GOP Farm Bill Obstruction Could Defund 90 % Of Dept Of Agriculture

[Ladyhawke1]

FROM THINK PROGRESS:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/20...fund-90-percent-of-department-of-agriculture/



Economy

GOP Farm Bill Obstruction Could Defund 90 Percent Of Department Of Agriculture

By Zack Beauchamp posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Sep 15, 2012 at 10:42 am


The 2012 Farm Bill is still languishing in the House, with GOP leadership in the chamber intentionally preventing action on the legislation for political reasons. According to the New York Times, House leaders declined to take up either [the Senate or the House] version of the legislation. They are not eager to force their members to take a vote that would be difficult for some of them, nor would they wish to pass a measure largely with Democrats votes right before an election.

But without a new five-year Farm Bill or at least a temporary extension of current legislation, the Department of Agriculture may be forced to shutter almost all of its operations.

The Farm Bill serves as a mass funding mechanism for the USDA it provides funding for roughly 90 percent of the Departments operations, meaning those operations may have to shut down if the Farm Bill isnt renewed. According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Commission, the effect of even a temporary shutdown could be long-lasting:


USDA would be forced to occupy a multiple-month holding pattern, temporarily stopping many services and programs. Program administration involves a certain amount of planning and preparation, stakeholder input, rulemaking, and outreach. Even if program opportunities arent announced until later in the year, the preparation work that leads up to announcements takes time and certainty. Programs cant simply be turned off and then turned on again with the expectation that program delivery and administration will not suffer.

The programs that the NSAC believe would be affected include all the major programs for beginning and minority farmers, farmers markets, organic agriculture, renewable energy, and rural economic development and new enrollment in the the Wetland Reserve, Grassland Reserve, and Conservation Reserve Programs. USDA programs funded by the Farm Bill are critical to addressing the crippling drought that has spread over four-fifths of the United States. The USDA also takes a lead role in shutting down brutal factory farms and administers the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), a cost-effective food assistance program for needy families.

This isnt to say that the House bill is necessarily worth passing in its current form the House version contains, among other things, deep cuts to critical food stamp programs. But failure to pass at least a stopgap necessary to keep USDA could have dangerous consequences.

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Now is the chance for all of you who are concerned with these issues to contact your Congress persons and get this bill passed. Congress has gone on another five week vacation. Who are they serving? What is more American than FARMING and the ability of farmers to help feed this nation?

 

[catjac1975]

What is wrong with them?

 

[897tgigvib]

The USDA has always been a toy that politicians play with. Because it has been batted around like a toy before, poliuticians all think it is ok to bat it around some more, both parties.

The USDA is a prime example of some of the things GEORGE WASHINGTON spoke about in his FAREWELL ADDRESS. Divisiveness of political parties ruins things. I'm pretty sure he was opposed to there being political parties at all in this country. That may be different than what some folks think about the first president, but I think I have a grip of his ideas, and how they evolved during his life. There was a whisky rebellion many forget about, and that did affect how things are today.

 

[Ladyhawke1]

Yes! I could use a whiskey about now!

Many people do not get it. The government is us. We own it!

It is a structure like a hammer. It can be used to build or to destroy. It just depends on who is running it! Those who work against the peoples best interests, like feeding ALL OF US, no matter what our situations are, because that is what you do in a civilized country, and if they are not doing the job that they were elected to do.then we change it. WE do not tear it down.

It has taken us at least two hundred to build this governments infrastructure. The US Government was created as the peoples delivery system. It was built to give things and not to take things away. It delivers our laws, it delivers our safety, it builds our roads and schools by using our taxes. If it is not doing what it is supposed to do, then the people of this country must speak out to the leaders who are running our country. There is more than just one man running this show.

Ask yourself, are our government officials, are they doing what is best for us? Only you can answer that for yourselves. If politicians (elected officials) choose to ignore our requests.then next we make our demands. There are many legal avenues for this instead of complaining and throwing untruthful and insulting remarks at our national leaders.

If the welfare of the people of this country is then not attended to, and still ignored, then eventually there will be a reckoning. People are the same all over the world. As history has shown us, rebellion has happened before and it will happen again. It has not only happened in other countries before but it will happen again right here in river city. If recompense is not attended to then it surely will happen again. The pendulum of time and justice is about to swing back. It always does.

 

[Smiles Jr.]

All I had to do was to read "By Zack Beauchamp posted from ThinkProgress Economy" and I knew it would be full of propaganda and lies. The Progressives are up to no good as usual.

 

[thistlebloom]

All I had to do was to read "By Zack Beauchamp posted from ThinkProgress Economy" and I knew it would be full of propaganda and lies. The Progressives are up to no good as usual.

You got that right Smiles.

 

[Collector]

All I had to do was to read "By Zack Beauchamp posted from ThinkProgress Economy" and I knew it would be full of propaganda and lies. The Progressives are up to no good as usual.

You got that right Smiles.

I agree!

 

[dickiebird]

Smiles is 100% correct!!!!

THANX RICH

 

[Ladyhawke1]

All I had to do was to read "By Zack Beauchamp posted from ThinkProgress Economy" and I knew it would be full of propaganda and lies. The Progressives are up to no good as usual.

Wow! I am not quite sure what you mean, however, no one could ever accuse you of the following.

Critical thinking is a type of reasonable, reflective thinking that is aimed at deciding what to believe or what to do.[1] It is a way of deciding whether a claim is always true, sometimes true, partly true, or false. Critical thinking can be traced in Western thought to the Socratic method of Ancient Greece and in the East, to the Buddhist kalama sutta and Abhidharma. Critical thinking is an important component of most professions. It is a part of the formal education process and is increasingly significant as students progress through university to graduate educationCritical thinking clarifies goals, examines assumptions, discerns hidden values, evaluates evidence, accomplishes actions, and assesses conclusions. Wikipedia


"Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - JOHN F. KENNEDY

"Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used." - Carl Sagan

Reason obeys itself: ignorance submits to what is dictated to it." - Thomas Paine

The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions. George Carlin

 

[897tgigvib]

Wellp. I should add a few things to think about.

I've never heard of a conservative education. but a good liberal education is one that teaches lots of things, and pours the knowledge liberally.

What is the opposite of progressivism? Digressivism? Regressivism? I would think that maybe we humans should regress to about 240,000 years ago if we are going to regress at all, because from around then, history has been a strange mix of good and bad. It leads to these days where we don't know for sure if our ways should be progress or regress. One or the other. Both is sure not working. So much tension and divisiveness in the world these days. Like a lot of bombs, with thousands of hands on the ignition trigger. Progress. Regress. Good. Bad. Which is which I don't know, but this I have seen: Those who want power the most are the same ones who should be allowed the least to have power. But that's not the way things go. The power hungry ones have the power, all the way from some little shift manager in a cafe, to the biggest nations, and all levels between.

As far as the USDA goes, all the powerful ones in charge only play with it.

There is another concept to consider:
Us thinking humans, that'd be most all of us, think we know things. It almost always turns out that what we think is a comfortable tale. The simplest cause and effect sets is what we think in. In fact, it is a philosophical thing we are supposed to do. Expected to. If we say all the causes for all the effects that are actually true, without simplifying, nobody would understand it, or get it. So we don't even try. We don't raise our children to try to do that. Nobody does.

Power hungry people use that thing about humans, among many other things, to grasp their power. They give us fallacies to believe. I don't think my cats do that. Most dogs don't either. Maybe some exceptions with dogs that imitate their person's ways might include a dog that protects a bad person, or even a good person, able to tell a person very different or opposed to their own person. Do we humans do that too? Yes. Look at WWII in europe. The situation in Syria. Those are extremes for example only. The USDA has some good things about it and some bad things about it, and it is not the fault of the folks in it. Course, the big cheeses hire folks who feel the way they do, then another party comes to power, or another congress, and it gets new big cheeses with different ideas. Then a new belt tightening program comes along, ad nauseum.

Resources are too thin to be able to afford the divisions and separations of wealth anymore, but those who have wealth have the power to propagandize the masses. That, is what will happen in the USDA. What the wealthy and powerful want, the direction they want it to go, so it will go.

Marshall Hugh Smyth

Editting for spelling and tyops, but not fixing all the forgot to capitalize letters...