POLITICAL DRIVEL
One of my annual routines is what I call “cleaning off the desk” and I usually get it done between Christmas and New Year’s. So today I’m deeply imbedded in finding hidden papers, neglected letters to answer, and everything that got put off during the hectic time of the year. Am I the only one that has this problem? Teresa says you can tell how good the weather’s been or how much I’ve been traveling by how high the desk is stacked up.
One of my discoveries this morning is a November letter one of our customers wrote our Virginia Senator Tim Kaine (D) in support of the Prime Act. Because my followers on this blog are all above average and well informed, I won’t go into all the provisions of Congressman Thomas Massie’s Prime Act, but the main thing is it would reduce meat sales prohibitions on custom abattoirs, opening up the flood gates to local marketing and unprecedented opportunities in local meat self-reliance.
In the letter, she decries the monopolistic power of the big 4 meat processing companies that control 85 percent of the market and then advocates for the Prime act because “we the people need our food to be grown and processed locally.”
What follows is Senator Kaine’s canned drivel, in toto (sorry this blog is a bit lengthier than most). This is a perfect example of why we don’t trust our elected people any more. They don’t listen and they just want to hear themselves talk. A Spanish idiom our family learned during our time in Venezuela during the 1950s roughly translates to “tell them any old silly.” Here you go:
Thank you for sharing your views with me on aspects of the 2023 farm bill. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.
Agriculture and forestry represent Virginia’s largest economic sector, accounting for 442,000 jobs and a yearly economic impact of $91 billion. Virginia is home to more than 44,000 farms, many of them “century” farms, which have been in the same families for 100 years or more. In many ways, agriculture is a unique business: its food commodities are essential to sustain human life, yet it is inherently uncertain because of unpredictable factors such as variable weather patterns.
This uncertainty is why Congress has traditionally passed farm bills roughly every five years to provide stability through crop insurance and other tools that allow farmers to ride out downturns in the farm economy. Farm bills also help the neediest Americans get through hard times by funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, which also provides a market for food commodities. The farm bill also supports a variety of other worthwhile activities, such as land conservation, water, and broadband infrastructure in rural communities, international food aid in the developing world, agricultural research at land-grant universities like Virginia Tech and Virginia State University, and many others.
In 2018, I was pleased to support a bipartisan farm bill that passed the Senate on a vote of 86-11. This bill included provisions that are important to many Viginians, including maintaining funding for SNAP, supporting crop insurance and a strong farm safety net, bolstering incentives for healthy foods and local farms, making it easier for young people to go into farming, and investing in rural infrastructure priorities. I was also pleased that this bill also protected farm conservation initiatives, including more funds for the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The current farm bill expires on September 30, 2023.
The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry began the formal process of drafting the 2023 farm bill on April 29, 2022 To provide the Committee with your ideas and feedback on the farm bill, visit https://www.agriculture.senate.gov/farm-bill-input.
Please know that I will keep your views in mind and continue to advocate for Virginia farmers as the 2023 farm bill progresses. Again, thank you for contacting me.
Sincerely,
Tim Kaine
Notice, not a single mention of the Prime Act, which was really the ONLY issue of interest to this constituent. Why couldn’t he say “I’ll vote for it when it comes up” or “I’ll vote against it when it comes up?” Why is that so hard?
But no, these blowhards can only respond like we’re idiots (do you know how many Virginia farmers there are? Do you know about weather? Do you know what “century” means? Do you know what SNAP stands for?). This drivel drives any thinking person nuts and destroys all credibility in the institution.
I know this lady fairly well, and I’m sure she would like to see SNAP eliminated, farm safety nets eliminated, conservation boondoggles eliminated, and certainly doesn’t believe farm aid to Africa is helping those poor souls one iota. This type of interchange is what drove “Rich Men North of Richmond” viral. We’re tired of this elitist “tell them any old silly” claptrap, and both sides do it; I’m not picking on him because he’s a Democrat. The Publicans are as bad as the sinners.
How do we get elected people to listen to us?