I don’t think anyone in America is in favor of childhood obesity, nor is anyone against the First Lady throwing her weight behind a good cause. Mrs. Bush lent her stature to childhood literacy just as Michelle Obama is fighting against childhood obesity. Unfortunately, like everything else with this administration you have to pay close attention to what’s really going on versus what the public is being told. This administration tries to distract you with one thing and then slip something else through when you’re not looking.
Huge kudos goes to Michelle Malkin for blowing this story wide open. It turns out Michelle Obama’s big crusade against childhood obesity is really a crusade to grow the membership roles of her husband’s favorite labor union — the ubiquitous SEIU.
Mrs. Obama earned a State of the Union Address shout-out from her hubby for taking on the weighty public policy issue of students’ physical fitness. The East Wing is now in full campaign mode – leaning on the nation’s mayors, traveling with the Surgeon General, and meeting with Congress and cabinet members to reauthorize the Lyndon Johnson-era Child Nutrition Act, which provides government-subsidized meals to more than 30 million children. It’s part of the Obama administration’s self-proclaimed “cradle-to-career” agenda for America’s youth.
Moreover, they want to expand the program to include meals for infants, meals during the summer, and even dinner. So why might the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) be so interested in keeping and vastly expanding this government entitlement? Do they just love kids?
The well-intended program to feed poor kids has morphed into an untouchable universal entitlement with a powerful school lunch lobbying coalition of Department of Agriculture bureaucrats, food-service industry executives, and union bosses. Enter the SEIU. Headed up by the White House’s most frequent visitor, Andy Stern, the powerful labor organization representing government and private service employees has an insatiable appetite for power and growth. Working alongside the First Lady, the SEIU unveiled a major ad campaign this week demanding reauthorizing and funding increases in the Child Nutrition Act.
What’s in it for Big Labor? SEIU Executive Vice President Mitch Ackerman explains: “A more robust expansion of school lunch, breakfast, summer feeding, child care and WIC [the federal Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program] is critical to reducing hunger, ending childhood obesity, and providing fair wages and healthcare for front line food service workers (emphasis added).” There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more. “More robust expansion” of the federal school lunch law means a mandate for higher wages, increased benefits, and government-guaranteed health insurance coverage (the more luxurious the better now that SEIU has negotiated its Cadillac Tax exemption from the Democrats’ health care takeover bill).
It’s not about feeding hungry kids or tackling obesity and it never was. It’s about propping up the purple shirted thugs in the SEIU. It’s a real shame that this administration can’t do a single f*cking thing without a left-wing agenda in the shadows somewhere. Everything they do and every bill they pass is about moving their insane Progressive agenda down the field.
This is by no means the full story. Click over and read Michelle’s entire column — it’s truly unbelievable.
-Chris Jones
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