And the Nanny State just continues to expand! 

What would we do without the state of California feeding us and our kids because we are too incapable of doing it our self?

As you probably know the state excused parents from having to feed their children to “we’ll take care of breakfast and lunch regardless of your income level.” Students get free breakfast and lunch which has to meet nutritional standards.

I’m not against kids eating well but what I am against is the expectation that the government will do it for parents.

But it’s not enough that the state taxpayers are footing the bill so now another big city liberal is demanding the content of those state-funded meals contain less sugar in the name of preventing diabetes and to give them more time to eat. State Senator Nancy Skinner, a Berzerkley liberal, has introduced SB 348 to pull this off.

Skinner said she’s concerned that diabetes is a problem “with our abundance of delicious, fresh-grown, nutritious food.” (You know, all that food that farmers in the Valley are expected to grow even though her party is opposed to building more dams to supply necessary water).

Kat Taylor, the co-founder of TomKat Ranch, a co-sponsor of School Meals for All, is gung-ho for the bill, saying, “Too many families are struggling with the soaring costs of groceries, rent, and utilities.»

I’ll say. Democrat rule has been costly for all Californians, from gas to housing costs. But Taylor conveniently neglects to note that families are struggling to make ends meet because of the high tax burden imposed on them by Democrats who control the state. The Legislature and governor even refused to stop the gas tax hikes when gas soared past $6 per gallon. Measured by either a percentage of personal income or a share of economic output, California’s state and local taxes are the fifth highest of any state, according to the Tax Foundation. On top of that, regulations have caused residents to flee California for less expensive states; and caused corporations to flee with good or great paying jobs.

Companies which fled California since 2020 include Garcia Hand Picked,

McAfee, Bluevine, Boingo Wireless, Lucas Oil Products, Allspring Global Investments, Trimble, Virta Heath Corp., Obagi Cosmeceuticals, American Airlines, Belong, Chevron, Aviatrix, Sendodo (took 1,000 jobs from SF to Phoenix, Ovation Fertility, Hyperion (680 new jobs created in Columbus, Ohio; FICO, Nexen Tire, Tesla, First Foundation Bank, GlobalFoundries, Homelight, NinjaOne, AECOME, MD7, Kaiser Aluminum, Smart Wires, Inc., Wiley X, Edelbrock Group, Landing, Snowflake, Wedgewood LLC, Green Dot Corp., Education Media Foundation, Align Technology, Viavi Solutions, Digital Realty, Lions Real Estate Group, OPSWAT, Charles Schwab, Oracle, Tanium, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, CBRE Group, Arctic Wolf, Pabst Brewing, O.W. Lee, Incora, Palantir, Dasan Zhone Solutions, Varo Bank, XO Jets, ASGN Inc., Question Pro and Norton LifeLock.

That’s only a scratch of the surface but that list is worth billions of dollars in payroll and spinoff trade gone. Poof! Other states are getting richer and California’s poverty rate is climbing – especially here in the Valley where about a quarter of all residents live below the poverty line.

Local leaders often campaign on the platform that they’ll bring great paying jobs to their area. But when you have state policies driving away business, it’s akin to jumping into a race car with a governor attached to the motor and expecting to win the Daytona 500.

Why did all these companies and hundreds more flee? Here are some of their stated reasons:

• Finding a place that is “easier to hire talent.“

• Seeking a “more sustainable place to do business.“

• There is an “increasing intolerance and monoculture of Silicon Valley.“

• Seeking “a strong economic climate with low taxes, reasonable regulations and a high-caliber workforce.”

• Moving for “our business needs, opportunities for cost savings, and team members.”

• There were “some symmetries in the way that the Bay Area works that just didn’t really work well for us.”

• “Arizona provided the ideal conditions of being business-friendly, offering a high quality of life at reasonable cost.”

• Employees can be homeowners in Texas, “which in the Bay Area is virtually impossible.”

• “In California, local rules could dictate how the company chooses board members, for instance.”

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But back to Skinner’s school lunch issue.

We know that school lunches aren’t where kids are getting obese. The amount of sugar in school lunches isn’t the cause for diabetes. We were all kids and all know the allure of all things sugar. It’s what parents are buying them at the grocery store that’s making kids fat; that also they are sitting down too much playing video games.

There are other factors at play with the increase in diabetes. California’s ethnic makeup is increasingly Latino which has a higher incidence of diabetes. In particular, the prevalence of obesity among Hispanic/Latino children 6 to 11 years old is twice as high as the prevalence for non-Hispanic white children of the same age’ but among 2 to 5 years old is four times higher than their non-Hispanic white counterparts (Ogden et al., 2014).

In 2018, Hispanics were 1.3 times more likely than non-Hispanic whites to die from diabetes. If genetics were the sole factor, why are Latino advocate groups trying to educate Latinos about wise food choices?

According to the National Library of Medicine (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/), “young children (2 to 6 years old) of foreign-born parents drink more sugared beverages and engage in less active play than children of U.S.-born parents, but spent less time watching TV. (Cespedes et al., 2013). 

The NLM notes this: “parental practices around food and screen time are reported as important factors for obesity risk. Studies report that behaviors like eating at fast-food restaurants and having meals while watching TV were associated with higher consumption of sugary beverages.”

Another problem is some Latino parents have a different perception of what is healthy. Apparently they see obesity as a sign of health.

“Furthermore, low-income Latinos are more likely to believe that physical activity and good appetite are more useful markers of health status than growth charts in being able to define a child’s weight (Mendoza & Fuentes-Afflick, 1999).”

A few studies reported that Latino moms are more likely than whites to consistently pressure their children to eat when they perceived them as being thin.

Another study cited is that “Latino mothers who had children with higher body mass were more likely to report lower levels of monitoring what and how their children ate (Elder et al., 2010).” Among Hispanic American women, 78.8 percent are overweight or obese, as compared to 64 percent of non-Hispanic white women. From 2013-2016, Hispanic children were 1.8 times more likely to be obese as compared to non-Hispanic white children.

So Senator Skinner, the problem is in questionable parenting, not school lunches.

Progressives talk a lot about rights, ever expanding what they consider to be a “right,” access to medical care being one of them. But if you ask Becky Silva, Government Relations Director of California Association of Food Banks, “access to food is a basic human right.”

I’m certainly not for anyone starving and with all of the existing programs out there, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in America who does starve. But I am also of the belief that if you are a parent, it’s your responsibility to love, care for, nurture, protect, house and FEED your children – and you find ways to do so. Food is a basic human need, of course, but food is not a human right, per se. Somewhere in the equation labor is required. It may sound harsh but even in the biblical times, one was expected to make an effort for one’s self, not expecting others to do it for you. II Thessalonians 3:10 reads: “this was our command to you: If anyone does not want to work, he should not eat.” Those disciples of Jesus Christ were adamantly against laziness but government programs encourage it.

Shimica Gaskins, president and CEO of GRACE/End Child Poverty CA notes how parents seem to be incapable to feed their kids during summer break. Say what?

I guess I grew up in an America that felt obligated to feed their children, no matter how many jobs is required.

I certainly didn’t grow up in a rich family but Dad supporting us with a job at Bell Telephone (later Pacific Bell). Mom always packed me and my brother a lunch with a sandwich like tuna, an apple or banana into my metal Batman lunch pail. My thermos contained milk or some juice. That’s what parents did. Does anyone expect kids to “brown bag” it these days?

They tell you not to feed bears in Yosemite for a reason: because it makes them lazy and they won’t work for their food, relying on handouts. Doesn’t the sort of principal apply when you have wholesale peoples eating out of the hand of government?

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Oh that Scott Wiener has done it again. What a piece of work.

Call him liberal or progressive but I call that state senator a menace to values most of us here in the Valley grew up with.

I cannot figure out how this man (who is proudly gay) continues to think up horrible pieces of legislation but he does. 

Ever the advocate for the creepy, Wiener authored a bill that took effect because our depraved Legislature and depraved governor liked it.

His Senate Bill 357, bans police from arresting anyone for “loitering with the intent of prostitution” or directing, supervising, recruiting, or aiding a person who is loitering with the intent to commit prostitution, or collecting or receiving all or part of the proceeds of an act of prostitution. In addition, those who have been convicted of loitering with the intent to commit prostitution can petition the court for dismissal and sealing of their offense or get it resentenced.

Wiener says he wrote the bill because the prior law was «discriminatory towards, and unfairly targets, black women, Latino women, and those who are transgender.”

According to the San Francisco Democrat, criminalizing sex workers does not make communities safer, does nothing to stop sex crimes against sex workers, and that sex workers deserve to be treated with dignity and respect too.

Wiener saying he wants prostitutes to be treated with “dignity and respect” is laughable. How about finding another line of work if it’s respect you’re looking for?

His bill is about tying the hands of police who have probable cause. It’s not rocket science and fairly easy to spot a hooker on the street by their dress and appearance as they loiter. He called that harassment so I suspect Weiner’s end goal is to next legalize prostitution altogether.

Wiener is no friend of law enforcement but he is squarely in bed with the LGBTQ community. In his obsession with race and overt attempts to normalize the perverse, Weiner caters his legislation to his favorite sub categories of the weird and debased when he states: “We must stop enabling law enforcement to harass trans women of color on our streets. We need to stand with trans women of color and sex workers, and stand with all people fighting for autonomy and safety and against racist and transphobic discrimination.” He speaks nothing of heterosexual white prostitutes which speaks to me volumes about his pandering.

SB 357 will increase human trafficking, but also by adding to California’s string of arrest deductions that have led to an explosion of crime in cities statewide. California Family Council spokesman Greg Burt summed up Wiener’s bill as “perfect – if you want sex trafficking to even increase in California.”

Frank Ma, a former police officer turned security consultant in San Francisco, called Weiner’s bill “reckless and dangerous” and said this bill has “nothing to do with discrimination or trying to make our cities safer like [Wiener] is claiming. It can only lead to more crime, which is exactly the last thing California needs right now.”

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Now for a little humor.

A newly seated member of the Ceres City Council who takes a lot to social media brand of community outreach, announced a “Free Community Elimination Event.”

As far as I know the community is still around; it fortunately hasn’t been eliminated.

This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation.  How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com