One of the answers to making America healthier isn’t to add more subsidies for farmers markets and the like, it is to simply END the subsidies we’re handing out to big agribusiness and farmers already, particularly grain. And then if you want, go a step farther and stop our foolish sugar policies, and maybe food producers will start using more sugar instead of the heavily subsidized corn syrup, which tastes like shit by comparison and fools the body.
On top of these obvious and immediate benefits, we would also have more power negotiating trade agreements and a greater ability to demand more open markets abroad.
MikeJ
By “foolish sugar policy” I assume you mean “buy from Cuba.” Which I’m all for. I just hope there are enough of the younger generation in Miami now.
El Cid
What? Is you tryin’ to say that we shouldn’t ha’been payin’ agribusiness to grow sugar in the Everglades instead of tradin’ with Fidel Castro? Unpossible!
Just Some Fuckhead
(this space reserved for even more advertising)
El Tiburon
And while we’re at it, can we stop subsidizing US corporations for moving their factories overseas?
Jesus Christ on a Popsicle stick.
Jon H
I kinda like the idea of changing subsidies so they match the proportions we should be eating.
mr. whipple
This talking Walmart ad is pissing me off.
trollhattan
Also, too, one could resolve western U.S. water supply issues by charging market rates for federally delivered water. But that would be Kommunist.
David in NY
There are (or were) actually two certified organic farmers in Congress — neither on the Ag Committees.
Which, by the way, is where the action is at on this stuff. So, it’s another three years or so until the next Ag bill is up. Maybe we should start whining early. The big guys control this stuff, but the niche farmers’ group has been increasing in power. I think Kirsten Gillibrand did a lot of work on this in 2008 (which is why none of the city press in NY thought much of her; little did they know).
MattR
@mr. whipple: It is actually a brilliant guerilla marketing techinique from Target to get everyone to have (even more) horrible reactions when they hear the word Walmart.
David in NY
@mr. whipple:
Me too. Can we water the fields with the blood of tyrants or something to get rid of it?
Niques
Escape stops the blinking colors.
Edit: Stops the voice, too.
Omnes Omnibus
@David in NY:
Does that work? Have you tried it?
Crusty Dem
Having grown up in the midwest, hell yes to everything. Freaking ridiculous subsidies are expensive and counterproductive.
David in NY
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes. Always. And much more satisfying than just hitting Escape.
ED: All right, I just tried hitting Escape, and it’s a lot easier.
John Cole
@Just Some Fuckhead: I’m switching things around, ya jackass.
Mike Kay
sweet sociahulist sugar
commie corn syrup
Bob K
You are forgetting something BIG here John. You are trying to deny the needy COUNTRY CLUB QUEENS such as comedy queen Bat Shit Shelly Overdrive their due. Without that TWO HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND dollar farm subsidy she and her psychiatrist spouse would be forced to close their Mental Health Clinic!!! Think of all those poor poor clients wandering around aimlessly – not even knowing which Bentley was their own. Being unable to remember exactly how much was left in their trust funds. Unable to play Mah Jong or Bridge any more. What is left for them in life? They don’t all have loving devoted children like Poppy and Barbara do. Compassion begins at home, John. You were one of them once. Dammit John – if nothing else do it for Grandma – come on, you KNOW you’re going to get those pearls in the will don’t you? Wwhat more do you want? OK you selfish, heartless bastard you can have the Bentley. Hope an oak tree gets in your way. (Fade out on Lynyrd Skynyrd “That Smell”)
Some time in the future maybe we will make our own CGI movies with CGI chracters on this site. Remember how great “Saturday Night Live” used to be with the original cast?
Annie
I would love to see Michelle B rally the teabaggers against cutting her farm subsidies, after all God and patriotic Americans want her subsidized.
RedKitten
@John Cole: Awww…insults. That’s our boy. How’s your shoulder doing, by the way? Still going to physio?
Fergus Wooster
Yes. This. Especially kill the corn subsidies – we’re fattening our own, and we’re dumping the rest on Latin America and killing their small farmers.
@Omnes Omnibus: Black pudding is always good. What was the exact formula for Soylent Green??
Annie
First they came for our sugar, then our farm subsidies, and finally our salt….Seems like creeping socialism to me…
Omnes Omnibus
@Fergus Wooster: I could tell you, but I would have to cut off your head and store it in a safe for 20 years.
dmsilev
@mr. whipple:
Install a Flash blocker for the browser of your choice. On Safari, I use ClickToFlash.
I don’t mind ads, but I draw the line at sound and garish animation. Blocking Flash but letting normal ads through does the job quite well.
dms
WereBear
@Fergus Wooster: It’s a pretty simple recipe:
Soylent green… is people!
It’s hard to tell just how good my Charlton Heston is from a comment. Like:
Take your stinkin’ paws off me…
You know.
Annie
Wow…first time a comment got cut…What did I say?
Let’s try again….
First they came for our sugar. Then they came for our farm subsidies. Finally, they came for our salt….Seems like creeping socialism to me….
Mark S.
Ambinder (who Sully is talking about in the link) praises the work of Jamie Oliver. How did that go, by the way?
Aw, c’mon kids, tuck in, that looks delicious.
gypsy howell
I didn’t read you back in the day, but is it true that at one time you actually voted for republicans? Because it’s pretty hard to imagine based on your recent posts.
You sound like a full-on flaming leftist hippie. Like me.
El Cid
I would criticize the subsidized agribiz barons but I am afraid that cellphones will be used to activate the microchip in my taint.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Shorter All Things Considered: Waaaaahhh! The govt might bring back the estate tax next year!! Estates don’t want to disburse because they’re afraid they might get taxed retroactively!!
Cry me a river, fuckers.
stuckinred
@gypsy howell:
Blinded by the light,
revved up like a deuce,
another runner in the night
Blinded by the light,
WereBear
@El Cid: That had me laughing so hysterically the SO came in to find out what was so funny.
And it was really difficult explaining the background.
HRA
@mr. whipple:
I thought I had clicked on something at the side of the blog. Now I have 20 Mules chasing me. (kidding, of course) I have not seen that product in the store for decades. What next – Climalene or Fels Naptha laundry soap?
SiubhanDuinne
@David in NY:
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos battalions!
Marchons! Marchons!
Leur sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons.
Surrender monkeys indeed.
RJ
How does an incumbent presidential candidate win the farm states after signing a bill (or even pushing the senate) to end the subsidies?
Bob K
@Fergus Wooster:
I loved “Wooster & Jeeves” – It was the first time I ever saw Hugh Laurie and in it he played a self centered, well meaning, bumbling English twit named Bertie Wooster. His butler named Jeeves played by Hugh Laurie who was constantly pulling his bacon out of the fire.
Anyway – “We’re fattening our Own” – that’s the whole point.
A group of retired military officers says high-calorie school lunches are threatening national security.
A study by the group Mission: Readiness finds that school lunches are making American kids so fat that fewer of them can meet the military’s physical fitness standards. That, in turn, is putting recruitment in jeopardy.
A report from the group, being released Tuesday, says that 27 percent of Americans ages 17 to 24 are too overweight to join the military.
One of the officers, retired Navy Rear Admiral James Barnett Jr., says many young Americans are simply too fat to fight.
The officers are pushing for passage of a wide-ranging nutrition bill that aims to make the nation’s school lunches healthier.
Is it REALLY a problem? Here follows a video of U.S. combat troops of the future. Judge for yourself
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/20/arlen-specter-chased-by-t_n_327628.html
in case you are a tech type person further design parameters:
http://www.survivaball.com/
John Cole
@gypsy howell: I’m not sure why Republicans take the position they do on things. To me, if you are a conservative, shoveling billions of dollars of t taxpayer money to achieve a negative end would be the kind of thing that would be a no-brainer to end.
“You mean we’re spending billions of dollars? And that is causing tens of billions of dollars of health related problems and making us less healthy and causing us to eat shittier tasting food? Why exactly are we doing this again?”
That, to me, would seem to be the “conservative” position.
mr. whipple
@dmsilev:
Thank you, but the only thing that pisses me off more than the ads is having to install software to block the ads. These ad designers are fucking douchbags.
Note to advertisers: pissing people off is stupid marketing.
Svensker
@Bob K:
Wodehouse is a genius. I’m rereading some early stuff — Blandings Castle and Heavy Weather at the moment — and annoying all around me by guffawing regularly. He is just perfect.
Wooster & Jeeves was great and Hugh Laurie was exactly right as Bertie, the fathead. :)
Alan
Since you mentioned sugar, here’s a very interesting hour and a half lecture about it. Yeah there’s a distinction between regular sugar (sucrose) and fructose, but not really.
Ben
You really shouldn’t talk about things you know nothing about. I would agree with the agribusiness crooks not getting subsidies, but having seen the USDA from the inside, you can thank them for your food security and that of the entire damn country. It is much more complicated than your rant implies.
Alan
BTW, tomorrow night Food, Inc. will be on PBS. I’ve already set up my DVR.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
OT
Dems are writing Reconciliation Instructions for this years Budget Resolution. Could allow all sorts of stuff to pass with only a majority vote, some good, some not so good (see extend Bush tax cuts)
One thing for certain, gonna make Mitch McConnell cry.
anonymous
Yes, finally stop talking about helping poor Third World farmers and help them!
D-Chance.
End subsidies?
So Cole is back on the “free markets, bitches!” bandwagon…
Bob K
@Annie:
I’d like to add:
They came for our sugar
But I use splenda – So I did nothing
They came for our farm subsidies.
But I live in the city – So I don’t give a rat’s ass.
Then they came for our salt
So I ripped their F**CK**NG livers out, breaded them bitchez and fried em up with tater tots, cause – ain’t no way I gonna live life without salt on my french fries you arugula eatin’ pansy assed socialists.
stuckinred
William Gheen, head of the conservative, anti-“amnesty,” anti-illegal immigration group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), spoke at a Greenville, S.C. Tea Party rally this weekend and called for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to “come out of that log cabin closet.”
El Cid
@WereBear: I’m only sharing the laughs I got from watching the testimony video.
JSD
Or we could take it even further than that and tax things like sugar and corn syrup: products which cause billions and billions of dollars in unnecessary healthcare spending. If a package of Oreos were $6 instead of $4, people would eat less of them. Ditto for Coke, M & Ms, and all the rest. Even if people don’t end up eating much less of these products (taxes on tobacco don’t greatly inhibit consumption), at least there will be a revenue stream to apply to the healthcare bills, subsidize fruits and vegetables with, and spend on education campaigns to prevent poor eating habits (something which has had a good effect with tobacco).
stuckinred
@JSD: don’t mess with dark chocolate m&m’s dawg!
JSD
@mr. whipple: Huh, my ad is about who to vote for in the upcoming special election: Hanabusa, Case, or Djou. Djou is a wingnut, and Case is a DINO, so Hanabusa wins by default.
Mark S.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
That might make me cry.
If they do that, I better not hear anymore concern trolling about the deficit.
Yutsano
@Mark S.: Plus the extensions are only for earners under $250,000, so it’s not as bad as if he were extending them period, which would be bad. Plus a lot of those happen by Obama and Congress simply doing nothing. We know they are quite capable of that.
JSD
@StuckinRed: Well, dark chocolate actually has relatively little sweetener, so under my scheme, price should not be that affected.
Gus
Maybe there would be less corn used in brewing, which would be a boon to consumers of the crappy beers that clog up the macro-brew market.
Bob K
Log Cabin Republicans always struck me as similar to African American Republicans – a little confused. Kind of like “Hebrews for Hitler.” How long till even the country club crowd admits Lord Murdoch is a brown eyed mullet.
Australian Slang Dictionary: Brown-eyed mullet : a turd in the sea where you’re swimming.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/20/lindsey-graham-gay-conser_n_544554.html
Wilson Heath
This is basically my rant (made at least a few times in prior comments) on energy and carbon taxes, just shifted to food.
The playing field is slanted because of a long standing subsidy based on industry capture and not an actual economic or social need. Idiot’s solution: add a counterbalancing subsidy for other industries or products. It’s like the old lady who swallowed the fly. Just take some ipecac and get it out of your system instead of taking stupid remedial measures that make your system no better off.
Steeplejack
@Svensker:
I always wanted to be a member of the Drones Club.
Nellcote
USDA comes to Cali:
A bit of a good news article, for a change.
Brachiator
I’m pretty neutral on whether ending subsidies is good for the economy, but the idea that ending subsidies will lead to healthier eating habits, and that corn syrup is worse than sugar are little more than myths. Let’s go Skeptoid:
Ending subsidies may be a good thing, but they will also increase the advantage that foreign producers have over American agribusiness.
Oh yeah, and there’s this:
The issue of what tastes better I can’t argue about, but any claims that corn syrup is bad for you are bogus.
Wilson Heath
@Brachiator:
Well, there’s a chemical difference, isn’t there? You said it yourself. The sucrose at least needs one chemical break to be processed. I’m not sure what that amounts to, but HFCS feels different to my body than cane sugar. I’m going to assume it’s that bit of chemistry. And I don’t like the difference.
(Could be worse. Aspartame feels like poison to me.)
Cain
@Wilson Heath:
Wasn’t there something about HFCS fooling with your head making you think you’re not as full as you should be (or something to that effect). HFCS is in EVERYTHING. It’s really bizarre to see where all it shows up in.
cain
Wilson Heath
@Cain:
I thought that study was about aspartame or whatever fake sweetener.
Speculatively, I’m guessing that HFCS just metabolizes a little more quickly without the need to break down the sucrose into glucose and fructose. That little bit of speed might make a difference. Probably not a coca leaf to cocaine sort of difference, but what I feel probably corresponds to a faster and more abrupt bump in blood sugar. Go where you want from there. I just don’t like the sensation and that’s enough for me. (Not like substantial cane sugar is “health food” either, but it’s a lesser evil to my senses.)
Gex
@62: faster entry to blood causes spikes in blood sugar. Those conditions have been found to increase fat storage. So there aren’t differences, but there are differences. And the differences you do concede just happen to coincide with one hypothesis on the increasing obesity of Americans. So I guess I don’t understand where you are heading with this.
Gex
Gah. Got you fellows mixed up, and unable to edit on the iPad.
burnspbesq
@John Cole:
” Why exactly are we doing this again?””
Because Iowa goes first in the Presidential nomination process. SATSQ.
Brachiator
@Wilson Heath:
Two words. Non. Sense.
That it “feels” different to your body says nothing about what is happening with respect to nutrition or biochemistry.
If it don’t kill you or make you sick, it ain’t poison.
Your guess is not backed up by chemistry.
The junk science speculation about HFCS is the same as the junk science “linking” autism and vaccines. Junk science nutrition is for many liberals what creationism is for fundamentalists, an inability to engage with science and rationality.
Ecks
@Brachiator: well… I don’t know about an INABILITY. More like an occasional attraction to pseudo-scientific claims that allow for sufficient health alarmism.
Most of the fructose stuff is just people trying to fill in plausible mechanisms based off of rumors and attempted application of common sense. A good dose of data usually solves it for people.
The immunization people surely get to a whole other level of crazy, but to be fair (we don’t have to be fair do we?) when it comes to the health of our kids we’re pretty much hard wired to panic over stupid stuff and become insanely risk averse (with “insanely” to be read in a fairly literal way). It seems to be mostly a different animal than right wing authoritarianism.
Splitting Image
@Annie:
Federal aid to anyone but farmers is creeping socialism.
Wilson Heath
@Brachiator:
No nonsense in saying a chemical difference makes no difference, though? If it doesn’t need to be broken down to be further metabolized, it’s metabolized faster. I do not comment on whether that does anything other than spike my blood sugar really quickly. That it does that is enough for me to not like it. I just happen to prefer not doing things that are unpleasant to my senses. I’m sorry if that hurts your skeptical feelings.
David in NY
@SiubhanDuinne:
That and what Thomas Jefferson said.
Brachiator
@Ecks:
There’s a certain type of person, mainly liberal, that is easily suckered by bogus food and nutritional claims. These folks also seem to have a burning need to try to link their food preferences to what is righteous and healthy for everybody.
Nope. They tend to cling to their nonsense despite all available data, and just shift their beliefs to the next big food thing.
@ Wilson Heath
Difference is not the same thing as significance.
I really wouldn’t worry about that. At all.