Where Are the Food Police?

I've given it a week now but it appears the Food Police will not be coming to the aid of State Representative Dean Kaufert and his effort to limit how much junk food that food stamps recipients can buy with their Qwest cards.  I fully expected a flurry of emails and press releases from the same groups that "applauded" the new White House standards for school lunches that nearly starve high school athletes.  There was no response from the associations that pushed for bans on birthday snacks in schools.  Not a peep from all those folks who want cities to provide free space for "community gardens".  And we got nothing from organic groups that assault Monsanto and the other big companies for pushing genetically modified grains and processed food products. 

I'm also shocked by the silence of such people as Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York--who famously decided to unilaterally ban large soft drinks in the Big Apple.  Perhaps he is still trying to recover from the sting of being rejected by the courts who upheld consumers'--and businesses'--rights to purchase and sell the food products they want.  And where is MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski--who just published an entire book on the evils of corporate foodstuffs--where she calls soda "poison"?

So why the deafening silence from the people who are pushing for government control over what we eat and drink on a bill that calls for the government to limit what people can eat and drink?

Maybe it is because Dean Kaufert is a Republican.  Heaven forbid we have "bipartisanship" on an issue so dear to liberals.  Maybe its because Kaufert's bill doesn't include increased funding for the FoodShares program to offset the "higher cost of eating healthy".  (Although, I would just apply the same flawed logic that liberals use to justify mandatory health care coverage: If we increase demand for the product, that will make its price go down.)

Or maybe it is because the restrictions that the Food Police believe are "so vital for the health of the country" are only being imposed on a certain group of people.  And a group of people more likely to vote for Democrats.  That's it--food stamp restrictions are "inherently unfair" because they create "food inequality" by "denying the poor access to the same 'luxury items' afforded to the 'rich'."  The only way to make things "fair for all Americans" would be to ban the purchase of junk food across the board--so the rich, the middle class and the poor all have to eat the same things.

In a related item, the Obama Administration decision to include super-caffienated energy drinks like Monster to its approved food stamps items has been met by overwhelming opposition by those same groups.  Or maybe not.