The money doesn’t have to go to small farmers to have price stabilizing effects or to provide incentive for letting land lie fallow. It is very nice when it does, but mostly I think that no one wants a replay of Enron this time with food. (Think of grain ships from Egypt waiting off the Italian coast until prices in Rome soar.)
Fixed that for you. 
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In nz’s case, it doesn’t matter if there’s a cushion of overproduction. Worldwide, however, overproduction is necessary to keep civilization afloat. The form of farm subsidy can be argued, but not its necessity.
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ObSF: The discussion of hypocrisy in The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Also see Austro-Athenian Empire on this topic.
It fits right in with the whole Republican meme of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, which allows them to demonize the poor and those on welfare while implying that those same people could become CEOs if they just stopped being lazy and worked harder. And cutting welfare forces them to stop being lazy, so that is helping them. (And punishing them.)
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Reminds me of what actor and right-wing tool Craig T. Nelson once said, “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No.”
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I have a problem with farm subsidies. The problem is that I pay them and they rarely go towards actual stabilization.
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A 2008 poll of 1,400 Americans by the Cornell Survey Research Institute found that when people were asked whether they had “ever used a government social program,” 57 percent said they had not. Respondents were then asked whether they had availed themselves of any of 21 different federal policies, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, the home-mortgage-interest deduction and student loans. It turned out that 94 percent of those who had denied using programs had benefited from at least one; the average respondent had used four.
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I’ve used the inner-liner technique as well. But for snow camping.
If you put a plastic liner between your inner-most liner socks and the insulateive layers, then you can keep your insulation drier and more effective while preventing warm footsweat vapors from migrating away from your feet. Therefore you can wear thinner and lighter insulating socks.
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While, I specifically am unaware of applying for any of the programs, I’m absolutely positive that I benefit from them. I live in a house that is part of the mortgage interest exemption. I just don’t have to contribute to the mortgage. My parents do that.
I’m actually very lucky, because my dad’s been part of a very competent union my whole life. If it weren’t for that, I’d probably be deaf due to not being able to pay to treat numerous childhood ear infections.
The whole conservative concept is so insidious. Get rid of govenment help, get rid of unions, then force everyone to be self reliant for catastrophic expenses, or capitalize on their popularity in the community.
What happens to people who can’t get a foothold in the community? Or those who have to move all the time? What happens to the homeless? What happens to the mentally ill?
The current Republican party isn’t just unempathetic and lacking in social compassion. It’s foundation is essentially disgust with modern civilization.
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A factually misleading BoingBoing post title by Corey? That would never happen…
/s
(Not sure why he does it so often… but at this point I have to think it is deliberate.)
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I personally don’t believe in the concept of evil, which is an idea that is unavoidably linked to religious ideology. Nonetheless, I do believe in abhorrent actions that don’t befit civilization or moral thought, so I’m pretty sure we’ve arrived at similar conclusions via different methods.
Note, I think the concept of evil causes more harm than good because of its inflexibility when applied to an actor rather than the action. That usage seems to be no end of trouble due to its unwillingness to recognize that people are influenced qnd don’t actually have free will, but do have the ability to change at least some behaviors.
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While I agree with your main point, I’m going to disagree that concern about GMOs (in the USA) is useful to the public currently.
These days, GMOs are so highly regulated by the FDA that they might be considered pharmaceuticals (which isn’t necessarily bad in itself)
The thing is, currently those who are in opposition to GM crops are arguing from points that would exclude traditional hybrid species, artificially selective breeding, and nuclear gardens from commercial use. Such methods introduce many unaccounted genes and mutations into plant species willy-nilly without any controls, yet they’re perfectly acceptable to nearly everyone who goes against genetic modification and engineering in spite of the fact that GM techniques are very precise and higly studied and regulated.
For fucks sake, corn and tomatoes didn’t exist 2000 years ago. They’re both completely human inventions via unregulated means using utterly random techniques gated by the choices of psychotic apes.
These anti-gmo people are hypocrites concerned about issues that have no scientific bearing. They’re worried about artifical problems that don’t actually exist. Just look at golden rice for an example of truly useful GM crops that have been hindered by bullshit concerns that are laughable.
I like all the complaints about the headline that do nothing to deny the fact that her family still received almost a half a million dollars. #lookatthebigpicture
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My main concern is that the trend toward more and more GMO’s is an expansion of the trend that is concentrating the ownership of patented seeds in fewer and fewer hands. Those same hands use their financial power to harass and litigate and jealously protect their interests against any farmer who even accidentally reproduces one of their crops. These cases are easy to find if you look. I am seriously opposed to bigger and bigger factory farming and the economics that drive it.
I’m not personally afraid of most GMO concoctions for the reasons that you state. Although it would be easy to describe a scenario where the system could fail. But if the companies who so jealously guard their products would be more willing to allow accurate labeling, and let the market decide whether they want to consume them or not, they could easily eliminate one of my objections. It’s ironic that mega-conglomerates, who are so eager to proclaim the efficacy of the capitalist system, seem so dead set against honest competition.
Point taken.
I have to think it’s deliberate too. Cory is extremely sharp, and a successful and experienced author who isn’t going to repeatedly make mistakes like this. If someone with an opposing position were to do something like this, he would be the first to point out the exact semantics of the deception.
This one is particularly egregious because it blames someone (Ernst) for something done by other people (mostly her brother).
I believe he must be doing it because he believes that, in this situation, the ends justify the means. BoingBoing has a lot to offer, but for anything even remotely related to politics or race, minimal thought is given to journalistic ethics. It’s a disrespectful and conniving way to treat a readership.
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BB doesn’t say her family received the federal aid, it says that the senator received the federal aid. That’s a big difference than saying her family/kin received the aid.
When did he say they aren’t synonyms? He’s saying that BB doesn’t say her family/kin received the money, which the linked article does, but instead says that she herself received the money.
That aside, as an antiquated term “kin” has the wider implication of an extended family, while “family” is more commonly interpreted as “nuclear family,” and I believe that’s why the original article used “kin” to describe who received the federal aid.
I think you need to reread the title and the linked headline.
In BB’s title, what did she boast/campaign on? And who received the federal subsidies?
How about in the linked headline?
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It sounded like they meant a 10%-20% profit margin over the course of a year with 20k net profit on average, not a huge subsidy with 80k-180k loss.
Well, clearly if they can prove that Corey is being disingenuous, the entire house of cards that she’s being hypocritical comes falling down, right? That’s how it works, right? Because it’s wrong of him to have a political view, because reasons.
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