Monitor School Lunches Today - Cavity Searches Tomorrow / Big Brother is Watching

I saw on the news where the City of San Antonio, Texas, is spending $2,000,000.00 (that’s two million dollars) to put cameras in local school cafeterias to keep tabs on what students are eating for lunch. And you want to know why Johnny can’t read. I am so angry I could scream. This is so wrong on so many levels that it almost unfathomable. What are we doing, folks? Are they really serious about this?

Here is how it works. Students are issued a bar code (I am not making this up). When they go through the pay the bill line, a camera takes a picture of the food on the plate. When the students are done eating, another camera takes a picture of what is left on the plate, then calculates the number of calories eaten by that student. The numbers are tallied, and sent home to the parents. It is being funded by the United States Department of Agriculture, and plans are to have these in all schools throughout the country.

I don’t even know where to begin. We are becoming so desensitized to this type of government behavior it only got mildly raised eyebrows on Fox News. It is in some of the print media that I have found some degree of appropriate outrage.

It is none of the government’s business what I eat…or what my kid eats. The food police in some schools have become so strong, they are banning home bagged lunches for fear some student might bring in some contraband into the school…like an Oreo.

Now you know why voters are outraged. Enough is enough. Kids are failing in schools. Many schools can’t afford to buy books. Class sizes in Detroit are approaching sixty students per class. And what does our government spend money on? Cameras to monitor school lunch trays. Unbelievable.

If the government wants to cut the budget, here is the place to start. It is a waste. It is Orwellian. It is just plain scary. But what else should we expect from a government that pats down our private parts before going onto an airplane. I know…cavity searches...which might be next for both the TSA and our school systems. You can hide Oreos in all sorts of places.

Shame on the United States government.