Posted on 03/13/2013 8:42:36 AM PDT by Nachum
Not so long ago in this republic, most parents of school-age children would frequently visit grocery stores where they would use their own money to buy things like peanut butter and jelly, and bologna and cheese to make lunches for their kids to haul to school in brown paper bags. It was an American tradition. Now, like other great things about America, brown-bag lunches are being driven to extinction by politicians seeking inordinate government control over our lives. In fiscal year 1969 (which started in 1968), there were approximately 47,906,000 American children enrolled in elementary and high schools,
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited. None to regulate agricultural production is given, and therefore legislation by Congress for that purpose is forbidden (emphasis added)." --United States v. Butler, 1936.
But also note, as I've already posted in this thread, that Justice John Marshall had previously officially clarified that Congress cannot lay taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially issues which Congress cannot justify under the Constitution's Section 8 of Article I.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." --Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
So not only does Congress not have the constitutional authority to regulate intrastate agriculture, but neither does Congress have the power to lay taxes in the name of subsidizing agriculture.
The reason that corrupt Congress is now wrongly interfering with intrastate agriculture is the following. Activist justices nominated by Constitution ignoring socialist FDR wrongly ignored the above case precedents when they decided Wickard v. Filburn in Congress's favor in 1942.
In Baltimore, it is not enough that the public school students are given meals at school. Many of them are sent home each Friday with a backpack full of food for the weekend. And there are pick-ups set up for summertime and for breaks.
Except, of course, that courts have held that a farmer producing wheat for his own consumption can affect interstate commerce, and therefore the Feds can control him.
See: Wickard v. Filburn.
Though I’m not clear on whether that precedent still holds.
Our son, now 19, was in Jr. High some 6 years ago. We wanted him to take more advanced classes and he was turned down based on testing and other criteria. As soon as the school found out he was on the free lunch program, the story changed. Yes, he could take the advanced classes. How many families are being forced to put their kids on fed lunch subsidies in order to get the better classes for them?
In the end our son was the High School Valedictorian for the class of 2012. He went to a 4-year college having already 70 college credit hours under his belt.
He would not have been able to get there if he wasn’t on the fed lunch program in 2007.
This article is misleading. I ate at school cafeterias in the 1960’s and early 70’s, but paid full price. The subsidy comes in if a kid qualifies for free or reduced lunch. So, the author is greatly inflating his numbers.
Anoter government do good program. Once started only multiples and grows more expensive. There was no free lunches when I went to school.
(There are, of course, the "will work for food" types. The last one I saw was standing at an intersection next to a fast food place that was advertising for help.)
I have actually been to your town. It was around 2008. My youngest son and his wife lived there for a few years, and we went out once to visit. It was a very nice town from what we could see.
The TAXPAYERS are getting SCREWED!!
and drugs and for toppless dances, too...
Who cares if intrastate commerce affects interstate commerce? That's Congress's problem. You can put your faith in the post FDR era Supreme Court's interpretation of the Commerce Clause if you want to. But I won't give activist justices the benefit of the doubt on questionable decisions.
Here's two more excerpts concerning the limits of Congress's Commerce Clause powers from expert sources, one of them from a Supreme Court opinion since that seems to be where some people put their faith. The excerpts clearly indicate that Congress has no business sticking its big nose into intrastate commerse regardless what activist justices say.
First, using terms like "does not extend" and "exclusively," Thomas Jefferson had officially clarified that Congress has no business sticking its big nose into intrastate commerce.
“For the power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State, (that is to say of the commerce between citizen and citizen,) which remain exclusively (emphases added) with its own legislature; but to its external commerce only, that is to say, its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes.” –Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson’s Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank : 1791.
Next, seemingly reflecting on Jefferson's words, Justice John Marshall had officially clarified that Congress has no constitutional authority to regulate intrastate commerce.
"State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress (emphases added)." --Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
What proof do you have of this?
Food stamps {SNAP] provide a family with a calculated amount of money based on combined income for the household, on an EBT card to spend down for a month. IIRC, I read, the *card* only works for food. Not booze or caninos. It doesn’t even pay for products to keep you clean like laundry soap and TP.
Help with *drugs* is available through medicaid application and acceptance.
If you have other sourced information, I would be happy to be enlightened.
We have to thank Title 1 program enacted in 1965 under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. And No Child Left Behind [1994].
The Title 1 funds are largely a boon to schools; I wish they had in place an audit system, to determine how principals spend the money. These funds are a major part of the budget of an individual school, since most BoE have cut back their budgets significantly.
THX for the link. Having unrestricted EBT cards is just plain stoopid.
Oh, I forgot, legislators are not paid to *think.*
This was going on in every state.
Unless you *sell* the pin # for the card for pennies on a dollar....I don’t see how *cash* can come out of an SNAP card, unless different states have different programs/administration. ;)
Nice town, but aging town. I now live 15 miles north of the city limits. The population has not increased in fifty years. Like many towns in the U.S., most of the population growth has been to the suburbs. When I was growing up there in the fifties and sixties, the city pop. was 50k and the metro pop. about 60k. Now the town is still 50k and the metro pop. is about 125k. Plus while relatively safe, there’s now drug gangs and the attendant problems. Some areas I didn’t think twice about walking through thirty years ago I’d now give a little thought to. And the local rag, The La Crosse Tribune, which was pretty conservative when I was a kid, is now a New York Slimes clone.
That’s why I have no hope for this country because even folks who claim to want balanced budgets and small Gov’t raise hell when their favorite goodie is threatened, notwithstanding the fact that every Democrat and more than half of Republicans think Gov’t spending helps the economy.
Also another state representative here, said that people were buying ILLEGAL drugs with them.
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