words, San Francisco officials are just doing their job.

Predictably, we hear more complaints in the Chronicle article about how elected officials have “better things to do” than worry about health habits. But nobody suggests the City is ignoring other concerns (if you think San Francisco does nothing about the homeless, you’re not paying attention), or that these rather benign measures are so controversial that they distract our time from other problems. Reminds me of when I lived in Berkeley, and the City Council got flak for passing foreign policy resolutions. Anyone who bothered to attend a meeting could see that the City still managed to address more pressing concerns.

San Francisco is a cutting-edge city with intelligent people who come up with innovative, progressive ideas that eventually become mainstream. The fact that we’re the first City to propose banning cigarette sales in pharmacies is a good thing (not a bad thing) – because a good idea has to start somewhere. We were also the first to require paid sick leave for workers, the first to attempt universal health care and (because of the higher cost of living) have raised our minimum wage beyond the federal and state standards. Some call it liberalism – I call it basic worker protections. And San Francisco values.

If only the Chronicle could see it the same way …