[Newspoetry] New Poimeeeeeeee

[Anne Bargar]

Government Announces New Food Programs;
Journalists Predict Libertarians Complain


AP (Associated Poets)  Today the U.S. government announced that it is
planning to expand it's existing school breakfast program to cover
middle-income, and not just low-income, students.  The program,
tentatively called "Bad Food For Breakfast II," is to go into effect in
pilot cities starting in February.  So far all free breakfast programs,
which come under the US Department of Shitty Food, have been targeted at
low-income students, and are designed to boost academic performance.  This
new program will be targeted at kids who might benefit not because they
are poor, but because they might not be given time to eat in the morning
by parents who have to get to work early.
	"Research has shown that, when kids eat breakfast in the morning,
their academic performance improves.  Average math grades have gone from
C's to B's in schools that have breakfast programs," says Ruthie
Goldblatten, executive director for the Center For Bad Food Research.
"For kids from whom society expects nothing, this is a pretty tremendous
thing.  15% of students, over half of which are in elementary school,
don't eat breakfast on any given day.  You've got a lot of kids out there
who are chronically poor achievers because their brains are too starved to
think.  We'd like to expand the success we've had with low-income children
to middle-class children."
	Predictably, however, there are critics.  Victor Johnson of the
Libertarian think tank Nudnik said, "We're outraged by this proposition.
The whole idea of providing free anything to anyone is simply noxious, no
matter what the reason.  If they can't pay for it, then they simply
shouldn't have it.  This goes for food, water; hell, even air."
	"We predicted that Nudnik would complain first out of all
Libertarian groups," said Gloria McPhnee of the Sane Journalists
"Hey, we figure that we're paying too many taxes on our inheritances and
capital gains to be paying for anyone to eat," says Johnson.  "Or go to
school.  My great-great- great grandfather had to sell newspapers on the
street to afford school books.  He had to pull himself up by his
bootstraps in order to provide my generation with the wealth they have
today.  I don't see why the current generation of seven-year-olds can't do
the same thing."
	Donald Howsley of the Foundation for the Conservation of Money
concurs.  "We'd actually like to see an end to all Bad Government Food
Programs.  That food, instead of being given to school lunch programs,
homeless shelters, soup kitchens, tribal governments, battered womens
"See, I wonder if they would actually eat it.  You can give a bowl of USDA
cereal to a seven-year-old, and as long as they can make it taste ok,
they'll probably eat it," says McPhnee.  "But I doubt they would ever even
touch the stuff."
	"Of course, I'm not allowed to officially speculate on whether or
not these people  would eat government food, or even whether or not these
think tanks are filled with really irritating people.  But that doesn't
mean I wouldn't like to," Goldblatten stated.
	When asked if they would even eat canned pork or USDA cereal, both
Johnson and Howsley said that no, they would not.  Said Howsley, "That
stuff is terrible.  That's all there is to it.  I'm not eating that crap."