I’m not so interested in whether or not he’s a hypocrite, I think he is (as are most of us). It’s difficult to be self-righteous about certain economic factors and not be a hypocrite because whatever it is you’re being self-righteous about you’ve almost certainly benefited from in some way (fossil fuels, meat consumption, taxes, homosexuals, whatever).

What I am interested in is the relevance of his hypocrisy. For instance, this information has nothing to do with the threat (or not) of global warming, it only points to the human failure of one hypocrite. I understand the argument that if he doesn’t even believe in it enough to live it in his personal life, then he must not truly believe in it. That might be the case, but the take-away that people seem to draw from that argument is that that is somehow proof of the falsity of the cause. In other words, because Al Gore can’t practice what he preaches then the scientists are wrong.

Is that relevant to this friend who is moving into a house that will more than sextuple his energy bills? Maybe, maybe not. But Al Gore was never the right guy to persuade the Right of anything.

MR: Heavenly Father, it’s me, Mitt.
HF: Romney?
MR: There aren’t any other Mitts out there are there?
HF: Big world, to be honest I haven’t taken inventory lately. How are you my son?
MR: I’ve been better. But okay all things considered.
HF: Could you not use that phrase, I’m not a big fan.
MR: A big fan?
HF: NPR. I prefer the BBC.
MR: Look, I just wanted to thank you for being with me during the campaign. I’m a bit disappointed in how things turned out, but all things. . . but overall I think we did as well as could have been expected
HF: You’re serious?
MR: Yes, absolutely, if I can speak freely.
HF: Have I ever stopped you from speaking freely? You all don’t speak at all for months at a time, really speak I mean, and then everyone wants to speak freely.
MR: Right, well to be honest I’ve been a bit down, but there is talk of a second chance at the number two spot.
HF: And that energizes you?
MR: A bit. I mean we were pretty confrontational but it does feel good to sort things out with one’s nemesis and get on with the business of life.
HF: Tell me about it. Try doing the nemesis thing for eternity.
MR: I mean I had some huge handicaps to overcome — regional base wasn’t that strong, some folks liked my good looks, others thought I looked too plastic, I honestly rethought some of my core positions and then got hammered for it. Sometimes I thought I just couldn’t get it right. And then there was the Mormon thing.
HF: Can’t help you with the regional question and the looks. On core positions I would have preferred you had been consistent, I really don’t change my mind on things like the sanctity of life and you shouldn’t either, even if it means you have to run in Utah rather than Massachusetts. But about that Mormon thing. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what you had in mind.
MR: I thought I played it about right. I mean I reached out to the Evangelical base but was very clear that I would not compromise on my core convictions or renounce my basic beliefs. But at the end of the day I realized that I just couldn’t come across as “too Mormon.”
HF: Let me cut you off right there Mitt. First off, and this is just some gratuitous advice.
MR: I don’t really consider any of your advice gratuitous.
HF: Whatever, everyone says that, but since so little of my advice is really followed I myself start to consider it mostly gratuitous.
MR: Whatever.
HF: Just for protocol’s sake, I get to use “whatever,” but you don’t.
MR: Right.
HF: Look, first off the Evangelical base is never going to be your ally. I hope you realize that. These people are hard-core. They have been raised on Walter Martin and the Godmakers and a whole series of brutal depictions of your faith.
MR: You mean our faith, don’t you?
HF: After your campaign I’m not so sure. Don’t worry about the Evangelicals. They will never get used to a Mormon in high office, especially since the Left Behind series got everyone all spun up on the devil in high office in the last times scenario. They are not your base. You could have formed a much broader base with people who are open-minded about diversity in beliefs, and who would have appreciated some of the positive distinctives of Mormonism.
MR: I see, so the problem was not that I was too Mormon?
HF: Too Mormon? Is that what you think? Your problem was that you weren’t Mormon enough. I give you universal truths and a compelling way of life and you are concerned that you are going to come across as “too Mormon?” Your friend Stephen R. Covey has made a New York fortune by just playing on his Mormonness, and you were afraid of being too Mormon?
MR: More like a Salt Lake fortune, but he has done well.
HF: New York, Salt Lake, all fortunes look the same from where I sit. The fact is he didn’t shy away from the principles of the gospel, not for a minute.
MR: But he doesn’t promote his Mormonness either. Some of his books don’t even mention the fact that he is LDS.
HF: True that. (Sorry, just got off the line with the Young Men’s leader in Albuquerque, he kept using that phrase). True enough, but he never betrayed the principles of the gospel, just sometimes was less forthcoming about their ultimate source. I am more concerned on a basic level that people know and live the principles, we’ll get around to where they come from later.
MR: And you didn’t think I upheld the principles? Because it was never my intention to betray the core precepts of the gospel. I always upheld. . .
HF: You upheld the letter of the law. You said you would not distance yourself from the organization of the LDS Church, but you did not uphold the principles of the gospel, no.
MR: I’m listening Father.
HF: Yes, well, make yourself comfortable. Let’s start with the issue that is on everyone’s mind — the war. What exactly were you thinking about the Iraq war?
MR: Well, I realize we are in it now whether we like it or not, and have to try to finish it on our terms so that freedom and democracy can survive, and if we are lucky even begin to thrive in these inhospitable places.
HF: All well and good, I have indeed planted in the breasts of all men the desire to live free and yes, democracy is the expression of free men in systematic form. But I also gave you a huge warning through my prophet that you should not confuse democracy as the collective expression of free men with democracy spread at the end of a sword. Brother Hinckley suggested this in the spring of 2003: “We are sometimes prone to glorify the great empires of the past, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and in more recent times, the vast British Empire. But there is a darker side to every one of them. There is a grim and tragic overlay of brutal conquest, of subjugation, of repression, and an astronomical cost in life and treasure.” I want a republic, not an empire to manage the affairs of you feckless mortals. If I wanted an empire I would have established it myself, and run it myself. Articulating this, even without the source, would have stood you well with the voters, who have figured this out themselves. It would have given you a unique position among the Republican lineup, might even have made the difference.
MR: I never imaged. Your people in the Utah Valley always seem so supportive of these pro-war policies, I thought that the field testing we did there meant it was in line with your thinking.
HF: I wouldn’t assume too much from the Utah Valley “street.” Not too much at all. A lot of good people, but my friend Rocky Anderson has it right when he rails against the herd mentality there. And don’t think so narrowly about “my people.” Everyone is running around claiming to be “my people” this and “my people” that. I’ll give you a clue about the “my people” thing. It is more a horizontal than vertical slice of humanity. I any event, I will name my own people if that’s all right.
MRBut this war on terror we are in the middle of. It really is complicated, and fraught with minefields.
HFLiterally and figuratively. I’m well aware of that. But don’t make it worse than it already is. And don’t assume it really is all that different. Early on I laid out my just war doctrine and it applies just as well to the threats you face as those your forefathers faced. Read Doctrine and Covenants 98 and tell me how on earth you get to pre-emptive war from that? My doctrine is strictly that of defensive war.
MR: But weapons of mass destruction. The margin for error is so small. We can’t let these threats evolve, can we?
HF: Look I’m well aware that the nature of warfare is fast changing and you face new threats. Perhaps the “second and third time you lift up a standard of peace to that people” will be less than during full-scale conflict, but it will have to be more than someone’s imagination. You can bring defensive doctrine up to date without abandoning the principle, which you do at your peril, both in terms of your country’s protection, and your success on the campaign trail.
MR: I think I see.
HF: The enemy is stiff, but you of all people should have been able to wade through the confusion and get to ground truth. This is not some business venture where it is a matter of crunching numbers to get to the answer, it is a moral issue.
MR: Uh huh.
HF: Yes, well, while we’re on it. Your position on Guantanamo reeks. Again the American people had figured this out and were closer to the principles I have laid out than what you proposed. Doubling the size of a prison camp that lies decidedly outside the protections of the constitution, or even a general appeal to decency and protection of human dignity? It was more than a little confusing to me why you would betray core principles of the constitution I had written and which generations of Americans have defended with bloodshed. Expediency? Or did you somehow think that the threat from Islamic terrorists nullifies the constitution in a way that the threat from genocidal Nazis or nuclear-armed Russians did not.
MR: We did think this through. But we decided that the threat from these guys was just too great to let them go.
HF: So you abandoned two plus centuries of progress in applying 700 plus years of the principles of protection under just law?
MR: But we didn’t think these principles were universal, just American.
HF: And when I said “that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom, in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me, ” that doesn’t sound universal to you? (D & C 98:5)
MR: But Cofer Black said. . .
HF: Look you want to rely on Cofer Black rely on Cofer Black. I have already said my piece. But when brother McCain hammered you on this in the debates, Cofer Black did you less good than I could have done. Again the American people are way ahead of you, and closer to my position than you and Cofer. You could have really gotten this one right. The principles of the constitution are universal, and you should apply them in a universal framework. Doubling the size of Guantanamo, hardly does that.
MR: Just curious, how many of the debates did you catch?
HF: When dancing with the starts wasn’t on, pretty much all of them. And Hockey Night in Canada, your northern cousins got me hooked on that.
MR: Not sure I want an answer to this, but is there more?
HF: Standard prayer trick. Heavenly Father, please give me an answer to X. You all rarely want an answer, what you want is to feign interest in my will. But yes, there is more. Immigration.
MR: I was afraid of that.
HF: Yeah. Again not an easy issue, I get that. Not only get it, it is the whole point. How you all respond to the daily moral dilemmas in life? That is what it is all about. You could have done better on this one.
MR: But we are talking about people violating the law. Surely you understand our desire to enforce the law. We are a people of laws, and order, we like order, you seem to like order too.
HF: Look who knows so much about what I like. If I really sought order do you honestly think I couldn’t have done a better job with the creation than what you find around you? I like self-arrived order, but there are higher principles than order — generosity, fairness, charity. This isn’t about order, it is about 12 million people that you Americans pretty openly allowed to come into your country through a system that permitted individuals to form a new life with no restrictions. Then having put down roots here, born children, worked to live the dream, you are going to expel them? What exactly was that going to look like? Have you any idea the magnitude of the task of expelling 12 million people from your country. The Czechs did it to the Germans after the Second Great War, it wasn’t pretty. If it could be done, which I doubt, it would have made Guantanamo look like Young Men’s camp. Have you brushed up on the Golden Rule lately?
MR: Yes, of course.
HF: I suggest that on issues of public policy, you never do anything that absolutely violates it. Again McCain was way ahead of you, as was LDS Church policy. Have you ever heard of anyone being “expelled” from the church for being an illegal immigrant? I talk about caring for the widows and orphans, the weak and the disposed. I put in place a program to visit and care for the least among you. I need to tell you that immigrants are part of this? If you had merely followed how the church treats the issue, with a kind of reserved judgment and patience, you would have done better than your self-righteous absolutisms. And again, in following what you perceived to be the will of the religo-rightist herd, you missed the show.
MR: I’m dumbfounded.
HF: Don’t be so downcast. You got a lot of things right. Your portrayal of the family, as you exemplified by your own fine family, spot on. And you spoke freely about the ultimate source and inspiration for the family – not like it is some cosmic accident. Well done.
MR: Thanks for that, they were all a real support for me, at least until I started to spend down their inheritance. But couldn’t ask for more, and I acknowledge you as the source of that realm of goodness in my life.
HF: Then there was the speech you gave on the role of religion in the life of the nation, nicely crafted and as always well-delivered.
MR: Thanks, some of our better work I agree.
HF: But it was the speech you didn’t give that concerns me, on the role of religion in the life of Mitt Romney. What were you afraid of? You missed so many positives by allowing your opponents to control the dialogue. You belong to a global church in the age of globalism. Mormonism is the world’s first truly global tribe and you are in the thick of it. You should have gotten people past the mission in France to articulate what it means to belong to an organization where sitting in a typical LDS congregation you could strike up a conversation in a dozen languages with individuals who know the world from the inside out. People can scoff all they want about the guys running around the world in white shirts and ties, but the fact that they are running around the world is significant. That is your culture.
MR: Indeed.
HF: Your culture is also highly educated, broadly so, in a way that when one gets past the source of the religion, which I deliberately made challenging to trip up the proud among you, yields doctrines and positions that would be more comfortable to more people than the Left Behind brand of Christianity. You don’t believe in a miniscule group of folks going to heaven while everyone else fries. Yours is a doctrine of universal purpose and of a broad-based redemption. In yielding the floor and cozying up to the Evangelicals, avoiding a direct articulation of this, you got defined by things like baptism for the dead, a seemingly bizarre ritual attached to a seemingly bizarre set of beliefs. But is it? The act of reaching out in redemptive grace to all mankind, what is so bizarre about that? Openly talking about these things might have yielded an opportunity to move from the slogan to the reality that underlies it. You also are not locked into certain unsustainable positions in direct contradiction with science. A 6,000 year-old earth is not required belief among your people. Creation and science do not clash for you as they do among many of those you were trying to please. But who would have known that? There are other things that could have resonated, your understanding of my principle of free agency, a vastly more enlightened understanding of human nature that what your companions have, and something that again would have resonated more broadly with more people than the alternative.
MR: This is all very good.
HF: The source of all this, by the way, is a bit difficult to hide. One of the things folks said about you was they thought you were trying to obfuscate. You came across as somehow disingenuous. Which is probably because you were, in fact, disingenuous. You distanced yourself from polygamy, the Abrahamic test of a generation. That generation passed the test, and you felt a need to apologize for it?
MR: But it is such a lightening rod.
HF: Indeed, maybe that is the whole point. My servant Joseph? Also a lightening rod you needed to distance yourself from?
MR: I never spoke out against Joseph.
HF: No, but you never mentioned him either. If you are not embarrassed by him in private why would you be in public? He even got a fair hearing at the Library of Congress recently. It is the very definition of disingenuous to enjoy the fruits of a life that he inspired and then when the big gig comes along you don’t want to mention him.
MR: I am starting to see things more clearly.
HF: Better late than never I suppose. Look, what you ended up with was good management. But the American people are simply not interested in good management right now. They want to be inspired. And they are ready to be inspired from the most unlikely quarters. You had the raw material to inspire them. But you sold out.
MR: I wish I had done this before.
HF: Me too.
MR: Just curious, have you endorsed anyone in the race?
HF: Part of the ultimate executive privilege I enjoy, I get to endorse everyone.
MR: Next time?
HF: Look I’d just as soon we not go through this again if it’s all right with you. I’ve cleared the way for you all to be CEOs, Senators, Generals, Ambassadors, but let’s leave the Presidency to someone else. Let’s keep in touch, though, eh?
MR: Eh?
HF: Sorry, just getting in the mood. Hockey Night in Canada is on. Until later. But do remember, there is no such thing as being too Mormon.

Is this really who Republicans want to represent their party in November?

By the time Congress finishes the latest “emergency” war spending bill, a mere seven years into the emergency, the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will have exceeded $860 billion. For the first time in American history, every penny of that amount will have been borrowed. For the first time, billions more will have been borrowed to finance tax cuts in the midst of war.

Confronting the debt amassed during the Revolutionary War, George Washington was determined to pay it off, warning against “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.” Confronting the enormous costs about to be piled up in Iraq, George Bush determined to press for new tax cuts — not just “little bitty tax relief,” as he put it, but hundreds of billions more.

“This contrast — between an active war effort on one hand and substantial tax cuts on the other — has no precedent in American history,” three tax historians explain in “War and Taxes,” a new book from the Urban Institute. Rather, since the War of 1812, “special taxes have supported every major military conflict in our nation’s history.”

As Steven Bank, Kirk Stark and Joseph Thorndike show, presidents and lawmakers have not always been eager to impose taxes to pay war costs. But historically, Republicans and Democrats alike ultimately acknowledged the necessity — fiscal and moral — of shared sacrifice. “I think the boys in Korea would appreciate it more if we in this country were to pay our own way instead of leaving it for them to pay when they get back,” said House Speaker Sam Rayburn.

Until Iraq, that is. “Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes,” then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay declared in March 2003.

While we may have the richest period in our nation’s history right now, and the cost of this war compared to our GDP is not that much, keep in mind that the price tag for this war is starting to equal the amount that has been needed to fix Social Security. And we all know how much politicians bemoaned spending this level of money to fix a staple program of our society. But we’re this willing to spend it on a war that did not need to be fought, against a nation that really wasn’t that much of a threat to us? History will truly not judge our generation very kindly if we don’t get our act together.

We must be willing to sacrifice NOW, not in the future, for wars we wish to wage. That does actually mean that you have to do one of two things. Either you lower your expenses to cover for the new war, or you raise your taxes to cover for the new war. If you borrow, that means you burden a future generation with the payment of a war they had no ability to choose to make.

The primary season has come to an end and we have a nominee for the Democratic party. Barack Obama has won.

Senator Barack Obama claimed the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday night, prevailing through an epic battle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in a primary campaign that inspired millions of voters from every corner of America to demand change in Washington.

A last-minute rush of Democratic superdelegates, as well as the results from the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota, pushed Mr. Obama over the threshold of winning the 2,118 delegates needed to be nominated at the party’s convention in Denver in August. It was an improbable triumph for Mr. Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and white Kansan mother, who served as an Illinois state senator just four years ago. In giving Mr. Obama the victory, his party broke a racial barrier.

“You chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears, but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations,” Mr. Obama said at a rally in St. Paul. “Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Because of you, tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.”

I’m a rather strong cynic when it comes to domestic politics, but I really do feel hope that a better America is ahead of us. And that may be due more to how low the Bush administration has brought us as a nation, or that Obama’s beliefs, charisma, and character really does make me feel better about the future.

I am glad he took the risk to jump on board now, against the incredible odds of beating Hillary Clinton’s mega-machine. Mrs. Clinton had prepared exactly for 2008 many years ago when she made her move to New York. She wasn’t looking for 2012 or 2016. She knew she had it in 2008. She lost, though, because she voted for the war in Iraq. That is why she did not get my vote. And that is why she did not get a lot of the votes of those who support Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton should have known better in 2002. She should have led then. Mr. Obama is a breath of fresh air to the stifling partisan divisiveness that has engulfed our nation for too long. Mr. Obama does stand for something, and that means that he stands for things that others do not. He is not non-partisan. And we want a good, healthy opposing party to keep the ruling party in check. But we have to remove the nastiness, the “swift-boating” lies and deceit from the political game. They slowly destroy our nation.

With that all said, I look forward to the general election. All virtual cyber-guns aimed at John McCain (though we don’t need to dig too deeply to find ways to show how terrible a candidate he is). I wish Republicans luck, but alas, it might be better if y’all just stayed home, or go on vacation on the first Tuesday in November.

Now, it’s clear from the report that UBS had some exposure on the subprime front. But I wasn’t aware of the true extent of it. TPM Reader KB sends in articles Businessweek and Forbes that show just how big a player UBS was. Forbes says that UBS is among the banks worst hit by the global credit crisis, particularly in their direct exposure to the US subprime market. According to Forbes, UBS has some $37 billion in write-downs on assets tied to bad US mortgages. In other words, the bank’s very life appears to be on the line in how the US government chooses to handle the matter.

As MSNBC reported, UBS deregistered Gramm as a lobbyist for the company on April 18th, though he continues to serve as a vice chairman of the bank. But that was fully a month after McCain’s speech outlining his own approach to the crisis.

Many of the lobbying connections the press has dug up on McCain have been embarassing. But I’m not sure any have really had teeth until this one. After all, how much does the average voter care that Charlie Black represented a lot of foreign dictators? A stench, yes? But finding out that McCain had a major subprime lender bank lobbyist whispering in his ear when McCain told the public that it was basically tough luck if they lost their houses?

Phil Gramm has done much service for the banking sector over his years as a Senator. As the MSNBC article linked above states:

In 1999, Gramm successfully undid the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, removing the decades-old wall between commercial banking, which was heavily regulated, and investment banking, which was not. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act did not extend significant new regulation to investment banking.

The breakdown of this wall between the heavily regulated and fairly safe commercial banking and the investment banking, which was not regulated hardly at all, has led to most of the problems we see today in the multitude of faulty loans given out to home owners.

Some economists fault Gramm’s deregulatory successes, as well as lax enforcement of remaining oversight powers, not just for the subprime mortgage crisis, but for its spread to other sectors of finance. Even Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has expressed interest in toughening regulations.

Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute told the Washington Post, “McCain is counting on people having very short memories and not connecting some pretty obvious dots here.”

Ad this is a very important key to note. There is great power in proper oversight, especially when dealing with money. Phil Gramm had done much to remove many safeguards in the loan industry, and he serves as an economic adviser to McCain. The article ends with the following:

The final UBS form listing Gramm’s work as a lobbyist says he was lobbying the Senate in the second half of 2007 regarding the Helping Families Save Their Homes in Bankruptcy Act. The bill would have let bankruptcy judges rewrite mortgage terms for Americans facing foreclosure so they could repay their loans and keep their homes.

The banking industry opposed this measure. The bill failed.

And guess who suffers? Both the banking industry (Bear Stearns nearly collapsed; Lehman Brothers is not far behind; neither is Morgan Stanley and UBS) and the families that lost their homes.

John McCain pretends to be someone he is not. He is deep in the muck of lobbyists. He is one of their best friends. He has purged FOUR lobbyists already from his campaign, and we haven’t yet gone into the general campaign. Now his economic adviser is discovered to have been working as a lobbyist for UBS while giving McCain advice on the economy. Who’s interest is John McCain seeking more? Should Republicans start considering someone else before their convention? Because this will be tied to McCain quite strongly (especially when the mortgage crisis is such a white hot issue right now) from now until November.

Update:

Here is Keith Olbermann’s report from last night:

It’s late in this Memorial Day observance.  But, I want to say thank you to those who have sacrificed the ultimate sacrifice and also to their families–particularly as many in our armed forces remain in harm’s way.  May God bless, keep and comfort you all.  And may the Spirit of the Prince of Peace bring these horrid wars to an end.  More photos here.

 And that’s when the proverbial fecal matter hit the fan.  The yakkers on the cable news networks all decided this was a suggestion that she’d better stay in the race in case somebody knocks off Obama.  And that Hillary was being insensitive to that risk.  Or that she was actually inviting some nutjob to do the job.

 What a load of crap!  (Apologies for the scatology, but this is ridiculous.)  Sure, Hillary should have said “And we all remember 1968, when things were still not settled after Bobby Kennedy won the California primary in June.”  Which is what I think she meant.  And I’ve never gone out of my way to give her a break–more likely that I’d go out of my way to give her a hip check into the boards, just for fun.

So, why all the “gotcha” nonsense?  Do the talking heads on the cable news programs really think we’re that dumb?  I dunno.  But I have a theory.

 They (the talking heads, pundits, news analysts, etc. etc.) are that dumb. 

 And we ought to rise up and yell back at them and tell them that they’re being idiots.

 (Of course, as to Hillary’s comments:  if she were really saying that she was sticking around so she’d be ready in case some nutjob plugged Barak (I decided to go with the KJV spelling–see Judges 4 and 5), then she’s also nuts.  If for some reason Barak couldn’t continue, couldn’t she revive her campaign and jump right in?  And would the Democrats really have the chutzpah to nominate someone else?)

( Further to her comments:  she could have carried the 1968 reminder a little further, to remind us all how the mess that the party was in during that summer, no nominee agreed on until the convention, and even then a lot of angry people, didn’t really have any negative consequences, with eight years of peace and freedom and love under President Hubert Humphrey.)

I know this is a departure from the election stuff (which could be a good thing, yes?). But I’m a foodie, an environmentalist, and I’m tired of hearing how each presidential contender’s nose twitched.

So for those of you who missed the farm bill drama, it was supposed to be resolved last year, but a number of watchdog groups, environmental groups, consumers, and Michael Pollan fans have been insisting on changes that would help the smaller, more-sustainable, more-local, and more-artisan food businesses. Ideally, the farm bill would stop subsidizing Big Ag and prizing efficiency for its own sake, other virtues be damned (hum, say, competition? entrepreneurialism? maybe even a little sustainability?), but with Big Ag’s lobbying budget vs. the grassroots budget, focusing on gains for the little guys is a smart strategy, IMO.

The bill has finally passed Congress, but Bush has promised a veto because, according to this Grist article, it “lacks meaningful farm program reform and expands the size and scope of government”. Because we all know G.W. Bush as a gov’t program reformer dedicated to reducing the size and scope of government. And it’s likely he has other goals in mind besides greening the nation’s food supply. However, if the farm bill is vetoed and the veto is not overridden, then Congress must address it again next year. If it stands, it won’t be addressed again until 2013. Which prompts the debate amongst the grass-rooters–which scenario is more beneficial? The Grist article has a number of comments debating these points and I, myself, am still undecided about which scenario I’d prefer. Initially I thought the veto would be better, so that the current momentum could build, but some of the comments have made me reconsider.

So I leave that all for you to digest as you may. But, to take a little turn here, when I heard Michael Pollan speak at Abravanel Hall in March (listen to the podcast, it’s great), he commented that food issues and the farm bill are a hugely under-noticed political issue right now and that if politicians were to tune into it, focus on it (in their campaigns??), there would be some pretty surprising results. And changes too, I like to think.

But nobody seems to pay much attention to the farm bill because it’s not sexy. And it’s a little overwhelming trying to get a handle on all the minutiae. And yet, I think it’s probably one of the more significant issues facing our nation because:

1. the mainstream, industrial food system we have is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, including pesticides, fertilizers, refrigeration, and transportation needs. If we really want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we should really take a look at our gluttonous consumption of it in our food production.

2. the mainstream, industrial food system is a huge environmental liability because of fuel consumption, environmental damage from feedlots (including putrid cesspools of waste and overuse of antibiotics), environmental damage from soil erosion and reduction of soil fertility (overuse of pesticides and fertilizers, creation of marine ‘dead zones’), and serious reduction of animal and crop diversity, to name just a few

3. What little competition in the market is dwindling as big corporations take over and consolidate, a bona fide oligopoly near completion. These are the Wal-Marts of our food supply and are similarly squeezing local competition and local wealth, to say nothing of those business trying to eke out a living in sustainable agriculture. Any economist will tell you that this only creates more wealth for the wealthy and less wealth for the less-wealthy. The Wal-Mart effect.

4. this crazy, over-processed diet we get handed to us (because it makes money for Big Ag) is also really helping Big Pharma and costing the taxpayers millions in healthcare costs–whether by subsidizing increased Medicare etc. costs because of more need for treatment, you paying for treatment out of your pocket, an exponentially increasing market (and cost) in drugs to cope with diet-related disease, and increased insurance premiums (again, more need for treatment). And ditto the oligopoly argument for Big Pharma.

These are significant issues. There are others. But the farm bill just seems to be off most people’s radar. And I wonder, what would it take to reach the critical mass of people clamoring for better management of it, at the very least in a way that actually helps family farmers instead of Big Ag? How do we get this issue on the radar?