Happy Meals Banned in San Francisco

San Francisco just banned the toys in happy meals unless McD's changes what is included in the meal. They did this because the McDonald's happy meals did not meet the nutritional standards that local government has set.

Due to time restrictions, I will keep it short. The practical reality is that it it is a parent's job to make sure their child eats right. A parent should have the right to feed their kid food they want. A parent no longer has the right to reward their child for doing good on a test, doing well at camp, etc. by taking them to McD's for their favorite meal.

This is the fundamental question. Who should have control over what your child eats, watches and does?

Government pushes low fat cheesy diets...

I was reading the huffpo and came along this article. The huffington post editors were stunned to find that a government that promotes and incentivizes healthy eating would also give millions of dollars to promote cheese, a substance that although is delicious, has been known to add on a few pounds.

They go through this process. The government thinks Americans should eat better and work out more. A noble goal. The problem is that farmers make up and enormous voting block and are not beholden to any one party. To remedy this, the politicians use a percentage of the tax revenues they take from the farmers through taxes they use it to promote consumption of cheese. How did this happen? The government has been promoting low percentage milk (1 or 2% instead of whole). This milk fat has to go somewhere so it goes into cheese, which lowers in price. In order to handle the overflow of cheese the government basically helps firms by paying for advertising promoting the cheese.

So the government takes some of your tax dollars to promote people to live a health lifestyle. Taxes the farmers, raising the price of your milk and then spends a percenage of those tax dollars to promote a substance full of saturated fat. The government at work....

BTW HuffPo readers, this is not limited to dairy. There is no more egregious example than subsidizing tobacco farmers and paying for non-smoking campaigns.

Good intentions causing more poverty

Close to 70% of students with a 4-year degree have student debt. The average student of a 4-year degree is 25,000 dollars. Imagine on top of that going to a graduate or professional degree which a record number of people are doing. Personally, I will have well into six-figures of debt by the time I graduate. Thank God the government is there to support us with access to cheap cash. They really make college affordable for the middle and lower class people.

As Lee Corso would say "No so fast!"

While I am thankful government is willing to basically cosign my loans with me up until this point and is now willing to directly lend me the money, I have to take a step back and think that maybe they caused this mess. Notice that cheap and easy access to loans have dramatically increased the cost of an education. The schools, knowing that the average student now has easier access to money than before raises rates in order to get more money... sound familiar? To make matters worse, universities popped up that provided a poor education experience but cost a lot of money because the consumer (the students in this example) had almost no incentive to check out if the school was good or not because the government was guaranteeing them a free (for now) education.

Whenever the government gets involved in influencing our personal decisions, no matter how wonderful their intentions, we end up getting hurt. If the government had not provided free access to guaranteed loans tuition would be far cheaper. Would less people have access to higher education? Maybe, but not definitely. Private charities could have taken over and even with the government support we see schools starting to match student and family means with tuition. That trend could have happened earlier. We will never know because the government got involved...

More Election Thoughts

So, the more I look at exit polls from this election as well as the map, I have become more convinced that this election was a small wave on top of a major realignment to the map of 2000-2006 and before.

I'll deal with the more controversial analysis step first. This was not a tsunami, it was a realignment. The majority of house seats won were in districts that McCain carried, some by large numbers. First, this means that a great deal of very motivated republicans lived in that area as a large number of republicans (this one included) were incredibly unhappy with McCain and either voted third party or stayed home. This means these seats were really just democrats borrowing seats that were obviously going to be returning to republican hands semi-quickly. The circumstances aligned so that this would not be the message or soundbytes coming from Washington insiders.

The small wave likely tilted elections that would have been close in 2006 and before. These are races like Ohio governor, PA senator, and WI senator. I am intentionally not putting on the IL senate seat as that was just a matter of the two worst candidates anyone can conceive of battling to make voters hate the other just a little more. The small wave switched votes in some of these swing states and swing areas from the democrats to the republicans and caused the races to either go republican or give the republicans a larger edge than they would have if there was not a wave underway (mainly seen in WI and FL).

This was still a refutation of some of Obama's policies. The country was realigning to the center-right. Obama's policies have not been center-right or even center, which is where he needs to end up. This is partly the republican's fault as Obama had to look to get the whole democratic party to support his bills because the republican's refused to play ball but President Obama also is a known progressive so had no problem going left on some issues. The biggest areas the President has gone left is health care (and I understand some consider this a compromise bill) and unemployment/welfare.

The real problem in the democrats is not the house seats they lost but the exit polls. The electorate that showed up said overwhelmingly they wanted the government less involved. Despite democrats saying that this is not specific enough, for voters, just chanting small government is currently enough. It will be interesting to see what happens when the new congress does not decrease the size of government (call me a skeptic). Will they give up? Create Third Party? Just keep voting Republican? No one knows. Democrats either need to get on the bandwagon of small government, create the right political situation where people are more amenable to larger government or split that voter block.

The other big issue for democrats is health care. There is no greater shift between 2008 and 2010 than health care. The voters used to trust democrats with health care 2 to 1. Now they trust republicans with health care 2 to 1. Some believe this is because Obama care is a disaster and some on the left believe that Obama just did a terrible job of selling the bill. The answer is likely both. The bill has some major flaws but Obama also did a terrible job of making the bill about some of the more popular parts of the bill. The democrats need to fix that trust gap in health care before 2012 or we will wake up to a republican president.

Conversely, the republicans need to fix their west problems. In NV, CO, and CA they lost.... bad. Losing in CO could be acceptable as the dems ran a strong candidate. Losing in NV against an unpopular senator with everyone knowing that was the big prize of the night is completely 100% unacceptable. The republicans need to figure out what went wrong, and it is far more than having a weak candidate, and fix it. CA also should have been closer. Boxer was beatable this election. Fiorina was a decent candidate but didn't come close (and lost classlessly by not conceding in a reasonable time frame btw). Even thought the republicans look good in the midwest, they should not desire to put all their marbles out there and need to fix their western problems.

Feingold

So, the more I read today, the more Russ Feingold is being discussed and for good reason. I think that I will spend some time (be prepared for another long entry) about my thoughts on him, and why I think he lost.

So, the last few hours I have been reading a lot of Feingold's statements and watching his ads. From this, I believe I have viewed Feingold with far too rosy a picture the last few years. I remember hearing he cast the vote against the PATRIOT Act. I was stunned then but have come to respect that vote more than any other cast by a senator in my lifetime. Every single American was terrified and we were told this law would make us safer. Only Feingold understood that this was not true, but even more importantly, the PATRIOT Act would get rid of some of the major reasons for fighting in the first place.

From this vote he got called a civil liberties champion. I used to believe this rhetoric but now believe that it was completely untrue. A civil libertarian stands up for the first amendment and Feingold was certainly an enemy of it. McCain-Feingold made it illegal to spend your money campaigning for issues you thought were important. Luckily, the Supreme Court understood how unconstitutional it was, and quickly killed it. Just because a liberty can be abused, does not make it a liberty.

Someone who respects civil liberties would support a limited commerce clause. The commerce clause is where government gets nearly all of it's power and it limits a great deal of freedoms. Feingold not only did not limit the commerce clause but extended it far beyond anything people considered just a few years ago. Through Obamacare, he said that Congress has the right to force individual citizens to purchase a service through a small group of government-approved corporation. This struck him as fine. This law destroys a great deal of basic liberties and Feingold not only didn't seem to mind but went to bat for the law.

While we can all reminisce for the Feingold of the PATRIOT Act, that person faded not long after that vote. He was replaced by a sterotypic liberal who was not concerned with liberties or rights of the people he was sworn to protect.

Feingold lost for three major reasons. More than 60% of voters in the exit polls said government needed to do less, a supermajority were unhappy with Obamacare and a supermajority also said they were worse off than they were two years ago. This matches what we saw across the nation. Feingold constantly stood on the side of big government over small businesses and over individual rights and liberties. I do not care if he is a hero to most or all, after really considering his time in the senate he is no longer a hero of mine.

He talked like a libertarian but acted like the opposite. Eventually, the reality of what he was caught up to him. The average Wisconsin voter saw a stream of votes from their senator that they felt hurt them. This election, more than any other in the nation, was not electing one candidate, it was rejecting the other. No one really knows who Johnson is or what he will do, but they do know that Johnson would not support Obamacare and will attempt to limit the size of government that is currently scaring the daylights out of them.

For that I say kudos Wisconsin.

Elections

What do these elections mean?

This election can only mean one thing. It means that everyone is libertarian like me again and I am sure that republicans will become more libertarian and create a permanent majority. Not really.

This election points to the simple fact that America in 2010 is a lot like America in 2007 and before. In 2008 President Obama and a number of democrats convinced themselves that the days of America being a center-right country are over. Hundreds, if not thousands (counting local races) rode President Obama's coattails to victory. Through this belief they passed bills that were center-left or left altogether. This includes, but is not limited to, bills like the bailout, Obamacare and pouring cash into the economy with no coherent direction. The latter continued today. These are all positions outside of what the America people think are appropriate and because of this President Obama in his own words got "shellacked."

This was a rebuke of Obama's current plans but it was far from an adoption of the republican plans. In a poll taken the day after the election the majority of voters said they expect the republican congress to disappoint them. I infer from this that the voters want the gridlock they voted for. They don't trust President Obama to pass laws that will move this country forward, through employment. Voters don't trust the republicans because they are blamed (in my opinion incorrectly) for creating the financial crisis. This opens the door for someone to step up and lead the nation. The leading candidates are Boehner, Obama, and Reid. The leader who steps up will create middle of the road solution, which none of them currently hold.

Let's discuss some specifics for both parties:

OVERRATED NEWS

The losses in the house hurt the democrats but these seats were basically borrowed seats anyway. Political expert Cook said that these seats were in areas where God didn't to have democrats (or something to that effect). While he is obviously using hyperbole, his point is right on. Democrats understood they couldn't hold onto seats in conservative districts very long, much as republicans lost a couple seats in liberal areas (like New Orleans). This is just the way it goes. The raw number of seats can only point to a wave of people against Obama's plans that has already been dissected and discussed ever since health care passed. This tells us little new information.

REPUBLICAN'S WEST PROBLEM:

The republicans are facing a major issue right now. They are losing the west and don't know what to do about it. Despite spending a great deal of money they lost Colorado and Nevada. Nevada should have been an incredibly easy pick up and republicans couldn't seal the deal. Latinos voted about 66% for democrats in this area (despite a group of new republican latinos winning Tuesday).

If republicans want to get ready for 2012, they need to spend some real time in the west. It will be tough for them to routinely win without having Colorado and Nevada in their pockets.

OBAMA'S PROBLEMS:

The midwest is the upset of the election and the most shocking result. It is the first time since reconstruction the midwest has gone republican in a time of recession. The republicans swept the midwest despite very strong democrats running in Wisconsin and Ohio. If Obama has any shot of being elected in 2012, he HAS to win the midwest. This set has to include 2 out of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The midwest is livid to a point I thought I would never see. In just a few years Feingold went from a dark horse to run for President in 2008 to losing his senate seat to a person with absolutely no name recognition in 2010. I was asked by someone in WI in 2009 what I thought the republican chances of toppling Feingold were and I told them that Tommy Thompson could possibly do it, but less than 50/50 chance and anyone else would have roughly 0% odds.

Feingold likely could have won this seat back if he had changed his views on everything and ran from everything he ever said (like John McCain did this election). For Feingold, that was a price he was unwilling to pay. While I disagree with quite a few of Mr. Feingold's views, that is something I can respect and know, for certain, the senate is a worse and less truthful place without him in it.

Getting back to the original point, Obama needs to figure out how to win back the midwest. Obviously Obama will likely not win Indiana again but he needs to win 2 of the big three to carry this election especially as Florida seems to be turning a darker red. This needs to be his first priority.

TEA PARTY:

The conservatives are interpreting one piece of data correctly this election. The tea party 100% saved the republican party. It took them from the Party of Bush to the Party of Libertarianism (kind of). The republican party was leaderless, and worse, directionless after 2008. They had no idea where they were going. Now they at least have an identifiable message. They have an increasingly identifiable leader (Boehner) and are getting their groove back.

The interesting part for me was watching the smear pieces of MSNBC on the rise of the new right. These documentaries painted the tea party as a group of racists who had no idea what they were talking about. These documentaries tried to scare people into not hearing what the tea party said, but the people responded as I hoped they would. The tea party is going to be around until, at least, 2012 and maybe beyond that.

The tea party lost a lot of races for the republicans as well, though. Delaware and Nevada instantaneously come to mind. It should be noted that even in liberal Delaware the Tea partier got 40% of the vote. This is a pretty big percentage for someone so far outside the general mainstream of the state. The tea party needs to exist to keep the republican party honest. They should have been louder during Bush. The tea party will become to republicans what the green party is to democrats. The tea party will continue to cost the republicans seats but that is a price the republican party should pay until they earn the people's trust again by cutting spending, etc.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

The biggest takeaway from last night, other than gridlock is headed to DC, is that 2012 will look a lot like 2004 or 2000. The race will be tight and there will be the normal battle grounds. The midwest, florida and possibly, the west if republicans can't get a handle on the colorado or nevada.

Obama has two models he can follow: Clinton or Bush. They are both viable paths to follow to reelection. Under the Clinton plan he goes towards the middle and starts to compromise with the republicans. His approval ratings go up and so do republicans. This could be a particularly good approach as none of the real contenders in 2012 for the republicans are in the house or senate. The big problem for Obama is that if he does this a democrat could run to his left in the primary. While this is currently being talked about in the political circuits, I find this unlikely. If Obama runs to the middle, his numbers go up and no one dares run against the incumbent President with strong favorability.

The other scenario is that Obama can run left and start to drive down the independent voters.In this method, he just has to stop anything from happening and attack the republicans at every point. This could happen but seems unlikely given where the President currently is mentally.

I will write a little more about the elections a little later but hope this gives you a good idea of what I think this election means and doesn't mean