Fat, Flunked, and Freaked Out
Some future historian will look back upon this period and conclude Americans became the most overweight, undereducated bunch of stoners in history.
According to the CDC, more than 35% of adults are obese. Obesity-related health problems cost an additional $147 billion per year. Medical expenses for obese individuals run about $1,400 more per year compared to people in the normal weight range. But don't worry. ObamaCare will cover them when youth find work and sign up. Or when government gets out of the healthcare business.
Forty-seven million adults are now on food stamps, an all-time record. The number has almost doubled in five years. Today, considering school breakfast and lunch programs, it is estimated the federal government is feeding about 100 million Americans each day at a cost of $80 billion annually. And guess what? Government food programs cause obesity.
"Numerous studies going back to the 1970s have linked food stamps to poor eating habits," states James Bovard in a recent Washington Times article. "Professor Charles Baum . . . estimated that food-stamp recipients are far more likely to be obese than eligible non-recipients . . . "
Conclusion: tax dollars are being spent to allow people to buy bad food that is making them fat and unhealthy so that tax dollars can be spent on increased medical care that is rapidly becoming less available, and that scarcity is driving up the cost of care, and insurance premiums. (Isn't that called taking a bad situation and making it worse?)
On the education front: kindergarteners get sex ed, grade school students know about the rain forest and climate change but they can't read, high school kids experiment -- not in the science lab -- but with sex and drugs, while colleges turn out good little Marxists equipped to subdue the world, by any means. This is education? Eighty million students indoctrinated in anti-American thinking at a cost of well over $1 trillion per annum, that's ROI!
Like the economy, American student test scores stagnate, falling behind the Chinese. Is there a correlation between test scores, productivity, food stamps and smoking dope?
The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports about 30% of high school seniors smoke marijuana occasionally, and 20% smoke consistently. No doubt use will increase as states legalize. Overall, about 24 million people smoke dope regularly. Modern marijuana is tremendously potent compared to the weed distributed decades back. And despite what the Stoner in Chief says, it is a gateway drug that causes serious health problems. Aside from memory loss, and problems with judgment and perception, marijuana has been shown to contribute to brain damage, and mental health difficulties, some of them as severe as psychosis, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
Did we mention respiratory problems too? More than 30 states allow 'therapeutic' use of marijuana, but the trouble is, the drug sometimes aggravates the malady it is supposed to treat. Then there is paranoia, laziness, and munchies, driving more people to drop out of school and put in for food stamps. Reports indicate pot can be purchased with food stamps these days, especially in and around medical marijuana dispensaries. According to Gallup survey results in October, 58% of respondents favor legalization, proving again that Americans are well-schooled in ignoring facts to reach illogical conclusions. In the end, for one or two trillion, give or take a few hundred billion, we are left fat, flunked, and freaked out. Perhaps this helps explain the re-election of BHO.