Instapundit notes this piece of craptastically bad thinking that sadly reflects the growing inability of people to do the most basic things without asking "what's in it for me?" Sayeth Kristin Wartman:
To get Americans cooking, we need to make it possible. Stay-at-home parents should qualify for a new government program while they are raising young children — one that provides money for good food, as well as education on cooking, meal planning and shopping — so that one parent in a two-parent household, or a single parent, can afford to be home with the children and provide wholesome, healthy meals. These payments could be financed by taxing harmful foods, like sugary beverages, highly caloric, processed snack foods and nutritionally poor options at fast food and other restaurants. Directly linking a tax on harmful food products to a program that benefits health would provide a clear rebuttal to critics of these taxes.
Are you freaking kidding me?
In what world should we live in where doing the tasks that we need to do to keep ourselves clean and healthy aren't worth doing if we aren't paid to do them? Isn't that simply a feature of being an "adult?"
What's next after being paid to stay home to shop and cook healthy?
Exercising?
Watching PBS and listening to NPR?
Fixing that loose board on the back porch, at long last you lazy football-watching slug!!?
I mean, as long as we're talking about things good for us that we don't have time to do. The sky's the limit when the money machine in Washington can be tapped to fund this!
And maybe the right can get in on this, too!
How about payments for going to religious services?
I really should clean and service my firearms more often, shouldn't I?
And target practice would be nice, too.
Hey, as long as anyone can play! Why not go for it all?
If eating is something the federal government must supervise, surely the logical bowel movement should be of interest to the government. And bathing. And it's a short step to the bedroom from there, eh? If you are justifying this "for the children," you kind of have to have children, don't you? What can't fall under government interest with this thinking?
Of course, we'll need a massive bureaucracy to organize this. Ms. Wartman does call it a "program," after all, with all that implies. I mean, if people can't be trusted to have even a healthy meal without government intervention, you don't really think just giving a frivolous person without the sense to come in out of the rain the day off and a check will automatically lead that person to buy some organic food and whip up a gluten-free meal for the family, do you? You are so naive!
Obviously, the Department of Agriculture (or will it be the IRS since they do everything these days, it seems) will have to set up the Bureau of Individual Training and Employment for Meal Enforcement.
So we'll have federally paid Cuisine Help Outreach Kitchen Employees to stand over the program recipient while they shop. Oh, and program recipients obviously need transportation to healthy food outlets, so a nice GM all-electric is a must benefit in the program.
And then your trained (mustn't forget the training program!) CHOKE guide will point out the foods you can buy--and rap your knuckles if you reach for the frozen meals--and then stand over you while you properly prepare your health food (it will be a 93-day misdemeanor to use salt or butter when you are cooking, of course).
And if your ungrateful family won't clean their plates after you plop that healthy meal in front of them because they are too busy dreaming of a chicken nugget meal with fries, federal SWAT teams from BITEME will knock down your door and arrest the miscreants for failing to cook and eat properly. I mean, it is one thing for people to freely choose to not take care of themselves when it is on their dime. But once the government starts paying, then it is a matter for all of us, isn't it? Now it is a crime to waste that federal money. (Clean your plates kids, there are children
Seriously, how little do you have to think of people to argue that simply taking care of themselves is something that is beyond the capacity of people to do? And how freaking idiotic does your thinking process have to be to suggest a government program is the solution--or even a problem the government should stick its freaking nose into?
And no, taxing the usual suspects isn't a "clear rebuttal" to a criticism of such a tax and such a program funded by that tax.
Ms. Wartman can just bite me and choke on her suggestion. If she wants my Tim Horton's donut, she can come and pry it from my cold, fat fingers. How a person with a functioning brain stem can seriously make such a suggestion is beyond me. (Wait--okay, that isn't an Onion article.)
If unenlightened people don't want to take care of themselves, I suggest Ms. Wartman lean back, enjoy her gluten-free, free-range, tofu burger, and just mutter "screw 'em" as the ignorant masses ignorantly enjoy another Big Mac with bacon added washed down with a 32-ounce soft drink.
