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What?s Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander
As the presidential election campaigns continue their loud and fact-bending fight for the White House, the important issue of local control--the ability of local people to make local choices for themselves, their families, farms and communities--is rarely broached.
It should be, as a lengthy, troubling story in Thursday?s Minneapolis Star Tribune notes. After all, what?s more American than Americans running local affairs?
Well, corporate control, that?s what.
Thursday?s Star reported that a University of California, Berkeley researcher, Tyrone Hayes, was uninvited as the keynote speaker at an upcoming conference staged by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency when state officials learned he would be showcasing research on the link between atrazine and frog abnormalities.
Hayes, stung by the rejection, went public with the politicization of science. ?Initially,? he told the Star, ?before the MPCA uninvited me, they asked if I would remove the words ?atrazine? and ?pesticides? from the title of my talk, and of course I refused to do that because that?s what I work on.?
A MPCA commission mouthpiece, Sheryl Corrigan, explained that Hayes was pulled from the conference because he had presented similar research in Minnesota in early 2004. ?I just didn?t think it was keynote material,? Corrigan told the Star.
At least that?s her story. Emails between Hayes and another MPCA staffer, the Star uncovered, tell a different story.
On Sept. 27, wrote Star reporter Tom Meersman, the staffer emailed the Cal scientist on ?the need to ?reassure management? about the keynote speech? to 1,100 conferees. ?Politically speaking,? the staffer wrote, ?it sounds like it is the atrazine that is causing some concern from other agencies?? in Minnesota state government.
The issue could be mitigated, the staffer suggested, if Hayes changed the speech title to something more general to ?alleviate some of the political power plays going on ... so the game doesn?t get out of hand.?
Hayes responded to the request by asking specifically what MPCA?s concerns were.
The staffer, by email, replied: ?Atrazine, atrazine, atrazine. This isn?t a Dept of Ag. (sic) conference and they are thinking there is a possibility that they are going to be attacked and not (be) present to defend themselves.?
Reporter Meersman, picking up on the Minnesota?s Dept. of Ag worries, interviewed the emailing staffer who confessed that Wayne Anderson, MPCA?s ?liaison with the Minnesota Agriculture Department,? was the worrier. Anderson, of course, ?could not be reached for comment.?
Hayes was then uninvited Sept. 29.
As big a splash as the Star made with its story Thursday, few Minnesota local control and sustainable farming advocates were surprised to see their state bureaucrats manipulating public meetings to keep the spotlight off Big Ag. Most spent the last year defending their communities from a state-led fight against local control.
Leading the fight has been Paul Sobocinski, a Minnesota farmer and organizer for state?s most active sustainable farming group, the Land Stewardship Project. According to Sobocinski, Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been undermining local control since taking over for former governor Jesse Ventura in 2002.
Minnesota, he explains, is unique in that local township boards control all planning and zoning in the state. That means Big Ag must convince local officials that factory farms will not harm the local environment or economy before building permits are issued.
But if Pawlenty and his Big Ag backers have there way that will soon change. In the 2004 state legislative session, Pawlenty & Pals succeeded in weakening state laws governing nuisance lawsuits. A year ago, local citizens were stripped of their right to petition for environmental reviews of big animal feedlots.
Last summer, however, Pawlenty went one big step beyond: he convened a special ?Livestock Task Force? on how to--and we?ve heard this before--make Minnesota?s livestock sector ?more competitive.?
The handpicked board is a who?s who of Minnesota Big Ag: the state president of the pork producers; a top of official of Christiansen Farms, the state?s biggest hog integrator; officials from Cenex Harvest States, Land O? Lakes (another hog integrator), Hormel and the local Farm Credit System.
And, to no one?s surprise, nobody from the Land Stewardship Project or any local control advocacy group received an invite to Pawlenty?s task force.
In the mid-2004 issue of the Stewardship Project?s quarterly newsletter, Sobocinski decried the panel and its obvious intent, to undermine local control of factory farms in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. ?Local democracy is not in the way of successful livestock farming in Minnesota,? he noted.
?But,? he continued, ?it does pose a significant barrier to the spread of large-scale industrialized agriculture. It?s much easier to influence decision makers in St. Paul that your mega-livestock operation is good for rural Minnesota than it is to convince a group of local farmers and resident that millions of gallons of liquid manure will make a good neighbor.?
And, cutting to the heart of the matter, Sobocinski added, ?For Minnesota?s family farmers, local democracy has not been a problem because we live with our neighbors, work with our neighbors, and farm in a way that?s compatible with our neighbors. As an independent hog farmer, I?m not afraid of local democracy.?
The Land Stewardship Project recently joined forces with the Minnesota Farmers Union, the state?s National Farmers Organization and the Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota to form its own task force, a task force to advocate that what?s good for local communities--democracy--is also good for local livestock producers.
Can these family farm groups protect their farms and communities from Big Ag--and outside politicians--bent on bending democracy to the corporate will?
They can if Big Ag takes one moment to listen to the most sensible phrase spoken by President Bush since taking office. Bush, on the stump, loves to wrap up his highly scripted campaign speeches by talking about the "the transformational power of liberty.''
The line, usually offered in defense of the White House?s Iraq policy, has one point: trust freedom and free people to make the right choices for themselves.
What?s good enough for Iraq should be good enough for Minnesota, right?
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Rabo Denied: ?It was a busy day for the folks at Farm Credit Services of America.
?The Omaha-based firm announced today it has terminated its merger agreement with Dutch giant Rabobank, rejected a merger proposal from Agstar Financial Services in Minnesota and established a patronage dividend program that is expected to pay out $55 million to its customer stockholders in early 2005.
?The announcements appear to address all the major issues that had embroiled FCSA in the months since it announced plans to leave the Farm Credit System and merge with Rabobank, which would have turned it into a commercial bank.
?The FCSA-Rabobank deal became a major controversy in rural America since farmers in FCSA's four-state lending area--Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming and South Dakota--had objected to the plan and farm credit leaders in other areas of the country said the plan to sell part of the system would endanger the Farm Credit System Congress established in 1916 to provide a consistent source of credit to farmers.
?Rabobank also issued a news release from New York that it had received notice from FCSA of the termination of the merger agreement.? Oct. 21, DTN.
Cotton Charlie Continues to Fight: ?After 26 years representing the people of West Texas in Congress, Representative Charles W. Stenholm might have thought the days of knocking on doors to ask strangers for votes were behind him.
?But Mr. Stenholm, tall and silver-haired, is pounding the pavement like a freshman this year - and for good reason. One of five Texas Democrats split from their constituents by redistricting, Mr. Stenholm, a conservative who often votes with President Bush is fighting for his political survival against a first-term Republican incumbent, Representative Randy Neugebauer, on Mr. Neugebauer's home turf. Two-thirds of the voters in his district are new to him...
?But Mr. Stenholm, a former cotton and wheat farmer who is playing up his political independence and his status as the senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, remains at risk.
?And so the congressman recently found himself hunting for votes in rural Hereford, a West Texas cattle town, cutting a lonely figure as he went door to door. His black ostrich-skin cowboy boots were worn through to his socks. His manner was polite yet determined as he introduced himself, offering bumper stickers or lawn signs to those who would take them.
" ?Which one you want?? Mr. Stenholm would ask, arraying the stickers like an accordion fan. ?You want Republicans for Stenholm, Democrats for Stenholm or Independents for Stenholm?? " Oct. 13, New York Times.
Fewer Polls, more Polled Herefords: ?Mr. Bush's job approval rating is at 44 percent, a dangerously low number for an incumbent president, and one of the lowest of his tenure. A majority of voters said that they disapproved of the way Mr. Bush had managed the economy and the war in Iraq, and--echoing a refrain of Mr. Kerry's--that his tax cuts had favored the wealthy. Voters said that Mr. Kerry would do a better job of preserving Social Security, creating jobs and ending the war in Iraq.
?But a majority of Americans continue to see Mr. Kerry as an untrustworthy politician who will say what he thinks people want to hear. More than half of respondents said they considered him liberal, reflecting a dominant line of attack by Mr. Bush this fall...
?The Times/CBS poll was conducted over the four days after Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry concluded the last of their three debates. Some other polls taken during that time have shown Mr. Bush in a slightly stronger position among what they described as likely voters. The variations reflect the difficulty of determining who is going to vote, particularly in a campaign in which both sides have invested so many resources in registering new voters...
?The poll findings were highly unusual in that many measures used by pollsters to determine the strength of an incumbent--from job approval to the percentage of Americans who believe the country is heading in the wrong direction (59 percent)--would normally signal trouble for an incumbent.
?In addition, voters seem to be listening to many of Mr. Kerry's arguments; 59 percent, for example, said they thought that Mr. Bush's policies favored corporate interests.? Oct. 19, New York Times.
?Like a Contented Christian with Four Aces?: ?The evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson has set off a partisan fight by telling a television interviewer that President Bush serenely assured him just before the invasion of Iraq, ?Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.?
?Mr. Robertson, offering that account in an interview televised Tuesday night on CNN, said Mr. Bush made the comment when they met in Nashville in early 2003. At that meeting, he said, he warned the president to prepare the public for casualties.
Mr. Robertson, a former marine who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, said that he had had ?deep misgivings? about the war. But, he said, closely paraphrasing Mark Twain, the president looked ?like a contented Christian with four aces.?
" ?I mean, he was just sitting there like 'I am on top of the world,' Mr. Robertson said.
?The Lord told me it was going to be a), a disaster, and b), messy,? he continued, adding that he wished Mr. Bush would acknowledge his mistake.? Oct. 21, New York Times.
The Next 10 Days
Please excuse us for a brief outburst of silly exuberance: GO CARDINALS!
Ah, now we feel better.
We feel better because we are reliving a very sweet and very wonderful childhood memory, a replay of the 1967 World Series where the Cardinals defeated the Boston Red Sox in seven games. Come tomorrow, the replay begins in earnest as the Cards and BoSox square off in the opening game of the 2004 World Series.
(We don?t know how that Series will end--we have our hopes--so the replay comforts us in our time of great doubt.)
In 1967, nothing mattered to us more than St. Louis Cardinals. Not family, not farm, not church--although we prayed daily for the sainted Cards--or school. It was all Cardinals all the time.
In 1967, just 60 miles south of Busch Stadium, baseball was our life. We played it every day at noon when the big dairy farm shut down an hour for dinner and naps. We even took our paycheck--hard-earned at 50-cents an hour back then--to the Western Auto to buy our own piece of the radio spectrum, a small Magnavox transistor radio, to hear Harry and Jack call every game.
In ?67 it was Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Dick Hughes, Roger Maris, Mike Shannon, Tim McCarver and, our personal favorite, Julian Javier. The names still send goose bumps up our typing hands, then back down our spine. Ooh.
For the Sox it was mighty Carl Yastrzemski, the American League?s (last) Triple Crown winner--best batting average, most homes runs and most runs batted in--that year, pitching ace Jim Lonborg and slick-fielding slugger Rico Petrocelli.
And the Cardinals, those beautiful boys of summer, won. Gibson pitched three complete games, all wins--a record not matched since. Brock batted nearly .500 and stole eight bases, another World Series record. And Javier hit a three-run home run in game seven to seal the Series for the Redbirds.
Oh, how we loved them, cheered for them, celebrated with them. Oh, what they gave us down on the farm.
We?re still a Cardinal fan today, but without the cheers and tears. Sure, we want the Cards to win this Series. Sure, we?ll watch the games--intently.
But today we view baseball from a different perspective: it?s just a game; it?s just grownups playing a child?s game. And the World Series is just a sweet, temporary escape for us for the next 10 days. Over the next week and a half we?ll see if history can be repeated.
Simultaneously, we?ll be watching the election--to see if history won?t be repeated.
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