OK **enough** about kids getting a damn "free lunch" with your nickel.

[Bluebear]

If you are so freakin' obsessed with the thought of some kid getting a hot fish stick lunch (with tartar sauce!) when he could just as well be satisfied with a dry cheese sandwich because SURELY his parents are lying, being deadbeat losers who "never learned how to make a sandwich" and their child is putting something over on you.....

If this is truly the bee in your bonnet that causes you to post and post and post AND POST because some child might be "getting" something more than you, ****BY ALL MEANS**** let us know so we can take up a collection and send you some coupons to Souper Sandwich or something.

Jeeze! Or should I say CHEESE???

:mad:

Thank you.

[Orrex]

1. Dude, can I have your Tater Tots?

[Bluebear]

3. Trade ya for that vanilla pudding. nt

[flvegan]

11. Get your own, gosh!

[havocmom]

2. Your go, bear

:thumbsup:

[Bluebear]

4. I've never seen anything like it!

:crazy:

[havocmom]

9. wondering how many of them cheered 'ketchup = serving of veggies'

from Reagan administration crackpot thinking

[Occam Bandage]

5. I would have simply bypassed this thread without posting,

but the words "hot fish stick lunch with tartar sauce" immediately sucked me into a nostalgic time warp, and upon exiting from my misty state I found my irritation at the Cheese Sandwich Anti-"Socialist" Brigade tripled.

[pnwmom]

31. Me, too! nt

[CreekDog]

6. We had deli sandwiches at my school

unless you wanted hot food, that was a different line.

on Fridays, we had fish burgers in the hamburger line.

public school. :D

[lumberjack_jeff]

7. Hey, here's a topic that hasn't been addressed lately!

I mean it's not like there aren't already twenty threads in which you can yell strawmen.

The free lunch program is great. It provides free or reduced price lunch to all who can't afford it. Everyone else can, and if feeding their children isn't a priority to them, I don't have much sympathy.

It's not reasonable to ask my childless neighbors to buy my kids lunch if I can afford it.

[Occam Bandage]

10. Or, you know, if their financial state has significantly worsened

since the beginning of the payment period, which is of course entirely possible.

[havocmom]

14. OB, they just have too much anger to think there might be conditions they don't know about

or they are just too frickin mean and into humiliating kids until kids will not be able to stomach going to school.

did a bus from some other site break down in front of DU or something?

[Bluebear]

13. Well - here is thread number 21. So sue me.

:hi:

[pnwmom]

34. Isn't it possible for someone not on the official reduced lunch program to

be going through hard times once in a while, and to need extra help?

Your childless neighbors are already paying for other people's children's education. Paying for the food that will help them function at school makes sense to me.

[Omnibus]

46. I'm childless, and as of today, I'm unemployed.

But hell, I'd rather my taxes went to buy a school kid lunch than to bail out a bank or kill brown people.

I'm your childless neighbor. I'll feed your kid even if you can afford it, but don't.

Surely that will shame you into doing the right thing, no?

If it doesn't, at least your kid doesn't suffer because her parents are jerks, and I get the satisfaction of knowing I'm a better person than you.

[Bluebear]

47. +1 thank you!

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

50. Well put. nt

[JerseygirlCT]

55. Nicely said. nt

[BuyingThyme]

8. Can we do kickballs next?

[flvegan]

12. You just made every guy wince.

[Hello_Kitty]

15. This childless-by-choice Cruella DeVille APPLAUDS you!

:applause:

Honest to fuck, kids getting hot school lunches they aren't "entitled to" ranks very low on my list of Things That Bother Me. Jesus God, give the kid the damn lunch and use my tax money for it if you need to. Raise my goddamn taxes if that's what it takes. Listen up, parents, the better educated your spawn are, the less apt they are to be a pain in my ass and a drain on society. Not hungry kid = more attentive student. Win-win. And by all means, shame the parent for being a scofflaw from lunch dues, but don't take it out on the kid.

[1]

16. calm down, blue (my buddy, my pal...)

all of our ranting and raving on this, on our dear website, is not going to change the fact that some kids are going to get these cheese sandwiches. and fruit. and milk.

i have yet to see one poster stand up and suggest any alternative, any protest, anything we could do to stop this objectionable cheese sandwich fiasco.


we just bitch about it our posts. because that's what we do here. and that's cool. if all you want to do is bitch about things and never really bring about any meaningful change to those poor little cheese sandwich eaters.



me? i love cheese sandwiches. so its hard for me to weigh in on this...

[merh]

17. With ketchup - remember how ketchup was declared a vegetable

for the lunch programs under Reagan's admin.

Ketchup for everyone, everyone needs their veggies.

[ColesCountyDem]

18. Stated perfectly!

I've been thinking the same thing, but couldn't quite put it into the right words, at least not without using phrases like 'tight-assed bastards' , 'Scrooges' and 'panties in a wad' ...

:D

[Lex]

19. Tell it, brother.

:thumbsup:

[Orrex]

20. Great post, BB! When I was in junior high, 25 years ago...

My school district offered four types of lunches:

1. Pay-as-you-go
2. Pre-pay, for which you received a beige ticket that had ten punch-slots on it, one for each day of use
3. Free lunches, which used identical tickets as in #2
4. Reduced-price lunches, which likewise used the same tickets as #2, but you had to pay $0.40 each day

Due to my family's circumstances, I initially qualified for the free lunch program; embarrassed, I lied to my friends and told them that I was on the pre-pay program. Then my family's circumstances "improved," and I was moved to the reduced-price plan. Not I had to face my friends who suddenly realized that I'd been lying to them, and I also had to absorb the daily humiliation of presenting my ticket and my lunch money, mocked and ridiculed in my generally quite affluent school.

After a week or two of this abuse, I simply stopped eating lunch, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who made that decision.

Regardless of the motivation behind the cheese-sandwich campaign, the impact is clear: it will subject kids to a humiliating stigma that will very likely drive them to skip lunch altogether. Is that really better than giving these kids a tiny, inconsequential break? If they qualify for free or reduced lunches, or if their families are so financially strapped that they can't afford lunches some days, then the last thing they need is the additional humilation of being branded as "Poor."

And I'm sure that a tiny fraction of families do abuse the system, but so the fuck what? There are still better ways to deal with the problem than to take it out on the kids.

Accusing these kids or these families of abusing the system is exactly the same as buying into Reagan's "Welfare Queen" meme.


Thanks again for a great post!

[pnwmom]

33. I agree. When our school instituted computerized lunch, and all kids suddenly

paid in exactly the same way (inserting their own card into a slot) -- no matter whether they were on full pay, reduced rate, or free lunches -- I thought it was such a great idea. And so did every other parent I knew.

But I wouldn't be friends with the kind of jerk who would want to make kids without money feel even more uncomfortable than they already do.

And I bet anything that that school that's passing out cheese sandwiches is throwing out hot lunch food every day, since they always have to have enough on hand to feed anyone who gets in line.

[Orrex]

42. Regarding friends, well, things were different back then

I was 13, so some things seemed important even though they'd be irrelevent just a few years later...


I suspect that you're absolutely right about the discarded hot lunches, because they sure as hell don't control portions on a perfect 1:1 ratio. In high school, one friend was bulking up for football, so he'd buy three lunches each day. What the heck does that do to their carefully rationed meal plan?


And you're right--the computerized payment system is brilliantly simple, completely and invisibly eliminating the problem.

[ladywnch]

21. okay, what did I miss? who is screaming about kid lunches? n/t

[madrchsod]

24. "google du" for all the posts today

be prepared ,there are some real.....

[madrchsod]

22. i was having a bad 80`s flashback reading the reagan talking points

thank god there`s more of us than there is of them

[dweller]

23. the Kin of Ata are waiting for you ...

just saying.


dp

[moriah]

25. Given the quality of hot lunch I remember from childhood....

... I'd rather have the cheese sandwich.

[tnlefty]

26. 'Nuff said.

K&R. I'm off to bed to have nightmares about some of what I've seen posted here.

Have a good weekend.

[City Lights]

27. Well said!

Who knew Rick Santelli had a couple of DU accounts?

:argh:

on edit: recommended

[Starry Messenger]

28. If anything, kids could be fed more often at school.

Teens especially. They seem to need to graze.

I think "big people" sometimes forget what school and growing up was like. I grew up in semi-affluent circumstances and then my parents divorced when I was 12. Our circumstances changed abruptly and this became quite obvious at the school I went to, which was a private Catholic K-8. Even though we were required to wear uniforms, the other kids could make you feel bad for having cheap looking socks and shoes.

Sure it "built self-esteem"... :crazy: We weren't even that "poor" by most standards. But a modest slip down the class ladder made my brother and I pariahs. I don't know what actual poor kids might have endured.

[Forkboy]

29. I love you.

:)

[kickysnana]

30. Cora, Jr and me;Reading all the threads

Mom did not think that nylon stockings were necessary for teenage girls and she and Dad said although they would not forbid me to wear them, I had to buy them myself. Everyone except the Pentecostal girl wore them (that religion seemed to think that persecution was a good thing). It took two weeks allowance to buy them and they usually did not last a week without a snag or run. She also encouraged me to try not to gain weight so in my 13 year old pea brain the solution was to not eat lunch and use the money to buy stockings, in hindsight setting me up for osteoporosis. (Other kids kept their lunch money to buy cigarettes.)

Cora, her husband her son, my uncle (now age 88) by marriage were/are hard core Republicans.

Husband and uncle worked a union city job and that paid good money and had excellent benefits. They retired with a good pension, social security and investments. They owned their own house and a fishing cabin and bought a new Ford every two years. She always asked where you bought the clothes, shoes or jewelry you were wearing.

Cora wore gold, diamonds and furs whenever she could EXCEPT when my grandmother saw her one month at the local commodity giveaway about 1975 (in a borrowed car). There was no means test then.

I have two sons who ended up on free lunch through no fault of their own in the 1980's. One it did not bother. The other started finding ways to buy his own lunch by age 13. Both are doing great now.

If people get something for nothing they take advantage of it. Some people are cruel. What makes one kid strong makes another one suicidal. An experience that makes one kid a compassionate Democrat makes another kid a cruel Republican.

One philosopher said he was good to his kids because life was so cruel.

On the other hand shielding kids from life and all consequences gives you millions of Nadia Sulemans and George W Bushes.

Nobody on DU said that kids should not be fed. Nobody on DU said that it was OK for adults to shame kids. Some school districts right this minute do not have the money to feed kids for free.

Bottom line. The kids are being fed. The rest is a grey area that we are going to continue to debate and fine tune.
We all need to realize that it is too easy to pontificate on this anonymous board and write something simple and shallow that makes us feel really good without thinking it all the way through.

[Stellabella]

32. YOU are

wonderful.

:toast:

[paulsby]

35. who the #$(#$(

thinks it's wrong for the state to provide a decent, hot lunch to kids? in this forum?

seriously.

i must have missed those threads.

for pete's sake. these are KIDS.

adults in poverty (generally) aren't to "blame" for their circumstances, but kids certainly aren't.

if a parent IS a "lying deadbeat loser" and relies on free lunch, that's a risk i am willing to take with my tax $$$$.

[Maru Kitteh]

36. Thanks Bear, and well said.

[Baikonour]

37. So if parents are never deadbeats and always feed their children

Then surely it must be a grand conspiracy wrought up by the school district to expose poor children to the rest of the more fortunate children, for whatever reason.

Occam's Razor sure has gone dull.

People around here aren't upset that the school is giving out free food. As far as I'm concerned, all public schools should have higher funding so they CAN give out free food to all their students. What people are seemingly upset at is the idea that children may be ridiculed for having to eat the cheese sandwich. As if children won't find any excuse to ridicule one another, regardless of school policy.

[Bluebear]

39. Oh yes, "people around here" certainly ARE upset about free lunch.

I've read my fill of people worried about the "lazy" parents who won't make their children lunch and I read one post where the woman who makes her children lunches now wants some kind of cash credit.

[Baikonour]

41. But there ARE "lazy" parents who won't make their children lunch

or who simply cannot afford to.

How about we take a look at how much the private enterprises that deliver the food to public schools gouge the prices?

[Heidi]

49. Should the children be penalized/publicly humiliated for what the parents can't do

or refuse to do? I don't think so.

[Tatiana]

38. Thank you!

I hate to swear... but FUCK! What the FUCK has happened to us?

We're not talking about filet mignon here. We're talking about school lunch, USDA commodity food, sometimes.

It's not like these kids are looting the treasury like *some* folk did.

[my2sense]

43. Cosign - Just feed the kids

The universe will take care of parents that are gaming the system and quite frankly we have bigger fish to fry.

[DBoon]

40. I have plenty of nickels

if a few of them keep a kid from going hungry, I have plenty more to enjoy

[freeplessinseattle]

44. my grade school, 20+ yrs ago, did have free lunch for some

and this was in Salt lake City. I distinctly remember a couple of my friends had special blue tickets they'd give to the cashier. quite a few people had them, and while one of my friends was embarassed to let everyone know she was poor, going without was worse. she ate better at school then she did at home, and her single mom did work her ass off. depended on my friend alot to watch the other kids, all the more reason she needed to be nourished.

whatever happened to that free lunch program? maybe it was more a Utah thing since the families were usually large and children are a valued population there.

[bvar22]

45. Amen!

:patriot:

[mrbarber]

48. Allot of my (personal) anger over this issue....

Stems from knowing people who care so little about their children that they don't consider keeping them nutritionally healthy a priority in their lives. I don't think railing agaisn't those types of parents as being a negative thing.

That being said, no child should be forced to suffer because of their parents failings. You should not be punished for something you had no control over (what family you were born into).

As a human being, and also as an Italian, the thought of ANYONE going hungry is absolutely obscene to me, especially when that person is a child.

[cherokeeprogressive]

51. I would gladly give up 2 bucks per WEEKDAY in taxes so a child could eat a proper meal at school.

Sadly, for many it might be the most nourishing meal they get.

[PA Democrat]

52. Cheese whiz, I can't believe how many people are OK with humiliating kids

because of the "sins" of the parents. To take that attitude to the next "logical" step, perhaps school districts should find out who is delinquent on their taxes and start giving the children of those adults damaged desks in the back of the classroom, the damaged or old obsolete textbooks, etc. And they should be damn thankful for getting anything at all!!!

And as far as the argument that these kids are already ridiculed by other kids, did anyone stop to consider that the very treatment by ADULTS to single out and embarrass the kids of the "deadbeats" gives other CHILDREN the green light to make those kids' lives very difficult. Children learn by example.

I remember how the nuns at the Catholic grade school I attended used humiliation to try to get parents to pay their kids' book bills. They used to call the kids' names over the PA system to come to the office to get a letter about their delinquent bills. My heart always broke for those kids. Some did a great job at putting forth an "I don't care" attitude, but others would get red faced and seemed to physically shrink.

[marew]

53. Kids getting a free lunch is fine with me.

What I can't stand is all the fancy business lunches that are subsidized by us taxpayers.

[Cerridwen]

54. .

:kick: