Cold Cheese Sandwich Compassion
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| Sat, 03-07-2009 - 3:04pm |
Something for nothing is the new American way. Free school lunch, free housing, free day care, free health care. Everything now is to become free. We are all entitled.
The following article dares to look at what something for nothing really is. Let this serve as a warning while we leap into the world of endless entitlement. Something for nothing could wind up being a cold cheese sandwich, warm milk, and a mealy fruit.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/cold_cheese_sandwich_compassio.html
The "village" is dishing out free lunch. Unfortunately, the natives are restless because the only provision on the collective cauldron is a "cold cheese sandwich." School districts all across America are under attack over the sandwich, fruit and carton of milk provided gratis for students without lunch money or those who fail to pay the tab for charged lunches. The initiative is called the "cheese sandwich policy" implemented as an effort to prevent children from going hungry, while insuring the district's budget remains unstrained.
Tearful mothers pleaded with school districts to stop singling out children by feeding them cheese sandwiches. Students are vowing, they "...will never eat sliced cheese again" after having to eat them as a "courtesy meal." Cheese sandwich anger is palpable and is being interpreted as a "singling out or punishment" of poor children.
One example is the Albuquerque New Mexico school district, which is the fifth largest in the country and should serve as an example to the rest of us of what happens when governmental type entitlement programs are instituted to meet needs that are deemed "rights" for large groups of people. What occur are "cold cheese sandwich" programs considered adequate by dispensers of the privilege, but below the expectations of recipients?
We live in a deluded state of entitlement in this country. Our perceptions of what we deserve don't quite line up with our bottom line. Not being able to meet the expense of a house doesn't stop some of us from purchasing one, forgoing the mortgage payment, blaming predatory lenders for our predicament and expecting the government to come up with the monetary solution. This type of attitude is indicative of the practice of sending children to school without lunch, running up a delinquent tab, expecting kids to be eligible for free hot pastrami on rye and then protesting when all they get is a "cold cheese sandwich".
We were once a nation that assumed responsibility for the needs of our own family. Never would we expect our food or housing to be provided by anyone other than ourselves and we worked hard as proud providers. Over the last twenty years, we're become a country that views itself as "entitled" and deserving of governmental provision of shelter, transportation, education and of course health care. We're sucking our thumb, curled up in the fetal position on the lap of a lactating Nanny state. However, when the government provides what is standard government colostrums we're shocked, appalled and dissatisfied with the stipulations.
We've eagerly elected politicians who are "changing" America into something against the grain of who and what we've historically been, yet we're still expecting what we've been used to -- just minus a monthly statement of any kind. Sorry comrades it doesn't work that way. American's are about to find out that "cold cheese sandwiches" are government cuisine and like it or not we're going to have to gag down dry sandwiches, warm WIC milk and a mealy, rotten apple if we don't wake-up in a hurry.
It is going to be very interesting to see the reaction of American's, who are eagerly awaiting single-payer Universal Health Care and who falsely imagine that for "free" they will have the same access and quality they presently enjoy These are same hoodwinked individuals who think they can skip mortgage payments and remain in their homes or overlook lunch tabs but still demand personal size pizzas and Acai-Blueberry-Pomegranate Vitamin Water without charge.
We are an impatient nation griping on deli lines, exhibiting road rage when caught in traffic, avoiding the inefficient DMV, walking out of the diner if the waitress dawdles and buying stamps online because it takes too long at the US post office. Surprisingly, this is the same group that thinks Universal Health Care is a panacea in waiting.
Wait until Americans get a "cold cheese sandwich" slapped onto the lunch tray of reality.
"Many Americans look to Canada's Medicare program ...ignoring the very real costs that system imposes ... long wait times that can stretch into months or even years of painful and detrimental delay. Chronic conditions can become acute, with increased morbidity and mortality, and curable malignancies may become incurable" (Waiting Your Turn, Studies in Health Care Policy, Fraser Institute, October 2008).
If parents are complaining to school boards about children's free lunches wait until curable cancers become incurable because of rationed treatment.
The same citizens who are complaining about "government cheese" sandwiches will be begging for the right to eat one when Universal Health Care restrictions decide the menu. Wait until loss of personal freedom is driven home to dying people who, while waiting for treatment, crave a gooey, grilled cheese sandwich and are then forced to pay increased taxes on the meal because butter, cheddar and white bread are considered detrimental to health and responsible for putting undue strain the health care system. We are in grave danger of finding ourselves sitting around gumming government "cheese sandwiches" because a socialistic Sugar Daddy reprimanded us for the candy stuck in our teeth costing us our dentures.
The witch doctors are entering the village and we're on the precipice of giving government unprecedented control over our lives, which I promise will nurture a response similar to Danessa Vigil's over her free cheese sandwich when she said, "... it makes me feel like I want to throw up"
Wouldn't it be better to insure that the choices available to us are dictated only by our own resources, driven by personal responsibility and initiative? The American people should reevaluate the cost of what the federal, state or local government considers free and if they don't want to have their entire life transformed into a giant, "cold cheese sandwich" maybe they should bag their own lunch and accept responsibility for their lives.

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My understanding of the "cold Cheese Sandwich" debacle, from the artcle I read, is that these are NOT children on the school lunch program. These are children from families who have not paid their childrens lunch tab, HAVE been notifed and still failed to pay the lunch tab (or send their kids to school with lunch/money.) The school wasn't actually required to supply these children with any lunch, that met any kind of standard at all. It's really too bad that the parents failed to respond BEFORE their children were singled out for the cold lunches or manage to be resourceful enough to send their kids to school with something to eat. Ramen can still be found 6 for a dollar if you are really hard up, while you are waiting for the school lunch program app to be approved.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090225/ap_on_re_us/cheese_sandwich_flap_3
Tempest in a teapot--at least in regards to the cheese sandwich bit.
The new (relatively) APS superintendent decided to get the school district whipped into shape. One of Winston Brook's priorities was to eliminate waste. He noticed that the school lunch program was running a deficit. Since families which can't afford to pay for lunch are offered reduced/free hot lunches, he figured that there were kids misspending their lunch money or parents who just didn't give a darn about their obligations. The cheese sandwich was seen as a lower cost alternative to letting children go hungry.
Yeah, the story made the front page of the Albuquerque Journal several times --but then so do human interest stories by staff columnists. Letters to the editor generally ran more heavily for the "so what?" POV. And the school district DID get some parents to cough up the money they owed the district while those who couldn't afford the money were enrolled in programs to provide hot meals. The kids who had run up a tab because they used their lunch money elsewhere had to either eat cheese or do some fast and creative "explaining".
The rest of the author's screed strikes me as mean-spirited, short-sighted and totally lacking insight. Does DeAnglis think that a hungry child (one who got neither hot lunch nor cheese sandwich through no fault of his/her own) is going to be able to focus enough to learn? She doesn't appear to have given ANY thought to that question, being caught up utterly in her own small-minded world.
Instead, she's busy inveighing against anybody who doesn't stand on their own two feet particularly in the realm of health care. Guess she hasn't paid much attention to the costs our badly broken system is inflicting not only on individuals but on business owners (in other than the health related fields) as well. I found this line particularly cold and lacking in logic: "Wouldn't it be better to insure that the choices available to us are dictated only by our own resources, driven by personal responsibility and initiative?" Gee, Jeannie, maybe if you're suffering from a chronic condition or unexpectedly have a catastrophic health-related issue, you should just expect to curl up and die if you can't afford the cost of health care insurance.
For my spouse and me, that tab runs $20,000 a year--and we're in good overall health.
DeAngelis is writing under for the wrong institution (American) and the wrong activity (thinking). There was a British character of fiction, one named Scrooge given to similar "thoughts" and opinions......
DeAngelis needs a visit from a ghostly trio--the Ghost of Good Health Long Past would be a reasonable start.
Jabberwocka
We have become an entitled nation. Entitled to housing, food, health care, transportation, entertainment. You name it, we are entitled to it.
Anyone who suggests we think about it a bit, is accused of publishing a screed.
None of the points which I raised-- the more nuanced issue of what actually happened in Albuquerque (my city of residence); the difficulty/inability of a hungry child to learn (thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty, and poor/no education); the skyrocketing cost of health insurance, the even-more-exorbitant cost of out-of-pocket care, and the toll both take on small businesses in manpower hours and money--were covered in the OP or your response.
I saw no great thought or consideration in the link from the OP--just rant, screed, diatribe,....whatever, on how we feel entitled. It reminded me strongly of this bit from "A Christmas Carol":
<Ebenezer: Are there no prisons?
First Collector: Plenty of prisons.
Ebenezer: And the union workhouses - are they still in operation?
First Collector: They are. I wish I could say they were not.
Ebenezer: Oh, from what you said at first I was afraid that something had happened to stop them in their useful course. I'm very glad to hear it.
First Collector: I don't think you quite understand us, sir. A few of us are endeavoring to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth.
Ebenezer: Why?
First Collector: Because it is at Christmastime that want is most keenly felt, and abundance rejoices. Now what can I put you down for?
Ebenezer: Huh! Nothing!
Second Collector: You wish to be anonymous?
Ebenezer: I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish sir, that is my answer. I help to support the establishments I have named; those who are badly off must go there.
First Collector: Many can't go there.
Second Collector: And some would rather die. >>
DeAngelis' piece with its massive callousness and implicit sense, not of self sufficiency but inherent and arrogant superiority, will never convince anybody except those whose preconceptions already match her opinion. Small wonder that "compassionate conservatism" is viewed as an oxymoron by many!
Jabberwocka
I absolutely agree with your post.
Glad I never lived in one of those districts.
My non-picky younger son had an account in high school.
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