Homestead mailing list

["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

----- Original Message ----- From: Gene GeRue<mailto:genegerue AT ruralize.com> 

> Those who take politics seriously prevail 
over those who take it less seriously. 

We who 'take politics less seriously' can be
anything from ignorant of how we are 
affected and what we can do about it, to 
having too much on our *empty* plates 
(doesn't make logical sense, does it ?) to 
spend the required time studying political 
issues to be able to *do* anything about 
them.  (think two/three job people - of
whom there are increasing numbers, and
single working mothers/fathers)
>From genegerue AT ruralize.com  Tue Dec  7 11:31:20 2004
Return-Path: <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
X-Original-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Delivered-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Received: from fed1rmmtao07.cox.net (fed1rmmtao07.cox.net [68.230.241.32])
        by happyhouse.metalab.unc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id C7D8D4C005
        for <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Tue,  7 Dec 2004 11:31:19 -0500 
(EST)
Received: from SLIM.ruralize.com ([68.230.50.216]) by fed1rmmtao07.cox.net
        (InterMail vM.6.01.04.00 201-2131-117-20041022) with ESMTP
        id <20041207163117.UHOU3863.fed1rmmtao07.cox.net AT SLIM.ruralize.com>
        for <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Tue, 7 Dec 2004 11:31:17 -0500
Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20041207093102.03c0e678 AT mail.itsamac.com>
X-Sender: genegerue%ruralize.com AT mail.itsamac.com
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 09:32:45 -0700
To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5
Subject: [Homestead] Getting government out of farmers' business
X-BeenThere: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5
Precedence: list
Reply-To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
List-Id: homestead.lists.ibiblio.org
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/homestead>,
        <mailto:homestead-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/homestead>
List-Post: <mailto:homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Help: <mailto:sympa AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=HELP>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/homestead>,
        <mailto:homestead-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 16:31:20 -0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/opinion/07tue4.html

Getting the Government Out of the Madison Avenue Ad Business
By HELENE COOPER

Published: December 7, 2004

When was the last time you were overwhelmed by an urge to go out and buy
some cotton clothing to wear?
If the answer to that is "never," you're probably among a vast majority of
Americans who base their purchase decisions on specific needs and desires.
You don't respond much to those feel-good ads from industry groups that
push beef, pork, milk and cotton down your throat or onto your body. Yet
the federal government is locked in a battle with small farmers who don't
think they should be forced to contribute money to these industrywide ad
campaigns.
Over the years, the ads have ranged from the ridiculous (Buzz the Bee
reminds you it's Mother's Day, so go buy some flowers) to the really
ridiculous (a peaches ad says, "Remember the taste ... so cool, juicy," as
a young girl in a wet bathing suit runs through a sprinkler).
The Supreme Court will hear arguments tomorrow from small beef producers
who say they should not be forced to pay for an expensive marketing
program. Under the Beef Promotion Research Act of 1985, the Agriculture
Department collects a fee of $1 per head of cattle sold by beef ranchers.
Like similar programs for pork, cheese, fruit or you name it, the beef
checkoff arrangement turns the fees - $80 million a year in the case of the
beef folk - over to industry groups to spend on marketing, commercials and
research. Those groups, for their part, would like to believe that when
beef shows up on your plate for dinner, it's because they told you to put
it there.
That twisted logic is probably why so many small farmers and ranchers -
raising things from cotton and watermelon to avocado and Louisiana
alligators - are all lining up to cheer the beef producers who want to get
out of the program. The hope is that the Supreme Court will put the kibosh
on the whole checkoff system, which is a relic of the Great Depression,
when growers and packers paid for the ads, produced by
government-supervised industry committees, through a tax on their sales.
Today, these programs cost about $1 billion.
Given that the Bush administration routinely claims that it wants smaller
government, you would think the Agriculture Department would happily wash
its hands of the whole checkoff program. But no. Spurred by big
agribusiness companies that like the programs, the Agriculture Department
is fighting hard to keep the checkoffs alive.
The small farmers rightly claim that the checkoff program is a violation of
their right to free speech because it forces them to pay for ads they may
not agree with, or may not want. To combat that, the government has come up
with the ludicrous idea that the ads are actually "government speech" -
whatever that is. The government also says that if the payments aren't
mandatory, farmers and distributors who don't advertise will get a free
ride at the expense of those who do. Of course, there's an easy answer to
that argument: kill the programs.
Farmers and others who have to pay into checkoffs have been trying to get
out of these programs for years, and United States courts have thus far
been erratic in their decisions. Ditto for the Supreme Court; it kept the
program for tree fruit back in 1997, but killed the one for mushrooms in 2001.
Now, with the beef case, the court has the chance to shut down this odious
system for good. At the very least, the Supreme Court should rid us of the
latest cotton commercial, which showcases a stack of "make him pant like a
dog" blue jeans. Well, tight low riders may be a civic asset, but I firmly
believe that the government should be spending its time on things I can
actually fit into.