Resist We Much! Liberal MSNBC’s Rev. Al Sharpton Stretches Truth about Milk Cuts in Wisconsin Schools to Smear Gov. Scott Walker
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on October 6, 2011
Left-wing MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton plays loose with the facts about milk cuts and Wisconsin school children
Facts and evidence are such pesky things for liberals… Rev. Al “Resist We Much!” Sharpton, who has recently joined the braying donkey stable over at MSNBC, is no exception.
When facts don’t neatly fit the desired narrative, when little to no evidence exists, left-wing weasels will reliably mold and roll and stretch the facts like Play-doh until it barely resembles reality, thus creating their own version of “truth.” And then they spew it on MSNBC.
Reported by Kyle Olsen at Townhall, Al Sharpton Wisconsin Milk Story Sours:
Public employee unions and their apologists will tell any tale to elicit sympathy for their cause.
A good example is the Rev. Al Sharpton, who now remarkably hosts a nightly show on MSNBC. He recently used a portion of his program to claim that state education cuts forced one Wisconsin school district to eliminate milk from morning snacks for elementary students.
“Governor Scott Walker’s budget cuts mean some kids go without,” Sharpton said, according to an article posted on PolitiFact Wisconsin.
Neither Sharpton nor his National Action Network responded to calls from fact-checkers who were seeking evidence to back up the claim. That’s not surprising.
As it turned out, Sharpton should have checked his sources.
According to the Baraboo district superintendent and the school board president and vice president, milk was eliminated from the morning snack because officials were concerned that kids were drinking too much of it in the morning. They had been getting a half-pint carton during breakfast, the morning break and lunch. That seems like a lot of dairy product for small children, even in Wisconsin.
The officials said they were also concerned about the amount of wasted milk, and the administrative time needed to track how much milk was being consumed.
These decisions were made before Walker’s education budget was finalized. The fact that school administrators expected budget cuts to affect the milk program was more or less an afterthought, according to the school officials.
But hey, who cares about facts when there’s a good opportunity for a Sharpton smear, right?
From Journal Sentinel PolitiFact Wisconsin:
Schoolchildren in America’s Dairyland going without milk?
Blame Gov. Scott Walker, the Rev. Al Sharpton says.
[...]
To sort out whether Sharpton’s characterization of the situation was accurate, we interviewed Crystal Ritzenthaler, the school district’s superintendent; Kevin Vodak, the school board president; and Doug Mering, the board vice president.
All three said school administrators did eliminate milk during morning snack for elementary school students in the 2011-2012 school year.
But they said Walker’s state budget cuts had little, if anything, to do with the decision, which Ritzenthaler, the superintendent, said was made in spring 2011 while Walker’s budget was being debated.
The three Baraboo officials said that, for more than a year, the school district’s Wellness Committee had discussed milk being served during snack time and that the decision to eliminate the milk was recommended by the committee.
Ritzenthaler told us milk during snack was eliminated for a number of reasons:
1. Concern that children were consuming too much milk — one half-pint carton during breakfast at school, another during morning snack and a third at lunch. There was a concern that the milk reduced the kids’ appetite for lunch, plus the school board wants to promote the drinking of water, which has been substituted for milk at snack time.
2. Concern about the amount of milk wasted because many children drank only a portion of the carton.
3. Administrative time needed to track how much milk was being consumed.
Ritzenthaler said less important factors were the $10,400 the school district spent on milk for snack time in 2010-2011 — and the fact that figure likely was to increase because Walker’s budget cut 10 percent from the state’s funding of the program.
Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie confirmed the 10 percent cut.
The same set of reasons was cited in a May 25, 2011 email from Baraboo schools administrator and principal Molly Fitzgerald informing her fellow elementary school principals that milk at snack time would be eliminated. The email added that state funding for the program “may be eliminated anyway in the state budget.”
Vodak, the school board president, was emphatic that budgetary considerations played little or no role in the decision to stop serving milk during snack time. He said he believed administrators cited cost as one of the reasons to eliminate the program only “as an afterthought” in explaining the decision.
It’s not the first time Sharpton has tried to sway Wisconsin citizens to the statist side.
Video encore… I simply never tire of this video of Rev. Al trying to inspire Democrat viewers to vote in an August Wisconsin election — I previously wrote this:
“But resist we much. We must and we will much about that be committed.”
Priceless…
And once Rev. Al concludes sounding like an overpaid simpleton, he introduces the grand tamale of overpaid simpletons at MSNBC, leftist fruitcake Ed “Conservative Women Are Sluts” Schultz.
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