Speaker 1: Hey, folks, are your elementary or high school kids hungry,
Speaker 1: Well maybe they should get a job so that they
Speaker 1: could eat lunch at school. It sounds ridiculous, right, Well
Speaker 1: not according to one Georgia congressman, I can't even begin
Speaker 1: to tell you how baffled I am by this whole thing.
Speaker 1: But Helen, maybe you can start us off. What the
Speaker 1: hell is going on here?
Speaker 2: So and taking the food out a mouse of babes
Speaker 2: News Republican congress and richmondcormick basically said children who are
Speaker 2: receiving free school lunches shouldn't as they should be able
Speaker 2: to work. Apparently, this real life supervilion things that child
Speaker 2: labor laws are bad and probably merely a suggestion, And
Speaker 2: it's forwartan.
Speaker 3: We see where the money is being spent.
Speaker 2: Rather than going to headstart, kids which are mostly preschoolers,
Speaker 2: get breakfast the subplemental food programs few millions of poor
Speaker 2: children around the United States. But I guess second graders
Speaker 2: should good jobs picking berries. According to McCormick, this is
Speaker 2: so disgusting to defend. I am starting to wonder if
Speaker 2: these politicians have a black void where their.
Speaker 3: Heart should be.
Speaker 2: It seems the right forgot Jesus's message of feeding the
Speaker 2: hungry and charitable works. I get another example of how
Speaker 2: the almighty dollar dollar is the real god Republicans worship.
Speaker 3: This story is.
Speaker 2: FROMBC News by Rebecca Shabad on January twenty eighth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. And I'm going to say it, I hope
Speaker 2: this guy gets murder hornets in his pee hole because
Speaker 2: this is just terrible.
Speaker 3: And it's just terrible.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy is fucking stupid.
Speaker 5: AJ There really are no words for stories like this, Okay,
Speaker 5: Like he's claiming that the reasons he thinks that's a
Speaker 5: good idea is because you know, it's going to give
Speaker 5: the government a chance to see where the money is
Speaker 5: really spent, as Helen mentioned earlier.
Speaker 6: But the thing is.
Speaker 5: That this money is being spent on things like head start, right.
Speaker 5: This takes care of kids between birth and age five.
Speaker 5: It's because for low income families that need this support. Yeah,
Speaker 5: obviously it is giving kids that are older up to
Speaker 5: you know, they come out of high school three meals.
Speaker 5: What is the problem with that? Are suddenly going to
Speaker 5: put like an age requirement for you know, like hey,
Speaker 5: at age fourteen, you can no longer get free lunch.
Speaker 6: What are they going to do?
Speaker 1: I don't know what they're going to do, but I
Speaker 1: don't think that this is a legitimate stance. Let's just
Speaker 1: face it. This guy is a Republican. He has been
Speaker 1: threatened by Elon Musk and unelected. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to call him. I almost said official, but he's just
Speaker 1: an unelected guy hanging out around the new president, the
Speaker 1: again president who has threatened all other Republican congressman and
Speaker 1: senators to go along with what he wants or else
Speaker 1: he will fund a primary against them. So Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and his cronies want to take away food programs in schools,
Speaker 1: and this congressman has no choice. If he wants to
Speaker 1: keep his seat and keep his power and keep the
Speaker 1: coffee warm right where it is and not make any
Speaker 1: changes and just be there, has to go along with it.
Speaker 1: And so he's coming up with this stupid justification that
Speaker 1: an adult should not be repeating like this is asinine,
Speaker 1: this is unheard of, and I don't believe he actually
Speaker 1: believes this stuff. Rob does McCormick actually feel this way
Speaker 1: or is his argument just another Republican puppet string.
Speaker 7: I ultimately have no way of knowing, and in many
Speaker 7: ways it doesn't matter because it's what he's saying, so
Speaker 7: that's what he's doing. So something that is hard for
Speaker 7: me me personally rob is knowing that people lie to me.
Speaker 7: Like I was, just when people say things, I just
Speaker 7: assume that they're telling me the truth. Is why would
Speaker 7: I assume that people lie things? So I just assume
Speaker 7: that when people speak, they're telling me a thing they
Speaker 7: think is true or wish we're true. So if he
Speaker 7: says this is what he's thinking should happen, then then
Speaker 7: I am actually obligated to believe that this is his stance.
Speaker 7: If it's not, then we have two problems. Not one
Speaker 7: it's just dumb. This is this is actually like going
Speaker 7: a couple articles pack back, whereas boy howdy, isn't inconvenient
Speaker 7: that every study shows that if you are poor and uneducated,
Speaker 7: you're more likely to be religious. And one of the
Speaker 7: best ways to get people into education is if we
Speaker 7: can feed them, because we in America have built a
Speaker 7: society where the parents have to go to work while
Speaker 7: the while the kids go get educated, So ideally they
Speaker 7: get food like that that's an important thing for those families,
Speaker 7: is that's a meal they don't have to supply, so
Speaker 7: I mean, I grew up with with free lunch, and
Speaker 7: free lunch is useful. There's more we can talk about
Speaker 7: with like his employ but it's just I'm going to
Speaker 7: assume that he means what he means what he means
Speaker 7: what he says, because it would be dishonest. Not too
Speaker 7: I hope he's not dishonest.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't have any hope that that is that
Speaker 1: is the case, but you know, I will shift to
Speaker 1: Helen and ask what are your perspectives on what's happening
Speaker 1: here and more specifically talk to us about the problems
Speaker 1: that the government is actually causing.
Speaker 2: So so many problems. It's a lot of shock and
Speaker 2: awe going on right now. So because this is a
Speaker 2: microcosm again of a wider thing that's going on, he
Speaker 2: says something completely acid eye, supervillain shit. That's fine, And
Speaker 2: it's not that I have a problem of looking at
Speaker 2: budgets and seeing if you know, money can be better utilized.
Speaker 3: We can all agree that's a reasonable thing to do.
Speaker 8: But not not taking food away from like meals on
Speaker 8: wheels and head started wick these programs.
Speaker 3: And it's not like I.
Speaker 2: Don't know what he thinks these kids are getting like,
Speaker 2: they're not eating like steak dinners.
Speaker 3: This is free school lunch. This is wig programs.
Speaker 2: So parents getting like peanut butter and peas and milk
Speaker 2: to feed their toddlers.
Speaker 3: This is uh. You know, elderly people that are stuck
Speaker 3: in their.
Speaker 2: Homes cannot work anymore and rely on this government programs
Speaker 2: to bring them food.
Speaker 3: And guess what, We're human beings. We need food. We
Speaker 3: need food to survive.
Speaker 2: This has nothing to do with trying to, you know,
Speaker 2: make it more efficient and look at where you know,
Speaker 2: where the money is going, because they bitch about welfare coings.
Speaker 2: But they create the problem, you know, they make They
Speaker 2: make it so inflation goes up.
Speaker 6: We just do not go up.
Speaker 2: People don't have access to the healthcare that they need,
Speaker 2: so they might not have access to things like birth control,
Speaker 2: and then they're lion the government to take care of them.
Speaker 2: And this is not a shamed thing. This is just
Speaker 2: creating the problem, you know, and that that's the issue.
Speaker 2: And what happens is that then they get mad for
Speaker 2: the problem they created and blame it on the victim.
Speaker 2: It's victim blaming and that's what McCormick is doing. He's
Speaker 2: blaming it on poor people. But guess what why are
Speaker 2: people poor? People poor?
Speaker 3: It is because the system is rigged so the.
Speaker 2: People cannot get up into a better place of economic opportunity.
Speaker 2: But regardless, that is not an excuse to take food
Speaker 2: away from children people.
Speaker 3: I don't mean anybody.
Speaker 1: I will keep I will keep parketing back to the
Speaker 1: point that people that are overly religious come for the
Speaker 1: kids first. You know, the Republicans, Conservatives in this country
Speaker 1: are closely associated, openly uh with far right Christianity, far
Speaker 1: right Christian nationalism. And there's really no difference if it's
Speaker 1: a you know, some foreign religious government that is affecting children,
Speaker 1: or if it's right here in the United States, when
Speaker 1: you've got religious audiologues in your government, the same things
Speaker 1: bound to happen.
Speaker 8: A J.
Speaker 1: I want to know how do policies like these affect
Speaker 1: Republicans' own constituents.
Speaker 5: Well, if you look at the voting history of supporters
Speaker 5: of Conservative elect officials, they are usually people in rural areas,
Speaker 5: in relatively poor areas, so they are getting government assistance
Speaker 5: as well. And this guy here went on a really
Speaker 5: weird tangent during his speech about this topic, he said
Speaker 5: that RFK is all about producing not just calories but nutrition.
Speaker 5: I don't I don't really know why he was talking
Speaker 5: about that, but one of his quotes was that when
Speaker 5: in history have we had our poorest people also be
Speaker 5: or fastest people. That's for the first time here in
Speaker 5: America traditionally or poorest people living live very skinny and
Speaker 5: very under nutrition.
Speaker 6: Whatever.
Speaker 5: What the fact that that quote means, He's basically implying
Speaker 5: that poor people are lazy for taking government assistance and
Speaker 5: fat because they're getting free breakfast and lunch like it.
Speaker 6: It's wild to me.
Speaker 5: That his supporters support that kind of person with those
Speaker 5: type of ideologies.
Speaker 6: That is actlutely going to affect them.
Speaker 1: And I think he was alluding to the fact that
Speaker 1: they're fat because they're lazy. That's what I got out
Speaker 1: of that, And so aj I initially was going to
Speaker 1: see this question up for you, but I want to
Speaker 1: kick that over to Robs since you kind of already
Speaker 1: started down this past. But Rob on the on the
Speaker 1: note that he says that people are there are the
Speaker 1: people now are the fattest and poorest, I would say
Speaker 1: there's certainly a difference between an adult abusing or being
Speaker 1: hooked on government assistants, which is what I think that
Speaker 1: he's alluding to. But setting kids up for success, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a completely different thing. That is not we can't
Speaker 1: just take high school kids and say, well, they're like
Speaker 1: these people that abuse the system. What's your take on
Speaker 1: that difference and where he gets it wrong.
Speaker 7: So just a couple of quotes from him. Before I
Speaker 7: was even thirteen years old, I was picking berries in
Speaker 7: the field before child labor laws that precluded that. I
Speaker 7: was a paperboy. And when I was in high school,
Speaker 7: I worked my entire way through and like cool, Like
Speaker 7: that's like literally all I've got to say that is
Speaker 7: like cool, you did jobs, But like it very much
Speaker 7: comes off as I got spanked and I turned out
Speaker 7: fine vibe where it's like, well I did it, so
Speaker 7: why don't you. Here's one more he says, versus just
Speaker 7: giving a blanket rule that gives all kids lunches in
Speaker 7: high school who are capable of going out and actively
Speaker 7: getting a job and doing something that makes them have value.
Speaker 7: Here's the thing where I'm probably going to be unpopular
Speaker 7: with some people. I actually don't hate the idea of
Speaker 7: employing kids. And I'm going to say that very specifically,
Speaker 7: and like, I don't want him to go out in
Speaker 7: the coal coal mines, right, and we don't need dangerous things.
Speaker 7: But we all have like classroom helpers for a reason.
Speaker 7: Kids want to help. They want to do things when
Speaker 7: I teach my staff, because I work with kids when
Speaker 7: I teach my staff. If there's a kid who's like board, like,
Speaker 7: give them a job, they want to go out and
Speaker 7: do stuff. And in this specific quote, he's talking about
Speaker 7: high schoolers, people who already go out and get a jobs.
Speaker 7: But I want to harp on a very specific thing.
Speaker 7: He says, going out and actually getting a job and
Speaker 7: doing something that makes them have value. Why do they
Speaker 7: need to have a job to have value. I agree
Speaker 7: that a person with a job gains more monetary value,
Speaker 7: but like the fact that in his mind right, the
Speaker 7: way you speak betrays the way you think these people
Speaker 7: lack value minus a job. This is not just a
Speaker 7: school lunch problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well this is a larger problem. So I would
Speaker 1: say not only not only is it one of these
Speaker 1: things where he says, well, I was spanked, and you know,
Speaker 1: to use your example, I was spanked and I turned
Speaker 1: out fine. I don't think he turned out fine. I
Speaker 1: don't think he turned out fine at all. I think
Speaker 1: that he is in He backed himself into a corner
Speaker 1: and just kind of kept talking because he's dependent on
Speaker 1: keeping whatever position he has. And this idea that making
Speaker 1: a job or getting a job will make children better off.
Speaker 1: I don't think that you can force a child that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be in school, supposed to be learning, into
Speaker 1: a position where they're not where they're going to be busier,
Speaker 1: where they're going to not have as much time for
Speaker 1: their studies, and expect them to be better off. They
Speaker 1: may end up in another forty years telling people that
Speaker 1: they should give their kids jobs picking berries instead of
Speaker 1: learning arithmetic. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 7: To be clear, my point is like, if they want
Speaker 7: to go get a job, absolutely, dude, that should not
Speaker 7: be because you have to. It's because they personally have
Speaker 7: the ambition to do so.
Speaker 1: And I have no issue there with that, except the
Speaker 1: issue I do have is with him saying, well, everybody
Speaker 1: should do exactly what I did because that's the way
Speaker 1: things should be. Well, that speaks to a mindset where
Speaker 1: there's no growth over generations, and and hele and I
Speaker 1: want to turn it to you. Is the government at
Speaker 1: this man being a government official or an elected representative
Speaker 1: kind of giving these you know, giving these tidbits of knowledge,
Speaker 1: if you will. Is the government responsible for leading a
Speaker 1: culture shift?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it trickles down like if anyone, if anyone
Speaker 2: is in a position of power and they have influence,
Speaker 2: and if people don't have their thinking braids on, and
Speaker 2: for people that want to like pass the book very easily,
Speaker 2: because it's very easily to pass back to light and
Speaker 2: say things, I'd like you as welfare queens or you know,
Speaker 2: people taking advantage of the system, blah blah. That's a
Speaker 2: very easy thing to say, rather than for the government
Speaker 2: to take any sort of personal response in our current
Speaker 2: administration of what the actual problem is. And that is
Speaker 2: the issue that we're facing. That's what that's what we're
Speaker 2: looking at, you know, because from my perspective, the government.
Speaker 3: Is there to serve us.
Speaker 2: We elect them, we work, we pay taxes that pay
Speaker 2: their salaries.
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely, you work.
Speaker 2: For me, okay, And if I think that children and
Speaker 2: the elderly should get food, because most people who have
Speaker 2: a kind heart will recognize that not everybody can work,
Speaker 2: but the basic human.
Speaker 3: One of your basic human rights is food.
Speaker 2: I don't mind paying extra money for people to eat,
Speaker 2: and we already have so much food waste in this
Speaker 2: country and so many problems. That's a a whole other
Speaker 2: thing that this leads into, also issues with food deserts,
Speaker 2: and the fat shaming is gross. I'm sorry that just
Speaker 2: because you're overweight does not mean you don't get to eat.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, that's not fair, and he's and like the idea,
Speaker 2: Like I worked in high school. I had a job,
Speaker 2: you know, and my parents were basically like, hey, we
Speaker 2: give you food, clothing, and shelter, but if you want
Speaker 2: to do anything extra.
Speaker 3: You got to start to work. But I was fifteen,
Speaker 3: sixteen years old when you usually start working.
Speaker 2: And that's because I wanted to, you know, my parents
Speaker 2: wanted to, and so kind some kind of work ethic
Speaker 2: into me.
Speaker 1: Because I needed the one dollar pizza on Fridays, right,
Speaker 1: you guys had Pizzaday?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And also I want and also I wanted
Speaker 2: to go to Dunkin Donuts and buy coffee down the
Speaker 2: streets at my school.
Speaker 3: I have regardless of that.
Speaker 4: But that's normal teenager shit like this, Like we were
Speaker 4: saying like eight year olds need to go out in
Speaker 4: the fields and pick berries, like there's something very fundamentally
Speaker 4: wrong with you. So and also too, there just one
Speaker 4: more point, there are children out there that do work.
Speaker 4: We do have child slavery in this country where like
Speaker 4: immigrant children are forced to work and they are abused.
Speaker 2: So that guy can go fuck himself because the things
Speaker 2: that he says is completely acidyne.
Speaker 3: It's going to lead to abuse and lead to problems.
Speaker 3: So again, fuck this guy.
Speaker 1: And there's a certain there's a whole safety issue that
Speaker 1: we could do another show on. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: a three year old and a sixteen year old and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't well, especially the three year old, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't even put the sixteen year old out in a
Speaker 1: field pick and berries. I wouldn't give her a job
Speaker 1: recommendation until she can learn to clean her room. That's
Speaker 1: a different story altogether. But you know the thing is, though,
Speaker 1: I don't want my kids to be in danger. You know,
Speaker 1: my daughter just started working, and I was very involved
Speaker 1: in helping her find something that would be a good
Speaker 1: first job. You know, I didn't just throw her out
Speaker 1: and make her spend her money on school lunch, which
Speaker 1: we're already paying for To Helen's point, you know, when
Speaker 1: it comes to spending money, though, I mean, we've got
Speaker 1: this guy saying that we should not be and to
Speaker 1: AJ's statistics, because Aja, I'm going to ask you to
Speaker 1: speak on your statistics in a moment. But for the
Speaker 1: three dollar lunch, which is mind boggling to me. When
Speaker 1: I was younger, it was not three.
Speaker 3: Dollars, it was it.
Speaker 1: I think maybe if the most I saw was like
Speaker 1: a dollar fifteen cents, but you know that was twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago. Now it's what three dollars? Okay, So
Speaker 1: this guy doesn't want to give three dollars lunches to children,
Speaker 1: but he's okay with I mean, let's face it, we've
Speaker 1: had some remarks come out of the Executive Branch about
Speaker 1: the United States owning gaza and rebuilding gaza, sending immigrants
Speaker 1: on eight hundred thousand dollars military flights out of the country.
Speaker 1: I mean, is this the kind of money that's okay
Speaker 1: being spent and then the taking care of the kids
Speaker 1: is not okay? That would be my question to him,
Speaker 1: how do you juggle those two priorities? And AJ, you've
Speaker 1: got some statistics that you wanted to share, and so
Speaker 1: on that note, please feel free.
Speaker 5: I mean, you have to remember that these programs also
Speaker 5: include things like lunch during the summer, and a lot
Speaker 5: of these kids actually do need that, and if they
Speaker 5: don't get that summer lunch, they're probably not going to
Speaker 5: get lunch. Like there are about twenty million kids that
Speaker 5: are in these reduced lunch or free lunch programs. That's
Speaker 5: over half of the all public school students. And like
Speaker 5: you said, you know, the average cost to make the
Speaker 5: lunch is three dollars, So I don't know how much
Speaker 5: they charge exactly, but that's the cost.
Speaker 6: To make it.
Speaker 5: And this guy's just claiming that he wants to save
Speaker 5: money for you know, like the whole thing that Elon
Speaker 5: Musk is doing, so that that's the main goal, save
Speaker 5: the government money. The problem with us is that there
Speaker 5: is so much other ways that we can look at.
Speaker 5: Each agency gets a different budget. Let's say the military
Speaker 5: gets billions billions in budget. If by the end of
Speaker 5: the year they don't spend all of that budget, whatever
Speaker 5: isn't spent goes back to the federal government. It doesn't
Speaker 5: stay with the military. It's not like a rollover amount
Speaker 5: so if the next year they see, oh, hey, you
Speaker 5: know you didn't spend twenty billion of your budget last year,
Speaker 5: then this year we're going to give you twenty billion less.
Speaker 5: So what do they do at the end of the
Speaker 5: year when they see they have quite a few billions left,
Speaker 5: They spend that quickly. And so some of the statistics
Speaker 5: that I found say that in September twenty twenty four,
Speaker 5: the military went on one of these spending sprees which
Speaker 5: did not cover their regular spending throughout the year. Right,
Speaker 5: Like they had already spent everything they needed to spend
Speaker 5: throughout the year.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: They spent one hundred and three million dollars on different
Speaker 5: types of meat, including sixteen million on Reby' steak, six
Speaker 5: million in lobster tails, one hundred thousand on blueberries and
Speaker 5: ice cream and donuts, five millions on apple products, two
Speaker 5: hundred and eleven million on new furniture. This was in
Speaker 5: one month. I'm not talking of throughout the year.
Speaker 3: One month.
Speaker 6: Thirty six thousand on car foot rests.
Speaker 5: So tell me again how a three dollars meal a
Speaker 5: day for an underprivileged kid is a waste like we
Speaker 5: can afford to field to feed our military and appreciate
Speaker 5: them throughout the year.
Speaker 6: That's that's great.
Speaker 5: I love that because they need that moral boost.
Speaker 6: Let's do that.
Speaker 5: But if you have all the all those billions left
Speaker 5: at the end of the year, don't go waste them
Speaker 5: on love s terancetaks that are probably going to get
Speaker 5: thrown in in the shrush eventually.
Speaker 6: Like, let's put that to our fitting the kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see your point. You know, there is UH,
Speaker 1: there's there's certainly cuts that can be made across the board.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that somebody who supports successive spending
Speaker 1: in other areas should be taking spending away in the
Speaker 1: areas that where it's most necessary. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is the gist of this. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the hell he's talking about. Sounds like a guy that
Speaker 1: just is going down uh, is going down a path
Speaker 1: that he can't justify, and he's grasping its straws to
Speaker 1: do it. Rob. I'm going to give you closing cor
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna wrap this segment up. What do
Speaker 1: you most want to say as we close out?
Speaker 7: I mean, it's a slightly different point from everything, but
Speaker 7: you know, I suppose I suspect one of the reasons
Speaker 7: why he was fat shaming people is probably because it's
Speaker 7: actually probably true that some of our poorest people are
Speaker 7: also some of the most overweight. However, I bet that
Speaker 7: probably has a lot to do with the subsidies that
Speaker 7: allow for highly processed foods withos consyrup that being the
Speaker 7: most affordable pieces of food and not actually nutritional things
Speaker 7: like the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: That's it, yep, yep. Yeah. So, I mean I think
Speaker 1: that was a good thing to throw in there, because
Speaker 1: we did kind of just gloss over the fact that
Speaker 1: health is also a major concern and we haven't even
Speaker 1: begun to discuss that. You know, forget about three yeah right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we got forget about the three to four
Speaker 1: hour lunches. What are we putting into our people? That's
Speaker 1: the other thing that has to be considered. And you know,
Speaker 1: our kids need to be taken care of anybody else. Helen,
Speaker 1: you look like you're you're itching to say something, please
Speaker 1: to close this out.
Speaker 2: Like the main thing I want to point out that
Speaker 2: also this comes down to lack of empathy, that your
Speaker 2: personal experience is not everybody's experience, and the fact that
Speaker 2: certain people on the right, like McCormick, lack personal, lack
Speaker 2: epathy for their fellow man. And you can't go, you know,
Speaker 2: shout about Jesus and how much you loved him, because
Speaker 2: if Jesus was really alive and was a real person,
Speaker 2: he would be disgusted at this behavior.
Speaker 1: You don't have time for that either.
Speaker 7: Man.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: No, no, I'm saying no, no, no empathy, be kind,
Speaker 2: that's what I'm asking.
Speaker 1: I'm not cutting you off. I'm saying, like, just like
Speaker 1: Rob said, man, what an untouched portion of this line
Speaker 1: of thinking that we haven't even begun to tackle. I mean,
Speaker 1: forget about everything we talked about, and let's just say, hey,
Speaker 1: you're a Christian nationalist, what would Jesus do? It's it's
Speaker 1: it's insane. But thank you guys for a wonderful discussion.
Speaker 1: Really had a lot of fun.
Speaker 6: Folks.
Speaker 1: That's gonna do it for us this week. Tune in
Speaker 1: Monday when you've got a whole new cast of characters
Speaker 1: to take you through more underwhelming, overwhelming stories. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you be the judge. Keep tuning into nonprofits.
Speaker 6: Thanks