Someone Get Rahm a Newspaper

Evidently, he's not up on current events. And neither is Fran Spielman if she keeps printing crap like this:

• Five new farmers markets will open in Chicago neighborhoods starved for fresh fruits and vegetables, providing a summer oasis in the food desert.

  Mayor Rahm Emanuel has summoned the CEOs of Wal-Mart and other major retailers to a summit on “food deserts” that, he claims, produced plans to build 17 new stores and retrofit 19 existing stores to sell fresh produce in inner-city neighborhoods.

  He has also promoted urban agriculture — by championing an ordinance that expanded the maximum size of community gardens, eased fencing and parking requirements on larger commercial urban farms and allowed those farms to sell their wares at farmer’s markets.

  The five new farmers markets mark yet another step to fill the void that has left inner-city communities with precious few shopping choices.

Ah yes, an "oasis" to combat "food deserts." But what's this that the bastion of liberal group-think published not even ten days ago?

• It has become an article of faith among some policy makers and advocates, including Michelle Obama, that poor urban neighborhoods are food deserts, bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables.

  But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.

  Within a couple of miles of almost any urban neighborhood, “you can get basically any type of food,” said Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation, lead author of one of the studies. “Maybe we should call it a food swamp rather than a desert,” he said.

Go read the entire article if you can stomach the New York Times. It pretty much states that the "food desert" is a myth and obesity results from poor food choices, not a lack of available healthy foods.

Rahm and Fran really ought to read the Times. It provides all the liberal talking points on a nearly daily basis.