San Francisco Passes Ban on Toys and Happiness

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently approved a preliminary ban on toys in McDonald's Happy Meals, although the decision still needs to pass a final vote. This echo's an earlier decision in California’s Santa Clara County, which also passed a similar Happy Meals toy ban ordinance. And don't look now, but the Center for Science in the Public Interest wants the ban on toys and happiness for children to go national-  it is going to sue McDonald's to force it to end its practice of throwing in a free toy along with an order of fries and Chicken McNuggets.

Via MoneyWatch:

"McDonald’s use of toys undercuts parental authority and exploits young children’s developmental immaturity — all this to induce children to prefer foods that may harm their health. It’s a creepy and predatory practice that warrants an injunction,” says CSPI litigation director Stephen Gardner.

Liberals in California and potential liberals in the court system believe that if you are left to freely decide on your own what to feed your child, you will make the wrong decisions because you are an idiot. You are not free to decide what to feed your children and your child is not free to enjoy happiness and a toy unless they eat their vegetables. Oh, we've all been there- threatening little Timmy or Amy to eat their vegetables or no toys, but I bet you never figured that someday you wouldn't have to say this, because if little Timmy or Amy didn't eat their vegetables the police would beat them down and steal their toys. The nanny state continues to get bigger and bigger, as people in California vote against a limited government that is restricted to protecting life, liberty, and property rights, and instead empower an all-powerful government to rule your life and control your children, all in the name of some sort of morality or fairness or something. It's creepy and predatory, and it warrants an injunction, and that injunction will be the American people standing up and saying "come and get me, and pry this McDonald's toy out of my cold dead hand if you can."

Via Time, we get a good picture of the audacity of local bureaucrats who feel that they have the power to control the fair and lawful businesses practices of a private national business:

Under the legislation, a packaged fast-food meal aimed at children would have to meet guidelines for sodium, fat and calorie content — and contain at least a half-cup of fruit or three-quarters cup of vegetables. Only if it does that, could it — or its intended consumers — qualify for a toy. The criteria are very specific: any meal over 600 calories total would be disqualified, as would a meal with more than 640 mg of sodium or more than 35% of its calories coming from fat (with the exception of egg, nut or low-fat cheese sources).

So, a customer goes to a restaurant, orders food for their children that they freely choose, and then the nanny police jump out and tell this customer that he can't get a toy with that meal because he choose to give his kids his vegetables or fruit for lunch or breakfast instead? We all know exactly where this sort of thing leads, and it isn't the kind of state that I want to live in.

This blog never advocates violence, but I kind of am picturing a response similar to that in the movie Falling Down (Falling Down):