Category Archives: Agriculture

The Weekend in Review

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Most of the internet news today revolves around two subjects—the continuing catastrophe of Obamacare, more and more people lose their coverage, and the latest book about Chris Christie when he was being vetted for Veep by Romney in 2012.

Both of these stories are significant. However I like to explore outside the headline news if I can. While performing that search this morning, what did I find?  The U. S. Navy has a new ship today—the USS North Dakota, a Virginia Class nuclear attack sub.

Navy christens attack submarine North Dakota

Posted: Nov 02, 2013 11:17 AM CDT Updated: Nov 02, 2013 11:17 AM CDT

GROTON, Conn. (AP) – The U.S. Navy has christened its newest attack submarine, a $2.6 billion vessel that can launch cruise missiles, deliver special forces commandos and carry out surveillance over areas at land and sea.

It is the first Navy vessel to carry the name North Dakota in nearly a century. Saturday’s christening coincides with the 124th anniversary of North Dakota becoming the 39th state of the Union.

With the smash of a champagne bottle against its hull, the 377-foot-long nuclear submarine was officially named North Dakota at the Groton shipyard of sub builder Electric Boat. It will become USS North Dakota and officially join the fleet when it is commissioned in May.

The submarine is the 11th in the Virginia class of ships, which have capabilities that allow them to perform better in shallow water than other subs.

It is significant that we have this new submarine. China is expanding their deep-water navy at a furious pace and adding more nuclear subs with missile capability at a time Obama continues to emasculate our military.

On the political sidelines today are two stories about Rove and McConnell attacking fellow ‘Pubs while supporting democrats. In one article from the American Spectator, Mark Levin accuses Karl Rove of supporting democrat McAulliife against Virginia Atty General Ken Cuccinnelli.

Levin: RINO’s, Rove, Push For McAuliffe Win

By on 11.4.13 @ 10:09AM

Leave it to Mark Levin to say exactly what many conservatives have believed but not said.

The RINO wing of the GOP — and Karl Rove specifically — do not want a Ken Cuccinnelli victory in Virginia.

In this corner we have believed this for some time. In its own way this reminds of the 1980 presidential race. The RINO in question than was one of Ronald Reagan’s GOP primary opponents — Illinois Congressman John Anderson. Anderson lost resoundingly to Reagan in the primaries, but as usual picked up a core of fans in the liberal media.

With Reagan now the nominee — and with Establishment Republicans like ex-President Gerald Ford having gone on record to insist Reagan was too “extreme” to ever win a national election — Anderson refused to support Reagan. Instead, he set out to make the claim that Reagan couldn’t win a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anderson decided to run for president in the fall election as a third party candidate, a deliberate attempt to sabotage Reagan. The bid failed, Reagan won in a 44-state landslide, humiliating both incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter and Anderson.

But the message was delivered. Establishment Republicans demand party unity — unless they lose to a conservative. Ken Cuccinelli — the man who led the fight against Obamacare — is now gaining rapidly on Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race, in no small part because Virginia voters are losing their health insurance because of Obamacare.

I could go on here – and on and on. But Mark Levin has done such a superb job of making this case that I thought this Monday before the Virginia election he should speak for himself here.

So below, Levin on the RINOs, Rove and what is really going on in Virginia:

The RINOs want a Terry McAuliffe victory in Virginia.

Many in the GOP establishment, from major fundraisers and consultants, to GOP officeholders such as the GOP Lt. Gov and mayor of Virginia Beach, have either trashed Attorney General Ken Cuccinnelli or endorsed McAuliffe outright. The GOP national machine has done next to nothing for Cuccinnelli. And GOP bag man, Karl Rove, is all over Fox without a word of support for Cuccinnelli, while he schemes and whispers behind the scenes against conservatives nationwide.

Having tried to sabotage Cuccinnelli’s candidacy from the start, these GOP actors are hoping for a Cuccinnelli loss and a big Chris Christie win (built on a Huey Long style of politics) to make the case that only big government Republicans can win and limited government, constitutional conservatives, such as Tea Party activists, are too extreme to prevail. They’ve already written the script.

In fact, the GOP establishment’s attacks on the Tea Party, which is an obvious assault on conservatives and conservatism generally, are increasingly difficult to distinguish from Obama and the Left’s attacks on the same folks. The ruling class in Washington is clearly united in one respect: to wipe out conservative resistance to their corruption, cronyism, and nation-killing policies.

Keep an eye on RINO columnists like Washington Compost mouthpiece Jennifer Rubin, as well as Rove and other commentators on cable TV, who have and will continue to reveal it all through their myopic ruling class lenses in the days ahead. As I said, their propaganda is written and ready to spread. And they’ll be given soap box after soap box to spin away. 

Meanwhile, despite it all, including tens of millions of dollars in relentless leftwing smear ads funded by truly extreme groups hoping to beat Cuccinnelli and turn Virginia into Hillary Clinton territory in 2016, much of the big GOP money stays on the sidelines. Better to try to clear the field of conservatives who threaten the ruling class and its preferred nominees. Better to protect the RINO investment in big government than beat Hillary. The conservative grassroots is to be crushed and dispirited.

So, that’s the game. Still, recent polls show Cuccinnelli closing fast. This makes the Left and RINOs very nervous. The rest of us are cheering, and hopefully helping, the underdog. We identify with him, not the sleazy McAuliffe, his radical donors, and the ruling class. We won’t retreat. We won’t give up. We will fight for the last vote. What a sweet victory it would be! But make no mistake, this is one of many, many battles to come, win, lose, or recount.

What these people will never understand is that for most of us this isn’t about politics per se but preserving what’s left of our society, Constitution, and individual free will. It is about our families and our way of life. It is about who we are as Americans. We are not surrendering to this because we will not sit quietly while the ruling class continues to destroy our nation. We fight against growing oppression as many did before us. And we will fight like hell through the constitutional process. We will continue to learn, we will take names, and we will battle these people and groups at every turn, and in every election. We are not going anywhere.

And as the ruling class catastrophe continues to unfold, as with Obamacare, the monstrous debt, and suffocating regulations, and with the cycle of unsustainable spending and confiscatory taxing, the coerciveness of the ruling class and its federal agencies will only intensify. There will be a commensurate backlash.

The sleeping giant that is the American people is only beginning to awaken. It is only a matter of time until more people are roused to join this all important constitutional fight. We fight to hold Virginia today and we fight on thereafter.

There is another article, via this link, that reports the same events—Rove and establishment ‘Pubs supporting democrat McAuliffe.

The other story is how McConnell, and others, are attacking the Senate Conservative Fund, created by Jim DeMint, using the same tactics democrats used, and failed, against Rush Limbaugh.

Mitch McConnell Embraces the Anti-Rush Limbaugh Playbook

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  November 4th, 2013 at 03:30 AM

For the last year, the left has engaged in an organized campaign to drive Rush Limbaugh off the air. Knowing they cannot go after Rush Limbaugh directly, the left has launched repeated boycotts against any advertisers who dare advertise while Rush Limbaugh is on. Consequently, some advertisers decided to stop advertising at all on political talk radio, depriving the genre as a whole of resources.

And it still hasn’t hurt Rush Limbaugh.

Mitch McConnell has decided to embrace the same strategy in his war against the Senate Conservatives Fund. He can’t attack the Jim DeMint created Senate Conservatives Fund outright, so instead he will launch an all out war against anyone who does business with the Senate Conservatives Fund.

This story, from the New York Times, is intriguing. McConnell has demanded, via the National Republican Senatorial Committee, that anyone who wants GOP support stop hiring Jamestown Associates. The organization is used by a number of Republican elected leaders and candidates. In fact, Senator Ted Cruz uses Jamestown Associates. So does Governor Chris Christie. For that matter, Senators Marco Rubio, Roy Blunt, Mark Kirk, Dan Coats, and Pat Toomey have all benefited from Jamestown Associates. Outside groups hired Jamestown Associates to make independent expenditures on behalf of those Senators. [edit: JA did not directly work for those Senators, but handled independent expenditures on their behalf]

But McConnell is perfectly happy destroying a private company his Senate Republican colleagues use because Jamestown Associates also helps the Senate Conservatives Fund. And the Senate Conservatives Fund just endorsed Matt Bevin against Mitch McConnell.

McConnell would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. He’d rather be minority leader, than have a Republican Senate majority without him. Updated: From the comments by Darin H: “Apparently McConnell would rather serve in Hell than even bother with Heaven.”

It’s all the sadder still in that McConnell worked against Ted Cruz’s effort to defund Obamacare. 280,000 Kentuckians are losing their insurance. But McConnell would rather drive a private enterprise out of business than fight for those Kentuckians losing their health insurance. If only McConnell had put as much energy into stopping Obamacare as he has stopping a business that does work with the Senate Conservatives Fund.

Outside observers have listed the Kentucky Senate race as a toss up. It does not lean McConnell’s way. This is very important to note. This is very important to understand. The polling in the race is terrible for McConnell. Charitably it breaks even against an empty suit of a Democrat. McConnell has already spent over $6 million. He is the weakest Republican incumbent up for re-election in 2014. Were it another Senator, McConnell would be pressuring him to retire.

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Mitch McConnell is the thug in the bar who controls through intimidation. He badgers, bullies, threatens, and cajoles others into giving him his way. Because of his position, most yield to his intimidation. And when others do not yield, he goes after their associates.

But there is a new paradigm of empowered grassroots activists at work. They are not intimidated. They will not be silenced. They do not fear McConnell. They hate him and want him out of office. McConnell has always relied on an alliance of staffers who’ve moved to K Street to get rich. He gives them access, they make lots of money, then they return money to his campaign coffers. It is a loyalty that extends to a lobbyist class now attacking the Senate Conservatives Fund because their gravy train may be ending. But it is a loyalty that does not exist at the grassroots level within the conservative movement or even Kentucky.

The only tactic McConnell can respond with is driving private businesses into the ground if they dare help those opposed to him — no matter who else they help. Senate Republicans and challengers in the races to be decided next year need to understand the bottom line here — Mitch McConnell is making it the NRSC’s job preservation of Mitch McConnell, damn the rest of the candidates. Don’t believe me? Where are the other groups the NRSC is blackballing? Right now, the only ones being blackballed are the ones who are on the opposite side of Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.

There’s more at the Red State website. Go here to read the entire article. McConnell, like fellow RINO senator, Roy Blunt, must go.

In closing today, here’s a tidbit on what capitalism can do if left alone by government and regulation.

Audacious wildcatters trigger fracking revolution

By MICHAEL BARONE | NOVEMBER 1, 2013 AT 6:00 PM

Capitalism, said economist Joseph Schumpeter seven decades ago, is a process of creative destruction. New inventions, new processes, new methods of organization lead to the creation of new profitable and efficient businesses and to the destruction of old ones unable to compete.

There are few accounts of the creative side of Schumpeter’s phrase more vivid than Fracking: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, a new book by Wall Street Journal writer Gregory Zuckerman.

For years politicians, policy experts and corporate executives have tried to reshape American energy policy and development. They have operated on a series of assumptions seemingly based on experience and logic.

One is that oil and gas production in the United States was inevitably in decline. Another is that we can move toward energy independence by increasing use of renewables like wind and solar energy.

Those assumptions seem to have been refuted in the course of this young century by a group of audacious outsiders who have made great fortunes — and in some cases lost them.

The Frackers tells their story. It tells the story of George Mitchell, son of a Greek immigrant, who was convinced that hydraulic fracturing — fracking — could bring in vast amounts of natural gas from the Barnett Shale in north Texas.

It tells the story of Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward, whose Chesapeake firm bought mineral leases atop vast shale deposits, becoming America’s No. 2 gas producer but overexpanding disastrously.

It tells the story of Harold Hamm, a sharecropper’s son who rose from picking cotton to a $12 billion fortune by prying oil out of the Bakken shale of North Dakota.

And it tells the story of Charif Souki, Lebanese immigrant and proprietor of the Los Angeles restaurant where Nicole Simpson ate and Ronald Goldman served their last meals, who charmed others into financing a liquid natural gas export terminal in Louisiana.

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Go, follow the link above and see what some entrepreneurs and capitalist are doing—in spite of government and the EPA.

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A review of the failed farm bill

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I was reading about the under-the-table tactics used to pass the House farm bill. Why, specifically, the usual tactic of ‘logrolling’ didn’t work as it has before. The best explanation comes from this quote.

The failure of the farm-bill charade, even if a temporary setback for the big spenders, is encouraging. Some 62 Republicans were willing to buck their leadership and reject business as usual, which must change. House leaders can start by coming back with two bills to be considered individually on their own merits. — The Washington Times.

Another problem is that some members of the House Agriculture committee have conflicts of interest. Some of those committee members, like our own Vicky Hartzler (R, MO-4), have family farms that would directly benefit from the crop subsidies. In any other endeavor, such a conflict would bar her from being a member on the committee.  But…we’re talking government, here, where peonage and corruption afflicts both parties equally.

The Washington Times article does point out one interesting facet of the maneuvering to pass the bill. Old, well used and familiar tactics failed.

The blame for out-of-control federal spending belongs mostly on logrolling, the practice of congressmen trading positions on controversial issues to pass a bill. Sometimes it doesn’t work. The farm bill crashed Thursday in the House by 195 votes for, 234 against.

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Other than the fact that farmers grow food, it doesn’t make sense to have food stamps and related welfare programs lumped in with, for example, dairy subsidies. Rep. Marlin Stutzman, Indiana Republican and a fourth-generation farmer, tried unsuccessfully to sever the two components into separate bills, where each could get the legislative scrutiny it deserves.

Mr. Stutzman made his case to the House Rules Committee on Tuesday. “The American people deserve an open and honest debate about farm and nutrition policy in this country,” said the congressman. “The only way that will happen is if we separate farm policy from nutrition policy.”

The panel decided not to let the House vote whether to divide the bill, as the pairing of the farm and food stamp bills was thought to be the key to final passage. Republicans from rural districts would vote for the farm subsidies to benefit their constituents, and liberal Democrats would vote for more food stamps. Logrolling requires maintaining spending high to keep both sides happy, which is a very bad thing for the taxpayers who pay for the compromise, usually through the nose. — The Washington Times.

So the Ag Committee relied on ‘business-as-usual’ to pass the bloated monstrosity. They failed to consider the opposition of the real ‘Pub conservatives and of the rabid “Spend! Spend! Spend!” dems who want to bribe constituents to continue to vote for their party. Whether the committee members passed a bill that would line their own pockets or if they voted to pass a bill to continue and expand welfare dependency, none of the committee members had the best interest of the country in mind.

We can thank those 62 ‘Pub conservatives who were willing to buck their party leadership for the failure of this piece of legislative trash.

Good on ya!

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CARE: Children’s Act for Responsible Employment

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The libs are attacking the family farm once again.  CARE, or the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment, HR 2234, sponsored by democrat Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34), is an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. That 1938 law limited child labor to those fourteen years of ago or older. Agriculture, however, was exempted.

This exemption allowed the children of farmers to work on the farms, to learn the skills needed to operate the farms, and to learn how to be farmers and later inherit and continue farming successfully.  The libs are outraged.

The libs claim that the exemption allows children to work long hours, in hazardous conditions among toxic chemicals.  All that is true. Farming is not clean, farm animals product large amounts of non-sanitary wastes, fertilizers, like ammonia nitrate, are toxic, and operating farm equipment can be dangerous.

Yes, farming is dangerous and always has been.  When I was growing up I was plowing a field and hit a pipeline. The presence of that pipeline was not known. There were no records of it but there is was.  When I hit that pipeline I was thrown off the tractor.  If the tractor’s engine hadn’t died on impact, it would have run over me.  There was nothing that could have prevented the mis-hap.  A neighbor down the road from us was killed when his tractor, on a hillside, rolled over on top of him.  Another neighbor was thrown off his tractor and was severely injured.  Farming is not safe.

What makes farming safer is teaching children how to farm safely at an early age until it becomes second nature.  The CARE bill, ignores all of these factors. They want to impose an age limit of 16 to prohibit farm children working on the family farm…with one exception.

That exception negates all their liberal arguments.  The exception is that children can work farms owned by their immediate families, i.e., their fathers and mothers.  It prohibits the children from working any other farms. No working for their grandparents, no working on farms owned by aunts and uncles, nor farms owned by cousins or neighbors.

If the danger and working conditions is so severe, why the exemption.  The danger and conditions are what they are and are no less for the farms of the immediate family that it is for others.

One reason for this bill, if you look at some of the so-called farm labor forums, is an indirect attempt to unionize the family farm.  If children do not learn the skills needed to farm, those skills must be hired. 

The great failing of this bill is that it’s been written by those who have no real knowledge of farming.  It is based on hearsay and anecdotes.  The proponents claim that 100 farm kids are killed every year.  That may be true. But how does those numbers compare with the number of deaths in auto accidents?  Far, far less I believe.

If the libs were truly outraged by the death rate why don’t they address the issue of auto deaths?  Perhaps because they would lose their supporters?  Why not one and not the other?  Politics.

The reality of this bill is that it is another attempt to impose the nanny state and expand governmental control over our lives.  I grew up on a farm. I know well the dangers involved in farming.  Technology and engineering has reduced some of the day-to-day risks of farming but not all.  Agriculture is too important to the survival of our nation to be left in the hands of idiots with an agenda.