So, did Michelle O's version of Big Government all over our kids food work out? - Granite Grok

So, did Michelle O’s version of Big Government all over our kids food work out?

school lunch- that no one is eating?Conservatives believe that the best government is a limited one and the closer to to the Citizens it is supposed to serve, the better.  That way, it is much easier for Citizens to correct the actions and decisions made by their public servants. After all, local is where life is lived and when things go wrong, best to fix it when problems are small.

Progressives, however, believe in the exact opposite – move the locus of power as close to a national level as possible; after all, our Public Masters don’t need to hear from the peons (so as to better formulate how they will tell us how the public will live their lives) – after all, THEY are the experts!  Really!:

First lady Michelle Obama’s signature healthy eating initiative – the plan that’s been pushed onto school lunch menus around the nation — is causing too many problems and demands speedy overhaul, a government watchdog agency found.

One of the biggest recommendations: Give local schools more control over their lunch menus.

THAT must be a hard pill to swallow (or would that be arugula?).  She started this process absolutely convinced that she and her cadre of Smart People had THE answers to all of our school lunch problems that were helping to further the obesity problem caused by junk food lunch times.  Yeah, that single admission should be all that is needed and totally refutes, for this example, that:

  • a handful of people can actually manage all needs for all people in a single industry and not screw it up
  • that a centralized Command and Control knows better than those closest to the situation, the needs, and the resources
  • that even mega-amounts of “Federal money Crack” can break the local bank, as there NEVER seems to be enough of that Crack Money around to actually do the job – costing the locals even more.

So, how did Michelle do is fundamentally transforming local food decisions into one D.C. based?

The findings: Schools were put in a tough spot to implement new lunch requirements with lowered fat and calorie counts in 2012. And “these changes sometimes led to negative student reactions,” GAO reported.

Negative student reactions‘ – well, I haven’t heard of many Animal House food fights, but I have heard that while kids’ waistlines receded, the lunch ladies needed to up size their trashcans.

…The report stated: “The new lunch requirements were leaving some students hungry, an issue raised in five of the districts we visited. For example, in one district, a high school principal told us that during school year 2012-2013, athletic coaches expressed concerns that student athletes were hungrier after school than they were in previous years, and staff reported that more students were distracted during the final period of the school day than in previous years. In the district we visited in which middle and high school students boycotted school lunch at the beginning of the year, the boycott was led by two student athletes in part because they indicated that the lunches were leaving them hungry. These concerns were likely related to decreased entrée sizes.”

In other words – Michelle’s Command and Control take over can be summed up in two words: it sucked.  Instead of helping, it hindered.  Actually, it didn’t so much hinder but this Federal (and Progressive) program actually did the opposite of what it was supposed to do: it hurt those it was supposed to help.

The GAO recommended several changes.  Among the suggestions: Give schools more flexibility in complying with calorie mandates. And get rid of the weekly meat and grain maximums for school lunches.  The National School Lunch Program served 31.6 million students in fiscal 2012, GAO reported. The plan was paid, in part, by $11.6 billion in federal subsidies.

So, the upshot?  Return control back to the local level.  Let the local schools do what they know better than D.C. does – put out lunches that the kids will actually eat. Drop the strings that come with the Federal Crack Money – they didn’t work$11.6 Billion – that’s a LOT of money to spend to determine “it don’t work” and probably “it will never work”.  Yes, once again, and in a high profile Progressive “Planned School Lunch Economy”, the centralized 5 Year Plan failed.

And Progressives just must be absolutely sick to their stomachs that Conservative values have been pushed forward to solve a man-made Progressive Problem.

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