-Paying Farmers Not to Grow Crops is Not Enough–
In a desperate effort to cure the expanding obesity epidemic, the Department of Agriculture has announced a plan to subsidize voluntary hunger. Modeled after the Department’s acreage set-aside program which pays farmers not to grow crops, the new plan will pay overweight consumers to not eat.
USDA economist Keithly Kuchler explained the program while munching on a USDA approved carrot:
“USDA pays really Big Farmers to not grow crops, which has prevented the nation’s soils from being wasted.
Now, we will plan to pay really Big Shoppers to not eat food, which will prevent the nation’s waists from being soiled.”
Department officials said that in the coming weeks, packets of anti-food stamps will be issued to any person who can prove he or she is 20 pounds overweight or unable to recognize his or her own feet.
Citizens with anti-food stamps who show up at store checkout counters and show their stamps will be given bonus money if they hurl store-bought meats and desserts into a government Dumpster. Dumpster food will then be “dumped” on select food markets to reduce the fat profits of select food retailers.
As the government’s anti-obesity plans unfolded, the administrator of USDA’s “Fraud, Abuse, and Horse-Meat Agency” warned consumers that if food stamps and anti-food stamps come into contact inside the same wallet or purse, government budgets could explode and destroy consumer’s diet choices.
The administrator said that anyone caught harboring both food and anti-food stamps will be arrested and sent to vegetable consumption camps, where they will be fed raked leaves, dried stems, and boiled roots for six weeks.
–Oakton High School Student Weighs In–
As the anti-obesity plan got underway, a two hundred and forty pound freshman student sued Virginia’s Oakton High School for violating the Federal government’s TARP program.
Arguing that he too, was too big to fail, Jackson Marcus said that Oakton High School violated federal TARP rules by allowing him to fail his Algebra 1 class.
The Department of Agriculture quickly shipped two boxes of anti-food stamps to the Marcus’ Oakton home.
Attached to the boxes was a handwritten note which said:
“Lick, but do not directly eat, enclosed TARP anti-food stamps.“
The next day, the father of Jackson Marcus, Jack Marcus, informed reporters that he had not planted one crop on his two-acre lot for the past forty years. Thrusting a handful of pitch black soil before TV cameras; the senior Marcus threatened to erode his entire yard, in one scoop, if he did not receive USDA back-payments for not growing crops on his land.
–A USDA Clarification–
Following the Jackson family dispute, USDA officials announced that any farmer who receives subsidies for not growing crops on their land also could be eligible to receive anti-obesity money. However, before receiving both payments, farmers would have to prove that family members would have eaten the crop which wasn’t grown, had it been grown.
Officials of USDA’s Fraud, Abuse, and Horse-Meat Agency:
“If you want both land set-aside payments and food set-a-side payments, you must send us the expected yields and acreage of the crop that was not grown. Then, you must send a record of the food you ate and an estimate of the food which you would have eaten, had you harvested your own crop.
It is up to you to prove the food you didn’t eat was not eaten because you didn’t grow it.
That is, if you did not eat it because you did not grow it, then you are fine.
But, if you did not grow it, because you did not plan to eat it, then you will not be allowed to receive USDA subsidies.”
Jackson Marcus, responded by telling teachers that he had not eaten hundreds of chocolate cakes in the past year, because his father had never planted cake-mix seed in the yard.
Using his calculator, and calling cake mix yields “x” and his appetite “y” and money “z”, Jackson Marcus said he figured the government owed him a hundred and ten dollars.
And two semesters of a USDA-approved, C+ grade in his high school algebra class