Posted on 05/10/2011 9:13:06 PM PDT by NoLibZone
For freshman state Sen. Michael Rubio, coming up with the idea for his first major bill was easy. Finding the right path to victory is proving more difficult.
The East Bakersfield Democrat had seen firsthand as a Kern County supervisor the impacts of rising obesity and type 2 diabetes rates in his community.
The "aha" moment, he said, came while he watched a woman use funds from the state's food stamp program to buy a grocery cart full of calorie-laden sweets.
His solution was Senate Bill 471, legislation to cross junk food and soda off the shopping lists of clients using the publicly funded CalFresh program.
"If we're providing nutritious food we ought to ensure that's what's being purchased (with taxpayer dollars)," he said. "If folks want to buy junk food, they're free to do it with their own money."
Rubio moved in February, drafting a bill to ban the purchase of fast food, soda and a long list of products deemed unhealthy, including gelatin, pudding, frozen treats, muffins, pies, pretzels and popcorn. He said the list was based on nutritional standards approved for schools.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
If they buy your food, they can tell you what to eat.
If they pay your rent, they can tell you where to live.
It will get more interesting in the next few years, especially for those who demand state control over every aspect of the person watch their process fall apart.
cue the “thats racists” sign.
END THE DOLE for everyone.
I have wondered why a system of gov’t food warehouses, kind of like Sams, with gov’t surplus foods, for food stamp recipients to shop in. Stocked with good, nutritious foods but not with filet minon or sweets and sodas and the like.
They would have good food but I suspicion they would strive a bit harder to get off the food stamps.
I know. I know. they have a ‘right’ to eat better than the rest of us - who are paying for their food.
"It is nearly impossible to identify, evaluate and track the nutritional profile of (every) beverage, or beverage product, for purchase in the ever-changing marketplace," Kara Bush, CGA manager of government relations, wrote in an opposition letter.
The fact is, the nutritional information is available from every vendor of beverage vendors, and can be tied to the UPC code for the product. Granted, the database isn't there today, but the nutritional facts are there -- it has to be on the label -- so building the database is a trivial but tedious exercise, one well-suited to the California Grocers Association (aforementioned CGA).
I'm not impressed with the original idea, but I'd rather see the idea fought with a much stronger reed than this pitiful attempt."
But with today's technology it should be easy to make only certain products, with certain bar codes, eligible to be paid for with taxpayer funds.
How about we limit the eligible items to a cheap-but-healthy diet, like what I limited myself to when I was poor:
- fresh produce
- dried beans, peas, or lentils
- whole grain cereals like rolled oats (no processed cereals like Lucky Charms)
- milk or plain yogurt
- peanut butter
- whole grain bread
And nothing else!
Nothing extra, that is, that would be paid for by taxpayer $
... people would always be free to supplement their diets with their OWN funds.
Hey Mike, here’s a better idea for a bill. Every food stamp recipient has to have his Body Mass Index calculated. If you’re fat, no stamps until your BMI is within the normal range! I was in the supermarket the other day in the checkout line behind a morbidly obese member Eric Holder’s “people,: Bought her food with her food stamps credit card, then paid for a bottle of Chivas Regal with cash!
Why have you and I had to support such women all my working years?
“I have wondered why a system of gov’t food warehouses, kind of like Sams, with gov’t surplus foods, for food stamp recipients to shop in. Stocked with good, nutritious foods but not with filet minon or sweets and sodas and the like.”
Aside from the extra operating costs of running all those special stores in every locality across the country, the supermarket lobbyists would never let such a thing happen. Government stores competing in their industry with free food ? Never happen. Forcing people to go to a special store rather than anonymously buying food at any corner grocer ? Probably unconstitutional.
See ? This is the problem with government entitlement benefits — you can’t get rid of them or modify them in any way that appears to reduce the benefits or convenience people are now “entitled” to.
Easier to kill an entire program than to change it.
True. I thought it was odd that they talked about a list of excluded products. The better method would be to only add allowed products into a database after they’d been vetted. The makers of the product would check the guidelines and not even bother to send the item’s application if they knew it was junkfood.
In California you can use in what used to be called food stamps in for Taco Bell, Jack in the box or many other types of fast foods.
Here in Texas our clueless lawmakers cam up with the “Lone Star Card” to replace food stamps. They said, to give both “dignity” to the welfare rats and to control fraud.
Well, guess what? The welfare rats now buy full grocery baskets of steaks and other goodies and simply roll the cart out to the car, load the car and take the goodies to the people who will buy them at 50 cents on the dollar. One hell of a good business!
Now, with this “healthy bill” they will simply do the same (after all steaks are healthy) and get paid with cash from their “customers” and go back in a buy candy and other “bad” items.
Yep! A real fix for their health problems...by the way...the cure is paid by you and I.
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