(Update June 6)-
Sadly, The Farm Bill,
HR 2419, again passes the US Senate Last
Night. I have my own name for the Farm Bill, The
Food and Money Incineration Act of 2008
Bloomberg reported: “June 5, the Senate approved
it, calling it the “Farm Bill” 77-15. The new vote was called after the
legislation Congress passed in May was mistakenly sent to the White House
without a section, or title, on trade policy.”
“Tom
Harkin, an Iowa Democrat and as Senate Agriculture Chairman, said on the
Senate floor, “I apologize that we have to be here again, it’s a broadly
supported bill, it’s good for our states, it’s good for our farmers and
ranchers.”
Senator Harkin is apologizing
because your spend-easy Congress goofed while carrying out the agenda of the
powerful Chemical and Agribusiness lobby in Washington in May. Now they
have to pass the bill all over again, but they cannot plow their mistake under
unless we consumers let them! Agribusiness plans to sit at your dinner
table every night.
Today food commodities ran up
across the board, in glee. Wheat, corn, rice, soybeans and cooking oil all
leaped higher on the news that the Senate has again passing “The Farm
Bill.” You are already paying for higher bread, milk, eggs and anything
that depends on grain. Corn reached a new all time forever high of $6.63
per bushel, up 300% in as many years.
The one biggest cause of food
inflation is Ethanol subsidies. If you can force Congress to stop HR 2419
you can save lives of millions who will otherwise starve. We are not just
talking about grain to ethanol. These subsidies are also paid for converting
cooking oil to diesel fuel.
And it’s no longer only corn that
is being burned. Yesterday this writer interviewed a mining company vice
president who is being strong-armed by the EPA to burn 50% vegetable oil in the
companies fleet of diesel burning equipment.
No wonder the price of
cooking oil is up 300% in two years. People will starve because they
cannot afford 63 cent a pound for cooking oil, but the mining company gets a
subsidy if they will burn it, plus a pat on the back from the Environmental
Protection Agency.
This callous burning of needed
food can only be stopped if a few people care a lot. Your Congressman will
swear HR 2419 is already “law.” He will probably tell you it’s too late for
him to object. Farm Bill can be stopped, if the President vetoes the bill, as
he promised to do, and if some 15 Senators will change their votes to support
his veto. John McCain swears he opposes the Farm Bill.
Congressman Jeff Flake’s and his staff have our thanks for standing nearly alone against the Farm Bill in the US House of Representatives:
Please read our full and updated reports, which contains new, corrected and updated information
and references below. Remember these talking points when you call your two Senators:
1) Subsidized corn burning for ethanol production is the number one cause of the food price
explosion. Other massive agribusiness subsidies add to the problem. The World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, as well as thousands of Scientists now confirm it.
2) 2) HR 2419 did pass Congress legally in May, but it was never legally delivered to the President to be signed (or vetoed) as the Constitution requires. There is much more to the story, but the bottom line seems to be, there is no Farm Bill law.
3) A World Bank analyst estimated that biofuel production has accounted for 65 percent in the rise of world food prices, while the IMF has concluded that biofuel production is responsible for “a significant part of the jump in commodity prices.”
4) Ethanol in a worse than a bad joke. It is a It contributed to higher,not lower,energy prices. More petroleum hydrocarbons are used to produce a gallon of Ethanol than you get back when you burn it. Therefore, it is probably increasing the cost of gasoline rather than lowing it.
5) Agribusiness is the only winner from use of ethanol.
6) Some 200-300 huge, new agribusiness industrial plants have sprung up like weeds to convert corn into ethanol. The subsidy is so huge as to virtually assure a shortage of food grains, and ultimately meat, for the entire world. We in the USA face drastically higher food prices, but those in the third world face ethanol induced starvation. It’s not in doubt.
7) The bill is death on ranchers, even many less than wealthy horse and pet owners and anyone else who has to feed animals. Many simply cannot afford the cost of animal food.
New Links about ethanol you should save:
Corn-to-Ethanol: US Agribusiness Magic Path To A World Food Monopoly
Charles E. Carlson Sep 27, 2007
https://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1774
Update: Ethanol: Burning Food, the Path to Global Famine, Charles E. Carlson Jan 11, 2008,
https://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2017
Yes, You Can Stop The Money and Food Incineration Act of 2008 ( https://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=2353 )
To receive updated from We Hold These Truths please subscribe here:
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(June 1 story)
Yes, You Can Stop The Money and Food Incineration Act of 2008
By Charles E. Carlson June 1, 2008
The number one cause of the food price explosion is subsidized corn conversion to ethanol. Other massive agribusiness subsidies add to the problem. All are enabled by your Congress.
By a fluke of human error, or perhaps a God-given reprieve, this one biggest cause of food inflation can still be fixed by killing one bill, HR2419. Your congressman will swear it is already “law” and it is too late to object. We, with the help of a lone Congressman, will show you it is pretend law that must be reversed.
HR2419 is know to most congressmen as “The Farm Bill.” It is 1700 pages long and it appears on the surface to have been passed, supposedly vetoed by President Bush, and on May 22, the day before the Congress took a spring recess, the veto was supposedly overridden by the House and Senate, making it law…or did it? *1
One constituent reported this fanciful response from Congressman Brad Sherman, who vote for the bill:
“If we had not passed it, the Agricultural Act of 1943 would have gone back in effect and that was much worse.”
You too can expect a nonsense excuse when you ask your Senator or Representative why he voted for HR2419. The agricultural act of 1943 probably did not amount to one billion dollars…we should be so lucky as to have it today! HR2419 spends $293 billion dollars, even at today‘s record corn prices thats enough money to pay for the whole US crop 3 times over! Our politicians must laugh at us when they get away with spouting nonsense.
Is HR 2419 it a law or a bluff?
I prefer to describe this almost-law by what it does, The food stamp expansion, subsidies for not-producing farms, price guaranty for large farmers, and agribusiness incentive for food incineration act. For short I will call it The Food and Money Incineration Act of 2008 (my own title).
Why there currently is no legal farm law
The facts seem to be that a bill numbered HR2419 did pass Congress in May, but it was never legally delivered to the President to be signed (or vetoed) as the Constitution requires because of a technical procedural error by some unfortunate congressional clerk. A materially different bill to the President, an error has never been addressed. The result is, there presently is no legal Farm Bill in effect. It would seem to follow that subsidies being handed out by the Treasury are illegal.
Congress made a mistake and needs to start over with whatever law they, in their limited wisdom, want to foist off on us. The public should now get a second chance to examine the food price monopoly under HR2419 while Congress corrects its error before the public eye.
The House and Senate leadership is instead it seem trying to patch over this error by pretending nothing is wrong because resistance to ethanol subsides and high food prices is going into orbit. All but a very few of your Congressmen appear to be cowed by the agribusiness lobbies into allowing HR2419 to become a pretend law that they would treat as legal for the next four years, or more. The Ethanol food monopoly is being institutionalized much as the Federal Reserve money control monopoly was created 95 years ago by a law that was never legally passed by congress. *2
President Bush correctly called HR2419 a “bloated monstrosity” when he vetoed what he apparently thought was the bill Congress had passed. This writer suspects President Bush’s sincerity. I think he wants The food and Money Incineration Act of 2008 to be law because his big friends benefit from it, and because he has always supported the ethanol program. Bush had a chance to get his name off this one scandalous give away. Note the White House is completely silent about the Three Stooges style mix up. Mr. Bush should be shouting “there is no Farm Law.”
Yes, silly and stupid as it sounds, it is true, the President vetoed a bill that Congress never passed! And illegal and devious as it seems, Congress is trying to fool us by claiming it made a law out of a comic mistake by overriding the veto of a bill that it never passed in the first place.
The White House is probably silent because it wants the Farm Bill, but wishes to pretend opposition. “The Food and Money Incineration Act” gives John McCain a talking point in the general election because McCain correctly opposed “The Food and Money Incineration Act.” Both Obama and Clinton foolishly gave pubic support to this act, though none of the three actually voted, all being too busy trying to become President. Lets give all three another chance to vote!
A “bloated monstrosity” of obscene subsidies
So great is the federal spending deficit that we consumers now pay for most of what Washington spends in higher priced goods and services. This is another way of saying the government is printing (with the help of the Federal Reserve) most of the money it spends. Our descriptive name only scratches the surface of the damage that will be done by HR2419, which by its supporters’ own admission will cost consumers in excess of two hundred ninety thousand million dollars ($290,000,000,000). *1
HR2419’s most significant feature is that it drastically increased the total subsidy to be paid to some 200-300 new agribusiness industrial plants that convert corn into ethanol. The subsidy is so huge as to virtually assure a shortage of food grains and ultimately meat for the entire world. We in the USA face drastically higher food prices. Those in the third world who live on two or three dollars a day, face ethanol induced starvation, as we have previously written about.*2
The grocery story tells the story. I just noticed my favorite bulk oats cereal out of the barrel at “Sprouts” now costs $.99 cents per pound, up from .66 cents a month ago, and .33 cents two years ago. Oats is corn substitute for animal feed, so corn-burning forced up the price of my oatmeal. It’s that simple. I can still afford a dollar for breakfast, but what about people who live on $2.00 per day? The subsidies given to agribusiness are only a small part of the cost to consumers in vastly higher prices for food and even energy.
Instead the House leaders appear to be dodging the law and pretend the version of HR 2419 the President vetoed is the same one Congress passed. It is not so!
Pelosi scheduled a vote to override the veto of the bill that was never passed, ignoring the missing section, and on May 22, both Senate and House recorded a vote just before adjournment. Pelosi’s intent, we are told, is to later pass a new little bill which presumably will consist of the 34 missing pages.
But passing the same stuff in two bills does not make either of the parts legal, for some easy to see reason. First, “The Food and Money Incineration Act” as given to the President, and had a table of contents, indexes, and references, which make reference to a Title III, that was in fact not there. This cannot be fixed by pretending!
Second, it is also likely, though not yet proved, that the missing 34 pages are integrated with other parts of HR2419, in at least one case, with linking references to the missing pages.
To emphasize: both chambers know they overrode a veto of a bill that was never passed by Congress in the first instance. Saturday Night Live should make a skit of this. Maybe they will!
Consumers should demand that Congress do it over. This time they would have resistance! The outrage is rising as we speak, Ethanol subsidies can no longer be sneaked past the public, who is now paying $5.00 a gallon for milk and $4.00 for a loaf for bread and $4.00 for a gallon of ethanol they have to buy with every 9 gallons of gas in their tank.
If the President is really opposed “The Money and Food Incineration Act of 2008”, he should be yelling and complaining to the Supreme Court. It would be exposed and killed, and with much publicity. Therefore you can expect a news blackout about HR2419. It is also vital to recognize that the President cannot be depended upon to do anything to stop HR2419.
One Congressman Stood Up
Arizona congressman Jeff Flake noticed “the food and money incineration act” had a section that actually guarantees a higher commodity price for big farmers in the event prices go down! This result, he said, is a fact never disclosed by the Agricultural analysts the agribusiness lobbyists who summarized and promoted the bill to the Congress. *4 Congressman Flake’s office suggests we talk to Senators. We ask you to do so, and to take time to encourage Congressmen Flake for blowing the whistle, and encourage him not to give up.
We suggest you print and circulate that this paper and our companion stories about ethanol and a global food monopoly.*3
We must demand of each Member of Congressman (especially the Senators) raise the issue of the legality of this obnoxious Farm Bill and seek to have it reviewed by the Supreme Court. Demand that he not approve any act that contains any subsidies for producing ethanol out of anything that grows. Let the ethanol industry make it on it own or sink
We consumers have been given a small and rare chance to avoid a world food disaster because of a fortunate clerical slip-up. Thank God for whomever did it. But in the longer run, we can not count on errors to save us from our own congress. Only a truly revolutionary change can return Congress to the people. Maybe it’s time for an idea about how can we recapture our Congress without going through a shooting revolution like in 1776. Lets start here by forcing Congress to obey their own laws.
Endnotes:
*1 To review the Food stamp Expansion, Farm Subsidies for Non-Producing Landowners, Price Guaranty for Large Farmers, And Agribusiness Incentive for Food Incineration, Act.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-h2419/show
*2 High School Student, on the Federal Reserve: what we all need to know
http://cp.whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=877
*3 Corn-to-Ethanol: US Agribusiness Magic Path To A World Food Monopoly
Charles E. Carlson Sep 27, 2007
https://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1774
*4 Congressman Jeff Flake, AZ, (or to call any congressmen): 1-202 225 3121
June 2, 2008: “No one is really certain of the status. Both chambers overrode the veto of a bill that that was never considered by Congress (what was considered by Congress included Title III as part of the package). The House has passed another entire farm bill, which they can do easily because the majority can simply prevent any amendments. That’s not so easy in the Senate. Some think that the bill that was the subject of the override (the farm bill minus title III) is good law currently, so all the Senate really should do is pass Title III again. Coburn and Demint are threatening amendments. Others think that the bill that was the subject of the override (the farm bill minus title III) is meaningless because it was never considered as is by the Congress, so the Senate really needs to pass another farm bill in its entirety. Again, there is the likely threat of amendments. No one knows for sure what will happen next.
As for my boss, it’s pretty much in the Senate’s court and we hope to
continue the campaign of opposing the farm bill should any further
opportunities present themselves in the House.”
“Morse,
