Breaking News, or, Your Tax Dollars at Work

"Schools that run bake sales and let teachers reward students with candy risk having more overweight pupils," says a new study, according to AP writer Steve Karnowski's report. The University of Minnesota's Martha Kubic, lead author of the study, concedes that she hasn't strictly proven a cause-and-effect relationship, but sagely notes, "there does seem to be a connection." A middle school principal interviewed for the article agrees that the hypothesized connection "makes sense", and can't restrain himself from alerting the Associated Press to a side-benefit of his school's ban on junk food: its hallways have become impeccably free of candy wrappers. Perhaps Nurse Ratched lurks somewhere in that joyless do-gooder's family tree.

Blogical Positivist suspects that anyone who needs a government-funded study to discover a possible connection between bake sales and weight gain must be a little underweight between the ears, and hopes those who look to government to mind the national waistline confine themselves to trimming pork from government budgets, not choices from citizens' menus.