It certainly seems like we have never seen so much objection and hostility to Washington. As Washington and its politicians overreach and over demand relative to Constitutional limitations, the rest of the country has pushed back on a number of major issues:
- Obama Care
- Medicaid Expansion
- Gun Control
- Common Core
- Spying on Citizens
Let’s take an inventory of the latest rebellious acts underway around the country:
1) We have often cited opinion poll numbers that show the country’s citizens regards for Congressional politicians is at a historic low and the approval rating for the Obama administration has been steadily dropping over the past year or so.
Thus, it should come as no surprise when a recent Reuters news report cited a reputable polling organizations finding that about 25% of the nation’s citizens supporting the concept of their state seceding from the union. Details of the poll include the following:
- The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted from August 23 through September 16.
- 23.9% of those polled said they either strongly supported or tended to support the idea of their state breaking away.
- 53.3% of almost 9,000 respondents strongly opposed or tended to oppose the notion.
- The desire to get out from under Washington generally cut across party lines and regions, though Republicans and residents of rural Western states are generally warmer to the idea than Democrats and Northeasterners with more than a third of Western area poll respondents supporting the concept.
- The poll found anger with Obama's handling of issues ranging from healthcare reform to the rise of Islamic State militants driving some of the feeling along with the childish and long term Washington gridlock also being a major driver of the 23.9%: "I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference anymore which political party is running things. Nothing gets done," said Roy Gustafson, 61, of Camden, South Carolina, who lives on disability payments. "The state would be better off handling things on its own."
- From North Carolina: "That [Obama care] has really hurt a lot of people here, myself included. My insurance went from $40 a week for a family of four up to over $600 a month for a family of four," said Brittany Royal. "The North Carolina government itself is sustainable. Governor (Pat) McCrory, I think he has a better healthcare plan than President Obama."
- From Texas: "Texas has everything we need. We have the manufacturing, we have the oil, and we don't need them," said Mark Denny, a 59-year-old retiree living outside of Dallas.
- As the national debt gets more and more out of control due to wasteful Washington spending, as economic conditions continue to languish at historical lows, as no major issues ever get resolved by Washington, at what point does the center not hold and we go from 23.9% to a majority of Americans saying enough is enough, we want to go it alone.
2) An issue that we have not discussed much at all in this series but one that is growing in aggravation and agitation is the imposition of new school food guidelines by the Federal government, an imposition and legislation that is supposedly driven by First Lady Michelle Obama.
Let me say upfront, that healthier eating habits should be a national priority. The country and many, many of its kids are overweight or obese, leading to higher incidences of ill health and higher health care costs to treat the obesity problem. This is a public health care crisis that should be addressed by a public health care initiative to instill healthy eating habits in American families over time.
Having said that, the wrong way to do it is to have the Washington political class pass and enact a law that mandates instant changes in the way the country eats. Just because a Washington bureaucrat dictates that a kid in a far away state can only consume so much fat, salt, and sugar at their school’s lunch table does not mean it is going to happen.
And it is not happening. School districts across the country are rebelling against this new Washington dictate and dumping the guidelines that the law put forth. The schools are finding that kids are not eating what Washington wants them to eat, resulting in millions of dollars in food being scrapped every day, kids not getting enough nourishment at lunch, and school districts running into serious financial troubles since the revenue from selling school lunches is way down.
The situation has gotten so bad that a recent article by Victor Skinner, writing for the Education Action Group, showed that schools in Missouri and Alabama have already bowed out of the Federal school lunch program despite losing Federal dollars to stay in it. The article found that: “Those schools and numerous others across the country are ditching the federal regulations and the funding that comes with them to save their cafeteria programs, which have experienced a nose-dive in sales and skyrocketing waste since the new rules were implemented in 2012.”
A large high school in Missouri, Norte Dame High School, saw lunch participation rate drop by half. They turned to local restaurants to provide healthy food that actually tasted good, as opposed to the healthy but badly tasting Federally mandate food to make sure kids actually ate lunch.
Saxony Lutheran High school also did the same thing: “We want to make sure we’re serving a well-rounded, healthy, balanced meal,” Saxony principal Mark Ruark told SEMissourian.com. “We don’t think the current federal guidelines give kids enough calories to sustain (them), especially those in extracurricular activities. Kids will not eat what doesn’t taste good.”
At Cleburne County Schools in Alabama, lunch participation dropped by 29 percent under Michelle Obama’s and Washington’s edicts. A local mom, Maria Gilbert, is quoted in the article saying that her children will no longer eat school food. Her 11th grader says it’s “nasty” and has opted to bring microwave food from home. at least until the school removed the appliance from the cafeteria. Gilbert said she’s often forced to find a quick meal for her famished kids after school, AnnisonStar.com reports.
In Ohio, it’s the same problem: “We are seeing a trend where meal counts are going down just because students aren’t accepting all the changes that are taking place,” Ohio School Nutrition Association member Jeni Lange told ABC.
A National School Nutrition Association survey found food waste is up in 81.2 percent of schools nationwide, and a study by Cornell and Brigham Young universities estimates the waste at $4 million per day. Students in Los Angeles schools alone are throwing away $100,000 in food per day, ABC reports.
In a Vermont school district, school employees devised a plan to “repurpose” their lunch waste as feed for about 3,000 hogs at a local pig farm. In Medina, Ohio, volunteer parent Marcie Henning is taking advantage of the massive waste in her district to feed the homeless and less fortunate.
You get the idea. Again, Washington never understood the root causes of a problem, the need to educate parents, families and kids about the need to eat better under a public health approach. Instead, Washington tried to fix a problem they did not understand and the unforeseen consequences by dictating a top down solution that, like Obama Care, has no chance of working.
As result, kids are eating less and going hungry, school district financials and revenues are being devastated, and the country’s unhealthy food chain is unchanged. When we see our kids going hungry and our tax dollars being fed to hogs, how long will the center hold?
3) One more quickie for today, we will conclude this update to our "will the center hold” series tomorrow. The Washington Examiner recently did a piece on this concept and how the relationship between the Washington elite and bureaucrats and the rest of the country has probably never gotten this dicey.
The article points to Obama Care as one of many drivers in this resistance to Washington. It cites the reality that 36 states said no to the Obama administration relative to setting up Obama Care health insurance exchanges, forcing the Federal government to do it by itself in those three dozen states. Another 20 or so states decided not to expand Medicaid within their borders as they were allowed to do under Obama Care.
I could be wrong, but from my history classes I do not remember any state that said they were not going to participate in Social Security or Medicare or any other major Federal initiative. This recent resistance seems to be a new phenomena. And according to
Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a Texas public policy think tank, it seems I am correct: “This is the biggest push back that I’ve seen in my lifetime, even more so than, I think, you had in the Civil Rights era. There’s this growing sense out there, that there are areas that are the purview of states, and the states ought to be allowed to do that.”
So I am not alone in wondering if the center will hold. From Obama Care to secession to something as simple as school lunches, the center in Washington is dictating and the rest of the country is saying hold up or something worse. More rebellion and resistance tomorrow as we try to figure out "if the center will hold."
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