San Francisco's Fast Food Incentive Law with a Sarah Palin Twist: An Update
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City Council Overturns Mayor's Veto
It is law, in San Francisco it is now legal for fast food restaurants to incentivize the purchase of healthy food ONLY. Notice how I put a positive spin on that?
Yesterday, in an 8-3 vote, the San Fransisco Board of Supervisors overturned Mayor Gavin Newsom's veto of their regulation to prevent fast food restaurants from incentivizing the purchase of unhealthy food. As I concluded in another article, "Unhealthy Fast Food Incentives Are ... : Check One" I think this is an appropriate move!
The bottom line for me is, unlike all of the hype that came out about this, is 'does the government have the right to control commerce to improve the general health of the population when the facts clearly show that current practices do harm to the public'? To me, that is one of the purposes of government ... to protect the public from those who wish to harm public; it is as simple as that. It has nothing to do with a parent's right to choose what their child eats. There is nothing in this law that prevents parents from stuffing as much bad food down the throats of their children as they want ... nothing at all. That is why I choose to announce the veto override the way I did at the top of this article. Needless to say, I was flabbergasted Mayor Newsom let himself be sucked up in that false argument.
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Enter Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama
I bet you are wondering how I managed to tie Sarah Palin to this hub, other than to increase the number of readers, lol.
In another Hub, where I consider the question of Palin being nominated for President in 2012, I stated that she had overcome her gaff problem. I guess I was wrong.
Recently, Sarah Palin criticized First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative which attempts to curb childhood obesity. She said something to the effect the First Lady's anti-obesity campaign is really "telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat...instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician's wife priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track." UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!! OK, a few more !!!!!
Not only can government pass laws and regulations (she is against the San Fransisco initiative) to protect Americans from harm American corporations want to do to our society in the name of free market and profits, she doesn't even want government, or anybody associated with it, to even encourage good health (or maybe abstinence). I can only wonder how much the health delivery industry is paying her to say such absurdities. Yes, Sarah Palin, please win the Republican nomination for President in 2012.
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Having fat children is not neglect. Watch out for the fat police!!!!
Let's teach honesty and respect to the parents, but this is something that neither the government nor schools can teach, only family and churches can teach this well.
Keep on hubbing!
I absolutely agree with you Eovery, if it worked. The hole in your argument, in my opinion of course, is the sad truth is parents are not doing as you suggest. The parents apparently are, judging from the accelerating obesity epidemic of America's childern, encouraging their childern to do just the opposite of what you want. Instead of teaching good health habits such as proper diets and exercise, they, at the very least, allow their children to be lazy and eat whatever junk they want, if not participate in such negative behavior themselves.
I think we both agree with the following: 1) the children have no say in this matter, 2) it is the parents responsibility to make sure their children are healthy, and 3) it is the parents responsibility to make sure their childern eat right and exercise.
Then to me, the logical and only conclusion you can draw, if you agree with the above three statements, is if the parents fail at number 3 and it leads to failing at number 2, then they are gulity of child neglet, at a minimum, and child endangerment in more extreme cases.
So, if you agree with the above, do you support arresting the parents of unnessisarily obese children for either of those two charges since they failed at their parental responsibilities? If not, why not?
Also, one might be able to make the case, (I know this is a bit of a stretch, but not too much of a one) that you might be able to charge the fast food industry for being an accessory to the crime before the fact, for knowingly encouraging parents, via their incentive program, to be bad parents. Maybe conspiracy would be a better charge, I don't know, but I think you get what I am driving at.
At this point in time, I am happy with government trying to get companies to do the right thing, or at least stopping them from doing the wrong thing, than starting to focus on what the Conservative solution to all problems (besides cutting spending and taxes) is ... throw the criminals in jail; for knowingly raising your child to be obese is a crime by any rational persons standards.
You proof my point, we need to be in control of our lives and not fall for anything the government or corporations do. We need to not purchase the products of these what you called "evil corporation". It is that simple.
We need to teach our children the substance is bad, and work from there. We need to step up to bat and not sit back and let the government do it for us. We have to learn good from bad, and take the stand.
Keep on hubbing!
Thank you for your comment Eovery. It does, however, give me an opportunity to prove a point. You say "the government needs to get out of our lives". I would agree when corporations give us the same curtousy of "staying out of our lives" by not using every trick in the book, including deception and lying (think cigerettes), to make us make bad decisions. Don't forget what the ultimate purpose of advertizing is - to lead an individual to make a choice they would probably not have otherwise made save for the advertizement. When the corporations stop trying to coerce the public into make bad choices, then I will be 100% in agreement with you. Until then, that is one reason why I elect my representatives; to help protect the American public from the bad consequences of self-serving decisions made by those corporations whose only motive is to increase the bottom line regardless of the social hurt. How can you be against that?
Interesting. Now we have the food police, because we are not doing what we should. Next, will they pull children from their home because the parents are not feeding them the right food? Where will this end?
The government needs to get our of our lives. We need to step up and start doing what is right. There are so many parents that are not being good parents to their children. So does this justify the government to step in and take their children. Especially when people in the government are outlawing God in everything so the people are not learning what they should be doing.
So in return, as the society deteriorates with God, the government tries to step in an fix it.
Keep on hubbing!
My Esoteric Hub Author 18 months ago
Thanks again, Eovery (other jump in if you like), would you allow Barack and Michelle Obama to speak out on parent honesty and respect as a respresentative of the government?
There are fat childern, less than 20% over normal weight, and then there are obese children, When we are talking about obesity, that is not a medical condition, I must beg to differ. Rather than argue this one, I refer you to Cashcow's hub on "Obesity Facts" and I added a link above the comment area to a site I found the in Internet about childhood obesity.
As for me, I managed to stay underweight until I was a senior in high school; 5' 11" and I wrestled the 147 lbs class. Then I had an epiphany, quit wrestling and eat. Five years later I hit 230; I guess I was in full revolt. Up and down, up and down. At 57, I hit my personaly best, 250 lbs which got me on my latest down. Got to 199 about 2 months ago and now pushing 208 (and 5' 10" maybe. You lose more than hair when you get older :-(. )
Now none of the preceeded paragraph has much to do about anything, just a self-motivator to try to keep on losing weight. But what does have meaning is that somewhere around age 40, I developed sleep apnia, an obesity related condition. I don't just have sleep apnia, I have SLEEP APNIA. I stop breathing some 59 times an hour. My wife says I do flops on the bed trying to jump start it again (I am on a BPAP machine now, soooo much better now, for her). I also developed Type II diabetes when I hit 60. According to the doc, mine was totally preventable; all I would have had to have done was keep the weight off.