Saving rural grocery stores: another waste of money
August 12th, 2010 at 7:08 pm by Jerri
In the current issue of Countryside (Sept./Oct. 2010) I discuss the ridiculous amounts of money tied up in the food stamp, low-income nutrition racket. While it took awhile, the government has finally decided it is going to do for the rural community what it has done for the urban community. They’re going to throw millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars at “poor” rural communities to help establish (read: nationalize) grocery stores. Ostensibly, this move is to help combat rural obesity. I guess since the effort has failed miserably in the urban community, they’ll try it here just to say they did. Here’s my prediction: the nanny state will spend millions of your hard-earned dollars over the next decade, and NOTHING will change. The obesity rate will rise, not decline. People will still abandon small, expensive stores for cheaper big box stores, and the government will continue to blame everyone but themselves for unhealthy state of affairs.
Some of you may remember that a group of us in my small town (population 898) tried to start a farmer’s market, only to be told by the State of Wisconsin that we need hundreds of dollars worth of permits, insurance, and State-approved electronic scales. Care to guess what happened to the proposed market? The State interference killed it. Proof positive that the government isn’t interested in healthy food or access to it. The only reason they want to establish more state-funded grocery stores is to make sure the food processing and packaging industries continue to thrive. If everyone stopped buying pre-packaged unhealthy foods, it would destroy what is left of our economy.
You can read my article, “At the end of my rope,” in the current issue, which will be on the news stands on September first. Rural people don’t need the government to feed us. Rather, we need the government to quit controlling our food.
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I was invited to attend a meeting at my local library to discuss the possibility of starting a farmers market in our little town of 898. The lady doing the organizing is part of an organization that wants to combat obesity. Sounds good, huh?