Paying the Rant

Reading over yesterday's post, I guess I'm guilty of a rant re: St. John's kitchen project.  I'm no Tea Party activist.  I'm just your garden variety bleeding heart liberal.  But when the Government forces a church to spend well over $20,000 just to boil hot dogs or bake a casserole for a few hungry souls once a week, something rather conservative (if I may use that word) stirs in my heart.  As I understand the rules, a church could serve a thousand meals a day without being licensed, just so long as the people served are its own members.  But if a church offers a potato chip to a non-member, the parish kitchen must be licensed in the same manner as a restaurant — including make-up air.  That makes absolutely no sense to me.

There is much in these United States which ought to be well and intelligently regulated.  I'm plowing through Sorkin's Too Big to Fail, his account of the financial meltdown of 2008.  We are still chewing on the bitter fruits of that disaster.  I'm aghast that so many bright, high-powered, and highly compensated financial CEOs could have been so stupid, so reckless, and so blind to their responsibility to clean up their own mess.  Wall Street needs a lot of regulation.  Church kitchens need little.

Now this troll will crawl back under his bridge and be quiet for a few hours. •••