Cheney and the Post, Part 2

Earlier in the week, I wrote about a series of articles appearing in the Washington Post regarding Vice President Cheney and his unprecedented role in the Bush Administration. In that post, I linked the first three stories from the series. Now, the fourth is available. Again, I strongly recommend it as a nice -- although juxtaposing "nice" and "Cheney" is absurd -- recap of events, accurately tying together the shady deals, the scandals, and simply the nation-destroying policy initiatives.

29 June 2007

When Iraq = Israel

President Bush recently held out Israel as the benchmark for Iraq going forward, indicating that Israel’s dealing with terrorism while remaining a functioning democracy would make an ideal role model for Iraq. I know that most of you are frantically rubbing your eyes right now in an effort to clear what you are certain is a caffeine-deprived fog. “He couldn’t have actually written what I just read,” you are saying. Unfortunately, yes I wrote it and yes, he said it. That is right folks, the President of the United States just made things much, much worse in terms our standing in the Islamic world with but a few sentences. I can only imagine how the US “wanting to turn Islamic Iraq into Jewish Israel” is being repeated over and over and over throughout the Islamic world.

Next up for Bush, the President gives campaign tips to the Republican presidential hopefuls. “Kill puppies at the debates!”

29 June 2007

Colony Collapse Disorder

A friend forwarded an article in the Washington City Paper by Franklin Schneider on honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). There has been much about this in the press of late, but little has been in-depth. This hits a bit harder. Moreover, it features what I currently believe to be the root problem as its focus, a new form of pesticide (imidacloprid) that, by its very nature, is impossible to keep away from bees. Honeybees then, through their natural behavior and the way that they produce their food, impregnate their entire colonies with this "carcinogen."

About to give up, I remember a major beekeeper in Maryland who’d mentioned he’d heard from some colleagues that high-fructose corn syrup tainted with genetically modified organisms could be the culprit. I get a number for a corn syrup dealer in Pennsylvania (he prefers to stay anonymous, for reasons which will soon become clear). I ask him right off the bat if he has any guesses as to what’s causing CCD.

“I don’t need to guess,” he says, chuckling. He sounds as if he’d been waiting for someone to call for quite a while. “I know what’s causing CCD.”

Yes, well?

“I don’t know if I should talk about this,” the source says. “I’m connected with a lot of people very close to this CCD investigation, and I know that there are researchers who are very careful about what they say—they’re almost afraid for their lives.”

After some coaxing, this guy tells me his fantastical story. CCD was triggered, he says, by a class of pesticides widely used to treat seeds. The plants that grow from these treated seeds incorporate the pesticide into their entire systems, from roots to leaves to stems to pollen and nectar. When pests (or bees) feed on treated plants, the chemical destroys their nervous system. The people in charge know that this particular type of pesticide is causing CCD, but he claims they’re keeping it quiet—and spending millions to make sure others keep it that way. At the end of his story—it takes an hour to tell and includes other nefarious and high-level government conspiracies—he instructs me to look up a list of pesticides, spelling the names out laboriously as I write them down.

When the phone call ends, it seems obvious that the guy is paranoid, if not outright delusional. Except a lot of his story checks out. The pesticides he cited, marketed under the names Poncho, Admire, and Calypso, belong to a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, “systemic” pesticides which, when applied to seeds, manifest themselves throughout the mature plant. When an insect ingests any part of the plant—leaf, seed, stem, or, in the case of bees, pollen or nectar, it gets a dose of a neurotoxin that can cause a swift and lethal breakdown of an insect’s nervous and immune system. For growers, this pesticide is efficient and limits their own exposure to nasty chemicals sprayed directly on their crops. Introduced in the early ’90s, these pesticides were a true revolution in pest control.

But not all insects are pests. In fact, one of these chemicals, imidacloprid, is the very same pesticide—marketed here as Admire and overseas as Gaucho—that was banned in France in 1999 as a suspected culprit in drastic and mysterious die-offs in honeybees. Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and chemical company better known for aspirin, has a crop science division that manufactures and sells Gaucho and many other pesticides. The company protested the ban in France, citing studies that found no correlation between imidacloprid and bee die-offs; beekeepers countered with their own studies that found the opposite result. The French government sided with the beekeepers, and the ban stayed in place and was expanded in 2004. Imidacloprid/Gaucho/Admire is used on a wide selection of fruits and vegetables in the United States, including apples, strawberries, and melons—all crops routinely pollinated by bees—and countless others.

…

Whether or not my source’s conspiracy theories hold water, if imidacloprid really is killing bees, we’re left with at least two equally discomfiting possibilities. One: Big Chemical failed to adequately test imidacloprid and unknowingly released a pesticide that’s killing the only natural pollinators we have left. Or, two: Big Chemical knew imidacloprid would kill off our primary pollinators and released it anyway. If the latter seems puzzling, consider this question: If all the bees died out, how much would Big Chemical, the global leaders in genetically modified crops, stand to gain from a sudden demand for self-pollinating crops? [My italics.]

I will, of course, continue to research this topic as it is near and dear my heart. When I find new and/or interesting information, it will end up here.

27 June 2007

The VP and Loose Lips

Continuing our recent focus on the Vice President of late, I want to bring two stories at TPM to your attention. It would seem that Cheney is so rabid about political security that he has put actual national security at risk.

Did you know that Dick Cheney is so hardcore about secrecy and security that he won't let the White House officials in charge of security into the West Wing? No that's not a Daily Show joke. It's actually true. Maybe that's why he's already had one (now convicted) spy caught working out of his office. And, no, I'm not talking about Scooter Libby.

You can read both stories here and here, the second with video.

26 June 2007

Don't Ask, Don't Tell... No More

From ActForChange by Working Assets comes the following call to action:

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is the only U.S. law that mandates firing someone because of his or her sexual orientation. The ban applies to all Americans serving in the U.S. armed forces, including active duty, Reserve, and National Guard personnel. Over 11,000 Americans have been discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the last twelve years -- an average of two people per day.

This discrimination has cost us, as taxpayers, more than $363 million, and has resulted in the discharges of valuable military personnel such as linguists, pilots, doctors, and intelligence analysts. Many of those discharged have critical skills needed in the service, including at least 300 linguists with skills in key languages such as Arabic and Korean.

There's simply no reason that people with the courage and skills the military needs should be prevented from serving in our armed forces if they so choose. Gay soldiers have served in every war our nation has fought, and currently serve openly in the military of almost every modern industrialized nation on the planet.

To correct the fundamental injustice of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," in February of this year Rep. Marty Meehan (D-MA) introduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act (H.R. 1246). It will repeal the discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" statute and replace it with policy of non-discrimination based on sexual orientation in our military. Contact your representative today to express your support for H.R. 1246.

You can express your support for Rep. Meehan's bill via an electronic message form at this link.

26 June 2007

Cheney & the Post, Part 1

The position of Vice President of the United States is a very, very strange one. It has no basic powers set out in our founding documents – or later law to my knowledge – save two. The VP acts as the president of the Senate and may cast a vote in instances of a tie vote of the whole Senate and the VP assumes the power of the president when the president is unable to fulfill his duties. In spite of this relative wasteland of responsibility, the president does not have the power to fire the VP. The VP can be removed from office through impeachment proceedings or resign.

VPs throughout American history have largely been powerless, often ceremonial figures. Prior to today, the most powerful VP was Walter Mondale. President Carter gave Mondale unprecedented power within his administration. Mondale, in turn, always used his power to promote the policies of the president. There was never a question of relative positions between the two men.

Today, we have a much different situation. VP Cheney is without a doubt the most powerful VP in history. President Bush gave him unprecedented authority even by Mondale standards at the start of his first term and Cheney’s sphere of influence both on and off the books has only grown since. What is more – and what is shocking – is that evidence is coming to light that the President has been unable to bring his VP to heal even on those occasions when he’s gone out of his way to do so. In essence, we have the proverbial “shadow government” in the Office of the Vice President, seemingly answerable to no one. (Indeed, the VP is now making the novel – and completely, unabashedly insane – claim that the VP is not part of the executive branch.* The Constitution weeps anew.)

The Washington Post is in the middle of a series of articles detailing VP Cheney and his role within the larger Bush Administration since 2001. There is not a lot of new information, but the series is doing a good job of putting a timeline together and linking events and scandals to one another. I will post links to the first several parts here and will provide a heads-up on the successive parts going forward. This is amazing – and amazingly disturbing – stuff and worth your time to stay informed.

Part 1: TPM and the Post

Part 2: TPM and the Post

Part 3: TPM and the Post

26 June 2007

*Cutting off funding for the VPs executive branch staff is the right way to battle this sort of despotism. We don’t want to cast validity over his argument, but we do want to curtail his grab for power. Forcing him to pay for his own staff – expensive even by the standards of his ill-gained fortune – may very well prove to be the leash necessary to do so. Some will, indeed some already have, decreed that this route is “partisan politics,” but it is in actuality simply protecting the Constitution when others who should do not. [Added later 26 June 2007]

No Child Left Unrecruited

Two Kansas teens taught me something this week. David Goldstein of McClatchy Newspapers reported that Alexia Welch and Sarah Ybarra of Lawrence, Kansas, have put together a short film, No Child Left Unrecruited, exposing a little-known provision of the No Child Left Behind Act. The film, which started out as a five-minute class project, became a 25-minute expose.

The piece of the law in question infringes on the privacy of children and their families and forces school officials who might oppose this to stay silent. Specifically, the law requires schools to give the military personal information about all students. If schools fail to comply, federal aid can be withheld from the school, putting educational programs at risk. Information can include the proverbial “permanent record,” as well as age, gender, DOB, and even parent names and work phone numbers. Military recruiters then use this info to target individuals who will be most susceptible to their efforts.

Before going forward, let me make two things clear. First, I have no problem with the military recruiting in high schools in general. Second, I have no problem with young adults being required to register with Selective Service upon reaching the age of majority. That said, the government has no right to the above information for the use of targeting children without the consent of the parents of these children. The military can recruit at work/college fairs (and the like) in the same fashion as do private employers, community colleges, and universities.

What is similarly a violation of personal rights is that Welch and Ybarra found that their high school was empowered through the law to compile the above information, absent – I believe – the “permanent record,” into a booklet of student information that was for sale to anyone for $2.00. That’s right, anyone from pedophiles to the local dentist to Dick Cheney, could buy the book for a couple bucks. In this case, students and their parents could opt out of inclusion in the directory, but doing so would remove the student from being listed in the annual yearbook, from the graduation list in the school newspaper, and from the honor roll. Nice.

Congressman Michael Honda (D-CA) has been working to change the Act to remove this provision. He has been a supporter of the girls’ project, going so far as to arrange a screening in Washington, DC. The film is also being screened at film festivals around the country. A trailer for it can be seen on YouTube. Other information can be found on Salon.com, MotherJones.com, and DemocracyNow.org.

Stuck in the Muck

I promised you a short, recap-filled piece on current topics, as well as those that I missed while away. Busy days since my return have prevented that heretofore, but I’m going to put it together now. They will be short and sweet, but I’ll have links for any that you’d like to follow up on yourself. I’d close with “enjoy,” but with the topics that I cover, that isn’t likely.

Bradley Schlozman and the Cult of Personality

Schlozman, who is at the heart of the scandal at the DoJ, has had DoJ staffers come forward with new information about just how much he corrupted his departments during his time at Justice. It was not enough for him simply to have new hires be good Republicans. No, they had to be absolutely loyal to Bush himself. This test was also used to retain employees.

Arabic Speakers in US Baghdad Embassy

Out of 200 staffers at the embassy, only 10 speak and write Arabic fluently. This is just sad. We are the most powerful nation in history, with greater resources at our disposal than most of the rest of the world combined… and we can only muster 10?!? Perhaps the State Department should be going after gay translators who the military has fired? Yeah, that will happen under Bush. Morons!

Rudy Giuliani and Foreign Policy

It is one of the stranger facts in this presidential race that people see Rudy Giuliani as having any experience in foreign affairs. He doesn’t. He was the mayor of New York during the 9/11 attacks. However well or poorly he handled that situation, he has no other credentials. Later, he was asked to be a member of the Iraq Study Group. He agreed to join the group, but failed to attend a single meeting of this prestigious organization in its first two months of activity. At that point, its leader told Giuliani to either make it a priority or resign. He resigned. Why did he miss the meetings? They conflicted with private, paid-for speeches to corporate clients. The net to Giuliani from these speaking engagements over a 14 month period that included the two months in question was over $14 million. At least when Giuliani sells out his country, he doesn’t do it on the cheap.

Stevens the Most Corrupt Senator?

Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) has long been among the kings of pork in the Senate… and that is saying something. He has also generally thought to be crooked. Indeed, the taint spreads throughout his family, many of whom hold political positions back in Alaska. Now, it is all catching up with the Stevens clan. Several family members have already been investigated/indicted on corruption charges in connection with taking bribes from Veco Corp., an oil company. Now, Senator Stevens himself is being actively investigated in the unfolding scandal by the FBI. So, too, are grand juries convening in both Alaska and DC. I love the smell of napalm in the morning!

PBS Tilting to the Right under Bush

Bush appointees that run PBS have unabashedly been turning PBS programming into a political tool for the right. Fruitcakes such as Richard Perle have been creating programming for the network. Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, a close Karl Rove ally, is at the heart of these doings. /sigh

Trent Lott’s Own World

This one, I’m just going to quote from Steve Benen over at TPM.

In case you missed it, Trent Lott had one of the classic lines of the immigration debate this week.

Comments by Republican senators on Thursday suggested that they were feeling the heat from conservative critics of the bill, who object to provisions offering legal status. The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: "Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem." [My italics for quoted text within the quote.]

I see. A far-right senator believes the "problem" with the policy discourse is far-right radio for a far-right audience.

Keep in mind, this wasn't a stray comment for Lott, who seems to have been thinking about this. The other day, the Washington Post quoted Lott saying, "I'm sure senators on both sides of the aisle are being pounded by these talk-radio people who don't even know what's in the bill."

You mean right-wing blowhards like Limbaugh can rile up a large audience based on nothing but demagoguery? And that conservative audience will bombard Hill offices with whatever they last heard on the radio?

Welcome to our world, Trent.

Illegal Surveillance and Searches by FBI of US Citizens Continue

It is simply Orwellian how the Bush Administration tramples on the Constitution.

Office of the Special Counsel Continues White House Investigation

In one of the broadest investigations of possible political corruption of an administration ever, the OSC has been continually expanding its investigation as new allegations against the White House, and especially activities linked to Karl Rove, have come to light. Eighteen agencies – yes, 18 – are now spotlighted. Remember Bush’s first inaugural address and his promise to make his the most ethical administration in history? /cry

Private Companies Operating for US in Iraq

If you are uninformed on how the US is using private companies in Iraq to further Bush’s objectives, including in some cases for military-like work, you should read this story, which also contains links to other well-done pieces. This practice has received almost no coverage by the mainstream media, but we should all be concerned by many of the ethical questions raised thereby.

21 June 2007

Fred Thompson, Round 1

As hard as it may be to believe, there are people out there who favorably view former Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) entering the race for the presidency. Heck, they may actually believe that the so-called “Draft Thompson” internet campaigns are actually grass-roots in nature, rather than the carefully orchestrated political affairs that they are. Regardless, it seemed a good time to start putting out a few facts about this “New Reagan.” If Thompson does look good, it is only because of the poor company he’s keeping among Republican presidential contenders.

Thompson acted as a Washington, DC, lobbyist during the years of 1975 through 1992. He represented clients including Westinghouse, GE, and former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He also lobbied on behalf of the Tennessee Savings and Loan League for the deregulation of the savings and loan (S&L) industry. His recommendations were incorporated into the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982. This act was a direct factor in the S&L crisis of the late 1980s that cost US taxpayers $125 billion.

From 2004 through 2007, Thompson worked for London-based Equitas Ltd, making $760,000.00 annually to lobby his former Senate colleagues. Equitas was in a pickle over asbestos-related health claims against the company. Thompson lobbied to remove a provision in a 2005 bill that would have forced Equitas to pay out a very substantial portion of an earlier agreed to settlement with those suing for health-related damages. His efforts were successful, getting Equitas off the hook.

Other activities after his Senate career include advocating for the invasion of Iraq and the war that followed, including doing a commercial for the pro-war organization Citizens United. He also served on the advisory board of the legal defense fund for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted of obstruction of justice during the investigation of the Plame scandal. (Both of these should disqualify him from contention in the race for the presidency.)

We’ll have time going forward to flesh out Thompson as a candidate. I like him as an actor, but can he possibly be taken seriously as a president? Stay tuned.

20 June 2007

TPM on Reid/Pace Flap

I'm returning from vacation and there is a lot of material to cover. As a result, you'll probably only get short and to-the-point posts from me this week. I'll try to hit the high (e.g. low) points from my week away and also try to stay current with new material as well.

Joshua Micah Marshall over at TPM has a great piece on the political flap surrounding Senator Harry Reid's (D-NV) criticism of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace. It also touches on how Bush and the neocons are starting to spin the absolute failure of the war in Iraq... as not a failure of their making at all.

Thinking back over the blather last week over Sen. Reid's (D-NV) comments about Gen. Pace, it's quite astonishing that the White House could with a straight face attack Reid for questioning Pace's competence only day's after they'd fired him. Think about that. The White House fires Pace as part of its many-month effort to sack everyone from the Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon. And Reid is in hot water for questioning the man's abilities?

But setting aside abilities, politicians can criticize generals. That is after all the very nature of our political system. And it is a symptom of the deeply decayed and desperate state of the Iraq War debate that this is even a question. We are now far past the point of supporting the troops in their mission, ensuring that they are properly armed and protected, or anything else tied to respecting and honoring the overwhelmingly very young men and women who are paying with risk to their lives for the decisions we collectively make here at home.

Now apparently even criticism of the policy/strategy level command in Washington (this is after all what the JCS are) is beyond the pale, a sign of denigration of the military itself.

We can say whatever we want about double standards, that Sen. McCain (R-AZ) said even more to the face of the then-actual commander of American forces in Iraq (Gen. Casey) not long ago. But that's just a partisan distraction.

The real issue here is shaking ourselves loose from the degradation of our own civic and republican collective character that the war has brought us. Some principles are clear and worth repeating: You can't have a war for democracy fought by people whose principles are authoritarian and anti-democratic. It's not a throwaway line or a barb. It's the only pivot around which to understand the Bush years. [My italics.]

A few days ago, Andrew Sullivan linked to this rancid post by Glenn Reynolds previewing the coming claims that the war was sabotaged by the critics of the war who had more or less no power whatsoever during the entire prosecution of it.

But Reynolds' post and all his prefab reader emails should put us on notice that the architects of this and its dead-ender supports plan to lie their way out of this war just as they lied their way into it -- now whipping up a dust storm of rationalizations for their failures, imbecilities and lies much as the original entry into the conflict was floated on phoney claims about weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent ties between the past Iraqi regime and al Qaeda.

The only antidote to the advance of this sort of authoritarian mentality and strategy of organized lying that it is inevitably built on is the truth. Not that we can know the truth ourselves with any confidence or consistency. But we can take stock of the facts of the case as honestly as we can and speak them frankly. And that means breaking out of, ignoring, as many rhetorical bait and switch games as possible.

I generally don't quote entire articles, but this one was short and spot-on. All credit should, of course, go to Mr. Marshall and TPM.

18 June 2007

Holsinger for Surgeon General

President Bush has nominated Dr. James Holsinger to become our next Surgeon General. For the President, the nomination is entirely a political game. Dr. Holsinger is a far-right crackpot who is adored by the religious right. Thus, he gets bonus points from this portion of his base – which is pretty much his base in total now – for the nomination, regardless of whether or not Holsinger is confirmed. On that subject, Democrats who fight the nomination – and rightly so – will stir up a hornets nest in that Fox News et al will run with the story and whip the aforementioned base into a further frenzy prior to the 2008 elections. It is win-win for the Republicans and lose-lose for America as a whole.

You can help confront the President on this issue and send a message to Congress to deny Dr. Holsinger confirmation by the Senate. The HRC has an on-line form that makes it easy to send your message electronically to the members of our government who hold sway on this issue. If you would like to contact your senators in another way, you can find their contact information here.

The HRC opposes Dr. Holsinger for this position due to his radical and radically unscientific views on homosexuality. While his views are unfortunate, he is entitled to them as a private citizen. They are anathema, however, for the “doctor of our nation” and the protector of our collective health.

18 June 2007

The Storm before the Calm

I am going out of town for a week of vacation and wanted to get one final post in before my departure. Here, I’ll simply point you in the right direction to learn more about two stories.

First up is the continuing mess in Iraq. As you know, a new funding bill for the war was passed by Congress last year and signed into law by President Bush. Instead of including a fixed timetable for withdrawal of American troops, or even the promise of withdrawal if fixed objectives are not met, it included a series of benchmarks, first put forward by the President in January, for the Iraqis. These benchmarks are a sham, with no punishment in the offing if they are not met. Moreover, it is the President who will make the determination as to their completion. Normally, I’d simply laugh in frustration at the idea of the Bush Administration policing itself. Here, however, I don’t have to suffer this because the Iraqis have already announced that none of the benchmarks will be met. Of course, this should surprise no one because none of the original benchmarks put forth by the Administration, but not previously written into law, had been met either. And yet, we are still asking our young people to die every day.

The second involves the testimony of Bradley Schlozman before Congress regarding the ever-unfolding scandal at the Department of Justice. Schlozman has been fingered for a key – indeed perhaps the key – role in the illegal politicization of the DoJ. Much of Schlozman’s testimony was contentious, even hostile. It was also downright unbelievable. Whereas other DoJ officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, have played the “I don’t remember” card in their testimony, Schlozman made many unequivocal statements, some of which might already be coming back to bite him on the ass. (Funny how lying to Congress will do that to you, no?) For details, check out these stories by Josh Marshall and Laura McGann.

No to a Libby Pardon

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former Assistant to President Bush and Chief of Staff of Vice President Cheney, has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for perjury and obstruction of justice. (I wrote about the case in general here.) The Special Counsel in this case has stated his belief that Libby’s actions were to protect those “higher up the food chain” in the administration and that he will continue to dig for the truth. For this and other reasons, the pressure on the President to pardon Libby will be great. Justice will most certainly not be served by such a pardon. You can make your voice heard in opposition to a pardon using the Working Assets form that can be found here.

Your Farm Bill & You

Several weeks ago, I wrote a call-to-action piece on the 2007 Farm Bill, urging you to write your Members of Congress on the matter. I explained the reasons for my concern on this matter there, and won’t repeat them again here. I included a letter in that piece so that you could forward it under your own name. I made it clear that while I didn’t believe that the letter provided was the best possible tool, it would be better than if your legislators didn’t hear from you at all.

Today, I received an updated letter from the coalition that helps build support at the grass-roots level in my area. While once again it isn’t perfect, it is an improvement over the original epistle. If you failed to take action earlier, but want to do so now, I urge you to forward the new letter to your Members of Congress. Their contact information can be found here.

As I noted previously, this letter is written from the viewpoint of a resident of New Mexico. There are two sections near the end where New Mexico is mentioned. I have put the state’s name in blue. If you do not reside in New Mexico, you should change this specific text to fit your state of citizenship. Otherwise, the letter should be able to stand on its own.

Time is of the essence. If you are going to act, do so today. Thank you.

Dear XXX,

I am writing to let you know that I care about your vote on the upcoming 2007 Farm Bill. I care about your vote because more than 35 million Americans, half of them kids, don't get enough to eat. Yet, kids get the majority of their calories at school, which makes school lunches extremely important to their wellbeing. So what do we feed them? Tater Tots, chicken (parts) nuggets, chocolate milk and canned fruit cocktail. School lunches are the dumping grounds for toxic food, and meanwhile one in two children will have diabetes by the age of 18!

I care about your vote because I worry about the loss of farmland and the fate of family farmers. As one example, in New Mexico over the last five years, over 200,000 acres of farmland and more than 500 farms have been lost! When farmland goes out of production, often the water rights are lost or transferred, which means that piece of land will never go into production again. As local farms disappear, our food security is threatened, especially as energy prices increase and our local production of food is compromised. Throughout the US, there are four times more farmers over the age of 65 than farmers under the age of 35. In northern New Mexico – once again a good example – the average age of farmers is 59 years old. Who will replace this generation of farmers? How can we train new farmers?

I care about your vote because I don't think it is right that our food system is dominated by corporations and commodities. It is crazy that almost 50% of all commodity subsidies went to just 5 percent of eligible farmers in 2005, which marginalized those who were producing locally grown organic food and grass fed meat and dairy products. I care because out of the hundreds of plant and animal species that have been cultivated for human use, the Farm Bill favors just four primary food groups: food grains, feed grains, oilseeds, and upland cotton. While millions of Americans are hungry, most of the subsidized food groups above are either fed to cattle in confinement or processed into oils, flours, starches, sugars or other industrial food additives. Now there's the threat of diverting farms to the production of biofuels, too.

I care about your vote because something is terribly wrong when millions of Americans are obese and the Surgeon General is predicting that this could be the first generation of kids who won't live longer than their parents. It's because the Food Bill favors the mega-production of sugars and starches rather than regional supplies of fresh vegetables, healthful fruits, and nuts. Over the last 15 years, the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables has risen 40%, while the cost of dairy, red meat, chicken, sugar, and fat has fallen 25%. Our populace doesn't have as easy access to food that is good for them, while highly-processed, subsidized food is easily and cheaply available.

Farmland conservation programs need help, too! Conservation bills have been cut by 14% and wildlife incentive programs have been underfunded by 30%. The Conservation Reserve Program helps farmers reduce soil erosion, yet 28 million acres are being removed from the program. Wildlife Habitat Incentives, Wetlands Reserve, Environmental Quality Incentives, Farm and Ranchlands Protection – all these programs need to continue to help farmers promote healthy habitat for animals and plants, reduce air and water pollution, and protect agricultural land from urban sprawl.

I think you'll agree that things are pretty out of whack with our country's Farm Bill. Now is the time to make our food and farm policies more enlightened, which is why I care so much about your vote!

Here are some of the things I'd like to see better funded in the 2007 Farm Bill:

* Increase the funding for the Food Stamp Program so that those below the poverty level can access the more costly fresh fruits and vegetables and have a choice over eating the processed, high fat, low nutritional cheap food now flooding the market.
* Continue and increase the funding for the Farm and Ranchland Protection Program. It will help farmers and ranchers create permanent conservation easements, receive a one-time, up-front payment equal to the fair market value of the development rights and continued use of the land for agricultural purposes.
* Please don't consolidate conservation programs! Each is important and deserves to be adequately funded.
* Provide more support for disadvantaged and limited resource farmers, so that farming is a sustainable lifestyle that others will want to do. In the west, 25% of farmers are minority, yet they get less than 1% of the funding. Be sure that the census accurately counts minority farmers.
* Allow schools to use federal money to have geographic preference to buy food. Right now, federal money doesn't allow us to buy food from New Mexico producers. New Mexico kids should eat New Mexico apples, not those flown in from Washington!
* Provide funding to help us rebuild our agricultural infrastructure. There's been a big push in New Mexico, for example, to grow wheat, but it has to be shipped 300 miles to get it milled in Texas! We need to rebuild our local mills and processing facilities to make it easier to grow and sell local food.
* Don't just subsidize the "big 5" crops (wheat, corn, cotton, rice, and soybeans). Farmers need support to grow fruits and vegetables, and be sure the funding has a geographic preference so it gets to all parts of the country, including New Mexico!

I depend on you to ensure that our food system is sustainable into the future by voting NOT with the farm bloc but for the common person who needs good food, locally available to live a healthy life. This opportunity to change the direction of our food and farm policies only comes once every five years, so please make the most of it. Thank you for your consideration.

John Q. Public
555 Main Street
Anytown NY 55555

4 June 2007

The Internet Needs You

The winds of change are blowing on the Information Super Highway and the driving force behind those winds is money. The history of the Internet is one of “Network Neutrality.”

Network Neutrality — or "Net Neutrality" for short — is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet.

Put simply, Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.

Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service on a non-discriminatory basis without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.

To put it another way:

…the issue called "Net Neutrality," which says that you, the customer, should choose what information you see, which services you use and not the company which owns the telephone or cable network you are using.

With the concept of Network Neutrality holding sway, it doesn’t matter what Net service you use to “log into” the Internet. You will be able to access any web site at the streaming speed of your connection provider. The site you are accessing cannot place speed limits or tariffs based on your Net choices. In other words, Comcast isn’t going to charge you a fee for visiting a site that is housed on their server network just because you use AT&T to connect to the Net. Nor will Comcast make your download or upload speeds slower because you use a competitor as your connection provider. On the flip side, AT&T shouldn’t prevent you from seeing any sites on the Net just because those sites are not affiliated with AT&T. This may soon change, restricting your freedom and the free-flow of information.

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner — want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all.

They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors.

These companies have a new vision for the Internet. Instead of an even playing field, they want to reserve express lanes for their own content and services — or those from big corporations that can afford the steep tolls — and leave the rest of us on a winding dirt road.

The big phone and cable companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to gut Net Neutrality, putting the future of the Internet at risk.

We need to make sure that our voices are heard on this issue. Congress is currently writing the next Telecommunications Act and the giant communications corporations are hard at work lobbying legislatures to sell them (or even give them) the right to carve up sections of the Internet as their own. With that power, they can control form of content, speed of delivery, access to content, and charge for access. When I speak of “charging for access,” I’m not speaking of an individual site charging for its content. That is a practice that is used by many businesses when information is their product. Rather, I’m talking about charging you just for the ability to get to a site’s URL address in the first place!

No matter how you look at this, it is bad for us as “consumers” of the Internet. It is bad for innovation through the free-flow of ideas and information. It is only good for the corporations looking for new, intrusive revenue streams and for corrupt legislators whose pockets are filled with cash at our expense.

What can you do?

As always, contacting your legislators is needed. Two sites allow you to send an e-mail to your legislatures, as well as to members of the FCC, quickly and easily using only a single form. They are MoveOn.org and Working Assets. Another site, SaveTheInternet.com, has an electronic petition that you can sign on its home page that will be presented to Congress. I urge you to fill out each of these forms so that electronic messages from you will reach the appropriate Members of Congress. Should you wish to take the fight farther and either call your legislators or write them via snail mail – either form of communication is taken more seriously by Members of Congress – their contact information can be found here.

Postscript: In spite of this being such a big issue, it has barely registered on the political state. Only John Edwards has taken up the call among the presidential candidates, and Al Gore has focused on it as well.

Postscript 2: Forms such as those I note above generally require a valid e-mail address in order for your messages to be sent. This is to help prevent individuals from “spamming” the sites with message requests. If you are worried about organizations either sending you future e-mails or passing along your information to third parties, most sites allow you to opt-out via checking or unchecking boxes as needed. Finally, you can always set up a “dummy” e-mail account for taking just this sort of action, for entering contests, etc. Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, and Microsoft’s Hotmail are all free, easy to use, and thus are perfect for just this sort of thing. (As an aside, I use Google's Gmail for my everyday e-mail and love it!)

Postscript 3: Thanks to my sister-in-law for the information on the Working Assets site.

1 June 2007