Who Cares If They Are Down on the Farm?

 Posted by Mike  Fiscal Issues, Issues, Poverty, U.S. Politics  2 Responses »
Mar 312005
 

Wow, not even sure where to begin to rebut Scott’s latest post on farm subsidies. So, in no particular order:

1) Scott claimed that as Americans we maintain an idealistic image of rural life. This is true–but it is not a good thing. We like to hold up a dichotomy between small-town “Leave it to Beaver” good ol’ America, and the modern, chaotic, dirty, crime-ridden inner cities. And we use this dichotomy as an excuse for a “not in my backyard” mentality that prevents real solutions to real problems. We use it as an excuse for racism and discrimination and for white-flight. And we use it to bash homosexuals, feminists, liberals, and anyone else who threatens to stand in the way of our idealistic image. This is not a good thing. What we need in this country is a realistic image of the inner-city and a realistic image of rural America both, and clinging to a false view of a rural America that never existed is not healthy, and should certainly not be encouraged by government.

2) I am willing to concede that there are good values to be taught from the image and stories of American frontier life and small-town sensibilities. There are lessons there that can be applied to a modern urban (or suburban or ex-urban) lifestyle; lessons about community, about the environment, etc. But these lessons are served just as well by stories of Paul Bunyan and Davie Crockett as they are by the maintenance of some small Kansas town no one has ever heard of. We still perpetuate the ideals of chivalry and honor exemplified by medieval knights, and we do it just fine without subsidizing a functioning feudal society in the middle of Nebraska.

3) Subsidies would not completely eliminate the rural lifestyle. Some farms and some farmers would still exist, although it would mostly be agribusiness (which actually dominates American farming already, despite subsidies). There is also a substantial tourist market in small-town and rural America that does not rely on subsidies, and that would still serve as the sort of constant reminder of rural ideals. There exist bedroom communities chalk-full of B&Bs and antique stores on the edge of every major metropolitan area in the United States, and those communities are not going anywhere.

4) The CAP in Europe is not an example to follow; it is a massive drain on Europe’s finances at a time when they ought to be worried about balancing budgets and balancing the needs of their expanding welfare states without stifling further chance of economic growth. Europe has a lot of tough financial choices to make, and spending hundreds of millions of Euros to buy millions of gallons of wine to pour down the drain every year is just a waste (in more ways than one).

5) Which brings us to the budgetary priorities of the United States. I would be much more sympathetic to farm subsidies if we had a functioning universal healthcare system, adequate funding for public education, a living wage for all Americans, etc. As it is, however, I can think of all sorts of ways that money could be better spent than paying farmers not to grow things simply in order to perpetuate an American ideal. Ideals are important, but not as important as food and medicine, so lets get the latter before we worry about the former.

I’ll leave it at that for the moment. So Scott will have to work a bit harder to get the last word in after all.

Since I’m Giving Recommendations…

 Posted by Mike  Movies  No Responses »
Mar 302005
 

Go see Hotel Rwanda. One of the best movies you’ll ever sit through. And also, as far as I can tell, one of the most accurate, which is absolutely the most horrifying thing about it. Go see it. and if you want to learn more about Rwanda, read We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, written by Peter Gourevitch. The prophetic title comes from a letter sent by a priest to his bishop who, little did he know, was standing outside with a mob.

And on that note, I leave you with a line from the movie: “When they see that footage [of a mob hacking women and children to death with machetes] they will say ‘That’s horrible!’ and go back to eating their dinners.”

God’s Politics by Jim Wallis

 Posted by Mike  Issues, Religion  1 Response »
Mar 302005
 

Allow me to take a break from my normal commentary to post a brief book review. I became aware of Jim Wallis a few months ago when I saw him interviewed on The Daily Show; it was one of the oddest interviews I have ever seen. There was this guy talking with John Stewart about how we ought to be applying our moral foundation as Christians to a broader set of issues than simply abortion and gay marriage, criticizing the War in Iraq as being unjust and immoral, and attacking the Bush Administration’s policies on counter-terrorism both at home and abroad. And yet he was equally critical of the secularism of the left, who either do not understand or do not care about moral values or religion. And he’s interspersing anecdotes about his own personal conversion story and using language I normally associate with evangelical sermons.

Now, if this sounds like the sort of thing that interests you, go read God’s Politics: Why the Right gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. Wallis has obviously been around the block enough to have seen some really horribly things both in the United States and abroad. He understands that racism, poverty, injustice, disease, and violence are real problems both domestically and internationally; problems that deserve the full attention of government as well as private institutions. He obviously believes in the power of individual charity and nongovernmental organizations; after all he involved in the running of two non-profit groups, one an anti-poverty initiative called The Call to Renewal, the other Sojourners Magazine which is a magazine espousing similar viewpoints as the book. But he also understands that charity and private groups alone cannot confront these social issues by themselves; that government action is necessary. As he puts it, budgets are moral documents that reflect a society’s values, and it says a lot about our real priorities that we are expanding military aid and cutting Medicaid at the same time.

Now, to be critical, I feel that he doesn’t always give enough specifics when it comes to how some of his goals can be achieved, especially in the areas of abortion, trade issues, and indecency vs. Family values in the media. I also feel like he sometimes fails to justify his position on practical as well as moral grounds. I am a firm believer that the “Right” thing to do is also usually the “best” thing to do, and I didn’t see that always coming through.

Still, those are fairly small points, and it is definitely worth reading for anyone interested in politics or religion, or simply interested in finding an alternative to the current Left-Right spectrum.

How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On The Farm?

 Posted by Scott  Fiscal Issues, Issues, Poverty, U.S. Politics  1 Response »
Mar 292005
 

As a preliminary note, both Hiren and Mike are travelling this week, so will only be posting intermittently, if at all. Which is kind of nice for me, because I disagree agree with them (Hiren agrees with Mike on this, evidently), and thus have a greater chance of getting the last word! Ha hah!

The tricky thing about this is that Mike’s kind of right in theory — farm subsidies are economically inefficient and have lots of bad side effects to them. But I think as a matter of practice things get more complicated, and the choice isn’t as easy as Mike makes it out to be. My reservation deals mainly with preserving the farming way of life.

Let’s focus on the way of life stuff first. I’d argue that the farm way of life is a cherished American myth of equal or greater importance to the rags-to-riches/American Dream/Horatio Alger stories, and certainly closely aligned. Without doing a lot of research on this, I’d probably say that it stems from Thomas Jefferson’s veneration of the yeoman farmer — an individual who knew the true value of wealth, because he created it with his own two hands by tilling the earth and working hard. Manifest destiny was powered by many things, but the ever-expanding need for space for farmers certainly was a major engine in the expansion.

Farming communities and small towns are considered to be the respositories of the best of American values — places where communities are actually formed, where neighbors truly care about each other and where folks can leave their doors unlocked at night. (For the Garrison Keillor fans out there, farming towns are “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”)

In contrast, urban America is cold and impersonal and dirty, where people don’t care about you, and danger and crime are omnipresent. People who grow up in or move to the big city are inevitably corrupted, or sapped of some kind of goodness in their exposure to the urban setting and lifestyle.

The stories we are taught as children reinforce this notion, too — take, for example, the City Mouse and the Country Mouse — where the Country Mouse decides to return to the country, where life is certain and clear, even if it doesn’t have all the amenities of the city. Or Superman, who fights for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, all of which he learned on a farm in Kansas. (Folding in neatly with my premise, the WB show about Superman’s childhood is called Smallville, of course…)

So, small farming communities are supposed to be all that is good and right with America — the repository of the values which serve as the foundation of our culture and society. Romantically, we’re a rural nation — from spacious skies and amber waves of grain to purple mountain’s majesty and the fruited plain (no songs sung to “O Beautiful for crowded streets, for office buildings’ gleam; for bustling lifestyles, long commutes, and factories unclean!”).

(and yes, I’m inordinately proud of that little bit of original lyricism…)

I’m not claiming that Littleburg USA is actually the apotheosis of all that is right with America, or that it should be — just that this is what the perception is.

And what keeps Littleburg USA alive right now? Farm subsidies. If Old MacDonald had a farm right now, the only way it would be afloat is with a government subsidy. E-I-E-I-O. The farming way of life is dying as it is — children raised in farming communities don’t stay there. Small farmers have a hard time eking out a living even when Mother Nature and the markets cooperate. In some areas, the land is more valuable if it’s developed (outside ring suburbs and in certain exceedingly gorgeous parts of the west — Montana, for example). Farm subsidies are the most effective bulwark we have against the total loss of that way of life.

So farm subsidies have a certain amount of value in keeping a fundamental American narrative alive. Do we value the narrative of the American Dream and social mobility? Then we should devote government resources to preserving that narrative. Do we value the narrative regarding the American farming way of life? Then we should devote government resources to preserving that narrative. Otherwise that way of life will be displaced by Big Agribusiness, which has the resources and the economy of scale to make farming profitable.

Europe has made this exact choice. Arguably, the EU Common Agricultural Policy (“CAP”) is as bad or worse than American farming subsidies. And while the EU has reformed the CAP, it is nowhere near eliminating it completely.

Why is that the case? Europe has made a determination that will likely prevent wholesale elimination of their farm subsidy: the EU has decided to support the social structure of agriculture — to protect their common narratives regarding the farming way of life. So long as the various constituent nations of the EU want to continue supporting their national narratives (particularly France, Spain, and Portugal, in this case) involving the essence of rural farm life, the farming subsidies will stay in place.

I think, if it was ever put to the test, we’d make a similar decision here. We’d recognize, rationally, that farm subsidies are probably a lousy thing for a number of reasons, and then we’d go ahead and keep them anyway. The myth has value and has purpose — going all Timothy Busfield in Field of Dreams makes us a little bit emptier in the end.

Not that the whole system shouldn’t be tweaked for greater sustainability. If you ever want to read a scary, scary book, check out Cadillac Desert, which talks about how the West got and is getting its water. Yow.

Misinformation

 Posted by Mike  Bush Administration, Foreign Policy, Middle East, U.S. Politics, War in Iraq  No Responses »
Mar 292005
 

With a good manager, it is always her fault. Good leaders take responsibility for the people they hire, and for the work that those people do. Good leaders know that if the people they hire do a bad job, then it is either because a) the leader hired the wrong people or b) the leader failed to guide them properly. When a project goes poorly, good leaders take responsibility for the outcome, and the run an internal evaluation to figure out what happened. Bad leaders, on the other hand, are constantly passing the blame of failure off to other people. Bad leaders want to lay claim to the banner of infallibility and throw their hands up in the air at the people they have to work with. When things go badly, they start looking for scapegoats to fire, all the while maintaining that they did their job just fine.

Think about this when you hear people talking about the failure to find WMDs in Iraq. Hussein’s possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction was the primary excuse used to justify the war. And, of course, we found none. So an investigation is launched to figure out why we were so wrong, an investigation that concluded today that the CIA bears much of the blame for the poor intelligence. What I want to know is, however, why is President Bush taking no responsibility for the action as well?

I understand that the president had poor information. Presidents always have poor information. In fact, this President has tried to justify his own misinformation by claiming that President Clinton was misinformed as well. This is true, except that President Clinton did not invade Iraq. That means that a) he did not think Iraq’s possession of WMDs was a big enough threat, b) he did not fully trust the intelligence that he was given, or c) he felt that the US policy of containment was being effective. President Bush, however, was all to eager to dismiss the containment policy and to play up the threat that Saddam Hussein posed, and was also much too eager to believe every bad thing that he was told about Saddam. In other words, you can’t just pin the war in Iraq on the CIA, as I have heard some Bush apologists try to do. Ultimately the President bears the responsibility for his own actions.

Think about that the next time you hear someone praise President Bush’s leadership.

 Older Entries