I received an email this week that said “Apparently, I am supposed to be more outraged by what Mitt Romney does with his money than what Barrack Obama does with mine.” My first reaction was to laugh at the irony.
However, it appears that we will once again this election season be subjected to the old tried-and-true tactic of attacking candidates based on personal issues and the politics of special interests and class warfare. I find it amazing that with record real unemployment and historically unprecedented deficits in this country, and the beginning of the collapse of European socialism (much like the fall of the former Soviet Union), very few conversations seem to revolve around reversing the path this nation is on.
Not surprisingly, agriculture hasn’t been mentioned much in the presidential campaign rhetoric, and only on an extremely limited basis at the congressional level. The latest farm bill attacks are a classic example. An anti-agriculture group this week, which not only had an issue with farm subsidies but also a nutritional agenda, made the comparison between subsidies for apple farming and subsidies for corn.
The group contended that consumers were paying for millions of Twinkie snacks (they used the Twinkies due to its inclusion of high-fructose corn syrup) but only ½ of an apple. Of course, there was no explanation about the size of those industries, or any of the meaningful statistics, that would have made the conversation relevant.
