Big Government and Fat TaxesBy RICK JENSEN
February 19, 2015
$500? $800? Senators in our friendly associated state, Puerto Rico, have been debating that very issue this week. Seriously. If you believe government certainly should be measuring your children for a "fat tax" in school because there are some unfit parents, you may want to inform your Democratic Congress Critters.
Fat City
Here's how they envision this law will create healthy kids. A tape-measure wielding school administrator pulls a chubby-cheeked schoolgirl aside from her classmates, measures and weighs her. If she weighs more than the Government—Approved-Tonnage, they call in the Government-Approved-Health-Department-Official. The Government-Approved-Health-Department-Official actually assigns a cookie-cutter diet and exercise regimen to the child. If the child has not lost an apparently random number of pounds within the randomly selected time period of six months, the parent(s) will be fined $500 to $800, depending on how much the politicians believe they can get away with. The bureaucrats would apparently be able to distinguish between a sedentary lifestyle punctuated by the exciting sound of a potato chip bag ripping open and a medical condition. Who wants to wager they make a lot of misteakes ... um, mistakes? When Michelle Obama decided her legacy would be to create a population of healthy, proportionally fit children more pleasing to the eye, the USDA went right along with her to create the school lunch program that limits the lunch meal to no more than 850 calories. The problem is, one size does not fit all. Young athletes often need 3,000 or more calories per day to fuel their running, jumping, throwing and catching. Midwestern high school students produced a musical video depicting the sad physical and academic results of their National School Lunch Program starvation that went viral on YouTube. Local news outlets around the country, as well as The School Nutrition Association, have documented what totals to be over a billion dollars of food going into the trash. The SNA also warns that the 2015 costs to local communities and schools will total $1.22 billion in food, labor and administrative costs. That's up from $362 million last year. Then what? $360 million the next year and the next and so on? Last year, The Washington Times reported, "New school lunch standards implemented as a result of First Lady Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign have led to more than 1 million children leaving the lunch line, according to a new report."
850 Calorie School Lunch
The new standards led to kids throwing out their fruits and vegetables, student boycotts, higher lunch costs, and odd food pairings such as "cheese stick with shrimp" in order for schools to comply with the complicated rules. The federal government has actually compelled over a million kids to skip lunch altogether and throw away a billion dollars' worth of food each year. The Obama lunch program has also created an alternate universe in which a healthy lunch bureaucratically deemed "unhealthy" is replaced with processed chicken fingers. In North Carolina, a preschooler's turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice did not meet the Michelle Obama USDA guidelines. It was all replaced with three processed chicken nuggets. Yes, it's safe to assume that the chicken nuggets are supplied by a contracted provider who makes money on every "meal" provided to school kids. This is what happens when government controls peoples' daily health and eating routines. Should Puerto Rico ever become the 51st state, their government overreach into your life will fit right in with the failing, over-reaching big government Democrats are creating.
© Copyright 2015 Rick Jensen, Rick Jensen is Delaware's award-winning conservative talk show host on 1150AM WDEL and 93.7FM HD3, Streaming live on WDEL.com from 1pm - 4pm EST. This column has been edited by the author. Representations of fact and opinions are solely those of the author.
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