[Market Farming] Spare Change by Steve Sprinkel
Lawrence F. London, Jr.
lflj at intrex.net
Wed Jan 14 12:36:12 EST 2009
http://lists.ifas.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0901&L=sanet-mg&T=0&O=D&P=52907
SANET-MG Archives -- January 2009 (#75)
Subject: Spare Change
From: Steve Sprinkel
Reply-To: Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion Group, Steve Sprinkel
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:57:18 -0500
A Prayer for More Thoughtful Action
Or
Spare Change
With all the concern-and furor-over Barak Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation
at the presidential inaugural, voices of the gay and lesbian wing of the Democratic left represented
the greatest grief over the peculiar selection. However, many straights on the left resent the
choice for reasons rarely explained. Choosing Mr. Warren to lead the prayer seems as arrogant as
it is naïve, and it's folks on the far left who see the choice clearly as a mistake that should have
been avoided. That gnashing you may have heard faintly is merely our collective yearning for
sanity turning to dust.
Why not merely ask a middle-roading Methodist from Milwaukee to make the prayer? Why not
move gracefully towards power, instead of recklessly making a statement of doubtful value?
Nobody is offended, and the big story still remains the Speech of the Century soon to be given on
20 January. Instead, if anything becomes clear over this, its that confusion instead is the result.
Why stiff the hardcores? How can the platinum campaigner turn all to post-election dross?
Whatever may be said in the speech will be a lot less inspiring because this meager incompetence
begets an incipient hollowness. Its now a toss-up whether the inauguration will be must-see TV.
Personally, I am glad I will be on the road.
The Warren choice makes little sense to most of us, especially if you gave to and worked for the
campaign and no one worked more tirelessly than the gay/lesbian contingent. The Obama camp
suggests that selecting Warren was about inclusion. This argument is nothing better than an
opening to satire. Except its not so laughable if you drove to Nevada last summer and spent a
weekend knocking on doors in 102 degree heat, making brave sweeps of the Walmart parking lot,
dodging periwinkle-clad security, and preaching the gospel of change in Spanish to cautious
devotees of Hilary Clinton. We only did this because we had expectations that intelligence,
foresight and intuition might be qualities we would enjoy in an Obama Administration. We used to
be that inspired. We wanted to be part of that sort of miracle, so we called strangers in New
Mexico at night for the change telethon.
Political theorists weakly thought that the Warren prayer might be an effort to open evangelicals
up to Mr. Obama's leadership and message, but so long as Sara Palin and Mike Huckaby draw
breath, that is a far-fetched belief. Those crackers are set in their ways. As one learned more
about Mr. Warren, what you knew about Mr. Obama became suspect.
Apologists of the Obama center explain that its just prayer, not a cabinet post. Other than our
profound gratitude for having revealed this truth to us, we need to point out that we did not
elevate the invocation to such a high-profile. Mr. Obama did. The effect was to say to the
evangelical right that they would be heard. For the far left, it translated that we should expect
more surprises and to not take change.gov for granted, because the substance of the change,
which we have been denied, is generally not terribly exciting as it is revealed in the team
selections to the incoming administration.
Nearly fifty million people voted for a maverick, and it looks like they will get one even if their
candidate lost. If the war in Iraq is prolonged, we should not be surprised-but this has been
telegraphed or quite some time now, and we are so inured to the debacle that another few years
of quagmire and scandal will not move us.
If labor is not as equally supported as capital in the ongoing economic collapse, it is because the
same people will serve the new administration who were in charge when the financial catastrophe
started, including congress as well as Timothy Geithner, the new Treasury Secretary. It does not
seem to matter much if the ship struck the reef during your watch when you enjoy the kind of
ruling class pedigree of Mr. Geithner, whose forefathers counseled Eisenhower and still work for
the Ford Foundation. Tim cut his teeth working for Kissinger in the "private" sector, and so on,
but who else can we expect to have been chosen to run the Treasury? Ralph Nader?
No. Joseph Eugene Stiglitz. Yes, Stiglitz, the anti-globalization Nobel Prize winner. But it appears
the same foxes who ate all our chickens are in charge of the henhouse again. Well, maybe not.
Seems like Geithner has a tax problem, so we can root for Stiglitz anew.
When Tom Vilsack, the centrist former governor of Iowa, was selected as Secretary of the
Department of Agriculture, it was a sign that nothing huge would change with regard to synthetic
chemical use, farm subsidies, probably immigrant labor. Change set in motion beforehand will be
neither aided much nor hobbled but merely tolerated. The only people who care about the food
and fiber industry anyway are the few who either produce or process the raw products, the parallel
universe of agricultural materials manufacturers and, of course, the modest number of loud food
activists who hate having been right so often, only to be ignored for too long. Now we get
Monsacko, voted by the biotech agriculture industry as their favorite politician.
It was those foodies who worked hardest to get Mr. Obama elected and whose hope burned
brightest for change. The Vilsack selection is therefore of the same nature as the Rick Warren
choice. Reluctant independent voters who have a major Round Up herbicide habit may have voted
Democratic, holding their noses, in November, but the Foodies are the base that is being ignored.
Monsanto didn't even need to have a Republican in the White house in order to have a defender in
regulatory government. Vilsack will promote policies that are generally in lock-step with
predecessors like Earl Butz, Ed Madigan and John Block, corn and soybean men all. We don't have
to go too far back in history to discover an Agriculture Secretary who was at least curious about
the results of spraying most of the Midwest with glyphosate. The least dogmatic USDA Secretary in
recent memory was Democrat Dan Glickman, a former Kansas congressman, who stepped in after
Bill Clinton's first choice, Mike Espy, resigned over a bribery scandal of which he was later
exonerated. Glickman did defend the status quo, but he created broad-stakeholder panels
empowered to review the technology and made a number of "go slow' comments about biotech-
ag that gave Monsanto's share price the shakes more than once. And, one of his Deputies was
the esteemed progressive Richard Romminger of California, whose son was a significant player in
the organic farming movement.
Traditionally the people who serve in this post mirror the agri-business constituencies of
international trade and manufacturing, which is why China is a problem for everyone, no matter if
your concern is public health or global competition. Vilsack, Warren, Geithner. We had other ideas,
frankly.
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