Tom Finneran: The Kids Revolt

Tom Finneran: The Kids Revolt

It was a fabulous wedding---a meaningful spiritual church service followed by an outside tent reception. A handsome young groom, a stunning young bride, a beautiful late summer day, and a band that could bring even the lame and the halt back to toe-tapping joy. The dance floor was full!! All day and well into the wee hours of the night………………….

There was an open bar too, apparently supplied by Jesus from Cana, because they never ran out of booze. And this was a mostly Irish crowd so Jesus was tested if you get my drift.

The hors d’oeuvres caught my attention as they always do. Being Irish, I dread the next famine and therefore I eat like a grizzly bear prepping for hibernation. And it was over those hors d’oeuvres that an animated conversation broke out. Among other delights, grilled cheese finger sandwiches were served with a small cup of tomato soup. What a combo. Delicious.  Real food. And more American than the Fourth of July. Then it got interesting…………………………

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A young mother said that her daughter’s school had just circulated a memo about the school lunch menu, citing federal regulations which now ban grilled cheese and tomato soup from the school lunch program. Spaghetti and meatballs too.  This, only the latest outrage from an officious, meddling, intrusive, and spendthrift federal bureaucracy which cannot even provide basic protection to the President while he is in the White House.

We are told that these restrictions are for our own good. We are told that they are designed to battle childhood obesity. We are told many things, none of which I find persuasive. And, with the nation more deeply in debt than we have ever been in our tumultuous two hundred plus years history, why are we actually spending taxpayer money on this nonsense? America has become a lunatic asylum, a society without grownups.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is actually spending your money on radio ads to tell you that leftovers should be wrapped and refrigerated…………..something that three-year-olds know well. Listen to the ads and you cannot help but conclude that our government must think that we are all morons.

How about school bake sales? You know those age-old community activities where families bring brownies, cakes, pies, and cookies to school, indulging the community’s sweet tooth, and raising funds for field trips and other events. Those sales are now banned as well because they violate some bureaucrat’s sensibilities about nutrition.

Leave it to the kids themselves to figure out how to stage a revolution. Since all these new regulations banning certain foods went into effect, student lunch participation is down in 49 states. The kids are voting with their wallets. They’re not buying into the kale and arugula revolution. Not only is student participation way down, but food wastage---food that is not bought and has to be tossed out---is way up. And schools are obviously now losing money on a program that once generated reliable revenue.

Here’s a thought for the geniuses at the USDA. Listen to the kids. They are your customers. And your recent changes to their meals are driving them away. You are losing on three important fronts—student participation is down, revenue is down, and food wastage is up. You are 0-3.

There’s actually a fourth front which should concern thoughtful public leaders and it is this---as the American public sees and hears of these various bullying edicts, as they wonder and worry about the nation’s hemorrhaging finances, as they puzzle over the sources of the federal government’s ever-expanding claimed authority, they become more and more likely to rebel. Polarization and resentment settle into the nation’s bones. A government which can’t protect the White House grounds from crazed intruders, a government which bans grilled cheese sandwiches, neither deserves nor gets any respect. And these are the small and simple things which any competent adult should be able to manage. What about the bigger things, the serious things, the things that will in fact determine the futures of America’s kids? It’s no wonder that healthcare and education and transportation policies are bogged down in interminable wars. We’re busy banning grilled cheese sandwiches. God save us.

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.