by Michelle Malkin
Behind every seemingly good deed in the Obama White House, there's a
deep-pocketed, left-wing special interest. Take first lady Michelle
Obama's crusade against childhood obesity. Who really benefits from the
ostensible push for improved nutrition in the schools? Think purple --
as in the purple-shirted army of the Service Employees International
Union. Big Labor bigwigs don't care about slimming your kids'
waistlines. They care about beefing up their membership rolls and
fattening their coffers.
Mrs. Obama earned a State of the Union address shout-out from
her hubby for taking on the weighty public policy issue of students'
physical fitness. The East Wing is now in full campaign mode -- leaning
on the nation's mayors, traveling with the surgeon general and meeting
with Congress and cabinet members to reauthorize the Lyndon Johnson-era
Child Nutrition Act, which provides government-subsidized meals to more
than 30 million children. It's part of the Obama administration's
self-proclaimed "cradle-to-career" agenda for America's youth.
For decades, school administrators have criticized this Great
Society relic for outgrowing its initial conception. The program was
originally created to use up post-World War II food surpluses. In the
late 1970s, New York principal Lewis Lyman skewered it as a federal
"boondoggle" in a seminal essay for the education journal Phi Delta
Kappan. But Democrats demagogued the GOP's responsible attempts at
financial reform during the Clinton years as "starving the children."
While spending on youth nutrition and wellness have ballooned, so have
the kids. Nearly one-third of U.S. children are now overweight or
obese. The feds spend $15 billion a year on nutrition in schools; the
White House wants at least a $1 billion increase this coming fiscal
year.
The well-intended program to feed poor kids has morphed into an
untouchable universal entitlement with a powerful school-lunch lobbying
coalition of Department of Agriculture bureaucrats, food-service
industry executives and union bosses. Enter the SEIU. Headed by the
White House's most frequent visitor, Andy Stern, the powerful labor
organization representing government and private service employees has
an insatiable appetite for power and growth. Working alongside the
first lady, the SEIU unveiled a major ad campaign this week demanding
reauthorizing and funding increases in the Child Nutrition Act.
http://townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2010/02/03/seiu_fat_cats_behind_first_ladys_anti-obesity_campaign