Fantasy Road Trip: Flatbeds Across America

I know it isn't feasible, there is no lawful authority behind the idea, but I'd love to take a convoy of flatbed trucks, like the kind you used to haul those square hay bales, back in the day before they became round bales, fasten some wooden benches onto the frame, and then take a few dozen captive politicians and their science advisers on a little trip across America.

It would be a pretty long trip, so I'd have a couple of "comfort" vans trailing along to provide refreshments -- homemade sandwiches and potato salad, plus some freshly squeezed lemonade. And off we'd go, down the highways and byways of this great land. We'd have loudspeakers and play some great American music, some old, some new, some of it country, some of it blues.

The only rule would be that we would avoid all interstates and any towns over 10,000 people, and we'd only stay in the smallest of locally owned motels and hotels, when we weren't pitching tents and camping. I would want these people to see the real America, the flyover country that some of them, I swear, have never seen, judging by their comments and their actions.

We would do this in late spring or early summer. The tour would be designed to show these Washington, D.C., elites just how the rest of this beautiful country lives, or tries to. Specifically I want them to get an idea of how vast it is, and how little of it is occupied and/or being used in productive ways.

America could still feed and clothe the world, if we wanted to. We could do it with legacy seeds, American beef, poultry, swine and sheep. We could do it without polluting the waters or triggering massive erosion. All it would take is a sensible farm and land policy that would be centered on eliminating the massive subsidies of corporate agriculture, eliminating federal intervention in markets, and empowering free markets to do what they do best.

I know this isn't going to happen. Instead we have pending legislation (H.R. 875) that would create a whole new bureaucracy and regulatory regime to lock down production of every bit of food imaginable. We are going to create a new serfdom for anyone who even thinks twice about growing a garden or raising a few chickens to sell eggs. But instead of the baron over at the Castle Anthrax, it will be some cookie cutter bureaucrat with Health & Human Services who's never grown anything except a couple of marijuana plants back in college, telling you that you must either keep up your paperwork reports or plow under your tomato vines.

No, in Washington today we have elected officials getting ready to rubber stamp new power grab pieces of legislation designed by progressive apparatchiks who will tell us that in order to protect the food supply we must clamp down on irresponsible food production facility (farm) practices. These are the same type of people who think that we are already over-populated and need to reduce our numbers. With their proposals, we will. People will starve.

Among those is a woman named Nina Fedoroff, the science and tech adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (In fairness, she was Condi Rice's S&T gal, too.) Here's what she told the BBC:

"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing "wild lands", and in particular water supplies.

Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: "There are probably already too many people on the planet."

I would want "Dr. Death" Fedoroff to have a bench seat with a good view of our nation's farmland. I would also like to have her explain to us why we should run the risk of using genetically modified seeds when these may well be the cause of the death of modern civilization. Yeah, she's all for GM crops too.

A National Medal of Science laureate (America's highest science award), the professor of molecular biology believes part of that better land management must include the use of genetically modified foods. [SNIP]

Dr Fedoroff, who wrote a book about GM Foods in 2004, believes critics of genetically modified maize, corn and rice are living in bygone times.

"We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production."

That last statement is false. It is only in the last 20 years that GM foods have entered into use, many of them engineered so that the big giant seed companies can force farmers to purchase their seed crop year after year, since the plants' genetic codes are programmed to produce sterile seed. There is now evidence that this gene is crossing over into non-GM fields and causing those seeds to become sterile. She is making a false analogy; there are many modern farming practices which do no harm. But we do not know all of the consequences of genetic modification. You would not go to your doctor and say, "Doc, experiment on me by re-sequencing my genetic structure to give me the strength of an ox." That would be the proper analogy.

But I suspect that the push for acceptance of GM crops is that the Malthusian elite know full well the truth behind the science. They want a world with fewer people, and one way or the other, they intend to see it happen.

By the way, if you want an eyeful of how India's cotton farmers are taking to GM seeds, just Google the phrase GM cotton seeds and see how many stories you find detailing the impact of (allegedly) unlawful GM experiments by a couple of multinational seed companies, including concerns that seeds modified to kill boll worms are killing the healthy bacteria in thousands of acres of once productive soil.

I know it's a long post, but it's as close as I will get to my long flatbed road trip. Please think about what kind of future you want to leave for your children and grandchildren, and their grandchildren. Will they have a future if we continue on the dangerous path advocated by the progressives in power?

You Know You're in Trouble When ...

... the head of the European Union says you're acting too socialist.

Finally, a European leader who makes sense.

BRUSSELS (AP) -- The head of the European Union slammed President Barack Obama's plan to spend nearly $2 trillion to push the U.S. economy out of recession as "the road to hell" that EU governments must avoid.

The blunt comments by Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek to the European Parliament on Wednesday highlighted simmering European differences with Washington ahead of a key summit next week on fixing the world economy.

It was the strongest pushback yet from a European leader as the 27-nation bloc bristles from U.S. criticism that it is not spending enough to stimulate demand.

Shocked by the outburst, other European politicians went into damage control mode, with some reproaching the Czech leader for his language and others reaffirming their good diplomatic ties with the United States. The leaders of EU's major nations -- France, Britain and Germany, among others -- largely ignored Topolanek and his remarks.

Topolanek is correct. It is the road to hell. The reason the leaders of other EU nations are ignoring him is because they, too, have accepted the socialist model and don't want to look like hypocrites. A nation like the Czech Republic, anxious to emulate the old U.S. model of free markets and free people after decades of suffering under Soviet domination, doesn't understand what could be sexy with growing government by spending trillions of dollars that have to be printed.

There are other European nations that are quietly warning that America is on the wrong path, but their motives are not the same. A free, vibrant United States is the economic engine that pulls the rest of the world along. Without it, the entire world will be thrown into depression. It's a lot easier to dabble with socialism as long as you have a big capitalist friend who will buy your stuff and lend you assistance from time to time. It's not so much fun when you don't have a rich friend anymore.

Meanwhile, As You Were Bitching About the Budget ...

Just got in from a day that required six hours of travel. The upside is I got to listen to a good deal of talk radio. The downside is that I'm almost too tired to think.

The bloated budget proposal seems to be the big thing on everyone's mind today which is why, I suppose, the U.S. Senate took today as its opportunity to pass its version of a bill that would give the District of Columbia a full-fledged voting member in the House of Representatives. The vote was 61-37, with turncoat Senators Specter, Snowe and Collins voting for it, naturally, plus Orrin Hatch (Utah gets an additional congressman in this "compromise, at least until the new census overturns everything in 2010), George Voinovich (OH) and Richard Lugar (IN).

Hell, boys, as long as we are ignoring the Constitution, which limits representation in Congress to states only, why stop at the House? Why not give D.C. two senators as well?

The House will pass its version of the bill soon, and in conference committee you can expect to see a couple of poison pill amendments, one to permanently gut the so-called Fairness Doctrine, stripped out.

In the Era of Obama not even the poor conservative dogs get scraps from under the Master's table.