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Saturday, December 31, 2016

Let them eat chalk


The National School Lunch program that provides healthy free or reduced meals for children in need has joined Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as yet another program Republicans want to gut in 2017.

Image result for federal school lunch programNot only do Republicans want to take Social Security away from the American people and take away healthcare for adults and children alike, they apparently also want to let children starve at school, too.

For years, both parties supported the school lunch program, but Republicans have becomes so greedy and heartless that they are breaking that spirit of cooperation in order to ruthlessly take food out of the mouths of the children who need it most.

The program currently costs $12.7 billion, which is a drop in the bucket considering Donald Trump just called for expanding America’s nuclear weapons stockpile, which will cost way more than a school lunch.

Clearly, Trump nor the Republicans have ever heard President Dwight Eisenhower’s Chance for Peace speech calling excess military spending a theft from the American people.




Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.
We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . .
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Indeed, while Republicans are only too happy to increase military spending way beyond our needs, they are more than willing to sacrifice the care of the American people to do it.

Low income families rely on the school lunch program to make sure their kids have something good to eat during the day. Eating well helps children learn better and develop healthy eating habits.

But Republican don’t care.

Republicans are targeting the school lunch program because they claim the kids aren’t eating the food because it’s too healthy. They also claim that the program “risks becoming insolvent,” which is bullshit because Congress funds the program.

Also, while there are always complaints when change occurs, experts agree that schools are adapting and number of complaints have dropped.

According to Huffington Post,
Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the GOP attack on the program was “out of touch with the progress that’s been made” improving school lunches.
Wootan acknowledged there were well-founded complaints about the program’s stricter standards, but the gripes have declined as schools have adapted. She described Freedom Caucus opposition as “purely political anti-government sentiment” that upends the program’s historical support from both parties.
Indeed, it appears Republicans only want to gut the program because Michelle Obama made it her focus over the last eight years to improve the nutritional value of school lunches.

In other words, Republicans are being petty because they hate President Obama and the First Lady.

In fact, food waste in America’s schools has always been a problem but a study in 2014 published by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that the new meal standards ushered in by Michelle Obama did make food waste worse.


So Republicans are attacking the program for no real reason and are apparently willing to hurt the well-being and health of children if it means hurting Michelle Obama.