I am not a real farmer, my neighbors say, because I don’t do it for money. That’s almost funny because the economists are saying that nobody’s farming for money this year. Although the corn crop is good in most of the midwest, there’s not much profit in it. Some go as far as projecting that on average, corn farmers will lose $8 per acre over the whole midwest. If that is the case, I’m not a real farmer for sure because I figure on netting $550 an acre on my corn.– Gene Logsdon » The Race Goes Not Always To The Fastest.

I first read an article by Gene Logsdon sometime about fourty or so years ago. In other words, his name and philosophy has been on my radar for all of that time through articles in Organic Gardening and The Mother Earth News and now his blog at OrganicToBe.org.

We’ve now seen banks that were “too big to fail” cost us quite a bit of our future. We seem to have had agricultural processing units (so called farm) that are “too big to fail” for years now with our farm policy full of crop subsidies on commodity crops. There is talk about how maybe it’s time to break up these “too big to fail” banks…My thinking is, maybe the “too big to fail” agricultural units need a rethinking too.

Conventional thinking for the last half century has been that bigger is better…Always. That thinking is becoming as outdated as the idea yhat you can make a profit raising more pork than the economy can consume, even as the actual costs of production are hidden or passed down to future generations…Who really pays for those subsidies anyway?

Anyway, go read some of what Mr. Logsdon has tho say…

The Race Goes Not Always To The Fastest

“No One With Land Should Be Without A Job”

Harvest Art

Kill People But Not Dogs and Cats

An Offbeat Way To Make Good Hay

We’ve Been Going “Back To The Land” For A Long Time

Our House Frog Liked Beethoven

My Clunker Pickup Is Too Old To Junk

Good Farming Was More Advanced A Hundred Years Ago

The Two Sides of an Organic vs. Chemical Story

A Startling Lesson in Pasture Farming

Sometimes Its Hard To Tell the Vegetables From the Flowers

More Choices at Garden Farm Markets

Gardeners and Farmers Less Fearful of Death?

The role of speculators in the world’s oil markets has been widely blamed for bringing consumers $4 gasoline last summer — and rightly so. A recently completed study by two Baker Institute scholars further confirms that this blame is not misplaced and recommends specific ways to do something to limit the speculators’ influence.

Research by Baker’s Amy Myers Jaffe and Kenneth Medlock shows that speculation increased following the easing of regulations in the oil futures markets in 2006…

I said it at the time, it’s nice to have some data backing up my own gut feeling that there was nothing that should be causing the spikes in price…

It’s just another in the long list of things that conservatives keep getting wrong. Faith in the markets but no faith in the government…Where, if ever, did proof of that misplaced faith ever prove out to be a benefit to society?

via Oil bets are off: Rein in speculators to smooth markets | Editorial | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.

THERE ARE MANY complicated aspects of the campaign-finance case the Supreme Court is poised to hear Wednesday, but the issue boils down to this: Will the justices let corporations spend unlimited amounts to elect or defeat candidates for federal office? This course of action would be unwise and unnecessary to resolve the dispute at hand.

via Court Should Take Conservative Route on Campaign Finance Case – washingtonpost.com.

One of my biggest complaints is how the conceptual rights of corporations have expanded in the past few decades to allow these “fictional” citizens to in effect become freer of constraints than actual flesh and blood citizens.

I have never bought into the legal fiction of free speech rights for corporations. To me that is just a legal fiction to allow the “heads” of these corporations to bypass the legal restrictions placed on actual “people” when it comes to limitations on “political speech”.

And now it looks as though the Robert’s Court wishes to review the limitations that have been placed on this fictional person’s rights by preceding courts for the past century. If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck…It sounds like judicial activism to me…Pretty ironic isn’t it?

If you read my post a while back about Senator Cornyn’s response to the White House’s request that people forward the emails they received with disinformation…You may be interested in his reply that arrived today…

Dear Mr. Boyd:

Thank you for contacting me about President Obama’s new initiative to monitor American citizens’ speech about his health care policies. I appreciate having the benefit of your comments on this matter.

As you know, on August 5, 2009, I sent a letter to President Barack Obama expressing my concerns about a new program that requested American citizens to forward to the White House emails and “casual conversations” of their fellow citizens who oppose the President’s health care policies. As I stated in my letter to the President, I believe that this program is inconsistent with America’s tradition of free speech and public discourse. I urged the President to cease the program, to purge personally identifiable information gathered by the program from White House records, and to detail how the White House intended to use the information gathered.

Though I am still awaiting a response to my letter from the President, I was pleased to see that on August 17, 2009, the White House shut down the program. While I am glad the site has been shut down, Americans still deserve to know what the White House intends to do with information that was collected during the 13 days the program was in effect. On August 19, 2009, I sent another letter to the President, reiterating my belief that the White House should fully disclose how they are using this information, and seeking the President’s commitment that no similar programs will be instituted in the future.

Health care affects every American and I believe we need to take the time to listen to the patients, providers, families, and small businesses that will be significantly impacted by reform. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights.

I appreciate the opportunity to represent Texans in the United States Senate, and you may be certain that I will continue working with my colleagues to protect our First Amendment rights. Thank you for taking the time to contact me.

Sincerely,

JOHN CORNYN
United States Senator

I must have missed that part of the original White House video where we were requested to report the “casual conversations” with our fellow citizens. Did you catch that part?

Also, it wasn’t the opposition to the President’s health care plan that was the issue. Since the President doesn’t have a Health Care Plan to oppose that would be a non-issue if it wasn’t just dishonest. The request was for people to forward the lies and disinformation being passed on as fact. Now if lies and disinformation is what passes for opposition in the mind of Senator Cornyn, Texas, we have a problem. If someone wants to offer real thoughtful opposition to Health Insurance Reform in America, I’ll listen…I’ll argue…I’ll have a conversation…But when I hear lies used to spread fear just to scare people into believing the lie…Get real Sir.

Four paragraphs in we get to your first reference to the issue at hand…Health Care. But to turn that around to pushing fear of government monitoring after the last administration’s abuses of the right to privacy…Abuses you approved of…That is just to much of a stretch of credulity. Senator, you need to take your feigned outrage and put it to good use stopping the intimidation of free speech by the gun wielding thugs and screaming, shouting “citizens” at the town hall meetings around the country.

The view from the right is evidently beyond my comprehension…

The Winter Harvest Handbook
Year-Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses
by Eliot Coleman