Ignoring for the moment the complete absurdity of giving a third-grader detention for eating a Jolly Rancher, let’s explore this story a little deeper. In other words, follow the money. Because the real story here doesn’t appear until the tenth paragraph, when the school district superintendent, Jack Ellis, says, “failing to adhere to the state’s guidelines could put federal funding in jeopardy.” There it is. The federal extortion racket is at it again.
If you watched any of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, you know that he ran up against this same nonsense, except the logic there was reversed. At the elementary school in Huntington, West Virginia, where he was trying to eliminate chocolate and strawberry flavored milk (because, as he put it, they contain more sugar than a can of “fizzy pop”), it took several attempts before the school district finally got “approval” from state authorities to remove a food item that was bad for the children’s health.
So in one state, the extortionists punish a child for eating sugar, and in another state, they punish the school for trying to reduce the sugar intake of their students. But in both states, the root cause is the same: fight the system and lose your funding.