The Agriculture Secretary was promoting his department\u2019s new hunger (or, in contemporary parlance: “food insecurity”) survey on CSPAN this morning, and promising to expand the federal government\u2019s role in feeding children.\u00a0 We do a good job with school lunches and breakfasts, Secretary Tom Vilsak said, but in the summer months, when kids are out of school, we need more centralized locations to give them their breakfasts and lunches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is it really the case that a minimally competent mother (we won\u2019t even contemplate fathers here) in this fabulously wealthy country where food is so cheap cannot give her child a healthy breakfast in the morning? \u00a0 Granted, doing so at low cost entails shopping for food low on the processing chain and, horrors of horrors, actually cooking it.\u00a0\u00a0A portion of rolled oats in a large discount container costs pennies and takes five minutes to cook.\u00a0 Too onerous?\u00a0 I know that there is a shortage of decent supermarkets and fresh food in the inner city, a result of low demand and high crime.\u00a0 (Actually, there\u2019s not a decent supermarket in all of New York City.)\u00a0 But a little planning should be able to overcome that shortage by occasional trips to someplace where you can buy in bulk.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a test of whether someone is really suffering from hunger or even just \u201cfood insecurity\u201d:\u00a0 Are you willing to cook legumes for a few hours?\u00a0 If not, you\u2019re not starving and have no claim on the public purse.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
If such minimal foresight and involvement is beyond the reach of a mother, she obviously shouldn\u2019t have had a child in the first place, and now that it\u2019s too late, maybe should not have custody.\u00a0 Of course the feds, ever eager to expand their reach, are not going to point that out.\u00a0 But the more that the government acts as a surrogate parent, the less parental responsibility we will get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Agriculture Secretary was promoting his department\u2019s new hunger (or, in contemporary parlance: “food insecurity”) survey on CSPAN this morning, and promising to expand the federal government\u2019s role in feeding children.\u00a0 We do a good job with school lunches and … Continue reading