Reedin. Ryetin. Riffmatik.

Ask average folks what they think New York City's biggest problems are, and you're apt to hear "crime," "sanitation," "public education," "traffic," "housing," and similar quality-of-life fundamentals. Tack on "the economy" and "potholes," and you'll have a fairly complete job description for any medium-to-big city mayor.

Managing all that should be enough to fill a mayor's every waking moment.

Unfortunately, mayors, especially those of the progressive variety, aren't content with working to improve their cities' core functions. Too often, they decide to venture into new territory, usually because they have grand notions of how people should live their lives.

The prompt for today's musing was a report that NYC Mayor Eric Adams is instituting a requirement that the city's public schools will be "required to offer two to five minutes of mindful breathing exercises to students every day." This, on the heels of his "vegan Fridays" mandate for school kids.

The mayor may enjoy his yoga, his meditation, and his veganism, but I'm skeptical of the notion that he was elected to impose his lifestyle choices on the 1,050,649 students in the city's public school system.

Adams wouldn't be the first mayor to do so. His predecessors Bill DeBlasio and Michael Bloomberg engaged in similar "thou shalt live as I choose" antics.

One might argue that mayors, if they know how to delegate, do indeed have the time to do more than fill potholes and chase rats, but when the core matters are still the most worrisome to residents, vanity projects should take a back seat.

Unfortunately, the concept of "public servant" has been flipped on its head, with politicians feeling that their job is to manage and modify the lives of the voters, rather than serve the voters' basic needs (and leave them alone after that). We see this reversal in everything from education policy to energy to climate to the exercise of individual rights. It's not enough for them to wantonly and wastefully spend our tax dollars - and borrow trillions above what they collect - they seem hell-bent on making us live as they think we should.

Meanwhile, the fundamentals suffer. American public education is a fetid stagnation, where tripling per-student spending has produced no improvement in outcome, and where union power bends the knee of even the most stalwart politician. Spending is out of control, with rampant waste, fraud, and inefficiency adding insult to injury. Low level crime is shuttering businesses and making streets less safe. Transportation is awash in problems, both on the ground and in the air. Government is the chief culprit in the scarcity of housing and in the poor quality of much that's available.

Shouldn't our politicians stick to the government equivalent of the "Three Rs," rather than devoting their time and energy to coercing behavioral changes that should better be left to organic societal evolution?

Shouldn't they be more worried about Johnny being unable to read than about Johnny momentarily thinking about becoming Janey?