Mother Jones - Comments for "Richardson Courts the Fat Vote"

EKG: One other thought on "Free Public Education"...

Despite my years spent incarcerated in the public school system, beyond reading and math (both taught in Tediously Boring fashion), everything of consequence I learned was taught to me by Robert Anson Heinlein, and the FIRST thing he taught me is: TANSTAAFL
(There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)

NOTHING is "Free".
The Cost, and means of paying it may simply be hidden. (it Always will be when government's involved)

The primary reason for hiding the cost of something people are intended to believe is "free" is..., People would have a FIT if they were to see what the Real Cost is, and were able to compare that against the Real VALUE of what they get "for FREE".

gvc, you are a libertarian Ron Paul type. Progressives(aka Liberals) believe in the nanny state and big government is our friend(but in sexual matters, don't restrict our freedom to get STDs). We will agree to disagree.

So get creative and tell me how the diagram on screen for two seconds works with a radio ad? Even if I accept the notion that you can absorb all the information you have proposed to include from a 2 second look at a chart on TV..., which I don't.

Get realistic, and tell me how much decision-making power toddlers have when the grocery shopping gets done?
It comes down to parents, and I don't think government needs to set itself up as the Parents of the nation's parents. Our politicians and bureaucrats are, after all, a group of people who consistently show that they can't control their OWN bad habits, but hey, let's put them in charge of dealing with OURS. Great Idea!

There's nothing NOT Nanny-State about a government that involves itself in a person's ability to decide what he or she is going to eat. There's no other way to see it, unless you're determined NOT to see it for what it really is.

I'm against worthless Centrally controlled GOVERNMENT education.
Year after year, we've seen education worsen since the inception of the Dept. of Education, no matter which Mobius Party wing was controlling it. Year after year, election after election, politicians are running on "fixing the 'crisis' in education". What does that tell us, when we've already got a cabinet department set up to deal with education? Historically, our educational system seems to have worked just fine up through the 60s. So what happened to change that?
Being a history buff myself, I've read some on education in the early Republic, and it seems to have worked phenomenonally well for America, with government involvement at a bare minimum, and America's common citizens were second to none in literacy as compared to any other nation in the world.
There is obviously a model there we should be examining and adapting to modern times, because it Worked, and it's difficult to argue that "free public education" as we see it today is keeping us ahead of the pack, OR that we are having the least bit of success improving it through central government efforts at "fixing" it some more.

No one has given me any reason to believe that Federal government will do any better at 'helping us' with our food choices, or 'carbon footprints' than they have done at their other 'greatest priorities'; those things they declare 'War' on, such as Illiteracy, to touch on the example you asked about, or controlling our bad habit in the use of drugs through a 'War' they've really been fighting (at tremendous cost to our freedoms, our families and our economy) since the 1930s, or their efforts to eliminate poverty through a 'War' declared in the 60s.
You want a 'War on Obesity' added to the federal government's list of failures.., fine.
You'll probably get it.

And the government that can't even win a REAL War (even though they don't have the balls to DECLARE That one) will have another phony 'War to Help You Behave Properly' to distract us from their failures in what they're SUPPOSED to be doing.

No, think creatively: a diagram on screen for 2 seconds would suffice (or a small "banner" during the ad, etc.)--no de facto ban necessary.
Good for you that you're smart enough to make the decision for yourself, but the target of the audience is often not: they target ads for toddlers!

And what about carbon footprint? They don't put that on any label, but in a larger sense it's just as important for our long-term health.

There's nothing Nanny-State about this, besides. Providing the public with valuable information is something any government should do if it can (don't tell me you're against free public education).

It sounds like you want a defacto ban on any food advertising at all, since inclusion of all the information you propose would take any food commercial well beyond any normal, reasonable advertising time-slot.
Or maybe another one of those lengthy legal disclaimers tacked on the end of commercials (the ones we've learned to mentally tune out) that they hire professional speed-talkers to zip through so fast you couldn't understand it if you wanted to, short of recording it and running it at half speed?

The ingredients and nutritional info is already required on the packaging, no? You already know what you're buying.
And it was that "scientific approach" that gave us 30 years of bad info on eggs, and milk too, according to the most recent "scientific studies".
Give 'em another 50 years and EVERYTHING they're telling us about diet will end up being wrong, right, and then wrong again.

I'm smart enough to decide for myself, and freedom-loving enough to let my neighbors decide for themselves. And after all, it Is MY life we're talking about. My life is not owned and controlled by government..., at least not YET.

Given the government's record at "protecting us from our vices", I'd say by starting government down this particular Nanny-State road, you'd eventually end up with a black-market in twinkies, and drive-by shootings over sugar turf.

The problem is that obesity is more affected by sedentarism than by what you eat.

I respectfully disagree, gvc.
I'd like to see regulation on advertising, especially radio and television. Since the airwaves belong to the public (stop rolling your eyes), I think we should force regulation that would have advertisers show information the consumer needs to make an informed decision.
A good start would be:
(1) the carbon footprint of the product, externalies and all (just settle in with the concept before you start haggling about how to measure the metrics).
And (2) the nutritional value (a scientific approach, natch: e.g. emphasis on the grams of saturated fat and colesterol over a reccomended amount) of the product, if applicable.

We deserve to know what we're buying, and I think the advertisers should have to disclose exactly what they're selling us (and what it's truely costing us) on our airwaves.

nojusticenoâ wrote: "It's more about taking back our control."

We aren't doing that by giving more control to the government. Telling THEM to decide what we may or may not hear advertised, to apply "penalty taxation" to this food, or that one, or whatever.
Had such regulation been in effect a few years ago, they would have banned ads for, and jacked up the price of eggs, due to the "consensus opinion" of "experts" that they would clog our arteries with cholesterol and we'd all have heart attacks at 35.
Well, those "experts" now say their research shows that they were wrong for 30 years, and the body doesn't absorb dietary cholesterol that way (consequently, those skeptics who were dismissed as "hacks, in the employ of the poultry industry" were right all along).
They had Americans denying themselves a very nutritious food.

You and I already have control of what we eat.
I'd prefer to keep it that way.

Ahem...
Getting back to the original intent of the article...
Huckabee lost about 100 pounds and also has some ideas about our overweight society. Of course, I don't agree with him on just about any other topic.

Another one getting on the fat folks, hope he find something more important.

I think that it is more than just about the government trying to control our eating or whatever. It's the fact that our government has been irresponsible in regulating advertising that is unethically directing high sugar foods at our nation's youth, irresponsible in making sure that labels are correctly identifying what we are putting into our bodies, and irresponsible in making some serious attempts at promoting healthier, less individualistic lifestyles. It isn't just about the weight, it is also about the health problems that come along with being overweight, like childhood diabetes for example. This is an issue of public health, not an issue of government's trying to control us -- at least not is this regard, in others, certainly. It's more about taking back our control.

GetReal: Very Kewl, but I don't think the f'ing idiot label fits you at all.

FWIW: I'm particularly fond of this little piece of guidance from T.J., and I wish more modern folks would take it under consideration for a minute or two:
"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him."
--Thomas Jefferson - 1816--

Maharaj ("Great King"?!?!)
I'd ask for something a little more definitive than quoting from a sermon someone gave.
Perhaps it's true as stated, and if so, I'd think it quite inspirational that a 'wife beater' might reform himself to the degree that the "Great Soul" attained.

However, barring something more authoritative, I'd have to lean toward suspecting, if anything, "harsh" is closer to how he MAY have acted in his early years, and that not physical in nature.

Gandhi was a wife beater prior to his conversion(power of love)-per Sermon by All Saints Church,Pasadena CA. Martin Luther King was impressed with the change. He said, "The chain of hatred in the world must be cut, and when the chain of hatred is broken, the chain of retaliation is broken, then brotherhood and sisterhood can begin." Gandhi was also a vegetarian and thin, something that we can also aspire too.

@ DrooliusSneezer
A. Yep.
B. Blatantly.
C. Good point. I'm the f*cking idiot. My bad, Droolius.

Beans, Asparagus, Broccoli, Brussel sprouts, Cabbage & Cauliflower For All!

CLEAR that air!