You must remember this, a kiss-off is just a kiss ....
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(See below*)
Multiply this story 1,000,000 X (or 10 million, or 100 million — your pick), and you have a good sense of how the guardians of our wallets spend what they find there:
NYC’s DOE accepts offer for nearly $5.6M worth of apples — leaving most to rot
The NYC’s Department of Education food-service managers ordered three times as many apples as needed — forcing them to throw away thousands of cases of rotting fruit in the last four months, The Post has learned.
In March, the city DOE’s Office of Food and Nutrition Services got an offer they couldn’t refuse and ordered 279,000 cases of apples worth a whopping $5,585,580 paid for by the federal government. The deal was part of an effort between the feds and the state Office of General Services to give schools fresh produce from the US Department of Agriculture. As a result, the city received a massive “bonus” of free Empire, Fuji, Gala, Red Delicious and Granny Smith apples.
But the nation’s largest school system bit off more than it could chew: The humongous order is overwhelming the DOE with more apples than schools can use in three years, kitchen insiders said.
“They have apples every day — nothing but apples,” said the parent coordinator at a Bronx elementary school, wondering what happened to the peaches and mandarins the schools used to serve.
Some students are served two apples at breakfast and another two at lunch, a food worker said.
Kids are being deprived of other fruit, the worker said. “Students are looking for a piece of watermelon, or a tangerine, but now it’s ‘Nope, we have to give you apples,’ and if students don’t want them, they go in the garbage.”
A supervisor griped: “You order one case of oranges, you get two cases of apples. You want bananas, you get two more cases of apples. We’re getting apples up the nose.”
Out of 5,299 cases of apples already delivered, up to 45% have already been tossed, the source estimated.
Stomach-churning photos show cases marred with moldy, rotten apples — some shriveled beyond recognition — and rancid juices soaking through the cardboard crates.
Food distributors had 28,012 cases on hand this week with 15,544 more to come in September, according to emails viewed by The Post.
“Despite warnings from distributors, managers and cooks that schools cannot handle such a large quantity of fresh apples, the OFNS decided to proceed,” said a DOE source, adding that officials saw it as “free money.”
Schools have been forced to take a glut of apples — some already spoiled and bruised — from distributors hit with nonstop supplies from the USDA. The agency offers periodic “bonuses” of free food products to schools across the country.
“We have rotting apples, and before we can take more we need to know what your plan is for discarding them as they all begin to rot,” one food distributor pleaded to an OFNS director in emails obtained by The Post.
“The apples will need to be accepted,” inventory management specialist Cristina Perez told the buyer.
“Please make arrangements for delivery,” director Lisa D’Amato confirmed.
Buyers are also complaining to the farms, begging them to do quality-control checks before shipping.
“We can’t tie up our warehouse everyday with thousands of cases of apples that are being shipped to us in very poor quality,” a distributor representative said in an email.
One of the city’s three grocery distributors said this week that the company will have to discard approximately 3,000 cases of apples. On Thursday, another tossed 86 cases, sources said.
In June, shortly before the school year ended, one of the distributors was slated to receive two shipments of 924 cases each. The fruit lasts 15 to 25 days.
On Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley and called Republicans ‘anti-government ideologues’ looking to shut down the government before declaring there is simply nothing left to cut in the $4-trillion-a-year federal budget.
CROWLEY: President Clinton, President Bush, President Reagan and this president have all negotiated the debt ceiling and given up something for that. So why now, we can't do this?
PELOSI: The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that.
