CSotD: Quote of the Year indeed
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Deflocked takes on one of the oddities of the current political circus.
The USDA provides subsidies to schools for lunch programs, and has decided that, in order to qualify for assistance from taxpayers, schools should not add to the health problems of our nation's children by serving them fatty, sugary, sodium-laden foods.
This has been met with squeals of disapproval from more or less the same people who also become apoplectic when they see a welfare recipient at the grocery store buying, say, pizza rolls.
The cynic in me suspects that, if Laura Bush had made this her First Lady Project, the cries from the Amen Corner would be: "Good for her! Those kids don't need pizza and chocolate milk! Let the taxpayers provide good, basic food and, if the kids want to eat junk, let them do it at home!"
So when did giving Buddy and Sissy anything their little hearts desire become part of the conservative agenda?
Aren't kids today spoiled and overindulged, not spanked often enough, not given enough chores? Isn't it time we made them shape up and walk both ways to school and do more homework?
Now all of a sudden, taxpayers are expected to pay for ice cream and pizza so the precious little darlings won't have to eat the same sensible food that was good enough for my grandfather when he came to this country to learn the language and work hard for lousy pay without a union to protect his interests?
Granted, some local schools may be going overboard. I've heard of schools telling parents not to send their kids to school packing their own lunches if those lunches don't meet the USDA health standards. It would be odd indeed if, given the tens of thousands of schools in the country, some eager beaver didn't decide to require more than the government demands.
But let some over-zealous Section 8 housing administrator kick a disabled grandmother out of the highrise because one of her grandkids was caught smoking dope and these same people shout that this is why the rule exists and good for him for going that extra mile.
When did conservatives become such bleeding hearts over the topic of subsidized school lunches?
I'd suspect they were being led around by the nose by the National Shit Food Council, but they're surely smarter than that, right?
(Please click that link. Here it is again.)
One of the biggest advantages of growing up in a truly small, rural town is that you know a lot more people than just those in your own social stratum. So while I — whose metallurgical engineer father was number two man at the mines — had a classmate whose father was chief accountant at the papermill and another whose dad was the only pharmacist for 40 miles in any direction, I also had a very close friend whose father shoveled railyard switches at the mines when it snowed. We got plenty of snow, but that hardly amounted to a career.
His was a pretty extreme situation, but I had plenty of friends whose family economics were stretched thin enough, thank you.
Some were on welfare, most weren't, but there were a lot of kids who didn't have much, and one of the things you saw when you had dinner over at their houses was that there were rarely any seconds, but there would be a stack of bread and a stick of margarine in the middle of the table if you were still hungry.
The ignorant, heartless jackasses who wonder how poor people on welfare get so fat should ponder the long-term effects of filling a teenager's bottomless pit with Wonder Bread and Blue Bonnet.
One of the girls started a Facebook page for our high school and it's great to reconnect with people I've loved so much in a place that, 45 years after graduation, I still consider "home."
But too many of my friends from home are already dead. I'm only 62, which is old enough, yes, to have witnessed mortality, but way too young to have lost as many good, dear friends as I have.
Trust me when I say that it makes more sense to direct taxpayer money into healthy lunch programs than to pitch even more of it into health care for low-income people with chronic problems caused by poor nutrition.
And trust me when I say that the publicists of the NSFC — and their lapdogs in Congress and the media — are not your friends.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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