Agriculture, not oil, should be priority No. 1
Mood:  bright
Topic: 7. Political Record
Op-Ed Letter

Posted on Fri, Feb. 15, 2002

Agriculture, not oil, should be priority No. 1


Offered a choice between a loaf of bread, or a gallon of gasoline, 95 out of 100 random individuals from every continent would pick the bread.

Agriculture sustains the world. Petroleum does not.

Our farms already hold the Earth's most-prized tangible commodities. A slim majority (215-214) of the U.S. House, though, including Rep. Saxby Chambliss, would sell them out on a "fast track" to export American jobs and import inferior products tainted by slave labor, health risks, and environmental mismanagement.

Neither First-World consumers nor Third-World producers really benefit from "free" trade, though it profits the elite jingos of global feudalism. Look at NAFTA. The social tariffs of the Greens' platform, in contrast, protect domestic standards of living, and reinvest the revenues into the target countries' education and health care.

Beyond food and durable goods (including plastic), agriculture also has the potential to supply us with clean, renewable energy. The Federal DOE recognizes it but doesn't give biofuels the same financial incentives it does to oil, coal and gas. The University of Georgia just invested $30,000 to retrofit power generators to run on chicken fat. Yet, we're not part of the 25-state Governors' Ethanol Coalition, which also includes Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and Sweden.

I can't buy the myth of "crop surpluses" when people die cold and hungry every day, and we're so desperate for energy that we'll subsidize offshore depth charges for oil exploration. (Then again, I'm also too cheap to dump a million bucks a shot on humbug missile defense testing.)

Bush's new Freedom CAR program is just beating the same dead pig as Willie's PNGV, since U.S. taxpayers have already funded the existing fuel-cell technology that the Detroit 3 markets to Europe. A trained environmentalist (not the PIRG) sees it's stalling the immediate demand for cleaner, energy-efficient vehicles. A trained economist (not Hastert) sees Americans on waiting lists for Japanese hybrids, while he predicts the 2-day "head fake" trend on stock prices in the relevant sector, traded above 700 percent normal volume, rising and falling after Secretary Abraham's big speech.

In effect, the Senate farm bill does affect energy and the economy. The House, meanwhile, intentionally poison-pilled their "stimulus" package with giveaways that would do nothing but undermine the long-term job security of teachers, cops, firefighters, and RAFB-related workers. Why aren't Senate Republicans called "obstructionist," if they won't be "bipartisan" enough to pass Daschle's provisions?

These may be minority views to urban folks drinking neurotoxic municipal water. Among suit-clad proponents of the worst ballot access requirements of any democracy in the world, though, I'm proud to wear denim overalls.