Anti-Farm Aid, ctd.

President Harry Truman, September 18, 1948, on the difference between Republicans and Democrats:

The farmer and the worker know that their troubles have been coming from another source. Right here I would like to cite you an example of the situation that they were faced with not so long ago. In 1932, under the Republicans, we had 12,500,000 unemployed, with average hourly wages at 45 cents, and we had 15 cent corn and 3 cent hogs. In fact, you burnt up some of your corn, because you couldn't market it, it was too cheap.

Those gluttons of privilege remember one plain fact. Never once during the great crises of the past 50 years have the Wall Street Republican administrations lifted a finger to help the farmer. Wait a minute-wait a minute!--they did once. They gave you a Farm Board. That was their great contribution.

How well you must remember the depression of the 1930's! The Republicans gave you that greatest of all depressions, as I said before, when hogs went down to 3 cents, and corn was so cheap you were burning it up.

All through this country, the American farmer and worker have been the victims of boom and bust cycles--with accent on the bust, especially for the farmers and the workers. And they have suffered alike in these misfortunes.

I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who's hitting you? It's about time that the people of America realized what the Republicans have been doing to them.

Why is it that the farmer and the worker and the small businessman suffer under Republican administrations and gain under Democratic administrations?

I'll tell you why. It is the result of a basic difference in the attitude between the Democratic and the Republican parties.

The Democratic Party represents the people. It is pledged to work for agriculture. It is pledged to work for labor. It is pledged to work for the small businessman and the white-collar worker.

The Democratic Party puts human rights and human welfare first.

But the attitude of the Republican gluttons of privilege is very different. The bigmoney Republican looks on agriculture and labor merely as expense items in a business venture. He tries to push their share of the national income down as low as possible and increase his own profits. And he looks upon the Government as a tool to accomplish this purpose.

These Republican gluttons of privilege are cold men. They are cunning men. And it is their constant aim to put the Government of the United States under the control of men like themselves. They want a return of the Wall Street economic dictatorship.

Note Passed From GOP to Small Town America: "Do You LIKE ME-Like Me? Check The Box Next to 'McCain.'"

Several posts ago, I explained my anti-Farm Aid stance. To briefly sum it up: if rural and small town voters want to vote on religious and cultural issues even though it will be to their economic detriment, that's cool; however, to them I say: do NOT expect anyone to come to your assistance when the economic consequences of your voting rear their ugly head, and you:

(a) lose your family farm,
(b) lose your job,
(c) lose your house, or
(d) suffer some other financially or economically devastating event alone or in combination with any of the above.

Simply put, if you LIVE for the culture wars, be prepared to accept the fact that there will be casualties. And, frankly, if the past seven or so years have reinforced nothing else, it is this reality.

What irks me about Farm Aid, among other things, is that it is the rural and small town culture warriors extending their hand for assistance (be it from the government, the public at large, or (gasp) a community organizer). In doing so, they are, in point of fact, asking to be relieved of the consequences of their decisions.

Well, I for one am not going to enable these people. If they make a knowing decision to let their life crumble into ruins just to advance an anti-gay agenda, or to have Roe v. Wade overturned, then they deserve to live in the world they've made for themselves. I know I sound like a Republican here, but I am simply done with people who are putting their personal social agendas ahead of thiking about what government should be doing for them and voting in their best interest, and by extension, the country's best interest.

So, that's my anti-farm aid position.

Now, of all the crazy things, the Wall Street Journal (??!!) is actually pulling back the curtain, and showing that there is some merit to what I'm saying. The Republican coalition depends on the votes of small town America, and once the Republicans are in office, they systematically screw the citizens of ..... wait for it ..... small town America.

Thus, when small town America sees Sarah Palin, they get excited because they see "one of us." A fellow culture warrior given a field promotion to Four-Star General in the Army of the Moral Majority. So blinding is their glee that they don't see that "one of them" will soon be putting "some of the rest of them" out on the street; or out of a job; or off their farm.

Money Quote from the WSJ:

Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well. If you drive west from Kansas City, Mo., you will find towns where Main Street is largely boarded up. You will see closed schools and hospitals. You will hear about depleted groundwater and massive depopulation.

And eventually you will ask yourself, how did this happen? Did Hollywood do this? Was it those "reporters and commentators" with their fancy college degrees who wrecked Main Street, U.S.A.?

No. For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town's mortal enemies.

Without raising an antitrust finger they have permitted fantastic concentration in the various industries that buy the farmer's crops. They have undone the New Deal system of agricultural price supports in favor of schemes called "Freedom to Farm" and loan deficiency payments -- each reform apparently designed to secure just one thing out of small town America: cheap commodities for the big food processors. Richard Nixon's Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz put the conservative attitude toward small farmers most bluntly back in the 1970s when he warned, "Get big or get out."

A few days ago I talked politics with Donn Teske, the president of the Kansas Farmers Union and a former Republican. Barack Obama may come from a big city, he admits, but the Farmers Union gives him a 100% rating for his votes in Congress. John McCain gets a 0%. "If any farmer in the Plains States looked at McCain's voting record on ag issues," Mr. Teske says, "no one would vote for him."

But of course, McCain is doing his damnedest to make sure no one is looking at issues. Only personalities.

The Sarah Palin Files, Pt. 19

Hardcore conservatives describe Sarah Palin as a "rising star."

A more sober assessment? Average.

McCain not only has thrown all sensible concerns about good governance aside merely to pander to a sliver of female and masses of conservative Christian voters, he has turned this period of American history into an episode of high-stakes reality television: Don't look now, but our cousin Sarah just became leader of the free world! Tune in next week and watch her get sassy with Pakistan!

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves...

... Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages -- and loses -- both necessary and unnecessary wars.

Although, compared to Dubya Bush, being average would qualify you as a political rockstar in the modern Republican party....

More to the point, though, I agree with the last paragraph wholeheartedly. In 2004, the urban vote broke for Kerry, the suburbs were more even - taken as a whole - and rural votes went overwhelmingly Bush. When I looked and saw this, I decided to become Anti-Farm Aid.

Don't laugh, I'm serious.

If you are, say, a family farmer in the midwest or anywhere for that matter, and your concern for whether gays could get married in California or Massachusetts - two place you likely have never visited and likely will never visit - trumped your economic concerns, and your greatest economic fears became a reality, well, sorry. But, do not get on TV with Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, and Dave Matthews and ask me or anyone else to bail you out. Your inability to get your priorities straight is not my problem.