Yo Howie, where's the beef?

[Guest Cerebus]

Though coming from a well known right-wing source (OMG FAUX WEEKLYSTANDARD LOL 2003!!!) an interesting article about Dean's agricultural plan. Growing up in suburban Connecticut I havn't got much insight when it comes to farming...maybe one of our more knowledgable boarders can help me out?

 

Where's the Beef From?

From the November 17, 2003 issue: Howard Dean's agriculture plan.

by Dave Juday

11/17/2003, Volume 009, Issue 10

 

 

DEMOCRATIC FRONTRUNNER Howard Dean is going for broke. Not content merely to do respectably in Iowa, as other New Englanders seeking the White House have done in the past, he is the only one of the nine Democratic presidential candidates to have campaigned in every single county in Iowa. What's more, unlike all his rivals, he has unveiled a highly detailed agricultural platform.

 

Dean's farm policy blueprint is all that you'd expect from the former governor of Vermont, a state whose biggest agricultural processor is Ben and Jerry's--it's populist, tinged with an environmental agenda, and very anti-corporate. Above all else he puts the meat-packing industry in his crosshairs. For example, Dean promises to interpret authority under the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act "to take aggressive action" against meatpackers who don't offer farmers what the Dean administration might consider a fair price for hogs and cattle. Remember Hillary Clinton's cattle futures trading profits? There'll be none of that under President Dean. Market ups and downs--even those based on fundamental changes in supply and demand--will give way to government-managed "fair markets."

 

Dean also wants a national ban on any slaughterhouse owning livestock. As trifling as it seems amid the big issues of our day, Dean, in contemplating his run for the White House, has given considerable thought to the unlikely question: Who in America should be able to own a cow or a pig?

 

At issue is the practice of some meatpackers of securing a cattle supply prior to slaughter by buying the livestock or contracting with farmers. The packers do so in order to be assured of the livestock's quality and, in some regions, to be assured of a sufficient quantity of cattle to keep their processing plants operating efficiently. Likewise, in the pork sector, many producers and meat processing plants transact business via multiyear contracts. So important is the assurance of supply to meatpackers that they often pay a premium over what farmers could receive in cash market sales. Respected Wall Street food industry analyst David Nelson of Credit Suisse/First Boston recently reported that such contracts "have been a positive in excess of [cash] market price."

 

Meat processing is a volatile, capital intensive, highly regulated, low margin business. Meatpackers find their profits in volume, ensuring that volume through contracts. The current economic system, in other words, already accomplishes what Dean says he wants--a relatively smooth-functioning market that provides some predictability to commodity marketing. Dean just doesn't recognize it. Not unlike Bill Clinton, he's a wonk, lost in the weeds of detail, hoping the government can fine-tune small, routine daily market transactions.

 

Dean promises to be aggressive in managing imports too, via a country-of-origin labeling mandate on meat. Under this plan, the labels on all meat products must detail where the livestock was born, raised, and slaughtered. U.S. hog producers commonly import "feeder pigs" from Canada, which are raised and slaughtered in this country. Likewise, U.S. cattle producers import a significant number of feeder cattle, which are raised and slaughtered here. In the case of ground beef, the following scenario would not be uncommon: Meat from a Mexican-born, U.S.-raised, and slaughtered cow is blended with meat from a U.S. born, Canadian-raised, U.S.-slaughtered cow, as well as further blended with some imported frozen lean beef trimmings from Australia or New Zealand. In descending order of predominance by weight, all of that would have to be detailed on the label, like some sort of stamped passport for your hamburger.

 

Why? Because at the Iowa State Fair Dean said "farmers should be able to enjoy the premium that consumers are willing to pay for quality American products." Consider, however, the intellectual disconnect: If consumers are willing to pay this premium, why is it necessary to establish a government mandate? Keep in mind, there is no prohibition against voluntarily labeling meat as bred, born, raised, and slaughtered in the U.S.A.--as any profit-maximizing company would do if consumers were, in fact, willing to pay such a premium.

 

Congress passed a country-of-origin labeling proposal as part of the omnibus farm bill in 2002, but after considering the complications in the livestock and meat sector, the House voted to stop the funding for the implementation of the system. That doesn't deter Dean. He believes this stuff.

 

Consider: As governor of Vermont, Dean was one of the architects of the North East Interstate Dairy Compact, a complicated and ambitious six-state statutory framework that established a regional board to regulate the minimum price of milk that dairy processors could offer to pay farmers. The compact was a fiasco. Small dairy farms in Vermont, the ones Dean was trying to save, went out of business at a faster rate the first year of the compact than before it existed. Retail milk prices to New England consumers rose by a total of $136 million.

 

In response to the economic chaos it created, Congress let the compact die. Now, however, Dean is proposing to resuscitate the heart of the dairy compact--micro-regulation of commodity prices and purchasing contracts and even animal ownership--and transplant it to the meat industry nationwide. The results are predictable.

 

With his ag plan, Dean continues to promote his bona fides as 12-year governor of America's most rural state. But Vermont's rurality (more than 61 percent of the population lives in rural communities) is largely divorced from commercial agriculture--i.e., the kind of agriculture that feeds the more than 98 percent of the U.S. population that does not live on farms and adds an annual $97.3 billion to our nation's gross domestic product. In fact, one of the stated goals of the dairy compact, according to the commission that oversaw it, was to preserve commercially unviable small agricultural scenes as a prop for New England's tourist industry.

 

This approach, called "multi-functionality" by the Europeans, was at the core of the European Union's ruinously expensive agriculture policy--until this year, when the overwhelming cost forced reforms. Dean's designs on the meat sector--the engine of the U.S. agricultural economy, as it happens--would Europeanize our food and agricultural system.

 

Agricultural policy doesn't typically get a lot of attention during presidential campaigns, either by candidates or by journalists and pundits. In the case of Howard Dean, however, his heavy-handed agricultural plan--and record--is a window into his political soul and merits closer examination by commentators. Dean's tough meat industry policy should give them a lot to chew on.

 

Dave Juday is an agricultural commodity market analyst.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Attacking the massive corporate agribusinesses isn't a very bright move, mainly because of the way it can be spun to say "Dean's tampering with our food," like that article just did. The tourist proposal he made is powerfully dumb, though, as a farm's purpose is to produce, not to sit there and look quaint, which is why so many family farms are going under. Granted, that's a damn shame, and having spent a lot of my childhood on a small farm, I'd like to think that something could be done to preserve them, but they simply cannot financially compete, period. It's just the nature of business.

 

Also, if I'm not mistaken, commodities are going to be cheaper when they're mass-produced in the high-density feed lots and broad expansive corporate farms of the midwest. Small farms tend to get middled when selling their stuff, too. The major agribusinesses are successful for a reason.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Though coming from a well known right-wing source (OMG FAUX WEEKLYSTANDARD LOL 2003!!!)

I hate to steal the thread and use it for another cause, but can we please put this catchphrase out of it's misery? I know I helped propagate it, but it was originally created because so many people were attacking Fox for it's biases that it was becoming rather trite.

 

This is nowhere near the case of the Weekly Standard, which is nowhere near as criticised as being a right-wing rag (which it is.) I don't trust Fox to give proper analysis on candidates or administration policy, but at least I can trust their weather report. If the W.S. told me the sky was blue, I'd need to go outside and check.

 

In short, not only is the catchphrase itself worn out, but the spirit of it is lost in cases such as these.

[Guest Cerebus]

In that case, Jobber, a number of sourcese from National Review to Nation to Slate would not even be worth picking up not to mention the Wall Street Journal or NY Times. I find it inconcievale, however, that just because an article comes from a source that is well known for leaning to the political Left or Right doesn't mean that it is completely worthles...even the most ardent liberal who watched Firing Line back in the day, for example, would know what I'm talking about. The folks at the Weekly Standard are arch-conservatives, no question about it, but they are folks who know what they are talking about...not just Joe-Shmo banging out stuff on his blog and for all the talk from many liberals (Chomsky) about "independent media" one gets the sense that they want "independent" to equate "liberal." Sorry folks, doesn't work like that.

 

On the first part...I'm (relatively) new to this forum so I guess the faux thing is still funny to me...but i see its long past worn out its welcome so i'll refrain

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Cerebus, I'm simply talking about the catchphrase. Fox News has gotten slagged so much for their tilt that pointing it out anymore has become obvious.

 

I wouldn't say the same about the Standard.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

I hate to steal the thread and use it for another cause, but can we please put this catchphrase out of it's misery? I know I helped propagate it, but it was originally created because so many people were attacking Fox for it's biases that it was becoming rather trite.

AH-HAH!

 

So that was your plan all along.

 

Use the phrase to death, go "it's been overused" and thus send it to the slaughterhouse.

 

You can have "FAU..." when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

 

Oh, and I can see the political ads now.

 

DEAN WANTZ DA TERRORISTS TO TAINT YOUR BURGER -- VOTE FOR GEPHARDT/KERRY (who by the way served in Vietnam*)/MOSELEY-BRAUN/EDWARDS/GRAHAM (if he's still around)/KUCINICH/LIEBERMAN.

 

*See Mike, moderation...

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

What the hell is an arch conservative?

[NoCalMike 0]

Though coming from a well known right-wing source (OMG FAUX WEEKLYSTANDARD LOL 2003!!!)

I hate to steal the thread and use it for another cause, but can we please put this catchphrase out of it's misery? I know I helped propagate it, but it was originally created because so many people were attacking Fox for it's biases that it was becoming rather trite.

 

.

In short, not only is the catchphrase itself worn out, but the spirit of it is lost in cases such as these.

I second JotW........the joke is over, we all get it, HA-HA, let's move on.

[Guest JMA]

What the hell is an arch conservative?

Sean Hannity describes himself as one. I take it to mean an ultra-conservative.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

DEAN WANTZ DA TERRORISTS TO TAINT YOUR BURGER -- VOTE FOR GEPHARDT/KERRY (who by the way served in Vietnam*)/MOSELEY-BRAUN/EDWARDS/GRAHAM (if he's still around)/KUCINICH/LIEBERMAN.

When are we going to get over this Vietnam thing and get to the pressing issue, which is that the man's initials are JFK.

 

Why WOULDN'T you want to vote for him with credentials like that?

[NoCalMike 0]

What the hell is an arch conservative?

Sean Hannity describes himself as one. I take it to mean an ultra-conservative.

Ann Coulter would be another example......YIKES.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

I second JotW........the joke is over, we all get it, HA-HA, let's move on.

Many of the people that used it did so just so that we could get to this point. And like I said earlier, take it out of my cold, dead fingers.

 

Oh, and I hate to steal the thread and use it for another cause, but I found this funny.

 

Dedicated to all you non-fans of a certain cable news network that will soon make you laugh out loud in the year 2004…

 

CNN planted question at debate, student says

 

By Elizabeth Jensen, LA Timtes Staff Writer

 

NEW YORK -- CNN planted a question about computer preferences at last week's debate of the Democratic presidential candidates at Faneuil Hall in Boston, according to the student who posed the query and wrote about it yesterday in an online forum of the Brown (University) Daily Herald. During the debate, cosponsored by the nonprofit Rock the Vote organization, Alexandra Trustman asked the candidates whether they preferred the PC or Mac format for their computers.

 

Trustman wrote yesterday that she was called the morning of the debate and given the topic of the question the CNN producers wanted her to ask. She wrote that she was "confused by the question's relevance" and constructed what she thought was a "much more relevant" question.

 

But when she arrived in Boston for the debate, she wrote, she was "handed a note card" with the question and told she couldn't ask her alternative "because it wasn't lighthearted enough and they wanted to modulate the event with various types of questions."

 

CNN did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Edited November 11, 2003 by kkktookmybabyaway

[Jobber of the Week 0]

I think we should be mad at her for being a wimp.

 

I know that if that happened to me, I'd ask my real question anyway.

[Guest I'm That Damn Zzzzz]

This has little to do with the article posted, but more relevent than most of the other posts so here goes:

 

http://www.ewg.org/farm/subsidies/milliona...sclub/page1.php

 

A list of people who got more than $1 million in welfare from government USDA subsidy programs.

[BX 0]

Hate to say it kkk, but "No Shit". I suspect both major parties moderate the questions coming from the crowd in these types of debates. Now I'll admit, the marijuana question and the subsequent responses threw me for a loop, but for the most part, I believe the parties practice this all the time. Why else would Kerry and company sound so damned rehearsed?

 

EDIT: Then again, "What kind of computer platform do you prefer"!?! What kind of fucking question is that?

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

There were planted, "faux" questions in a primary presidential debate?

 

Next thing you're going to tell me is that the Bush camp is going to do a PR campaign.

 

Or that John Kerry served...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...a double fault against his tennis opponent and lost his match in straight sets...