There's nothing wrong with offering vegetarian options, but the blatant manipulation with the assumption that the school administrators know best insults the parents.
It's reminiscent of Mayor (or should I say Mommy) Bloomberg in New York City trying to ban super-large sugared soft drinks or the Richmond politicians trying to tax sugared drinks—although I think cash for the city is part of that thought process.
What's needed is for parents to take responsibility for their children and for school districts to provide a balanced set of choices without political agenda. Perhaps, the district should have devoted as much attention to split reading and its impacts as it does to what goes into students' stomachs.
While the nannies in Pleasanton are working on students' diets, the Legislature and governor have been dealing with the weighty matters of state. Let's ignore for a minute the passage of some degree of public pension reform, the approval of the absurdly expensive and unnecessary high-speed rail and the pending tax increase votes in November and look at what the governor has signed after the Legislature gave its approval. Gov. Brown has until Sept. 30 to act upon all of the bills sent to his desk.
Assemblyman Bob Wiecowski of Fremont authored a bill that won approval for Aug. 15, 2012 to be observed as independence day for India. You might ask why that's important to Californians or people living in his district to celebrate independence for a nation halfway around the world. Check the demographics of the district—there are lots of Indian natives living there.
Now, along the lines of nanny, there was the resolution that declared May 20, 2012 "California Mental Health No Stigma Week." How legislation signed in September applies to a week that took place almost four months ago is a mystery. The same goes for Wiecowski's bill that called out the 2012 date.
Then there's the resolution about the U.S. Postal Service by Republican Paul Cook from Yucca Valley down in the southern California desert.
His resolution calls for the postal service to abandon its plans to move from six-day service to five-day delivery. It's the type of resolution you'd expect from a Democrat looking to support the postal workers unions without regard to the economics.
The Internet has changed the game for the postal service. How many vendors are constantly asking you to move to electronic billing—more importantly—do you have any vendor who is not? Electronic billing saves companies lots of money and does the same for consumer—it's precious few bills that get mailed first class with a hard-copy check in my household and we're not early adopters.
Paying bills in a matter of minutes electronically saves time and money—lots of money at the expense of the postal service. The trend will only continue—the sooner the postal service and Congress wise up to reality and the service develops a flexible and sustainable business plan—the better served the public will be.
