South Carolina is officially America's most embarrassing state. You've got Mark "Appalachian Trail" Sanford, Joe "You Lie" Wilson, Jim "Waterloo" DeMint, and now this… all from the same state.
Here's what South Carolina's Lt. Governor, Andre Bauer, said about free and reduced cost lunch programs:
I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina," adding, "You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I'll show you the worst test scores, folks. It's there, period.
He continued, saying:
My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better.
Wow. Talk about missing the point. School lunch is intended to help hungry children – who by no fault of their own were born into poverty – get a full belly so they can learn and hopefully work their way out of the bad situation they were born into. What's more American than that?
As for concerns about poor people and teens "breeding," have you considered doing away with abstinence-only sex education and instead teaching about birth control? Or how about offering comprehensive reproductive health care to all women in your state? I'm not sure what South Carolina's track record is on this but I'm guessing it ain't good. Andre Bauer, if this is an issue that concerns you, maybe the thing to do is give a large donation to Planned Parenthood – not get rid of school lunch.
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