We’ve all seen the periodic news releases from Durham agencies to alert people that not enough citizens have applied for the public dole, and that some who qualify are not availing themselves of government largesse. I guess part of the motive could be a job-security ploy for government bureaucrats, but it’s looking more like the goal is to make as many people as possible dependent on government.
The latest example is the Obama administration proposal to begin giving free and reduced lunches to kids who don’t even qualify:
Here’s how the program works: if 40% of students at a school qualify for public assistance, then every student in the school will get free food. That’s free breakfast, lunch, and a snack. If that sounds like arbitrary welfare waste, it is. Sixty percent of the student body could be above the poverty line, ineligible for welfare, or even upper-class — it doesn’t matter. Every student magically becomes entitled.
This welfare trap is named the Community Eligibility Option, part of President Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Three states will be involved in a pilot program starting now, and more states will be phased in over time. By 2014-15, the option will be available in all states, if this law is kept on the books.
And what is the rationale for the program? They say it’s to eliminate the stigma of getting a free lunch while everyone around you is paying with their parents’ hard-earned money, but that’s a smokescreen. As all of my kids can tell you, there was never any shame or stigma on the part of the kids who got free lunches at their schools in Durham. In fact, many of them thought it was simply wonderful that they could eat lunch free and then head to the vending machines and put in as much money as a lunch would have cost for snacks that tax-paying kids couldn’t afford.
Only six out of the 52 schools in Durham would not qualify for this program. That’s right, 46 schools in Durham have more than 40 percent of their students on free or reduced lunches. All of the middle schools and 10 of the 13 high schools would qualify. The average is 60.1 percent, according to the latest figures, which means that 40 percent of the student body in Durham would be forced into the indignity of the government dole just to make bureaucrats happy.
How bad has it gotten? The push to get kids on the government sugar teat has metastasized even to the military overseas. Servicemen are being urged to get their kids on the free lunch program. Watch this video from Ramstein Air Base in Germany, in which “servicemembers” are urged to sign their kids up for this gateway-drug welfare program.
