Better than your own butler or personal chef, public school kids are getting three squares a day at school, but are flunking basic math, and English-as-a-second-language.

Who needs a mommy when there is a public school down the street?

Hungry Kids Can’t Learn

The only institutions that serve three meals a day are prisons and military barracks. While America’s public schools may look like prisons, hunger as a criminal offense seems to be catching on.

Government officials love to repeat the phrase, “hungry kids can’t learn.” There are even government programs with this title.  Picking up the banner, President Barack Obama signed into law the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which authorizes funding and sets policy for some of the USDA’s child nutrition programs: the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), the Summer Food Service Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program.

According to the state Department of Education, 228 California schools are already participating in the new program.

“This is an historic victory for our nation’s youngsters,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said when Obama signed the law in December 2010. But what was deemed historic for children, is also historic for parents. With public schools providing all of the resources of boarding schools, prisons and barracks, why would children ever need to leave?

And, America’s children are becoming conditioned to expect that everything in life is provided by the government.

Advocates of the additional government-school meal say that the dinner is important to “curb hunger in kids” who use the after-school day care.

The USDA now oversees the school breakfast program, lunch program, snack program, Summer Meal program, Child and Adult Care meal program, special milk program, and now the school dinner program. What’s next – the personal chef program? What about vegan kids – don’t vegan kids count?

It’s A Crime To Be Hungry

The First Lady, Michelle Obama, is on a mission to curb childhood obesity. And the way to do it, according to the Obama administration, is to feed kids more meals at school. Kids are either overweight, or they are starving – which is it?

In America, it is now a crime to be hungry. Judging by the girth of today’s school children, far more emphasis is put on hunger and food consumption than on exercise or overall health.

My son used after-school day care programs throughout elementary school. But we got up early enough to eat breakfast at home, we packed his lunch, and included enough food to get him through the day until I picked him up.  And sometimes he was hungry.

Now kids go to school, get fed three meals a day, have an after-school babysitter, and want for nothing.

Double-Dipping Obama Style

What doesn’t make sense about the government provided school meals, is that the program states the meals are for students who qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches. Aren’t their parents already receiving money from the government for food? Those who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches are on government assistance and receive food stamps.

Adding a dinner meal at school, for children whose parents qualify for government assistance, is double-dipping. Double dipping is already a big problem in government employment. With public schools getting into the game, the double-dipping is more insidious, and harder to track. Obama signed one more giant entitlement into law, when he signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

Follow The Money Motive

The motive for these additional school meals is not to feed hungry children. There are already many government programs for hungry Americans. The motive is to create a need for additional school employees. With dinner now on the school menu, school cafeterias will need more staff. And those cafeteria employees are members of the Service Employees International Union.

“A more robust expansion of school lunch, breakfast, summer feeding, child care and WIC (the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program) is critical to reducing hunger, ending childhood obesity and providing fair wages and healthcare for front line food service workers (emphasis added),” SEIU Executive Vice President Mitch Ackerman said, reported Michelle Malkin in February 2010.

“There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more. ‘More robust expansion’ of the federal school-lunch law means a mandate for higher wages, increased benefits and government-guaranteed health insurance coverage,” Malkin wrote.

It’s never really about the children, but they are a very convenient prop.

The federal government already spends $15 billion a year on nutrition in public schools.  One-third of the children and teens in America are now overweight or obese – it is a growing health problem, and is only going to get worse. With more government spending on school meals, and more people expecting entitlements from the government, America’s sheeple are thriving.

FEB. 23, 2012

School officials said that the lunch was missing a “milk equivalent.”

So her mommy’s lunch was taken away, and the little girl was provided a nasty cafeteria lunch of chicken nuggets, apparently a government gold standard of nutrition, if overweight, government-dependent kids are the future.

Exactly what part of a chicken is a ‘nugget’ anyway?

I can just see the crime scene: “Freeze kid! Drop the lunch box, and put your hands up.”

The government is now sending “inspectors” into taxpayer-funded, government schools to force children to eat government approved food. What has the American experiment come to?

“In 1787, when the Founding Fathers had hammered out the U.S. Constitution in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin told an inquiring woman what the gathering had produced, ‘A republic, madam, if you can keep it,'” the Heritage Foundation wrote in 2007.

Limited government is perhaps one of the greatest accomplishments in history, but the U.S. is now failing at even this. The United States was created to provide limited government, while still protecting basic human rights. But these rights do not include a government school lunch. Nor do they allow government officials to abuse or supersede parental rights.

The North Carolina Pre-Kindergarten “is a state-run enrichment program to help 4-year-olds at risk of starting school lagging behind their peers. Ninety percent of the children qualify for free or reduced lunch.The program has 1,100 sites serving 25,000 children and is required to supply a healthful lunch,” the Peoria Journal Star reported. “The U.S. Agriculture Department defines that as a serving of milk, two servings of fruits or vegetables, one serving of grain, and one serving of meat or protein.”

So where did the chicken nuggets fit in to that perfect menu? How about a Cinnabon for breakfast?

“I am so sorry this happened to this little girl,” Hoke County Schools Assistant Superintendent Bob Barnes said. “On that day, the policy wasn’t followed, and hey, we’re the grown folks here. That’s our fault. The teacher never should have sent that little girl into that line. She should have gone over and picked up the missing item and brought it to her.”

The Peoria Journal reported, “It was a tale of government meddling that outraged radio talk show hosts and a pair of Congress members.” Do you think that maybe the parents were also just a little outraged?

“This is also kind of adding on to a lot of things that we’re seeing coming out of the Obama Administration” that conservatives oppose, like requiring insurance coverage of contraceptives, Republican U.S. Representative Renee Ellmers ‘ press secretary Tom Doheny told the Journal. “We’re joining this bipartisan call to get any and all information. It’s one of those things that if it looks like a rat, and smells like a rat, odds are it could be.”

“We’re not trying to force government down anybody’s throat. All we’re trying to do is make sure that our children get a good education and a nutritious meal every day,” Superintendent Barnes said.

But forcing government down parent’s throats is exactly what happened, and happens everyday in U.S. schools. Teachers and school administrators are stepping in for parents, whether it is welcomed or not. The arrogance is stupendous, as well as unconstitutional.

I have argued with a family member who is a teacher about this subject. She insists that because today’s parents are so lousy, teachers are forced to step in. Perhaps. But the question is, ‘what came first – the chicken or the egg?’ Did teachers and government schools force themselves on children, or did parents start the process first by shirking their responsibility?

My answer is ‘who cares?’ The government’s job is not to do anything at public schools other than educate. And they are doing a lousy job of educating. I think that because they are failing so miserably at educating America’s youth, they’ve compensated by stepping in as surrogate parents. And America’s children are a great deal worse for it.

Kids are testing lower than ever, ill-prepared for college and the workplace, and don’t even know America’s history. If kids were familiar with U.S. History, they would rebel against public school teachers and administrators for pushing socialist programs and liberal ideology on them, and angry at the  attempt to replace their parents.

But alas, instead, too many of the little drones show up at school most days, eat the government-mandated breakfast, listen to the government-mandated lectures, eat the government-mandated lunch, and go out into the world qualified to do nothing, unable to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or tell you who their own council member or Congressman is.

But they are able to tell you who won American Idol, and who the WWE Raw wrestling champion is.

This is only about the statists taking control of American citizens at government-run schools. How scary – that’s what our children should fear.

Instead, they have their lunches taken away – lunches prepared by mommy – and are told that mommy isn’t feeding them properly. Government officials are trying to instill fear in the youngest children in society, to create another generation of government-dependent blobs.

School officials in North Carolina could have given the little girl an apple or a carton of milk, but instead they gave her chicken nuggets. Are they trying to get her hooked early on salt, sugar and grease?

This is about as sick as it gets – and it’s our tax dollars paying for it.

FEB. 16, 2012