From an article in the print editions of today's Wall Street Journal that was posted to WSJ.com on December 9 at 6:18 p.m. The print headline was "McDonald's Sales Promise Little Mirth":

More disappointment is expected to be on the menu at McDonald's Corp.

After the burger giant last month reported the first drop in monthly sales in nine years, all eyes will be on November same-store sales, which McDonald's plans to report on Monday.

But not much has changed at McDonald's or in the economy since October.

"People are not looking for a big improvement," said Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Sara Senatore. "The macro environment isn't much better. They had very good trends this time last year, so their comps are getting tougher and will be for the next couple of months."

Analysts, on average, expect global sales at McDonald's restaurants that have been open at least 13 months to be up 0.1%, with sales in the U.S. down 0.8%, Europe flat and the Asia-Pacific Middle East and Africa division down 1%.

John Sununu, writing in the Boston Globe, observes that the free market has improved energy efficiency:

Today, the economy uses 40 percent less energy than in 1980 to produce a dollar of goods. Government did not create the shale gas boom. Government did not turn North Dakota's once languishing Bakken oil fields into one of the country's largest. (North Dakota now produces more oil than Alaska.) Government did not subsidize the rigs, provide tax credits for the refineries, or chant "drill, baby, drill." And with natural gas consumption up and coal consumption down, emissions of carbon dioxide have fallen 15 percent below peak levels of 2007. As a more policy-minded Grinch might say: "It came without taxes, it came without bans . . . it came without protocols, mandates, or plans."

Three dozen college presidents earned more than $1 million in job-related compensation in 2010, the New York Times reports, picking up a survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Columbia's Lee Bollinger, according to a Times graphic, earned $1,932,931.

One could argue that many on this list are running large and complex world-class institutions, including medical schools with highly compensated doctors, so the salaries aren't that out of line. One could also point out that these compensations are being supported by taxpayers and tuition-paying families and alumni donors who in many cases earn significantly less.

The New York Times takes its never-ending campaign against inequality to the toy store with a column complaining that Toys "R" Us stores in the Bronx don't carry educational toys like the ones sold at independent stores in Tribeca:

Just as we are unlikely to unearth dilled artisanal long beans from the farms of northern Vermont, we are unlikely to find these sorts of diversions — small-batch toys aimed at the parent for whom it is never too early to begin LSAT drills — in large retail chains. Instead, they are the provenance of independent toy stores that maintain a presence almost exclusively in the city's most affluent neighborhoods....toys, like lettuces or chocolate, have long since become another manifestation of difference.

What a spectacular column from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. Kudos to him for writing it and kudos to the New York Times for placing it on the front of the Week in Review section:

This is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability.

Many people in hillside mobile homes here are poor and desperate, and a $698 monthly check per child from the Supplemental Security Income program goes a long way — and those checks continue until the child turns 18.

Anyone laboring under the misimpression that the First Amendment of the Constitution would prevent the Congress from heading down the road the British Parliament has gone down of judging whether one newspaper owner or another is a "fit person" may want to have a look at the November 30 letter to the Federal Communications Commission from nine members of the United States Senate.

Open Magazine has an article about a fraud case in which a firm was charged with passing Chinese honey off inaccurately as Indian honey. Why would they do that? The article (link via The Browser) explains:

in 2001, in the wake of a US government investigation that found domestic honey producers being harmed by significant price disparities between Chinese and American honey, the US levied an anti-dumping duty of roughly $1.20 per pound (454 gm) on Chinese honey. This tariff, its imposition implying that this honey was being sold below its real cost of production, was intended to level the playing field for American beekeepers who could not compete with imported honey selling in America at half their cost.

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Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, will resign from his seat in the U.S. Senate to take over the Heritage Foundation, Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal reports.

When you think about it, this is an amazing thing. Usually think tanks are where people hang around hoping to eventually influence a senator, get a law passed, or get a job in the government. Here you have someone who was actually a senator, part of the government, quitting to go work at a think tank.

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Bobby Jindal, the Republican who is governor of Louisiana, has an op-ed in Politico talking about what Republicans should be asking for in the fiscal cliff negotiations. He does it in a way that frames him as an anti-Washington candidate, which might be useful if he runs for president in 2016 against sitting senators and congressmen like Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio:

•A federal balanced budget amendment. S..This is an idea that is supported by virtually every American who does not live in the 202 area code. It's common sense. It is also laughed at in Washington. When you mention the BBA as a solution, they roll their eyes and write you off as a non-serious person. But the American public is dead serious about it, and they should be.

From a New York Times news article today:

Mr. Obama's outreach to business leaders began shortly after an election in which he effectively ran against corporate America and corporate America poured hundreds of millions of dollars into defeating him.

Funny, I don't recall the Times news columns announcing so directly during the campaign that Mr. Obama was running "against corporate America." To the contrary, I remember a lot of talk from Mr. Obama about what he had done to help at least two large corporations, GM and Chrysler.

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Writing in the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald describes the career path of Elizabeth Fowler, who was, in order:

• Top healthcare policy aide to Senator Max Baucus, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee
• Vice President for Public Policy and External Affairs at health insurance company WellPoint
• Top healthcare policy aide to Senator Max Baucus, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee (for a second time)
• Special Assistant to the President for Healthcare and Economic Policy at the National Economic Council (in the Obama administration)
• senior-level position leading 'global health policy' at Johnson & Johnson's government affairs and policy group. Johnson & Johnson is a member of the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America

He writes, "This is precisely the behavior which, quite rationally, makes the citizenry so jaded about Washington."

Link via RealClearPolitics.

Two possible contenders for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in 2016, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, spoke last night at a dinner of the Jack Kemp Foundation, and their remarks are worth a read.

Senator Rubio took up the monetary policy issue that was largely neglected by Governor Romney during the 2012 campaign. Said Mr. Rubio:

Sound monetary policy would also encourage middle class job creation. The arbitrary way in which interest rates and our currency are treated is yet another cause of unpredictability injected into our economy. The Federal Reserve Board should publish and follow a clear monetary rule – to provide greater stability about prices and what the value of a dollar will be over time.

Rep. Ryan focused (link via Politico Playbook) on lifting people out of poverty: