CONGRESS DEBATES THE MERITS (OR LACK THEREOF ) OF PIZZAThis past Wednesday afternoon our nation's indebtedness surpassed fifteen trillion dollars. Our elected officials in Washington D.C. are spending money as though it is merely gains of sand on a tropical beach. The appointed twelve members of the Super Committee, charged with the responsibility of trimming 1.2 trillion dollars in Federal spending reductions by next week, can't even agree on when to take a restroom break. But what are the illustrious members of the House of Representatives spending their otherwise unencumbered time? The all important and weighty issue of whether or not PIZZA is to be classified as a vegetable. Are you kidding me!?!
Let's slap these good old boys on the back and congratulate them on reaching a consensus that resulted in an approved bill that abandons a previous proposal on the table (pun intended) that would have removed the serving of french fries and pizza from federally funded school children's menus. Thank God. Pizza may indeed not stand the test of scrutiny when it comes to the best choice for a child to consume as a nutrition source, but the elimination of french fries? Well, that's damn near unamerican!
Listen, I'm not here to debate the merits, or lack thereof, of whether or not pizza is a vegetable or if french fries are truly French. The blatant fact of this gigantic waste of time is that the Federal government has no business sticking its dietary proclivities in the noses of what our children are consuming daily for lunch. What Congress should diligently be concerned is the increasing relationship between poverty and hunger in this country. The question looms, it's not about what our children are eating, but the fact that many are not eating anything nearly enough.
Three years after the onset of the 2008 financial and economic crisis, hunger remains alarmingly high in the United States. In 2010, 17.2 million households (approximately one in seven) were deemed "food insecure," the highest number ever recorded in this country. In 2010, children were food insecure at times during that year in 9.8 percent of households with children (3.9 million households.) Chew on these additional facts... The drop out rate of high school aged children overall, regardless of ethnicity, is over 10%, with some ethnic groups elevating that percentage far higher. In some U.S. cities the drop out rate is over 50%. Poverty in this country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's report released in September of this year, rose from 15.1% (46.2 million) in 2010, up from 14.3% (39.8 million) in 2009, and the number of individuals who find themselves in the criteria of being impoverished continues to climb. And our elected representatives can find nothing better to be concerned about is whether or not pizza is a vegetable? No wonder we citizens have bestowed a 9% rate of approval on this body of incompetents.
The business of education in this country needs to be permanently removed from the control of the Federal government. It needs to be reverted back to local control, where the local educators and parents can best determine how best to teach their children, how best to retain them and what is best to feed them. The laudable program of "No Child Left Behind" has no lasting merit or value if the child's parent has no job by which to have sufficient income to place nutritional food on the family table. The welfare of this nation is not to be relegated to a welfare state, wherein every malady's alleviation is the sole province of the Federal government. And to waste even a minute on the ludicrous subject of pizza vegetable worthiness speaks volumes on just how inane our system of governance on a national level has become. The hell with them. Let them eat cake! Then kick them out of office.
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