Charles Dickens Call Your Office

You know, we're beginning to think that republicans don't like anybody. We mean, we know they don't like the wimmens, they don't like anybody from another country, or anybody who has a different religion, and some of them don't even like the people who tell them who not to like, so we weren't surprised to run across this headline floating across the interwebs:

Williamson GOP chief blasts school breakfasts

Well, of course he does. Come on, it's bad enough that you won't let them change the child labor laws to get these little loafers off their butts and into the workforce where they can generate a profit for someone, or barring that make them work for their educations, but now you want to feed them? Just feed them? Just give them food for no particular reason? What is this, the Soviet Union?

“I am sure you have heard about this happening in other areas, but ladies and gentlemen, Williamson County, one of the wealthiest counties in the nation by any measure, is now operating under a perverse incentive to increase the number of students taking government hand-outs,” Kookogey wrote. “Of course, those handouts are courtesy of you and me, the federal taxpayers.”

OK, we're not psychologists or anything but we're thinking that anyone with both kook and gay in his name probably has some issues when it comes to experiences in school vs-a-vs his treatment by his fellow students and this might explain his current opposition to feeding the sons and daughters of little monsters who used to make his every day a living hell with their ceaseless attacks, their heartless mocking, their continued efforts to stuff him in his locker. And the pantsings and the swirlies and the...oh sorry. Where were we?

Whether students qualify for free and reduced prices for the meal or they pay full price, the district essentially receives money back from the government.

Now, let's give Mr. Kookogey the benefit of the doubt here and assume he's right when he says  Williamson County is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation by any measure. Maybe there just aren't any poor kids there and his point is that the money could be better spent in districts that have kids who need the food.

About 12 percent of the county district’s 32,000 students qualify for free and reduced-price meals. In the 2005-06 school year, that number was 7.6 percent. In the Franklin Special School District, about 41 percent of the 3,800 students participate in free and reduced-price lunches. According to the most recent census data, poverty is on the rise in Williamson County. More than 5 percent of school-aged children in the county school district and almost 15 percent of the students in the Franklin Special School District were living in poverty in 2010.

 Oh. Um...all right, maybe there's another reason you oppose this program Mr. Kookogey. One you can say in public we mean. After all you've got, like six kids and we're going to assume absent any child welfare reports that you feed them, so what's the deal here Mr. K?

“This is not a complicated issue,” he said. “It is not the role of government to feed people. Government exists to protect and defend our God-given rights.

There you go then. You show us somewhere in the bible god said you have a right not to be hungry. Go ahead, show us.  And don't go all Matthew 25:35 on us either because everybody knows Jesus was speaking metaphorically there and he didn't really mean "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink" literally. Don't believe us? Then ask Mindy McAlindon, first vice chair with the Williamson County Republican Party:

McAlindon agrees with Kookogey. “It’s not the government’s job to feed students. It’s our job to provide for ourselves,” the Franklin home-school mom said. “The government is deciding where our money goes. And we should be deciding where our money goes.”

And you can forget about that the people are the government thing too. That quit being true when they took away the poll tax and literacy tests, right Ms. McAlindon?