What does it say about our country that a once fiercely independent people who claimed they’d walk a mile for a Camel can’t today be expected to walk (or bike, or drive, or be driven) a mile for some healthy arugula or a properly portioned take-out cup of broccoli salad? Other than maybe that they just don’t really want the stuff?
I’ll tell you what it says: it says that the government needs to step in and declare that untraversed mile of sunflower sprout dearth a “food desert” — and decide, as a result, what businesses can set up where in order that healthy food make its way to people who simply can’t be expected to secure it on their own. Competition, choice, and the free market be damned.
The good news, though, is that there’s been no word yet that HHS is planning to mandate bibs and/or high chairs, or that the agency has any plans to put together a bureaucratic apparatus whose job it is to make sure the healthy food actually gets into the mouths of those poor helpless citizens who to date have not shown an ability to make the proper or informed food choices.
So we’ve got that going for us.
Everyone should have access to fresh, organic, locally-sourced produce. It’s more expensive, sure, but genetic modification is for women who want to be men, not food.
Maybe they live within a mile of a school where all the FLOTUS’s wonderful “mystery” foods are served.
Yesterday Rush talked about this, the next looming crisis just aching for government intervention.
Speaking of Rush, have any of the MSM jabberers referred to his Fluke comments as “tone-deaf”? And if so, were they properly castigated for their insensitive mention and mockery of Rush’s disability?
Rural people must be in better shape.
Theodore Dalrymple identified this “problem” for the bullshit it is already a decade ago.
Just the latest example of the American Left eagerly seeking to imitate their European brethren.
Here in the NYC area there is a packaging of near equal freshly-ground portions of beef, veal, and pork that is popular for meatball/meat loaf/pasta sauce making; these are generally packaged by the stored themselves.
As of March 1 they can no longer offer this product though. The reason? Why the government has decided no food can be sold that doesn’t have precise, not generalized but specific, nutritional information printed on it. And as the weights of these store-made mixtures always varies slightly, well…
The only facsimile available is a large vendor’s product that has a decidedly sketchy and unappetizing appearance, but I was told that specialty butchers may still be allowed to sell it. Of course, instead of being eminently affordable, it will then be frightfully expensive.
I asked the store manager if this was state or federal requlation; he wasn’t sure, but thought it was NY state. My comment to him was astonishment at why a corporate entity like his chain wouldn’t, alone or together with a consortium of grocers, “lawyer up” and fight this asinine intrusion into their business.
His reply? That my suggested proposition wasn’t worth the cost to them.
But what about the folks that relied on buying the mixture precisely because of it’s affordability?
Andrew Cuomo and the democrats, champions of the little man once again…
Looks to me as though there is a “cane beating desert” in the Committee rooms of Congress, the twenty-five paces it might take for a Congressperson to get from a position on the dais to the witness table to deliver a “wake-up” call to the witnesses being quite too far to have to walk, and a time waster besides. Better to sit a proxy beater behind the witness table to act on signaling from the dais.
1) there are few grocery stores in Detroit because of theft and an inability to staff the store- all major chains have pulled out.
2) There may be dearth of grocery stores down the block, but there is a beer/liquor/wine store with a few cans of cambells soup and chips with DOES take food stamps. If it didn’t – you may choose to walk or drive those few extra blocks and get healthy food, but fuck it, right?
3) The stores offer what sells.
So we need to make sure all these new grocery stores have gyms so folks can get some exercise when they walk next door to get groceries.
Too fucking stupid to survive.
I read a piece a month or so ago that around 80% of the stores that accept food stamps are these convenience stores.
Remind them of the Schechter Bros. before them, men who stood for the freedom to conduct their business as they understood it better than the Federal gov’t. The Schechters won, because they were right.
in detroit, that is.
Maybe they could just issue taxicab stamps to go with the food stamps.
I think we won’t really solve the problem until every household is provided with a nutritionist and personal chef, and perhaps a trainer as well.
Of course to make it practicable, we’re all going to have to live in dormitories.
The Schechters won, because they were right.
But through it all they remained avid Roosevelt supporters.
There is no solution to be found. Massive federal bureaucratic intervention is the only way. These people can’t walk. They’re fat! And poor.
Never mind Dalrymple — Orwell identified the problem in 1937! From The Road to Wigan Pier, chapter 6:
Of course, old George spent the second half of his book explaining how Socialism! could solve all of these problems. This, obviously, was before he wised up.
That’s plain old freedom of choice in action, Abe, as it would be if Bob’s grocer chose to vote for Obama, whether thoughtfully or not (surely the great man wouldn’t condone these Federal inspectors conducting themselves in this manner! If only Stalin knew.) Grim, sure, but isn’t that the way? That is, the best way we’ve found to date?
Government: the cause of
, and solution to,many of life’s problems.So how long until the FDA realizes that the “F” in their name actually stands for “Food” and demands that your garden-variety Big Mac has to go through the same safety and efficacy studies that prescription drugs do?
“Some food stampers are lazy. We the People must provide another tax-payer funded, soul crushing entitlement immediately!”
“Of course to make it practicable, we’re all going to have to live in dormitories”
Dormitories…camps…whatever.
True, sdferr, but I exercise my freedom of choice by choosing to mock people who suffer from cognitive dissonance.
Kathleen Sebelius.
The kind of racketeering that gives Tony Soprano a good name.
For the record, I liked in a seedy neighborhood which had two supermarkets within easy walking distance, and the poor people were still fat. I’d dare say that if they gave a shit about poor people at all, they’d eliminate lotteries and get rid of taxes on alcohol and tobacco products.
Oops. lived in a seedy neighborhood …
I don’t believe he wised up, personally. I think he despaired of finding a solution, —and so he died.
The TB didn’t help.
“I think he despaired of finding a solution . . . ”
There is no solution. I think it’s the idea that there is a solution that’s the trouble.
Which, by the way, while we’re pointing to dates of discovery, when did that idea that there is no solution come to light? Try circa 430 B.C.
Me?
I stick to tea.
And strumpets.
An hour later, and I still can’t find any neighborhood in St Paul that’s more than half a mile from a bus route that will take you to the supermarket.
I give the poor an allowance for rent, I pay for their kids’ schooling (abysmal as it may be), I give them free bus passes, I sponsor church day-care and after-school programs to keep the little ones off the street, I give them an allowance for food, and I give them walking-around money so they don’t have to live without an unlimited data plan for their smart phones. And still it’s not enough…
Not only is it not enough, but if I remark on their lack of gratitude or balk at their ever-growing list of demands, I’m the greedy bastard!
The fact that you finally understand what a despicable human being you are is the first step on the road to recovery.
But there’s good news, Squid. You can buy absolution. Just vote Democrat and all your sins are not only washed away, but you get to commit an infinite number of new sins without fear of being called to account. Especially now that Breitbart’s dead and Ann Coulter is backing a progressive anti-Reaganite Obama defender for President!
So voting Democrat is the equivalent of purchasing indulgences? It dovetails nicely with my opinion that progressivism is a religion.
To be tiresome (it seems tiresome at times, anyway), the topic is yet another example of how progressives are under the notion that external factors are the sole cause of individual behavior. Give the people a choice to buy certain foods and they will buy them. Make guns illegal to own and people won’t kill each other.
Just because the facts don’t support this thesis is no reason to give it up, right?
Kathleen Sebelius. Obama’s next choice for SCJ?
10: The Same Subject Continued
cranky, the Ruling Class aren’t concerned with us using guns to kill each other; they’re concerned with us using guns on them.
$24.50!? 1 percenter! Consider yourself denounced, Pablo.
In my neighborhood, they just steal the carts from the stores.
The local rag has been all spun up about this for the past year or so, running story after story about our fair city’s so-called food deserts. That and payday loan shops.
YES the answer is THERE IS NO ANSWER.
It’s like that Wisconsin senate bill that was on the news about single parents :
http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/wisconsin-bill-claims-single-moms-cause-child-abuse-011200419.html
The problem is that if you take away poverty assistance to single moms, the dads aren’t suddenly going to come back and take up their responsibilities. It’s ridiculous. And those of us who were abandoned with several children are supposed to – what? Go to the local prison and find some guy who’s willing to marry us? There just aren’t any good solutions.
The fact is. People have black hearts and the government can’t do anything about it. Nothing.
Hmm. That bill is sponsored by a dude who has never been married and has no children. I say all the single moms he’s bad mouthing should start a whispering campaign that he is gay, gay, gay.
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