Our government bailed out General Motors and Chrysler, so we now own 2 auto makers.

Our government bailed out banks and even an insurance company.

With the White House’s announcement of “Let’s Move”, could we be looking at a government take over of grocery stores?

“Let’s Move” deals with childhood obesity. Michelle Obama is leading this agenda.  There are 4 components to “Let’s Move”: give parents the support they need, provide healthier food in schools, help our kids to be more physically active, and make healthy and affordable food available to everyone in the country.

For more information about “Let’s Move”, you can visit its website here>>> .

For the sake of this post, let’s look at what it means to make healthy and affordable food available.  The First Lady advised that one of the issues that needs to be addressed is “food deserts”.  Food deserts are areas where people live more than 1 mile from a supermarket. The government advises there are 23.5 million people living in food deserts in America.

Studies show that people who live in food deserts are more likely to suffer from diet-related illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. For the people who live in food deserts, the food available at gas stations and convenience stores is their main supply sources. These are not the kinds of businesses known for ample supplies of fresh produce. It is this lack of available “real” food that “Let’s Move” is trying to address.

The First Lady, along with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, were in Phildelphia on February 19th to talk about the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI). The Healthy Food Financing Initiative calls for a  $400 million dollar investment in the first year.  According to the First Lady’s remarks, Treasury Secretary Geithner advises that they are going “to use that money to leverage hundreds of millions more from private and non-profit sectors to bring grocery stores and other healthy food retailers to underserved communities all across this country”.  The Healthy Food Financing Initiative is a joint effort by the Treasury, Agriculture and Health and Human Services Departments.

These efforts will be focused on 1/5th of the nations food deserts. and the model appears to be Pennsylvania’s state level initiative called “Fresh Food Financing Initiative – 2004”. Treasury Secretary Geithner states that the HFFI  initiative aims to eliminate food deserts in seven years and the First Lady believes that this goal is reachable through the help of  non-profits and the public sector. She gave credit to The Food Trust and The Reinvestment Fund along with Pennsylvania’s Fresh Food Financing Initiative – 2004 for creating a successful module in Pennsylvania for America to follow.

The public sector is going to use the New Markets Tax Credit, money from the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, as well as money from non-profit and private sources to develop supermarkets in food deserts in places such as Illinois, Colorado, Louisiana, New Jersey, and New York.  The government is going to pay private businesses to build supermarkets in poor economic areas to eliminate food deserts.

This sounds like a program to create socially responsible grocery stores. The strategy is to invest money from foundations and private donors to encourage grocers to build stores in inner cities — a plan that would otherwise defy a typical business model.

Now, consider the banks.  How many banks ran into trouble because they gave loans to people who shouldn’t have qualified but did so out of a sense of socially responsible investing? Look at ShoreBank of Chicago.  They have been propped up by foundations and private donors which allowed them to loan money to people who would not otherwise qualify for a mortgage. Where has that left Shorebank? Well, they are looking for Illinois to bail them out.

Consider that one of the partners in this venture is Timothy Geithner. Lately, don’t we see him on television talking about government bailouts? America, now we own AIG; America, now we own General Motors; America, now we own many banks. In a few years, could we be saying “America; now we could end up owning grocery stores”?

Shouldn’t we have concerns with the government saying where a grocery store should be located? In our current capitalism model, if the grocery business could be profitable in these areas, wouldn’t there already be stores established there?  Simply throwing money at a business and asking it to locate a store contrary to where the business models suggest just seems like a bad idea. What happens to these stores when the government isn’t funding them?

Here in Springfield, Illinois, we just have to look at the Cub Foods Store on South Grand Ave. for the answer. TIF money was used for that business venture. It failed, leaving nothing but a large empty building sitting on a lot as a reminder of the mistaken venture.

If we build hundreds of supermarkets in areas that don’t make profits but can stay in business as long as there is an influx of outside money, it appears there can only be two possible outcomes for those stores.  Either they will go out of business as they continue to lose money, or become subject to a government take over.

Could these groceries be set up as government run stores in food deserts?  If that were to occur, where would that end? Would we be looking at a government take over of supermarkets so the government can determine where to build and maintain stores for the good of the community? After all, there is legal precedent. According to the Center for a Livable Future, “As far back as 1926, the United States Supreme Court rendered an opinion that government has a responsibility to promote and protect public health, and that government can therefore control land  use.”

Is all this just fanciful thinking? Well, consider President Obama’s Memo dated Feb. 9, 2010 called, “Presidential Memorandum – Establishing a Task Force on Childhood Obesity”. In seeing how ambitious the president is in empowering this task force, it doesn’t seem farfetched to conclude the government could seize land from individuals to build grocery stores in the name of solving food deserts, pump tax payer money into it, and then propose to bail it out in a few years. This would put yet another industry under the government umbrella. Only time will tell how this one plays out.