Yesterday, Carolina Journal associate editor David N. Bass attended a joint legislative committee hearing where lawmakers learned heard confirmed what David’s been reporting since 2008: there’s a lot of fraud the free and reduced-price school lunch system, and no one administering it seems very concerned about it.
Free and reduced-price lunches are parceled out on the honor system. The people operating it seem to feel that holding people accountable, making them prove their level of income before giving their kids free lunches, is harsh and hard hearted. In flush times, maybe governments can absorb this kind of poor administration, but when budgets get tight, it’s a different thing.
As David reports today, local governments around the country are starting to bring the hammer down. One example is an elementary school principal in Albany, Ga., who failed to list her $90,000 salary on school lunch forms. It seems to that Albany has more problems than school lunch fraud if they’re paying their elementary school principals $90,000.
Bleeding heart liberals tend to get into the business of administering aid and benefit programs. Their predilection to give people the benefit of the doubt, to not ask for the required forms, is an opening to fraud. It’s too big a temptation to people who want to game the system.
That same instinct applies to liberals in election administration. They think it’s “unfair” to ask a voter to provide proof that they’re eligible. Consequently, during every election cycle we get stories of people voting for dead registrants or double voting.
It’s time to understand that it’s not unfair for people who are in charge of administering government programs to require that their recipients follow the rules.
