Now that the recession is over, notably without stimulation, we can all breathe a huge sigh of relief. The worst is behind us and we have the Father, the Son and Barak Obama to thank. Unless of course you are obese or hungry or both - then brace yourself for the "good war" on obesity and hunger. And in this war truth is definitely the first casualty. Barak and Michelle Obama are determined to save you from yourself by insinuating themselves into how much and what you and your kids eat so that you won't be hungry or fat or both.
The family is an unwelcome intrusion in the war on hunger and obesity among the "it takes a village crowd". This is certainly true in Boulder where the food renegade Ann Cooper was drafted, from Berkley, CA no less!, to serve as a general in the good war to save Boulder's children from the bad and wrong food choices made by their parents. BVSD parents have been treated to letters from the food general begging us to have our children eat breakfast and lunch at school as a means of eliminating that old stubborn achievement gap. Her last missive cheered the fact that "more kids are eating at school". Children cannot achieve if they don't eat the food Ann Cooper and Michelle Obama think they should eat which includes, strangely, more fruits and vegetables and ice cold milk. Who knew? Haven't parents been imploring their children to eat fruits and vegetables for years, decades and centuries? Not all decades of course. In the Great Depression parents did not have to beg their kids to eat cooked carrots or lima beans because those kids were hungry and there were no Fritos in the cupboard. There was no nothing in the cupboard. Families and children living in the Dust Bowl, if they didn't die from particle pneumonia, ate pickled thistle. Pickled thistle.
According to the USDA "food insecurity" affects approximately 35 million people in America. Food insecurity is defined specifically as reduction in food selection and or total calories at some point during the year typically due to financial pressures. Food insecurity is usually episodic and recurring, as opposed to chronic, and is defined in numbers of days without eating. Most of the families experiencing "food insecurity"are defined as low income and qualify for the Food Stamps program which is part of the $980 billion in food, housing and health care transferred to the poor annually by the federal government. Seventy-five percent of all people on Food Stamps are obese including the children. A typical explanation for why poor people are fat is that they "eat too much of the wrong food because it is cheaper than nutritious food". Per the USDA this is empirically not true and insulting to anyone who thinks logically. Specifically, calories per dollar are 5 times higher in soda than milk, soda being devoid of nutrition.
"Snack foods such as potato chips and donuts cost two to five times more per calorie than healthier staples such as beans, rice, and pasta. Families truly seeking to maximize calories per dollar of food expenditure would focus not on junk and snack foods but on traditional low-cost staples such as beans, rice, flour, pasta, and milk. These foods are not only less expensive but actually have below-average energy density and therefore a lower potential to promote weight gain.[16]" Barbara Rolls "The Volumetric of Weight Controls", 2000.
Obama vowed to spend $10 billion to help feed the poor and the overweight, ostensibly not because they are hungry but because their parents are incompetent at parenting. So why do the food policies for low income people include remedies that arguably make the problem worse; giving the poor more free food? Because this administration would rather micro-manage your food choices and foster dependency than allow you to improve it yourself in a bigger more real way. Michelle reaffirmed support for the Childhood Nutrition Act, i.e. spend more government money, to help with childhood obesity. This program consists of school programs run by educators to end injustice,getting kids to move ...yada yada yada; the money pours out while the kids grow fatter.
"Healthy Schools Campaign’s approach to environmental health and wellness in schools includes a special focus on the role that school environments can play in combating health disparities and promoting environmental justice." Healthy Schools Campaigns
Obamacare has provisions that will mandate BMI, body mass index, calculations on children which will certainly help kids lay off the chips. Oh, and Obama spent $400 million on the Healthy Food Financing Initiative which includes forcing grocery stores into low income neighborhoods and mandates that convenience stores have more wall space for refrigeration units so they can offer apples that the low income patrons may or may not want to buy.
The mind boggling array of dollars spent to combat what should be called malnutrition, or bad nutrition, can only be described as depressing. Bad nutrition is a cultural problem and is not purely driven by economics but socio-economics. Many kids today, including mine and poor kids who are not starving, would rather eat Oreos and Frito's which explains why some kids today are big fat fatties, to quote Glen Beck. How does one fight a culture war? Should the federal government fight a culture war? What would I do if I were Queen Michelle? I would put to rest once and for all the lie that the poor in this country are starving and that their hunger is driving the achievement gap. Many things drive the achievement gap, including but not limited to bad parents who don't care about education as well as by bad schools run by very bad and highly protected teachers. If I were Queen Michelle I would lean hard on Barry to transfer funds out of the Childhood Nutrition Act into the Race to the Top program, provided the Race to the Top guru Arne Duncan did an about face and supported school choice. Giving poor parents access to public funds and school choice via vouchers is the only long term solution out of this mad mess of throwing billions of dollars at the wrong problem. Since this will not happen with Barry at the beck and call of the National Education Association the only thing left to do is serve pickled thistle at school lunches. Pickled thistle.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
I'll Keep My Guns, Religion and Money - Mr.President, Keep the Change
"So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Senator Barak Obama explaining why some in the middle class may not vote for him.
As offensive as candidate Barak Obama's comments regarding the fly-over zone voters was, his Rolling Stone interview where he chastises his base to "buck up" moves to first position. It's bad enough that a President conducting two wars is being interviewed in Rolling Stone, but to think that the voters and not he himself should be the ones to "buck up" is biblical, no pun intended. As this administration scolds the electorate, corporations, Republicans and the Department of Commerce for not behaving as he sees fit, the rage boils over and Obama's personal popularity continues to sink. The interesting fact is where his popularity is cratering; among the non-college educated, the "blue collar" base who did vote for him despite their bitterness. And Obama further provokes these voters who, despite lacking college degrees, are able to add and subtract, by making factually incorrect statements.
"When I walked in," Obama said, "wrapped in a nice bow was a $1.3 trillion deficit sitting right there on my doorstep." Per the CBO when Obama took office the expected 2009 deficit was $1.19 trillion, not $1.3 trillion, however and the actual deficit for 2009 came in at $1.41 trillion, meaning that the new president's administration added approximately $220 billion to the total. Early in 2010 Obama claimed the mathematically false "we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade." The CBO's projected 10-year deficit when Mr. Obama took office was actually $4.09 trillion. Now, after 20 months of his presidency, the expected deficit has almost doubled, to $7.68 trillion." Doubled. X2. Twice as much. Americans have done the math and they are spooked - this level of debt feels very, very wrong.
The current debate regarding the expiration of the Bush tax rates is empty headed on all sides, Republicans included. The fact that they all scampered home before resolving the corrosive uncertainty for American taxpayers is shameful. I won't even quote Krugman on this subject, he doesn't deserve it. "We can't afford the Bush tax cuts", intoned Donna Brazil on a Sunday Morning talk show, asserting that to allow the top 3% to keep an additional 4% off the top marginal rate is tantamount to a gift. From whom to whom one might ask. By logical extension, if the United States cannot afford the Bush tax rates due to the doubling of the debt created by Congress and Obama what on earth led them to believe they could afford the levels of spending they undertook? What could possibly justify such a fury of spending if we didn't have the money? The Keyensian multiplier affect? Further, why is the burden of shrinking the deficits the exclusive job of the top 3% income earners? The answer is revealing and constitutes a significant data point on the graph plotting Obama's agenda and its advancement in American society. Congress typically spends money in a porkish manner; dispensing favors in the form of money to an increasingly dependent electorate. Obama, however, seeks to advance the "dreams from his father". He announced his fondness for these dreams in countless motivational campaign speeches before the election, so .....I told you so.
Barak Obama's support for high progressive tax rates on the "rich" can be explained specifically by the "anti-colonialism" theories advocated in his father's economic thesis, which remain unscrutinized by the media and many of Barak junior's supporters. Obama senior's fundamental premise is that the pursuit of economic prosperity is a myth and the game being played is always zero sum. The only manner of remedy to the zero sum game is intervention by the state to transfer all wealth, at whatever rate and manner is necessary, because the gains are ill-gotten. If someone has a great deal, e.g. the colonialists, someone else, the colonized, must have an equal amount less. The fact that Steve Jobs created Apple computer,setting off an explosion of new technologies which every American enjoys in some meaningful way, means that some other would be entrepreneur has been frozen out. If this were true in fact and not just a sentiment expressed by those who feel truly awful that some in the world have less, why ever strive for growth in GDP or personal prosperity since these things only happen to the detriment of the have nots? Further, belief in the patent unfairness of commerce and business belittles the significance of the rule of law a belief Obama expresses almost constantly. An Obamian example of shoring up the imbalance in world economies is the bizarre loan to Petrobras, 2 billion American dollars no less, to develop Brazil's off-shore drilling. Setting aside the hypocrisy of subsidizing a foreign nation in a manner of commerce that is forbidden to American oil companies, the end game is transparent; advancing the dreams from his father.
What can be said of an American president who still thinks in terms of hegemony, imperialism, and oppression of the colonized? The nicest thing I could offer is that such thinking is dusty and old, not current for such a young president. The worst is that he is not suited tempermentally to serve as the captain of American commerce. His reactionary return of the bust of Churchill to England, America's best ally ever and once colonizer of Kenya, is a telling example. For the record, I certainly hope that the US is done with imperialism and colonialism - on that Obama and I can agree. We are substantially burdened by our own self-imposed governance problems. But more to the point - many of the so called colonized, Kenya and Brazil to name two, will have to progress or not independent of American aid and in accordance with the constraints of an aggressive global economy. And then there is the constant ingratitude. Daniel Hannan has said "External colonies and colonists are expensive and ungrateful,the founders knew that first hand". This is and always has been true, we ungratefully pitched out the British, and should be understood by those responsible for implementing American foreign policy. Pushing the economies of third world countries forward and holding imperialist rogue elephants back is a zero sum game because you will always, always run out of other people's money. We sure do miss you Maggie Thatcher.
As offensive as candidate Barak Obama's comments regarding the fly-over zone voters was, his Rolling Stone interview where he chastises his base to "buck up" moves to first position. It's bad enough that a President conducting two wars is being interviewed in Rolling Stone, but to think that the voters and not he himself should be the ones to "buck up" is biblical, no pun intended. As this administration scolds the electorate, corporations, Republicans and the Department of Commerce for not behaving as he sees fit, the rage boils over and Obama's personal popularity continues to sink. The interesting fact is where his popularity is cratering; among the non-college educated, the "blue collar" base who did vote for him despite their bitterness. And Obama further provokes these voters who, despite lacking college degrees, are able to add and subtract, by making factually incorrect statements.
"When I walked in," Obama said, "wrapped in a nice bow was a $1.3 trillion deficit sitting right there on my doorstep." Per the CBO when Obama took office the expected 2009 deficit was $1.19 trillion, not $1.3 trillion, however and the actual deficit for 2009 came in at $1.41 trillion, meaning that the new president's administration added approximately $220 billion to the total. Early in 2010 Obama claimed the mathematically false "we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade." The CBO's projected 10-year deficit when Mr. Obama took office was actually $4.09 trillion. Now, after 20 months of his presidency, the expected deficit has almost doubled, to $7.68 trillion." Doubled. X2. Twice as much. Americans have done the math and they are spooked - this level of debt feels very, very wrong.
The current debate regarding the expiration of the Bush tax rates is empty headed on all sides, Republicans included. The fact that they all scampered home before resolving the corrosive uncertainty for American taxpayers is shameful. I won't even quote Krugman on this subject, he doesn't deserve it. "We can't afford the Bush tax cuts", intoned Donna Brazil on a Sunday Morning talk show, asserting that to allow the top 3% to keep an additional 4% off the top marginal rate is tantamount to a gift. From whom to whom one might ask. By logical extension, if the United States cannot afford the Bush tax rates due to the doubling of the debt created by Congress and Obama what on earth led them to believe they could afford the levels of spending they undertook? What could possibly justify such a fury of spending if we didn't have the money? The Keyensian multiplier affect? Further, why is the burden of shrinking the deficits the exclusive job of the top 3% income earners? The answer is revealing and constitutes a significant data point on the graph plotting Obama's agenda and its advancement in American society. Congress typically spends money in a porkish manner; dispensing favors in the form of money to an increasingly dependent electorate. Obama, however, seeks to advance the "dreams from his father". He announced his fondness for these dreams in countless motivational campaign speeches before the election, so .....I told you so.
Barak Obama's support for high progressive tax rates on the "rich" can be explained specifically by the "anti-colonialism" theories advocated in his father's economic thesis, which remain unscrutinized by the media and many of Barak junior's supporters. Obama senior's fundamental premise is that the pursuit of economic prosperity is a myth and the game being played is always zero sum. The only manner of remedy to the zero sum game is intervention by the state to transfer all wealth, at whatever rate and manner is necessary, because the gains are ill-gotten. If someone has a great deal, e.g. the colonialists, someone else, the colonized, must have an equal amount less. The fact that Steve Jobs created Apple computer,setting off an explosion of new technologies which every American enjoys in some meaningful way, means that some other would be entrepreneur has been frozen out. If this were true in fact and not just a sentiment expressed by those who feel truly awful that some in the world have less, why ever strive for growth in GDP or personal prosperity since these things only happen to the detriment of the have nots? Further, belief in the patent unfairness of commerce and business belittles the significance of the rule of law a belief Obama expresses almost constantly. An Obamian example of shoring up the imbalance in world economies is the bizarre loan to Petrobras, 2 billion American dollars no less, to develop Brazil's off-shore drilling. Setting aside the hypocrisy of subsidizing a foreign nation in a manner of commerce that is forbidden to American oil companies, the end game is transparent; advancing the dreams from his father.
What can be said of an American president who still thinks in terms of hegemony, imperialism, and oppression of the colonized? The nicest thing I could offer is that such thinking is dusty and old, not current for such a young president. The worst is that he is not suited tempermentally to serve as the captain of American commerce. His reactionary return of the bust of Churchill to England, America's best ally ever and once colonizer of Kenya, is a telling example. For the record, I certainly hope that the US is done with imperialism and colonialism - on that Obama and I can agree. We are substantially burdened by our own self-imposed governance problems. But more to the point - many of the so called colonized, Kenya and Brazil to name two, will have to progress or not independent of American aid and in accordance with the constraints of an aggressive global economy. And then there is the constant ingratitude. Daniel Hannan has said "External colonies and colonists are expensive and ungrateful,the founders knew that first hand". This is and always has been true, we ungratefully pitched out the British, and should be understood by those responsible for implementing American foreign policy. Pushing the economies of third world countries forward and holding imperialist rogue elephants back is a zero sum game because you will always, always run out of other people's money. We sure do miss you Maggie Thatcher.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)