Posted on 11/04/2010 12:06:16 PM PDT by jazusamo
(CNSNews.com) – The latest “Golden Hookah” award for outrageous government spending, presented by CNSNews.com, goes to First Lady Michelle Obama for calling on Congress to create a $400-million-a-year program to encourage the establishment of supermarkets in places she calls “food deserts.”
“To do that,” the first lady has said, “we’re creating a Healthy Food Financing Initiative that’s going to invest $400 million a year -- and leverage hundreds of millions more from the private sector -- to bring grocery stores to underserved areas and help places like convenience stores carry healthier options.”
Pushing this $400-million food-desert-eradication plan has been a staple of Michelle Obama’s stump speeches. So, while the agricultural bill that’s been working its way through Congress includes an earmark of “only” $40 million for the program, this week’s Golden Hookah goes to the First Lady for asking taxpayers to pony up $400 million a year to pay for her anti-food desert pipe-dream.
VIDEO 3:57 minutes
The Golden Hookah is the symbolic token that CNSNews.com confers on government agencies that win our “What Were They Smoking Award” for outrageous government spending. CNSNews.com presents the award weekly to a component of government that has distinguished itself in taking the hard-earned money of taxpayers and sending it up in smoke.
Inspired by CNSNews.com stories that exposed federal grants used to subsidize research on hookah smoking in Syria and Jordan, the “Golden Hookah” symbolizes how a prodigal government squanders the taxpayers’ money on outrageous, unconstitutional and unconscionable programs. Each weekly video presentation of the “Golden Hookah” includes a “Taxpayer Tally,” indicating how many average American households need to work hard and pay taxes all year just to fund the winning program.
Believe me, if it were profitable for grocery chains to be in those areas, they would be.
The truth is that high crime rates have forced them to leave the areas. Government subsidy will not lower the crime in those areas.
Michelle Obama’s $400-Million Plan to eat all the world’s ‘Food Deserts’.
Mouldy Hooker Award
Food deserts form where it’s simply not economical to sell food, usually because of violence. The only shops available have much higher prices than normal - because their insurance rates are higher, their staff costs are higher, and so on.
400 million a year will do nothing useful except distort the free market - but will put 400 million into the pockets of left-wing sleaze buckets.
$400 million wouldn’t even finance the Obama family India trip for 2 days of chatting with sex workers. I’m not saying “food deserts” aren’t an egregious waste of time / money, but it’s not even the worst example of monetary excess by Michelle Obama this week.
Michelle’s All You Can Eat Food Desert!
This week’s special:
All-You-Can-Eat-Lobster!!!!!
Didn’t the author mean ‘profligate’ not ‘prodigal’?
Maybe MO should investigate the purchases that suck up the $billions from productive, over-burdened tax-payers’ to subsidize food stamps - creating a population of non-working, obese welfare mothers and their kids.
LOL!
Give her a little time and I’d bet she could.
Correct, this is an out and out liberal “feel good” boondoggle.
“Prodigal” means “foolish spending,” too, although I think “profligate” is a better choice in the context.
This sounds like yet another lame element of the “food justice” for which the SanFran city council claimed to be fighting when they banned happy meals.
I foresee milk at $25 per gallon, subsidized by us.
Agreed and Frisco and their happy meal fiasco is unbelievable. They’re probably a lot more nutritious than what many young ones are fed at home.
In urban areas it’s usually because of violence, in rural areas it’s usually because of low population density. I realize MO doesn’t think about rural areas, but last I read it, her proposal didn’t exclude them either.
Banning happy meals is right up there with banning marijuana spiked brownies.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/middle-school-students-brownies.html
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