Yesterday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan (R, WI-1) addressed the faithful and told them of his new platform. He wants to steal school lunches from poor kids.
Mr. Ryan told a story he says he got from Eloise Anderson, but the story was stolen, too.
“She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch—one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids’. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him.”
“The left is making a big mistake …. What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul. People don’t just want a life of comfort. They want a life of dignity, they want a life of self determination.”
Mr. Ryan’s policy is neatly summed up by Paul Krugman: “Let Them Eat Dignity.” Oh, and the book the story was swiped from? A portion of sales goes to a campaign that “connects kids in need to effective nutrition programs like school breakfast and summer meals” and opposes Ryan’s cuts to food stamps.
Mr. Ryan knows nothing about lunches for the poor, but he’s an authority on a poor lunch. Nutrition-poor, anyway. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “One of his summer jobs in college was as an Oscar Mayer salesman in Minnesota, peddling turkey bacon and a new line called ‘Lunchables‘ to supermarkets.” He once drove the Wienermobile for Oscar Meyer, and that was his last honest job. He’s peddled his bologna as a DC political hack ever since.
More:
“Paul Ryan accidentally makes the case against means-testing,” Ned Resnikoff, MSNBC
“Paul Ryan’s Soul Food,” Ed Kilgore, Political Animal
“A story too good to check: Paul Ryan and the story of the brown paper bag,” Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Fact Checker
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