Agri-bureaucrats confer, you pay

Instapundit:

$57K TO SEND ONE BUREAUCRAT TO A CONFERENCE ACROSS TOWN?

Imagine life without a farm bill

The Washington Post, of all sources, questions the urgency behind Congress's 10 trillion dollar farm bill.   

Why farmers, alone among all businessmen, should be entitled to a nearly guaranteed income is especially inexplicable when total U.S. farm equity is projected to $2.3 trillion this year, up $500 billion since 2008, according to the Agriculture Department.

Here at South of 5 and 20 Industries, LLC, we support a guaranteed annual income for bloggers, and will endorse and support any politician who makes that vital cause a national priority.

Organic fad meets reality

White House organic garden

Organic foods: trendy, politically correct, more expensive, and no nutritional advantage.

Yet "there isn't much difference between organic and conventional foods, if you're an adult and making a decision based solely on your health," said Dena Bravata, senior author of the paper and a physician at Stanford's Center for Health Policy.

The data don't fit well with consumers' stated motivations for buying organic foods. A 2010 Nielsen study found that 76% bought them believing they are healthier, 53% because they allowed them to avoid pesticides and other toxins, 51% because they are more nutritious and 49% because organic farming is better for the environment.

September in the Finger Lakes

Sunday afternoon.  Click pic for larger image.

Holder - Corzine connection explains lack of prosecution

Wondering why former Goldman Sachs honcho, former New Jersey governor, former frontrunner for Obama's secretary of treasury, former Obama fundraiser, and disgraced MF Global financial scam artist Jon Corzine seems to have evaded the long arm of the law?

Those wondering why the Department of Justice has refused to go after Jon Corzine for the vaporization of $1.6 billion in MF Global client funds need look no further than the documents uncovered by the Government Accountability Institute that reveal that the now-defunct MF Global was a client of Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s former law firm, Covington & Burling.

Also providing cover for Corzine may be former FBI director Louis Freeh, recently of the Penn State scandal report.

...the trustee overseeing MF Global’s bankruptcy is former FBI Director Louis Freeh. During Mr. Holder’s 2009 Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Freeh appeared as a witness testifying on Mr. Holder’s behalf. While Mr. Freeh stated that the two men shared no “social relationship,” the former FBI director praised the legal work Mr. Holder did for him when Mr. Freeh, then the general counsel for MBNA Bank in Wilmington, Del., retained Mr. Holder to represent MBNA Bank. “As general counsel, I could have engaged any lawyer in America to represent our bank,” Mr. Freeh said. “I chose Eric.”

Are your friends and neighbors discussing the Corzine/Obama/Holder/Freeh cabal?  Are they even aware of the MF Global scandal?  Why not?  Many of Corzine's victimized investors are farmers, just like ours here in the Finger Lakes.  And farmer or not, all of us will pass on Obama's debt to our future generations.

Fighting food facism

Glenn Reynolds quotes James Lileks on Michael "Mikey Donuts" Bloomberg:

A culture that redefines food choices as moral issues will demonize the people who don’t share the tastes of the priest class. A culture that elevates eating to some holistic act of ethical self-definition - localvore, low-carbon-impact food, fair trade, artisanal cheese - will find the casual carefree choices of the less-enlightened as an affront to their belief system. Leave it to Americans to invent a Puritan strain of Epicurianism.

We've had enough of the food fascists ourselves, and so has Professor Reynolds:

Let me be clear. These people are not well-meaning do-gooders who have just gone a bit too far. They don’t actually “mean well” at all. They don’t mean well, they mean to be in control. They are power-fetishists, drunk on the joys of bossing the little people around. They are not good people. They are evil. They should be ashamed of themselves, but shame — like taxes — is for the little people.

They don't like you.

Eating judgmentally

"Food you feel good about"

Finger Lakes residents, perhaps more than any other Americans, are constantly harassed by our elites:  "spend three times as much to buy organic food, or you're no better than Bush!"   While we're usually too polite to question our neighbors' religious beliefs, Diane Mapes has the cojones to ask the question:  "Does organic food turn people into jerks?"

Renate Raymond has encountered her fair share of organic food snobs, but a recent trip to a Seattle market left her feeling like she'd stumbled onto the set of "Portlandia."

"I stopped at a market to get a fruit platter for a movie night with friends but I couldn't find one so I asked the produce guy," says the 40-year-old arts administrator from Seattle. "And he was like, 'If you want fruit platters, go to Safeway. We're organic.' I finally bought a small cake and some strawberries and then at the check stand, the guy was like 'You didn't bring your own bag? I need to charge you if you didn't bring your own bag.' It was like a 'Portlandia skit.' They were so snotty and arrogant."

To see if Raymond is just a crank, or might be on to something, Mapes asked a scientist.

"There's a line of research showing that when people can pat themselves on the back for their moral behavior, they can become self-righteous," says author Kendall Eskine, assistant professor of  the department of psychological sciences at Loyola University in New Orleans. "I've noticed a lot of organic foods are marketed with moral terminology, like Honest Tea, and wondered if you exposed people to organic food, if it would make them pat themselves on the back for their moral and environmental choices. I wondered if  they would be more altruistic or not."

If you're not already singing harmony, and we suspect you are, read the whole thing.

h/t Museum Guy.

5/21 update -  Rush Limbaugh piles on: 

 Which Came First, the Jerk or the Diet?

Is the chicken local?

"His name was Colin."

h/t Dr. Joy Bliss

Fill 'er up!

Could the answer to our decades long "energy crisis" be domestically produced coal, oil and natural gas?  A shocking hypothesis from Michael Lind in, of all places, Salon, is sure to get the left's hemp panties in a wad. 

What if the conventional wisdom about the energy future of America and the world has been completely wrong?

As everyone who follows news about energy knows by now, in the last decade the technique of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," long used in the oil industry, has evolved to permit energy companies to access reserves of previously-unrecoverable “shale gas” or unconventional natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, these advances mean there is at least six times as much recoverable natural gas today as there was a decade ago.

Natural gas, which emits less carbon dioxide than coal, can be used in both electricity generation and as a fuel for automobiles.

The implications for energy security are startling.

In Lind's view, the Finger Lakes' ubiquitous voluntary peasants may soon be sent to the political locker room for a long delayed shower.

The renewable energy movement is not the only campaign that will be marginalized in the future by the global abundance of fossil fuels produced by advancing technology. Champions of small-scale organic farming can no longer claim that shortages of fossil fuel feedstocks will force a return to pre-industrial agriculture.

Economy of scale

Organic produce kills 13

E. coli bacteria

The death toll from an E. coli bacteria outbreak in Germany has risen to at least 13, per this morning's New York Times.

The health authorities in Europe stepped up efforts on Monday to halt a deadly outbreak of a virulent form of E. coli bacteria in cucumbers as a dispute broke out between Spain and Germany over the source of the illness.

The federal and state authorities in Germany — where effects are by far most severe — said the death toll climbed to 13 by Monday, from 10 on Sunday, in one of the largest outbreaks its kind reported worldwide.

Not mentioned in the Times article is that the source of the deadly infection has been identified as organic produce from Spain.  If we read all the way through this CNN report, in the tenth paragraph we learn:

The European Food Safety Alert Network said EHEC, or enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli, a strain of E. coli that causes hemorrhage in the intestines, was found in organic cucumbers originating from Spain, packaged in Germany, and distributed to countries including Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg and Spain.

These seems to be a pattern of E. coli outbreaks originating with expensive, trendy "organic" produce.  If consumers chose to pay the price and take the risk with organics, we wish them the best of luck.  However, whether you like it or not, the FDA is using your tax dollars to subsidze the conversion of US agriculture to "organic practices."  For instance, we still have time to apply this $3,750,000 grant.

The overall goal of the Organic Transitions Program (ORG) is to support the development and implementation of research, extension and higher education programs to improve the competitiveness of organic livestock and crop producers, as well as those who are adopting organic practices. In FY 2011, ORG will focus on environmental services provided by organic farming systems that support soil conservation and contribute to climate change mitigation. Practices and systems to be addressed include those associated with organic crops, organic animal production (including dairy), and organic systems integrating plant and animal production.

Bold added.  Left to be understood is why taxpayers are being forced to subsidize the admittedly uncompetitive, risky, boutique organic industry.  Perhaps our esteemed readers can provide insight?