Getting it right....er, correct?

I have more than once urged readers to contact their congress critters and request some action regarding a piece of legislation, normally one that was inspired by 19th Century Republicans or Dubya himself. This time, however, I want to turn that around. It is time to contact our President and ask him to veto a bill that passed Congress, one which is making true conservatives and true progressives nauseous just to think about it. I am talking of the current Farm Bill, a pork laden attack on our pocket books and common sense.

Before you do, you should read Carolyn Lockhead's story in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle.

It is the rarest of moments: President Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are on a collision course over a giant farm bill, but it is Bush who is broadly aligned with liberal Bay Area activists pushing for reform, while the San Francisco Democrat is protecting billions of dollars in subsidies to the richest farmers.

The rest of Lockhead's story is a text book example of how nothing gets done in Washington for the needs of the people and everything happens in the way that it happens purely for the political advantage of one party or the other. Things are packaged together is such a way as to obscure what is really happening.

Pelosi touted a ban on payments to farm couples earning more than $2 million, 10 times higher than Bush's $200,000 income limit.

At the same time, she backed a 50 percent increase in the actual amount of money each farmer could get. The Senate added a new $3.8 billion "permanent disaster" program to bail out farmers of drought-prone land, intensifying the push to plow fragile prairie.

Probably nothing is as sneaky as putting an increase in food stamp programs in this package of pork and then threatening to blast the President over his treatment of the poor if he dared to veto it. Pure Pelosi playbook.

Pelosi threatened to blast Bush for killing the food-stamp increase if he vetoes the bill, issuing a statement urging Bush to sign the legislation to "ensure that 38 million Americans - especially children - have improved access to basic nutrition."

I have never seen a better reason to vote for Cindy Sheehan, since she is running.

If you want to make your voices heard, there is some possibility through the Conference Committee that is resolving difference between House and Senate Versions. There is a full list here. California members are Dennis Cardoza, Joe Baca and George Miller. All Democrats and all from areas with a vested interest in getting their own pork. It may help to comment on Lockhead's story at the Chronicle.

If you want to send a message to Bush, then I would ask you to call and leave comments. Here are the numbers:

• Comments: 202-456-1111
• Switchboard: 202-456-1414
• FAX: 202-456-2461

Parsing the 110 Congress Part II.

The second part of what could be a series. In the first post, we had a glimpse of how our Congress exposes incompetence in other branches of government rather like a George Foreman slowly grilling whole hog and enjoying every minute of it. But it is rare that they would turn such a spotlight on themselves, as that would threaten retribution in the form of not getting their own appropriations appropriated.

Maybe we should turn a little attention on Rep. Dennis Cardoza, CA-18. Cardoza was the Chief of Staff to Gary Condit when Condit was still in the California State Assembly. If you go to Cardoza's bio on his congressional web site, you find a long and varied political career detailed for you to see, but nary a mention of Condit. It seems that forgetfulness is a Washington convenience.

What you do see is a very opportunistic politician, using Condit's support, getting appointed to a position and then winning re-election with the name recognition of an incumbent. He is always one to stay close to the center, being a blue dog Democrat, and always delivering some benefit for the special interests in his constituency.

This year, he has delivered a pork filled farm bill, one in which he understood that it was not politic to fight the special subsidies in the bill so he worked to get more, but this time for the farmers in his district, those who provided not for commodities, but rather for "specialty crops".

As Carolyn Lockhead reports in the San Francisco Chronicle...

Prominent Los Altos developer John Vidovich and various family members in the Sandridge Partnership of Sunnyvale were the nation's biggest recipients of automatic government payments to farmers last year, receiving more than $1 million, according to a new analysis of federal data by Environmental Working Group.

Known as direct payments, the subsidies go mainly to big farms growing a handful of crops. In the Sandridge case, that is mostly cotton, wheat and peanuts grown on farms controlled by the partnership in the Central Valley.

To put this in perspective, we have a member of the Congressional Portuguese Caucus (all of whose members, Cardoza, Nunes, Costa, used to be Pombo, are Central Valley agribusiness / developers) who wants to buy his continues support by larding up a Farm Bill that continues to give commodity subsides to while the prices we pay for food skyrocket.

This makes political sense when trying to buy votes but makes absolutely no economic sense.

Unfortunately, about the only journalist telling the real story these days is Lockhead and she does not work for a Central Valley newspaper.

If there is one area of this state where we all need a great Green Party presence, it is in the Central Valley. The issues of Community Based Economics, of sustainable agriculture, of urbanization and growth are all issues where the Green Party has the right answers and yet, we are not there, not making noise, not getting attention.

If Cardoza is the best that a Democratic Congress is going to deliver, we are all going to be in greater trouble after we elect an even larger Democratic majority in the fall. I hope that Green voices do not stay silent on this issue.

New boss, same as the old boss.

The great hope of The Who was that we "Won't Get Fooled Again." Well, I guess that we did.

I rarely find an editorial in any paper with which I am in complete agreement. However, today's editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Bumper crop of big spending", is one where I have absolutely no disagreement.

This follows a series of well-researched, well-written articles by Carolyn Lochhead in the same paper.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's staff sees the bill as the best possible bargain that could be won. They argue that Pelosi pushed for spending reforms, but southern Democrats prevailed. Now critics should be happy with the increases in food stamps and fruit and nut subsidies Pelosi supported - as the best deal that can be won in a political world. The Environmental Working Group and other reform-minded organizations have argued that it actually would be good politics for Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to cut off Big Farm's spigot. But Pelosi and Reid are smart politicians. If spending less were good politics, the farm bill would not be a pork sandwich.

The $286 billion farm bill is good politics only because the millions of taxpayers who are paying the bill are not pushing as hard as the relatively few people who benefit. (emphasis mine)

It is interesting that the target here seems to be Pelosi's two-faced lack of courage. How many things will she bargain away in order to get "the best possible bargain"?

I wonder just how many people in San Francisco will break with Pelosi in the coming election? If people actually read the Chronicle that number might be growing.

What should Greens be doing? At the very minimum we should be speaking out, in our forums, through our candidates, directly to our legislators, that enough is enough and we need to stop subsidizing big agriculture just like we need to stop subsidizing big oil. It is all the same game of power.