Michelle Obama now has control over $345 million of government two-year funding so that she can encourage (read "coerce") grocery chains to open stores that stock fresh produce in ghetto areas ... which are now conveniently called "food deserts." (See: Michelle's Markets and Slush Funds) The idea here is that the FLOTUS has been educating the poor families in this country about better nutrition .. yet many of these disadvantaged people have to travel great distances to purchase such nutritional products, since there are no nearby retail purveyors. Or, if there are such close-by grocery stores, their prices are often much higher than similar stores in upscale neighborhoods.
Now, this sounds to me like another rat hole down which our current paternalistic government plans to pour oodles of taxpayer funds. And, much like our government's catastrophic meddling in the sub-prime mortgage market, this otherwise noble endeavor is surely going to end up badly. (Good intentions, gone sour?) We are supposed to be a free-market economy which means that, if there was an attractive economic opportunity to pursue such business, then it would have been already achieved. If this hasn't happened, there must be one or more reasons for this reluctance. Will these reasons disappear because Ms. Obama wishes them away? I doubt it. And I also doubt that this initiative will continue much after the current government largess disappears.
And like the sub-prime mortgage fiasco was propagated by our misguided feel-good government hacks, I fully expect that there will be a number of corporations that rise to this juicy bait and make a quick buck off of the backs of the U.S. taxpayer (like Countrywide Finance did back then with no-documentation mortgages) ... until they no longer can. Let's just hope that these companies will not be then "too big to fail."
The road to hell ... apparently goes through the food desert.
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