They touch our lives in so many ways, and now Reason.tv acknowledges those who tell us that if it looks good, tastes good, or feels good, it should be illegal.

Live (to tape) from the fourth floor of the Sepulveda Center in Los Angeles, California—it’s the 2010 Nanny of the Year Awards!

Over the past year, Reason.tv has recognized plenty of busybodies who relish minding other people’s business, but who deserves to succeed 2009’s winner (Meddlin’ Mike Bloomberg), and take home the 2010 Nanny?

Will it be the heartland mayor who sacked the Lingerie Football League? The Peach State pol who sued a man for growing vegetables in his own yard? A member of the food police?

Remember, it’s a dishonor just to be nominated. So get your awards season started off right, and tune in to the only black-tie ceremony that delivers busybodies, bikini babes, and bacon!

Approximately 1.53 minutes.

“Reason.tv’s 2010 Nanny of the Year Awards” is written and produced by Ted Balaker, who also hosts. Animation: Austin Bragg; Camera: Zach Weissmueller and Hawk Jensen; Voice Over: Rin Palmer

To learn more about our nominees and to watch more Nanny of the Month (and Year) videos, go here.

Scroll down for downloadable versions of this and all our videos, and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.

They’ve targeted bottled water and the selling of all kinds of pets, er, “animal companions.” And now, with the soda scold who’s yanking sugary beverages from vending machines, the City by the Bay pulls off the first-ever Nanny of the Month trifecta!

Presenting Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Month for July 2010: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom!

“Nanny of the Month” is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Associate Producers: Paul Detrick and Alex Manning; Animation: Meredith Bragg

Approximately one minute.

To watch previous Nanny of the Month videos, go here.

Go to Reason.tv for downloadable iPod, HD, and audio versions of this and all our videos and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.

Much Ado? It is worthy to note that the law passed by Arizona “merely echoes federal immigration statutes” – at least according George Will and PoliticalFact.com.  Existing federal law requires:

“Any alien required to apply for registration and to be fingerprinted in the United States who willfully fails or refuses to make such application or to be fingerprinted, and any parent or legal guardian required to apply for the registration of any alien who willfully fails or refuses to file application for the registration of such alien shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall, upon conviction thereof, be fined not to exceed $1,000 or be imprisoned not more than six months, or both.”

According to Arizona’s Governor : “”Despite erroneous and misleading statements suggesting otherwise, the new state misdemeanor crime of willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document is adopted, verbatim, from the same offense found in federal statute.”

So why are some on the Left going so far overboard?  It may well be it is because they have no issues to run on this Fall.

Nationally, the Democrats are facing a hostile center-right electorate over cap and trade and health care.  Beyond that, unemployment remains very high and there is no clear sign of a turnaround on the horizon – in other words, many job seekers are without hope, if you will.  Economists by-in-large agree the stimulus plan didn’t help.  But it did drive up the deficit – another source of voter anger.  On the Left, the Democrats face voter apathy if not anger over the continuing wars and the failure of Obama to deliver nationalized health care, card check and more.

Lacking any issue clearly in their favor, and knowing that center-right voters are motivated, Democrats think they found an issue, in the Arizona law, that might motivate their side.

Lacking clear facts in their favor, however, the Left is resorting to the demonization of people on the center-right.  Quite frankly, it has become perhaps their favorite tactic in this last two years of political troubles if not outright failure.

It is worthy to note that today’s demonization tactics are an outgrowth of the political correctness wars of the past.   Political Correctness was a means by which the Left sought to plant guilt in the minds of Americans over issues of race and poverty – all in an effort to neutralize opposition to liberal legislation.  As that tactic began to lose its effectiveness, the Left upped the ante and began labeling people “extreme” for their views – views which often a majority of Americans held and continue to hold.  The treatment of the tea partiers is that case in point.

Still dealing with fact that a majority of Americans are against run away deficits, government cram downs, and the abandonment of the Constitution (otherwise known as what the Left believes are the extreme views of tea partiers), the Arizona law is a prime example of how far the Left has come since fighting their PC wars.  Now they are outright demonizing people through claims of racism and beyond – even if 60% of American voters believe authorities should have the authority to stop and verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant (even though that is not what the Arizona law will actually do).

In sum, faced with intellectual and factual failures, we have seen come on the Left go from charging average people with insensitivity through the PC wars, to claims of extremism, to outright demonization. Lacking a record to tout for this Fall’s elections, and a Supreme Court nomination fight still to go, we may have seen nothin’ yet.

In running for those many offices, Brown has taken countless liberal positions.  As Governor, Brown empowered public employee unions, strongly opposed the death penalty and appointed judges who strongly opposed it.  He opposed Prop 13 before he was for it – but only after the voters passed it. When he ran for President, in 1980, he was for universal health care and said his economic agenda was based, in part, on Buddhist Economics – followers of which endeavor to measure “Gross National Happiness.”  In 1992, when he ran for the Presidency a third time, he touted “living wages,” fought free trade agreements and said he would consider Jesse Jackson as a running mate notwithstanding Jackson’s controversial if not anti-Semitic remarks.  Such is the life of a career liberal like Jerry Brown.

In 2009, while still in the race for Governor, liberal Gavin Newsom said of Jerry Brown’s candidacy: “We’re not content to relive history. We’re going to keep making it.”  To ensure that Brown’s latest history would not include a loss to Newsom, Brown resumed his liberal ways.

Brown attempted to kill Sen. George Runner’s Voter ID Initiative by dubbing it: LIMITS ON VOTING.  INITIATIVE STATUTE.  [which] Prohibits citizens from voting at the polls, unless they present a government-issued photo identification card.  Under similar circumstances, Brown’s Democrat predecessor dubbed the Voter ID initiative he reviewed as “VOTER IDENTIFICATION REQUIREMENT.  INITIATIVE STATUTE.”

Brown filed a lawsuit against San Bernadino County for “failing to consider how growth and new development will impact climate change” – even though the regulations related to AB32 had yet to be put in place at the time of the lawsuit.

In 2008, Brown was also sure to say, before voters passed Prop 8, that it would not apply retroactively to the same sex marriages that Gavin Newsom “legalized” in San Francisco.

All of those positions and actions taken by Brown, on law and order/voting, the environment and social issues, are considerably Left of center and were either taken because he is that Liberal or because he wanted to make sure that then candidate Gavin Newsom would not get to the Left of Jerry Brown.  But now Gavin is gone.  There is no one for Jerry Brown to out-Left.  Soooo, its apparently time for “Reasonable Jerry.”

Like:  The “No tax increase Jerry” – unless the voters want it – meaning he is now against it before he might be for it, or

The “I will look at the pension crisis” Jerry – as if he will take on all those public employee unions he empowered, or

The “I will downsize state government” Jerry – even though the budget increased 120% when he was Governor.

And perhaps the coup de grâce, The “We don’t need mere ambition to be Governor” Jerry Brown.

Clearly, Jerry Brown knows no shame, and without Gavin Newsom in the race, he is trying to tack away from his Leftist rhetoric and embark on his newly discovered Reasonable Jerry Tour.

However, those watching Jerry well remember his comment that “It doesn’t matter what I say, as long as I sound different from other politicians.”  Hopefully, this Fall, voters will understand the true Jerry Brown and let him know that it does matter what you say and even more what you have done.

But beyond the diddy, I also can’t get the vision of a fascist “green” future out of my head — even if it’s portrayed with a heavy dollop of of “Reno: 911“-style cop-show parody. Good comedy has to have a grain of truth in it to work, and this spot has plenty. It’s not just a peek at a ridiculous future, but a look at our “be green or else” present. An overreaction? Tell that to the chief of America’s Green Police, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who Tweeted:

“Ok .. That ‘green police’ Audi commercial hits home..”

And hits home hard. San Francisco, which proudly considers itself the greenest city in America, has mandated composting for all residents and businesses. Failure to comply results in an escalating scale of fines. No word on whether Newsom was proud or embarrassed to see his Green Police state in San Francisco reflected in an ad.

There’s no doubt the ad is funny, but one is left to wonder what Audi’s purpose was? I’m still a bit flummoxed. Did Audi intend to produce a screed against the Green Police as a way to appeal to those who are fed up with years of constant eco-scolding? One would think not, since the “punch line” is that if you own a clean-diesel Audi, you get to drive right through a green checkpoint. But the other 40 seconds of the one-minute spot dovetail nicely with the growing fatigue and skepticism the public feels about the “green” initiatives of government — especially in the wake of the ClimateGate scandals.

Or did Audi believe the public is in lock-step with the green agenda, and figured people would get a laugh out of a satire of paranoid, know-nothing skeptics, and actually want a car that keeps you on the “good side” of environmental policy. If so, it strikes me as a horrible miscalculation to assume the country is full of people who think like Al Gore and Barbara Boxer. The German carmaker, too, seems to be a bit confused about its own ad.

The Green Police are a humorous group of individuals that have joined forces in an effort to collectively help guide consumers to make the right decision when it comes to the environment. They’re not here to judge, merely to guide these decisions.

Ha ha ha! Just “guide” us, eh? By slamming a dude’s head into the checkout line for choosing plastic? Not here to judge? Tell that to the folks scrambling away from their too-hot hot tub. (I know. It’s only a commercial, and a funny one to boot. Still, to pretend there’s no judgment being made on people’s freedom to make decisions about how they may go about their ordinary lives is ridiculous.)

There’s been a good bit of commentary about this ad in the blogosphere. Ben Boychuk at Infinite Monkeys thought the ad was “cleverly written and produced (the anteater was a cute touch)… and utterly horrifying.”

Two bits in particular really bothered me: The part where the Green Police put some hapless homeowner in the back of a squad car as a news reporter explains the perp was caught using incandescent lights; and the Cops-like scene where the bewildered couple is rousted for setting their hot tub’s thermostat too high.

Ben notes how Audi explains there are “numerous real Green Police units globally that are furthering green practices and environmental issues.”

For example, Israel’s main arm of the Ministry of Environmental Protection in the area of enforcement and deterrence is called; you guess it, the Green Police. New York has officers within the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation that are fondly called the “Green Police”. The Green Police is also the popular name for Vietnam’s Environmental Police Department and the UK has a group who dresses in green as part of the Environment Agency’s squad to monitor excessive CO2 emissions.

Wait. What? A Western carmaker is holding up Communist Vietnam as a good example to follow? And we’re supposed to admire the fact that “free” countries like Israel and Great Britain send bureaucrats around to monitor the emissions of its citizens? I don’t care if they wear cute green outfits, that’s a bit creepy and fascist to me. Such agencies don’t merely “further green practices and environmental issues.” They enforce government-desired life practices through a knock on the door. Big difference.

But, I suppose the joke’s on me. Steve Hayward at No Left Turns sees this as a victory for those of us who’ve had enough of the enviro-scolds:

What’s more over than Mark Sanford’s marriage or John Edwards’ reputation? The environmental movement, that’s what. … Is [the ad] mocking environmentalism?  Um. . . yeah. Your moral authority is pretty thin when a major advertiser finds it safe to take this approach. Think anyone would ever try something like this about the civil rights movement? Or the feminist movement?

Point taken. And it should be a source of comfort that those who believe in bossing us around in the name of “saving the planet” (which doesn’t need saved) are a little worried about the mixed messages in this ad. But I live in a state, California, which recently:

• proposed fining and jailing people for the crime of driving with under-inflated tires;

• considered a bill banning cars with black paint from being sold (because black cars trap more heat in the summer and require more use of the air conditioner to make the driver comfortable);

• banned wood-burning fireplaces in new home construction (and restricts it in “grandfathered-in” homes from time to time by bureaucratic fiat); and

• outlawed 25 percent of flat-screen TVs on the market because a panel of bureaucrats say they use too much power;

I could list more examples, including a bit from the Audi ad that is actually true: Incandescent light bulbs will be contraband in the United States starting in 2012. Sure looks like the Green Police are real to me. Happily, Audi has now armed those who would oppose the reordering of society through environmental mandates with a nice bit of video to splice into footage of Al Gore, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Henry Waxman, Barack Obama and others ordering us how to live our lives.

Get crackin’, YouTube fiends! A golden propaganda moment awaits.

Here’s one: How can one of the most powerful law enforcement officials in America not know his communications director routinely engaged in activities that may have been unlawful?

Or, how is it that only this senior member of the staff knew this was occurring as they currently claim?

Since we know the conversations on the tapes were transcribed, who provided those transcriptions?  Was it an internal staff member?  If it was an outside service, who approved the payments for such service?

Any logical line of questioning (especially from an office full of state attorneys) would seem to lead to two possible conclusions: either procedures in one of the highest profile law offices in the nation are woefully inadequate and ineffective; or, other members of staff knew what was going on and are now concealing their earlier knowledge.

Either conclusion is a disaster for a man who frequently brags of the benefits of four decades of political experience.

The irony here is that while Jerry Brown has chosen not to investigate the matter further, his office is currently pursuing the makers of the recent videos that exposed ACORN’s corrupt practices based on the same legal grounds.  Apparently California’s Attorney General thinks that he and his cohorts can sidestep the very laws that they are using as justification for their investigations of ACORN filmmakers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.

Unfortunately, it appears Brown may manage to casually sweep this scandal under the rug while breezing into the Democratic Party’s 2010 gubernatorial nomination.  With the sudden departure San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom from the race last week, Brown currently has no other opposition in the race to win the nomination of the party that likes to lecture everyone else about diversity.

The bottom line is that Brown displayed serious management deficiencies that allowed a senior member of his staff to go rogue under that neglected leadership.  His double standard policy for the investigation of possible crimes under the law conveniently keeps his political pals out of the fray while aggressively going after those who exposed the problems at ACORN.

At least we know who that group will be campaigning for in 2010.