One Idaho Republican believes that school kids will value their free lunches
more if they have to work for them.
Apparently, he thinks that kids will enjoy their sloppy joes more after they
were forced to do labor to earn it.
So this is the mastermind behind the plan.
Idaho State Representative Ron Mendive,
there he is looking exactly how you expected him to look.
And let's read this direct quote from him about his proposed program.
Daily Beast reported on this and said, if we could find a way for
the students to work to earn credits for their school lunch, I don't think we'd see
any of the waste we do in that program because it doesn't mean much.
It doesn't mean much to feed the children who are from low income families.
The important part is instilling the values of capitalist labor in
these children from a young age.
But he didn't specify what kind of work he wants the kids to be involved in,
but his plan does implicate Idaho labor laws.
And he clearly doesn't understand that, but the people over the Daily Beast do.
They said, Idaho child labor laws say children must be at least 14 years old for
non-agricultural work.
The law is supposed to be enforced by local school boards
as well as by probation officers.
So I will say this, I had free lunch as a child,
if someone told me that I had to work to get my lunch,
I wasn't gonna be more proud of eating it, I just wasn't going to eat.
The way that we label free lunch programs and
the recipients of it is already very stigmatized in this country.
If now you're parading these children out of the classroom a little bit earlier than
their lunchtime is to force them to do some type of labor,
those children are just going to choose not to eat, okay?
It's already embarrassing because we have stigmatized being the recipients of,
and this is in essence a welfare program in this country.
But a simple solution to this is to just give every kid free lunch, in my opinion.
Cenk, what are your thoughts?
>> Well, they actually do do that in California now, and
at least in Los Angeles, they do.
And so my kids, by the way, don't take the free lunch, they go to public school.
We try to pack them a healthy lunch, etc.
And so that's a little bit of a waste.
So that's true, okay?
So that's why I think they should work in coal mines instead.
>> [LAUGH] >> Okay, now, guys, look,
the government has tons and tons of waste.
So I mean, Jesus, in LA and California, we've put in billions of dollars in
propositions to help with homelessness, and they've built 12 homes.
Okay, so unfortunately, giant percentage of the kids in LA public schools,
I think it's over three-quarters of the kids need free lunch.
So we're talking about a small percentage that don't.
Okay, so that's a tiny bit wasteful.
And this is, by the way, not Idaho, they're not doing that in Idaho.
Idaho, it's not for everybody, it's just for the kids who need it.
But even in the place where they're giving out a little bit more it's a tiny,
tiny, tiny percentage of the budget.
And to raise point, if you have to go in and you ask for it,
etc., it's stigmatizing, of course, right?
And so then you balance the interest.
But now back to Idaho, his state, when you have a situation where you're saying,
okay, not only do you have to come up and say,
yeah, I need the free lunch, but then we make you mop the floors or something.
Come on, are you serious?
That's the thing I don't understand about Republicans.
How could you be this cruel?
And this is the point that claim to be for family values and stuff,
it's really quite sick.
Mondale.
>> Listen, right, Cenk, think about this.
From 1995 to 2021, Idaho gave four
programs more than $5 or $6 billion.
Those programs were subsidies.
They weren't for kids to eat, it was for farmers not to grow.
Imagine that, you want kids to work for food, but you pay farmers for not working.
And we don't call it welfare when it actually is corporate welfare,
it is absolutely ludicrous that we have an elected official talking about putting
kids to work.
Why don't we give them chains and whips to tie themselves up with as well?
This is ludicrous.
The idea that poverty is something that you earned and
not that we create systems or we have systems that create poverty is ridiculous.
And we've not always, as a country, had this ideal about poverty if you consider
all of the subsidies country came up with during the Great Depression.
What happened to that America, where we fed people and
ensured that people had enough?
Well, I know what happened.
More diverse group of folk became aware and also should be rewarded by this.
The free lunch program is nothing unique, or
I should say it's not innate to American government.
It's absolutely created in reply or
response to the Black Panthers creating a free lunch program in this country
first before we had a nationwide free lunch program.
So this is not something people care about anyway,
especially folk who kids aren't eating or need to do it.
Then we need to consider who actually is attending public school, anyway?
What color are the kids that are going to public school?
And if you look at that number, we're talking about starving some of the lowest
people in this country, people that are already at the bottom all social wrongs,
black and brown folk, and it's disgusting.
>> I'm gonna get random point here.
Sorry, Ray, get back to you in one sec.
So look, what Mondale said about basically right wing propaganda,
how they flip everything on its head.
So they do it all the time.
So in the 2012 election, a couple of different things happened.
One was Mitt Romney put out a statement about how 47% of the country were takers,
and that all the Obama had to do was promised them free money,
and they would just take and take from the makers, right?
And Paul Ryan piled onto that, and he made it seem like minorities, particularly
African Americans, because then Romney said, this is my book Justice is Coming.
You preordered, got the link down below.
But I traced it all for you guys.
Romney then went and spoke at the NAACP to make sure that everybody understood,
the takers were black folks and the makers were white folks, okay?
In slavery, African Americans literally made everything,
and the white slave owners literally took everything and sat inside the house, okay?
And so they just take stuff and flip it on its head, and they're doing that in Idaho,
and exactly the way that Mondale talked about.
And by the way, that's not new either.
In 2012, Newt Gingrich ran on the same idea, make the kids work, okay?
By the way, in Idaho, they're almost all white kids and
still no sense of compassion.
I would have thought maybe he would have some compassion for
white kids, but no, not for them either.
>> But to both of your points and for anyone wondering if this man who
introduced the idea of kids working for their lunch is racist, the answer is yes,
and I can give you some more information about that.
So he was a party to his successful effort to strip climate change from
the curriculums in Idaho schools.
He also joined like-minded legislators in opposing a $6 million dollar federal early
education grant intended for working parents with children aged five and under.
Mendive and his fellow loonies contended that the grants real intent was
to indoctrinate preschoolers with critical race theory because, of course,
three and four year olds are ripe targets for graduate level legal doctrine.
I mean, there it is.
>> No, you make a good point, blacks have taken over Idaho.
And that's why they're making everybody study critical race theory.
>> That's right, with the new potato farmers.
>> [LAUGH] Totally deters from reality.
All right, amazing postgame show for you guys.
tyt.com/join, become a member and get that bonus episode.
We'll see you there.