More light, and murk, shed on the legality of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed food-stamp soda ban:
In this corner: Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to grant New York City a two-year waiver to ban the purchase of soda with food-stamp cards, saying it’s a matter of public health. In the far corner: Joel Berg, New York Coalition Against Hunger director and food program expert, who says it’s not only a dumb idea, it’s illegal.
When we last left our two contenders, they were engaged in a fierce game of “Is not!” “Is too!” about what exactly the USDA can and can’t approve without going back to Congress to ask for a rewrite of the law. So what does, you know, the law say? Here are the results of an Exclusive Village Voice Investigation:…