Farm bill not evil, what?

As a planet first kind of guy, I’ve always had my suspicions about the Farm Bill. I figured that Congress was using the bill as a tool to hand out transfer payments which disproportionately favored the lobbying powerhouses. I thought factory farms were making out like bandits at the expense of everyone else.

The truth is, that’s not really the case. When the 2008 farm bill expires next September, it will have doled out only 15 percent of its total appropriations to support growers of select commodities, and less than 1 percent on livestock or poultry (of which may be morally dubious).

The big ticket item of the 2008 farm bill, was the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or Food Stamps, which will have consumed around 67 percent of the total appropriations included in the bill.

Despite the stigma and the harsh criticism about the Farm Bill propping up the undesirables of agriculture, appropriations numbers seem to portray a far less dramatic picture. If you’re interested in the numbers, check out this pdf (scroll to page 6).

The plight of the next farm bill is underway as of Friday and it may take about two weeks according to Environmental Blog Ecocentric.  The upcoming farm bill will offer $23 billion less in appropriations as the federal government tightens it belt to save $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. 

They’ve occupied my hope

Occupy Chicago protesters rally for economic equality in Grant Park, the same spot where Obama delivered his '08 victory speech. Whether its hope, or hopelessness, we're in for an exciting ride.    

Visionaries, protesters make my world better, greener

I’m poor just like everybody else, but thanks to Groupon I’ve got my Sunday edition of the Washington Post. Thanks to net neutrality, I’ve got my free podcasts, and thanks to the world wide web, I have 24-7 access to liberty as it currently exists and transforms. But what I’m crazy thankful for now, are the visionaries that have led us to where we are at this moment:

Ali Tarhouni: University of Washington Economics Professor turned rebel finance minister who helped orchestrate the robbery of the Libyan National Bank and helped finance the Libyan revolution.

Julian Assange: The Australian ethical computer hacker and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks who exposed millions of classified documents after the launch of WikiLeaks.  

Anonymous: The loose band of hackers who commit honorable terrorism. They are the most notorious group of net activists who hack organizations, corporations and agencies that they deem debauched. They're the Web's bona fide Boondock Saints.  

And most of all, OccupyWall Street. Don’t let Time magazine, the Washington Post, or any other newspaper or periodical simplify them into a political movement. Occupy Wall Street is a band of individuals who are seeking a more effective society with a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. Their political orientation is irrelevant, but their message is resolute. Fed up with the economic disparities that have arisen from the social elites’ dominance of our political, economic, and earth systems, they will protest, unceasingly until justice is served. 

As an environmentalist in training, I see hope in their movement and in their trend. Once the corporate playing field is leveled or kept in check, lobbying power could greatly diminish. This could have all sorts of good environmental implications. Stronger regulation on CO₂ emissions, an actual domestic energy plan, who knows…

Occupy Wall Street is burgeoning and with Arab Spring in the back our minds rebellion seems way more possible today than at any point I can pull from in my lifetime. I can’t help shake the feeling that the fall of Gaddafi, could accelerate the disintegration of the US.

It’s scary to think that the United States as an entity could fail, or even to admit that the United States is failing. (Yet as an entity it could, and as an entity it is.) However, the essence of the United States will never fail. The essence of the United States is what is pushing Occupy Wall Street. The essence is what every American has the fortune of sensing: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

As our liberties have been stymied by the Patriot Act, the Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Bailout, and have been exacerbated by an ineffective Congress and a dismal economy, Occupy Wall Street has become the vanguard of those usurped liberties. Since 9/11 our melting pot has become fervid and Occupy Wall Street could be just the ingredient we need to have everything boil over.

As an emotional being, I hope that the movement doesn’t get stolen by the democrats.  And as cities in the US and those around the world become occupied with protesters, hopefully justice will be served.

The reach of the oil juggernauts

Left: Hiding behind the National Environmental Policy Act, the State Department is outsourcing it's responsibility for a fair environmental review of the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal. The image is a screenshot of a comment I left for the State Department, to read it legibly scroll to the bottom of this post.

I know as a blogger you’re supposed to write about things you’ve done related to your blog’s theme. But for those of you like me who are eco-peripherals, sometimes my little victories are completely nugatory compared to the setbacks we face from the oil juggernauts. 

Right now it appears that the State Department is complicit in a scandal involving these oil juggoes.  The State Department has contracted the private company, Cardno Entrix to run the environmental review process for the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline bringing oil sands from northern Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. The thing is, Cardno Entrix was recommended to the State Department by TransCanada, the company that is building the pipeline, according to an article in the New York Times.

Because of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which took effect in 1970, agencies are allowed hire outside contractors to perform required environmental impact studies. Yet, choosing Cardno Entrix to perform the impact study and run the environmental review process is a conflict of interest. 

Professor Oliver A. Houck, a law professor at Tulane University and an expert on NEPA, said to the N.Y. Times that Cardno Entrix should never have been selected to perform the environmental study on Keystone XL because of its relationship with TransCanada and the potential to garner more work involving the pipeline. 

To make matters more interesting, TransCanada’s chief Washington lobbyist, Paul Elliot, was a top official in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign…

I highly recommend reading the New York Times article.

I wish I knew about all of this sooner. I found out Sunday night, that public comments on the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal were accepted until Sunday at midnight. I posted a comment as appears below, but I wish I could have gotten this info out to you loyal blog readers to comment as well. Though the comments don’t have a lot of bearing considering that they are directed to a Cardno Entrix email address. But here was my two-cents anyways: 

“Now that I know the State Department is complicit in contracting a client of TransCanada, I know how meaningless this comment is, however, I type it nonetheless.

Oil sands are not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States. Job creation is a meaningless endeavor if the jobs created damage our national social construct. 

This has gone too far, and it’s time that the President and Secretary of State that I voted for, shut the Keystone XL Pipeline down. Please don’t use the bad economy as an excuse to undermine our natural rights, especially the pursuit of happiness.”