Posted on 12/19/2016 5:35:20 AM PST by Kaslin
I have one great hope for a no-nonsense, business-oriented Donald Trump administration.
It's that the Federal Government finally begin to ask what the return was, and is, for money spent – just as every private enterprise, from the window cleaner's one-man show to Exxon's army of thousands, is forced to do.
Take for example WIC – the Women, Infants, and Children federal nutrition program. Very similar to food stamps, WIC spends billions and billions of tax dollars and in great measure was implemented because somebody noticed that drug-addled mothers were not feeding their children nutritious meals. Well? What happened? Have the dopers started baking their children homemade chicken pot pies? Or are they just buying their boyfriends more crack with the WIC assistance?
It's a question the Obama administration would never ask and was terrified of asking, but it must be asked and answered if you're a sensible steward of the taxpayer's money.
Another example is the close to a million civilian employees the Department of Defense has. Can't they get by with less? Say, with the much smaller proportion of civilians to the uniformed, the likes of which it employed during the height of World War II, when the military and naval establishments were fifteen times the size they are now?
But if you're going to hunt where the greatest number of ducks gathers it's hard to choose between the bloated Defense Department and an area in which federal and state resources commingle on a grand scale: K-12 education.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Today’s best posted article. Thanks.
One thing I have noticed by WIC users in the checkout line at the grocery store is that WIC (at least in TX) only allows certain brands of food. Users can’t buy the more expensive milk, or eggs, but just buy the less expensive store brand.
Good Stamps could save $$ if they did that, and cut out sodas, and energy drinks.
How can you tell a WIC user? Is it a particular kind of credit card? To be honest, I can’t even tell a EBT user.
Food stamps were for US produced food items *only*, at one time.
Food stamps could not be used for imported items.
I would like to see this policy re-instated.
Tax payer dollars shouldn’t be used to subsidize foreign agriculture/food industries.
Public education - or ‘public indoctrination’, if you will, is in urgent need of fixing. Early indications are that Ms. DeVos is apt to make some good headway in this regard.
I think it’s important to note that we put men on the moon with slide rules, relatively slow and low capacity computers, chalkboards, and textbooks. Most Americans had a good grasp of English, Math, Science and could think creatively and critically.
Point being we have done far more with far less. Time to get back to the fundamentals in public education. Home school needs to be a viable alternative as well (void of local/state harassment).
How can you tell a WIC user?
I only notice when the checker tells them they can’t buy a particular item, like Borden’s milk, or Eggland’s Best eggs, or pricey cereal, and are told WIC won’t cover those..
Then the WICcan usually gets mad that they have to go get the store brand or cheaper option, argues, and holds up the line.
Here in Georgia the WIC user hands the cashier a blank check and the cashier fills in the dollar amount and it goes into the register till. I assume it’s that way everywhere if this is a federal program.
Food stamp cards here look like this.
The only good thing about WIC is it restricts what can be bought. Where food stamps anything human edible can be bought. Food stamps needs the most reform, and it starts with restrictions on junk food purchases and classifies what is junk food, I watch the fatso go through the check out line with 2 buggies loaded with junk food not just chips and soda, but frozen dinners that are not nutritious and energy drinks. MANDATORY Drug testing must be included. These people don’t even know how to cook. They do know how to zap something in the microwave. Thus the frozen dinners.
What I have seen in those carts is all processed high calorie, high fat foods. Frozen dinners, sodas, chips, cookies, ice cream. I have even seen people shopping for the family at 7-11 and using their EBT cards. I guress if it is not your money, you don’t care what and where you buy stuff.
You are making it a double subsidy if you a) give them food stamps and then b) don’t let them buy the cheaper agricultural imports.
That would essentially leaving us poor schlubs to buy the cheaper imports while they get to eat “American”.
The government's K-12 socialist entitlement schools can't be fixed precisely because they are a socialist-entitlement. They are compulsory-use and compulsory-funded. Compulsion means the threat of police and court action.
What is needed is that we begin to move toward complete privatization of all schooling. The end goal should be complete separation of school and state.
Yup.
Fundamental #1: People are not equal, and every year after fourth grade, there will be students who cannot master the curriculum and must be dropped. Their numbers in Grades 5 and 6 are small. They increase in Grades 7 and 8.
Of all US Public School students, less than half belong in a high school on an academic track.
Get this most critical fundamental wrong, nothing else can be right.
Thanks for the info! I love to look in people’s carts at the supermarket. Nosey, I guess.
There is a reason food stamps are in the Department of Agriculture.
Re: High School
I have repeatedly asked the questions:
1) “What percentage of youth are capable of finishing high school for the diploma to have any meaning? “
Re: Elementary School
2) “What percentage of the population will have an IQ high enough to finish 8th grade?”
In an completely privatized and NON-compulsory system of education these questions would be answered privately between the parents, the child, and the administrators of private schools.
In a NON-compulsory market of schooling schools would emerge that would appropriately educate and train children based on their IQ and talents.
The free meals program to public education is popular, and yes, needed. However, over years the federal government has larded it with countless demands, under threat of taking those monies away.
So the best reform here would be to make the free meals program a block grant to the states, with no strings attached. This would save schools a vast amount of money, on what are otherwise unfunded mandates.
It might even be enhanced by including with the block grant additional monies for the states to use their surplus foods to *augment* the meals.
Nice to read this. I've posted the same question here on education threads many times.
There's not a lot of data. The white high school graduation rate in 1941 (graduation in June, draft screenings beginning in November) was 25%.
This probably approximates the percentage of the white population capable of mastering true twelfth grade work - maybe throw in 10% for students forced to skip 12th grade due to dire family economic circumstances.
Legislators who keep passing laws requiring Algebra II in their high schools (and FReepers who keep advocating for it) are like King Canute ordering the waves to recede. All "raising standards" does (if you presume a natural graduation rate of 100%) is increase the amount of fraud and lying required of the schools.
If universal public free education does not end by Grade 8 at the latest, nothing else really matters.
Zackly!
The FS program was launched to;
1. assist those needing it.
2. promote US agricultural products.
Limiting the program to US products could possibly
encourage young people to get into farming as a business, IMHO.
I know there are a lot of young people coming along these days
interested in back to the basics (read: farming, etc) for a living.
I am retired now, but if I could do it again I would ask for SAT or ACT scores.
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