Lazy and Healthy People

Lazy and Healthy People 

            Last night I went to the store to get some grapes for my daughter. Full of Christmas cheer, I tossed a buck in the Salvation Army bucket, grabbed a bag of grapes and jumped in line to pay. The lady in front of me was buying cases and cases of soda, cookies, chips and a five Lb. package of hamburger. I rolled my eyes and said to myself “Please, please don’t be EBT”. Sure enough, she pulled out a Food Stamp card. It wasn’t enough so she paid the remainder with a credit card. She is not the lazy or healthy person I am referring to in my title. In fact, I am glad that our country can give her a helping hand in whatever her situation is.  This event was not originally part of today’s topic, but I felt it sort of fit in so I mentioned it. I love the work Michael Obama is doing with the “grow your own food” and “healthy school lunches” platform. But please, please limit food stamps to healthy food. It would be such an easy thing to do, and it would help so many people.

            The lazy people, to whom I am referring, are a certain number of farmers that receive government subsidies. There are three types of farm subsidies that I know of. The first is in the form of low cost crop insurance that will cover a farmer’s loss for a bad crop. The second is money paid to a dairy farmer to regulate the cost of milk. The last is money paid to farmers for not growing food. Guess who I think the lazy people are. The latter is used as a way to help regulate the price of food so that it remains artificially high, creating a profitable market for farmers. I say we stop that subsidy, make them work for their money and grow some damn food.

            The healthy people, to whom I am referring, are actually not healthy, but need to be. These are all the poor starving people that we are constantly reminded of during the holiday season. The countless number of malnourished people we see on TV; starving to death in some god forsaken place, so remote that only a wealthy celebrity could amass a convoy to reach. All of these people reside in countries whose government receives billions of dollars in aid from our government every year. We, as Americans think this aid is supposed to help their government’s population build infrastructure to resolve their plight. In actuality, it is a program created in the cold war to buy political alignment. All the monies paid eventually end up in the bank accounts of the government officials. This is an out dated practice and it needs to be stopped. The cold war is over and this money does not guarantee that any foreign government will look out for our interests.

            Instead, I say we take the foreign aid money and buy the food the “no longer lazy” farmers and making and we distribute it directly to the poor via air dropped crates with big American flags on them and slogans like “America Cares”. You can’t just ship the food over there as we have done in the past; the foreign governments take the food and sell it instead of giving it to their people. We need to just go right to the source. So that’s how I would make them healthy people.

Merry Christmas Everybody.