Conservative Catch-All

The Virginia Tech gunman carried two pistols. A Glock 19 and a Walther P22. All guns are much more accurate at close range. An AR-15 at close range is going to be less nimble due to the size and length not to mention the difficulties in concealment. An AR-15 is not more deadly or accurate than any other long gun. An AR-15 doesn't have any special features that make it more deadly than other rifles. It shoots one bullet per trigger pull just as a hunting rifle or handgun.

In my cynicism, I rather imagine the NRA will step up to make up any lost donations from what this man might have contributed.  Good for him for voting with his wallet, though.

It's really one of those things where the schools can't win.  For budgetary purposes, school lunch choices are limited.  And they are frequently eaten by kids who suffer from food insecurity at home, or who often eat dinner from convenience store.  If you offer healthy foods, it's nanny-statism; if you offer junk, it's just another example of the ways the public schools fail to help bring kids out of poverty, obesity and the various ills of the day.    

An honest question. Do you have kids or grandkids that eat school lunches? Because I do. My kid eats hot lunch at her public school (full pay) just about every day, and personally I’m really glad that action was taken by the previous administration to improve the nutritional quality of the school lunches my kid eats. She has plenty of opportunities to eat stuff that is loaded with excess salt, sugar, fat and carbs and her school lunch doesn’t need to contribute to that. It’s enough of a challenge to limit those kinds of things at home when we can personally monitor what she’s eating.

When I was in high school in the 80’s, the choices were mostly hamburgers or cheeseburgers, hot dogs, greasy fries, breaded chicken nuggets. My kid has usually 2-3 entreé choices daily including things like vegetarian chili, grilled chicken wrap sandwiches, fish, chicken wild rice soup or turkey ranch wraps. I’m actually a little surprised by some of the things she has eaten (and liked) at school that I never would have imagined she would like, and as a result we’ve incorporated similar menu items at home too because we know she’ll eat it. If someone is dictating what my kid eats, I’m not going to be concerned if it’s a selection of healthy choices. I don’t see offering healthier options as being a bad thing.

As far as waste goes which another pea mentioned, there will ALWAYS be some waste especially when you’re talking about kids who are eating without a whole lot of adult supervision. FWIW, our district collects the waste food products from all of the schools and it gets recycled by sending/selling it to a pig farm. While I would much rather my kid actually eat all of the healthy food on her lunch tray every day, at least the food the kids don’t eat isn’t totally going to waste in a landfill.

Even when you pack a healthy (or not) lunch for your kid, there is no guarantee that they’re going to actually eat it. When my brother was young, he had a pretty nice gig going on in his grade school cafeteria by trading my mom’s homemade cookies for the Twinkies and Ding Dongs other kids would bring. Or he would outright sell them and use the money to buy candy at the drugstore on the way home from school. My mom was kind of appalled when she learned about that decades later!

I am not sure what you mean, but at our school each child has a choice of 5 different main courses each day (at least one vegetarian, one turkey/chicken, one beef, one dairy free) and about 7 side items they can choose from.  I assure you at our school even the pickiest kids find something to eat.  

Also, our schools big change to meet Obama’s healthy lunches were things like serving whole grain buns instead of white bread, using whole grain crust on pizza, using reduced fat cheese, adding a cup of granola with the yogurt option, serving whole apples instead of applesauce cups that had added sugar, serving milk instead of juice for lunch, etc.  In other words a whole bunch of stuff the kids don’t even notice but is making them a little healthier.  

Also, I guarantee you that kids that bring their own lunches throw away at least as much, if not more then the kids who buy lunch at my school.

But see, for many people the non-perishable food items mentioned for the SNAP boxes AREN’T as healthy a choice as the fresh food they could (or may need to) choose for themselves at the grocery store for all the reasons mentioned. I applauded the Obama administration when they acted to *improve* the quality of the school lunches that many kids eat so they would contain more fresh ingredients and less of the things that are generally considered unhealthy (salt, added sugars, fat and carbs). By offering the kids fresher options in the public schools, they have effectively removed a lot of the ingredients that the SNAP box items would naturally contain such as salt, preservatives, sugar and carbs that you tend to find in canned food and dried pasta.

I’m not a conservative, but I am all for some outside-the-box thinking (see what I did there? 😀) for feeding those who need it.

Some of the staples that would be included in the box are terribly expensive for those who live in the food deserts. Just try buying those items in a convenience store or small grocery that does not have the bulk purchasing power. They also tend to be heavy and difficult to carry on public transportation if you try to go out of the neighborhood to a larger grocery store. So sending those items directly to those who need it would possibly save money, especially if they can get better prices for buying in bulk.

As long as these boxes do not replace all the SNAP benefits, they could actually leave more money available to those families to purchase fresh foods at farmers markets or local vendors.

"Instead, according to NPR, the packages would consist of "shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit and vegetables and meat, poultry or fish."
Anything canned has preservatives and many times excess salt. I make oatmeal. No pasta or beans, medical. I do eat peanut butter but not that which needs to be stirred. The other issue that is being continually ignored is the purchase, processing and distribution of said boxes.

The food will come from extensive operations with onsite packaging facilities. The food will not come from local farmers. Local farmers will lose, local businesses, supermarkets will lose revenues and jobs will be lost, some filled with the projected recipients. Recipients might also lose their jobs at Walmart, Target and other stores that accent food stamps. There is a lot to think about.
Local economic is very important for all of us!

Trump’s Food Stamp Idea Is Like Blue Apron Had a Socialist Hangover

Clearly not in the service of any free-market ideal. It is hardly pro-market to displace the private sector and build a parallel, state-run distribution system, no matter how many times you name-check Blue Apron. This is the sort of thing you find in countries still recovering from socialist hangovers. India’s government, for example, buys more than 30 percent of the country’s grain output at above-market prices and then sells it to consumers at below-market prices through ration shops. Emulating that approach by delivering the food in a box is hardly an innovation.

Against this backdrop, it is remarkable that the present-day incarnation of food stamps, delivered via EBT, gives recipients so much flexibility to buy the food they want instead of the food the farm industry wishes to dispose of.

This, of course, is what Harvest Boxes would change.

One week after President Trump took office, a consortium of 10 of the largest agricultural lobby groups wrote to him, lamenting that their subsidies had been “relentlessly attacked by previous administrations,” and urging him to “prioritize the use of American-grown in-kind commodity contributions” in fighting hunger.

If the Harvest Box is any indication, their pleas have found a receptive ear.

www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/15/trump-food-stamps-harvest-box-blue-apron-snap-217004

I understand.  I understand that in your love for guns, you don't love human lives.  Here's my thoughts.  Make anyone who wants to buy a gun have a license.  Make them have to insure each and every gun they own.  Make gun shows illegal as guns are bought there with no checks.  You can only buy guns in a licensed gun shop.  Would be better for gun shop owners as well.

Exactly revirdsuba. Then, if you aren't careful with your gun and it gets stolen or something, you would get in trouble for storing your gun improperly. I think that a lot of the guns involved in crimes were originally bought legally and then were diverted or stolen or something. Also, insurance companies would probably end up charging more for insurance if you own more guns, if you don't have a gun safe, etc. It would make people more choosy and more careful.

Actually, I don't!  They all attend private schools (grandchildren) and I believe they all take their lunches from home.  (Lunches aren't available at their schools.)  So, their mom's decide what they eat. 

except that you actually don't need to protect yourself or your family with a gun.  Stats in other countries prove that.