TANSTAAFL

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch...but the government would like kids and unsuspecting parents to believe otherwise.

Image credit: David Boaz and the Cato at Liberty blog (their source unknown.) At its inception “TANSTAAFL” was an unofficial slogan of the Libertarian Party.

This is what government expects from our schools.

As you are surely aware, I extolled my thoughts on education a couple weeks back.

But I thought it worth the update because I came across this news story from the Delaware Live website discussing a bill from Rep. Sherae'a Moore, a usual far-left Democrat suspect from the wilds of New Castle County. Even more disappointing is that at least one school superintendent supports the bill - can't have too many government claws in those crumb-crunching skulls full of mush, can you?

Here's the scoop: once we finally got kids back in schools after the plandemic, the federal government allowed local districts to expand their pre-existing free lunch and breakfast programs from those kids who qualified by virtue of their family's lack of (reported) income out to all kids in the school, with Uncle Sam footing the bill. But now that the crisis is over, schools had to revert to the old eligibility rules, and that doesn't sit well with Rep. Moore and those other advocacy groups who never want to let such a crisis (or its effects) go to waste. Instead, they want over $30 million a year of state taxpayer money to add these thousands of public school kids back to the free meal rolls.

Now I'm not sure exactly when breakfast is served in schools (that being a relatively recent concept to me) but either they're extending the school day for no good educational reason or having these kids masticate their way through first period instead of paying attention to the teacher.

Moreover, how seductive is this concept to the parent? She's probably more than happy to turn over the little rugrat(s) to the system because she has others still in diapers or has to go to her job. Think of it this way: the more those children are conditioned to have government serve and indoctrinate them, the less likely they will be instilled with the values that made our country strong and free. I often harken back to the Scripture of Proverbs 22:6 because it's a guide for parents that truly care.

The one place I will give credit to Rep. Moore is that she’s making this a state issue rather than a federal issue, which is a more proper venue. In fact, she’s a teacher herself, so I’m sure she’s dealt with her share of hungry kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is from her campaign “about” page:

After hearing stories from the working class and those that the system has overlooked, Rae decided to make a shift in careers and became a teacher. It was through this experience where she saw firsthand how overburdened and underserved the education system was. Becoming an educator solidified her passion for advocating for those who feel like they do not have a voice.

But now she wants to make the system more overburdened and underserved by converting the school into a mini-restaurant? We already have a federal program that extends the free food program into the summer, meaning school districts may be opening their buildings up for that purpose. (It’s worth noting that Delaware has not given the federal government information about their summer food locations on their sites, but I’m sure they have some.)

At some point we have to allow for personal responsibility and thinking things through. In the end, all this free breakfast and lunch would achieve is creating yet another excuse for guys to not keep it in their pants and women to accommodate them. One of the benefits of waiting until you're wed is that you'll more likely have the means to feed your own children breakfast before they go to a place where they'll be taught phonics instead of reimagined pronouns and learn to think rationally for themselves instead of perpetuating a cycle of dependence. Doing it the way we’ve been doing it has been one of the main causes of the $30-odd trillion we count as our national debt. We’re paying for a lack of responsibility from the last two or three generations.

It's the state's dependence on Uncle Sam that led Rep. Moore to introduce her bill, so here is the call to action: let's start to break one cycle of dependence and assist many others to do the same. To borrow a phrase from the Reagan administration: Just say no.