As for the issues flushing large, ahem, amounts of waste with the low-water toilets, it's mostly just cliche now. When the restrictions were first added, the toilet manufacturers weren't ready. Probably a lot of the complaints were from experiences with these early models.

Now, low-flow toilets have an amazing amount of research and design put into how to meet the guidelines while still performing as well as, and often better than, old 4+ gallon flushes.

A few (ill-informed) complainers aside, this actually seems like a win all around. Toilets don't cost more than they used to, they use less water, and perform better than ever.