We’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank Gov. Jeff Landry for doing what we suggested a couple of weeks ago. Landry dropped the veto hammer on a stupid bill by a partisan Democrat that would have created stupid results in furtherance of a stupid narrative, and for some reason Louisiana’s Republican-dominated legislature lacked the stones to stand up to the stupidity.

The bill? SB 287, which would have required the state to form partnerships with nonprofit organizations and private entities to provide healthy food in areas that lack access to it.

In other words, it’s a massive sop to the Obama-Soros NGO grifter network, and it would have given subsidies to organizations which are already loaded down with dollars that are used for political activism rather than charity work.

This myth of “food deserts” is one which popped up during Barack Obama’s first term. It was a pet project of Michelle Obama’s. And it’s a great scam.

Because when you think of poverty, at least from the standpoint of global poverty, what you think of is starving people who can’t get enough to eat.

But by that standard we don’t have poor people in America. Obesity is a far bigger problem for poor people in this country than malnutrition is.

And if you operate on the principle that government’s role in the lives of the people ought to be limited, once you’ve set things up such that you can feed all the hungry folks out there – and we passed that point more than half a century ago – you don’t need to do anything else.

Oh, but that’s not good enough for the Marxist control freaks in the Democrat Party. Oh, no. And it’s definitely not good enough for Little Lord Royce Duplessis, who comes from one of New Orleans’ oldest and most prominent Creole families and who never knew real poverty in his life.

And incidentally, Little Lord Royce Duplessis, a graduate of Catholic St. Augustine High School and Catholic Xavier University, both private schools of course, loves the poor people so much that he’s railing against school choice so the poor could have access to the same opportunities his family’s privilege afforded him.

No, now that we’ve fairly effortlessly set it up so we can feed the poor, now it’s a question of what the poor are being fed.

So it’s “food deserts.” What does that mean? Essentially, it means that since there are no Whole Foods stores in the hood, somehow that’s a civil rights issue. And since Duplessis’ family had a grocery store, this is somehow something he’s “passionate” about.

Of course, he could open his own grocery store back in New Orleans. But Little Lord Royce Duplessis isn’t about to put his own money into a project like that.

All of this is absurd, of course. But absurdity is the stock in trade of the Modern Left.

There must be “healthy food” available in the rough neighborhoods.

But wait – if there was a market for “healthy food,” wouldn’t someone carry it? There are stores in those neighborhoods, after all.

Yes, there are. Poor neighborhoods across America, and Louisiana is no different, are dotted with lots of gas station/convenience stores. Like the one in North Baton Rouge where Alton Sterling died after trying to pull out his gun while fighting with a cop.

Often those convenience stores, usually owned by immigrants from places like South Asia or the Pacific Rim, will load up on junk food to sell to the denizens of those rough neighborhoods, and they don’t often carry a lot of things like fresh fruits and vegetables.

Why? That’s easy. Because fresh fruits and vegetables spoil pretty quickly. And because the people who live in those rough neighborhoods don’t buy them.

They buy processed foods. Junk foods. Poor people eat lots of cookies, crackers, candy and other junk-y things.

Because that’s how you can get lots of calories for not that much money, and also because it’s extremely quick and easy to get something to eat out of a box you got at the Circle K.

So it’s upscale leftists who think the slovenly, fat, poors in the bad neighborhoods don’t eat well enough who’ve created the “food deserts” problem that only they can solve.

By throwing tax dollars at attracting big grocery stores into those neighborhoods when the crime and low sales figures chased away those big grocers in the first place. Because the things which make a neighborhood bad are the same things which chase away the business owners.

Royce Duplessis thinks he can fix that by redistributing tax dollars from productive people who live in functional neighborhoods to people who live in places the market is trying to clean out. Those “food deserts” are places where it’s no longer viable because the residents have chased away not just the grocers but the jewelers, the nice restaurants, the car dealers, the clothing stores, the tailors, the bookstores and the banks. They’re not just food deserts, they’re commercial deserts. Because places the criminals control are no longer fit for commerce, so they don’t get more than the most basic elements of it like gas stations and convenience stores and an occasional beauty salon or fast food restaurant.

Rather than endorse efforts to take the streets back from the Alton Sterlings of the world, something Little Lord Royce Duplessis will never do, we get demands that the Louisiana Department of Agriculture come and play sugar-daddy to Albertson’s and Rouse’s in an effort to entice them back into the hood.

And Republican legislators like the ones we have in Louisiana feel like they’ll come off as racists if they shoot this stupidity down. Which is why almost nobody voted against Duplessis’ bill before Landry finally put a stop to this.

Somebody could set up vegetable stands in poor neighborhoods, and if the poor people were interested in buying those vegetables they’d make that entrepreneur rich. But they don’t. And, hating the market and what it says about humanity, people like Royce Duplessis jump on wasteful and stupid ideas to better the lives of the poor through distribution of fresh kale and Belgian endive.

Landry has more respect for the poor than Duplessis does. Not that he’ll get credit for that. They’ll call him every name in the book for shooting down this bill. But in the future, bills like this should never get to his desk. Rather than just pass a stupid bill like this out of fear you’ll get called names by the Left, simply kill every bill Royce Duplessis brings which doesn’t have a Republican co-sponsor. It’s an easy rule which insures quality control and prevents Landry from having his calendar cluttered and his political capital wasted on a veto.

Food deserts, indeed.

We have brain deserts in Louisiana’s legislature. That’s a lot bigger problem.