Pinner writes: "With no public input whatsoever, a congressional supercommittee of four people plans to pass legislation that would gut food stamps, favor industrial-scale commodity farming quenched with GMOs through funding. If passed it will defund transitions to organic farming and funding to help communities start farmers markets."
An ear of corn and a beaker of 200-proof ethanol produced near Lena, Illinois. (photo: Scott Olsen AFP/Getty Images)
Supercommittee Farm Bill Boon to Agribusiness
05 November 11
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ith no public input whatsoever, a congressional supercommittee of four people plans to pass legislation that would gut food stamps, favor industrial-scale commodity farming quenched with GMOs through funding. If passed it will defund transitions to organic farming and funding to help communities start farmers markets.
The Farm Bill, a piece of legislation that gets reauthorized every five years, is being rushed ahead of schedule to squeeze it into the deficit reduction plan. According to The Nation, the Farm Bill is "sometimes called the food bill because of its enormous influence over what Americans (especially children) eat," what our food costs at the grocery store and when exported, what foods are safe (GMOs), "and whether 45 million impoverished Americans (again, about half of them children) continue to receive food stamps."
Ken Cook heads the Environmental Working Group, "an NGO that that has embarrassed corporate farmers by publicizing how much taxpayer money they receive in crop subsidies, sometimes for land that hasn't been farmed in years", again according to the Nation. Cook says, "If these are truly great ideas, let's discuss them openly," adding that his organization is mobilizing its 1.1 million followers and other parts of the food movement to say, in the words of a new TV ad, No Secret Farm Bill.
We spend 2.2 trillion a year on health care - over five times more than the defense budget - and we spend more money per person on our health care than any country in the world. Yet we grow sicker year by year.
Why could this be?
In 1973, the U.S. congress passed a farm subsidy bill. Among other things, it included mass incentives for corn production. One of the major causes of this surplus was a product you might know called high fructose corn syrup. It can be added to soda-pop, barbeque sauce, hotdog buns: literally anything, except whole foods.
Some scientists and medical researchers suggest that the doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.
This is a time of an infamously high deficit and not-so-famous record farm incomes. In 2007 net farm income was $70 billion with 17% coming from the fed; now in 2011 net income is $103.6 billion with 10% from the fed.
According to Politico, federal crop insurance subsidies this year are the highest ever recorded, which means a lot more of the status quo.
From Politico:
The accelerated timetable now is driven by the August debt accords, under which a newly created House-Senate select deficit panel or supercommittee is charged with coming up with $1.2 trillion in 10-year savings next month.
For the House and Senate Agriculture committees, which had planned to write a new farm bill in 2012, it's a nightmare situation in which their jurisdiction will be subject to cuts in advance, all written by a panel with little knowledge of farm policy.
The most important issue here is that the writers of the bill are skipping around the democratic process by rushing its uptake.
If we keep eating the same processed muck churned out by restaurant chains across the country, bought from the same industrial farms that could care less about food quality so long as it passes inspection, our health care costs are going to rise and the problem will continue to compound.
HuffPo reports that "Leaders of the two panels are planning to submit their plan to cut up to $23 billion from agriculture funding to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the so-called Super Committee, next week. Their recommendations will likely cut billions of dollars from agricultural conservation programs, according to published reports on the discussions."
"One quarter of what you eat keeps you alive, the other three quarters keeps your doctor alive." - an Egyptian proverb.
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They want to put the big banks and big hedge funds and big insurance and big phrma and big agriculture in charge of everything we think, do, say, breathe, eat, drink, smell, hear, drive, sell, whatever.
Thank you to those patriots in that room who invited Nancy Pelosi the reactionary to reveal her true colors.
They want to put the big banks and big hedge funds and big insurance and big phrma and big agriculture in charge of everything we think, do, say, breathe, eat, drink, smell, hear, drive, sell, whatever.
Thank you to those patriots in that room who invited Nancy Pelosi the reactionary to reveal her true colors.
I also wold choose being on the edge of warrant and free speech rights over not trying to find the people who want to blow up innocents.
Me too, but since 2000. And I became a pariah among my liberal friends for NOT swallowing obonbya's campaign rhetoric. My friends, most of them wt least ware finally seeing what a terrible mistake they made in supporting the murderer.
She's no more leftist than Blair or Billy-Bob Clint' was.
So true. Please, everyone remember it was Pelosi who could have ended the Iraq invasion singlehandedly, but REFUSED TO DO SO!
This only proves once again that the people deserve the government they choose. They voted for Pelosi instead of Sheehan in 2008 and they got what they deserved, the same old BS.
You're absolutely correct, IF THE VOTES WERE NOT STACKED AGAINST SHEEHAN...
I live in Arizona and therefore could not have voted for Sheehan as much as I would have liked to, but the election was completely one-sided. Cindy Sheehan had no chance whatsoever of winning.
I would agree that Nancy Pelosi did her very best to keep Sheehan completely out of the public's eye as much as humanly possible, and Pelosi absolutely refused to debate her, but the voters in Pelosi's district clearly were stupid enough and naive enough in a reasonably honest election to vote Pelosi back into office for another term over Cindy Sheehan.
Therefore, as I have stated in my initial comment, they deserve what they are getting right now and since the 2008 elections.
At this point all she does is deliver essentially meaningless platitude-heavy speeches. Her vote to stop the War Party's madness is what I demand, not reassuring and comforting speeches.
If I were so inclined, I would assume the fetal position and suck my thumb any time I chose. I certainly don't need Pelosi's Pavlovian-bell prompts to do it for me...
Ahem, once proud? When was that? Was it when women could not vote? Was it before the voting rights act? The true mark of a conservative is to mythologize the once glorious past as the baseline from which modern departures can be gauged. Only problem is there is no glorious past. Empire is empire.
It has been challenged only once, actually rather benignly, by JFK and we have evidence as to how they reacted to that. All the poor guy was proposing to do was bring the CIA and JCS under control.
Prior to this, old Ike, a willing participant during his two terms in office, had toward the end, second thoughts of his own. To his credit, he gave us a modest warning in his farewell address to the nation.
Ever since, it's been a pretty much a scam. National "security" utilized as rubber stamp for all sorts of money making mischief. Aided by the CIA/MIA shadow government, supported by their corporate sponsors by way of a bought and paid for government.
The idea that we can produce some politician or group of them, who will change things is merely an extension of the con game. The Kucinichs, Feingolds even the Ron Pauls of the world, will be allowed voice only so long as they're no where near the seat of power.
A placebo, to keep the illusion of "representative " government in the forefront of public discourse while the real powers behind the throne, that is the MIC/CIA and their corporate sponsored friends, call the shots.
The GOP sold their soul in 1952.
The Dems mortgaged theirs in 1964 and finally sold it in 1992.
The politically interesting question is, will either one rediscover it?
If so, when?
In the good ol days we used to think Feinstein was the cat's Meow. Wonder who bought thwt woman?
http://news.yahoo.com/pelosis-defense-nsa-surveillance-draws-boos-183845402.html
When Mac Perkel was forcibly removed from the audience because he dared to ask Nancy Pelosi a question during her Netroots Nation presentation after she condemned Edward Snowden & supported Obama & the illegal NSA spying, some in the audience shouted leave him alone.
This was the Netroots Nation political conference. The article also states that some in the audience got up & walked out in support of Perkel. The total shame of it all was that not every person in that audience, down to a man, didn't get up & walk out in support of Perkel.
To add insult to injury, after the few walked out, most stayed & continued to listen to Pelosi's political BS. As the article states, Pelosi's remarks criticizing the Republican majority in the House & encouraging powerful women brought applause, cheers & laughs as if they actually believed she was being sincere after openly supporting the illegal NSA activities because Obama supported it.
The behavior of the majority of the audience being so forgiving of Pelosi & hanging around to listen to the rest of her BS after one of their so-called compatriots was forcibly removed as if this was a Republican conference just shows how badly fractured our side is & their support for the hired thugs who were there to forcibly kick people out if they wanted to speak up.
This goes against the whole idea of Netroots Nation.
Dumb person...he didn't violate the constitution like you did Ms. Pelosi!