Letters to the Editor
Electro Robot
Published Letters: 1115 Editor's Choice: 9
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What do I believe
[Read the article: Trade and the price of food]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't believe in ideology uber alles. I believe in what works. If some subsidies work to efficiency aid the production of food, fine, do that. If you're looking for me to bounce hate mail off your one dimensional ideology you're talking to the wrong person. Sorry. Small farms aren't efficient. If that irks your ideology, I can't worry about that. I don't drive a handmade car either.
I tell you though what form of small farming is frightfully efficient. Tobacco. Virtually all tobacco farmers are sharecroppers. The land owner gets a crop rent and the farmer pays out all of his costs from his share. The reason for this is because other than illegal drugs, and some herbs, there is more profit per acre in Tobacco than any other crop we grow in the US. And the work to bring in the crop is horribly labor intensive. It simply can't be automated.
Whereas, do you know what the 4th largest cash crop in the US is today? Anyone? It's SOD. That's right lawn grass sod is the 4th largest cash crop in the US. Why? Everyone wants it and it's cheap to make. So cheap in fact it's massively automated & an average sized SOD farm is more than 700 acres minimum with a labor overhead of perhaps 3 people, maybe 5. If anyone were to suggest small SOD farms they would be out of business in one year.
You know what else lends itself to massive efficiencies? Cranberries. In fact there's a whole industry in New York state that turns defunct dairy farms into productive Cranberry Bogs. Once they're established they are enormously efficient and require almost no labor over huge tracts of land.
So yeah I know a little agronomy. There are perhaps 4% acreage of all food crop farms in the US classify as 'small farms'. That's it. And they don't produce more than 4% value correspondingly in other words there's no leveraged advantage. Now if we remove all subsidies they go out of business tomorrow, the agribusiness farms absorb new costs, you pay correspondingly more. The farms don't hire more people, they automate more to hire less to offset their costs and poor people eat less.
Which I'm not convinced is a good thing that ideology has delivered. Maybe it is but I'm not convinced.
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Well the problem with derivatives is that no one really knows what they were ever worth
[Read the article: "The next time we have Black Monday"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]They didn't care for good long time, now someone wants to get paid. And no one really knows if they have any value at all. It could be zero. Which wouldn't crush the banking system but it would deliver a staggering blow. Salon readers might be licking their lips at that prospect but it would be a global phenomenon. Middle class people would certainly catch it in the neck. Whereas poor people in the US and elsewhere would literally get run over with a train. We would see hundreds of millions of people added to the rolls of the marginal poor world wide.
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If you doubt this look in the history of cotton farming in India
[Read the article: "The next time we have Black Monday"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]when that market crashed thousands of people committed suicide.
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I almost never with Joan about anything but she is right about this
[Read the article: Americans more ready for a black president than a woman?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And you Obama freaks will ALWAYS claim you have a reason to poke at a woman candidate you view as damaged goods. Every single time.
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Yes you were all studying your Marx and Che
[Read the article: The year that changed everything]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Polishing your AK-47s and bringing down the man. So how did that work out for you?
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Alkaline
[Read the article: "The next time we have Black Monday"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well I'm not sure. It would depend on realistically how far you expect this whole thing to go. I believe that calls for the 4 Horsemen are indeed overstated. I think this will be a 20 month recession of sorts and if we're lucky it won't end in a high inflation spike. Given that there's a limit to what's reasonable and practical with the amount of time it takes for any change to show some demonstrable effect. Let's not forget that almost ALL of FDR's first term was a failure in terms of generating some productive benefit out of the Depression. The programs that failed were matched by the ones HIS OWN Supreme Court declared invalid.
Broadly speaking though, there's no such thing as a bank. Everything is a bank. So apply the same fidiciary, risk and reserve guidelines uniformly. The SEC is worthless and toothless and has been for 30 years. Change it or scrap it. Decide which Federal agencies need to be bolstered and which need to be done away with. Combining Freddie and Fannie would be a good idea too.
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What's a shame is that radicals throw Hosannahs at FARC no matter who they kill
[Read the article: Real female heroes: Ingrid Betancourt]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Rest assured that if FARC kills this woman, a third of Salon readers will jump up to defend FARC.
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It's a plot I tell you
[Read the article: Why did Clinton wait to release her tax return?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We like our Democratic millionaires slightly less millionaireish
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David
[Read the article: Americans more ready for a black president than a woman?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mob hysteria is mob hysteria. Demagogues are demagogues.
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It will be interesting to see
[Read the article: Can Stephen Colbert save America?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The News and the Fake News try to poke fun at Obama while staying clear of virtually every aspect of the man that's considered off limits to the press, like his race, his name, his parentage. If you think we're all too PC now, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Also, is Maher still relevant? Maher is to 'comedy' like fire hydrant is to ballet.
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I guess we should burn Bono at the stake
[Read the article: Why did Clinton wait to release her tax return?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For making around 30-40 million dollars a year. Or better yet, wrap Soros in cash dipped in honey and throw him at a bear.
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America is about 5 years away from being too dumb for satire
[Read the article: Can Stephen Colbert save America?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Haven't you ever met people who give you a blank stare and think you're serious? Yeah well all of America will be that guy soon.
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Forbes estimates Fidel Castro is worth 900 Million dollars
[Read the article: Why did Clinton wait to release her tax return?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And Yasser Arafat managed to steal between 7 and 9 Billion Euros before he died. Viva La Revolucion Allahu Akbar
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bernbart
[Read the article: Americans more ready for a black president than a woman?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But you see, they WERE elected as heads of state, as was Indira Gandhi.