Today’s column explores how U.S. policy is soaking taxpayers and starving the world.

I just think it’s great that paternalistic libs are exporting their life sucking dependency culture to other countries.

Coke, McDonalds and a poulace that can’t wipe it’s own ass....American as apple pie made with subsidized grannysmiths!

Patrick Murphy,

You never went away, did you, you old devil you....

Bob,

You don’t specify what those leftwingers or libertarians are doing, but you indicate you blame politicians for messing with formerly cheap prices. Point taken.

After reading the accompanying column in the T-D from the Oxfam lady, I even more appreciate the Barticlesian take on the issue.

Her idea that food aid is too expensive because we have to pay Americans to do it illustrates the misplaced idealistic zeal these do-gooders evince. Noble but unbalanced.

I’ve heard her assertion that “there is enough food to feed everyone” before and it is scary. Yes, if we do nothing but move all resources to food production, sure, that is correct.

Bush’s notion we should just hand out cash is a terrible idea too. Horrible. That screams abuse and corruption. Shades of Katrina and those FEMA credit cards.

To add to that, we will end up in the business of subsidizing poor countries to overpopulate the world and strain resources. We should encourage them to not have children. We shouldn’t be feeding them indiscriminately.

We stand ready to offer aid to the recent victims of Myammar as we should, and I like the comments of one aid official who said it shows we are ready to engage and we care. True enough. Simple goals.

No need to get overly political. Let the corrupt dictators decide when and how and if we get in.

I’m taking it the “Jack Daniels strategic whiskey reserve” is a non-starter as an idea. Just don’t come whineing back to me when there is a worldwide shortage and no one did anything about the impending disaster.

Maybe we could all become sensitive vegetarians, brag about how vegan we are and make vegetarianism mandatory. Death penalty for carnivourous activities.
Then after that, we could ban all cars and start riding bicycles, including people in wheel chairs and the elderly.
And after that, the Vegetarian Libertarian United Front could have all American farmers branded as “Rich Kulaks”, rounded up and shot just like old Uncle Joe Stalin did in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
Americans spend about 5.8 % of their money on food. Overall, we have a pretty good food production system. Just leave it to the extreme left kooks and the libertarian ideologues to scrtew it up.

Another insightful post: “...That may be true to some extent and is certainly true to some extent...” Blew me away!

Another suggestion. In addition to the strategic petroleum reserve we now employ why not a strategic Jack Daniels reserve ?  Millions of gallons of whiskey in underground casks waiting to be sold to African warlords, Russian mafiosos and Chinese diplomats for premium prices.  A much smaller Woodford reserve for upscale Republicans.

In the future Democrats will have to distill urine in order to serve water in a Dixie cup at their pitiful little conventions. The Republicans can tap into those strategic Woodford reserves instead.

By burying a half-empty bottle of Old Crow in your own backyard, assuming you have one, you can insure that you are contributing yourself to safeguarding your future and the future of America.

Millions of starving pygmies are depending on it.

Let this be the first Old Crow Day, a day to replace that fusty, oft-ignored and ill observed Earth Day.  Eco-minded folk everwhere will go out with a garden shovel and do their part to insure a blissful future for us all.

Good column.

Bleeding hearts will think it heartless to deny aid. More the fool they. In this age of global instability programs that don’t work will just come back to bite us twofold later.

If bread costs us $4 a loaf, then either we are getting soaked or else poor folk have simply lost the ability to afford to exist. (grim humor)

There are alternatives for those who do want to help.

One is a beefed up Peace Corps, where we send over farmers and seed to help them raise crops and work with the farmers rather than governments.

Another is more research. They just cut funding for agricultural research even as (in the news) there is a new epidemic of wheat stem rust brewing out of Africa.

The last big epidemic of this plant disease was in the 50s, so farmers are complacent. Special seed varieties held it at bay for decades. Now it is back.

Think bread $20 a loaf.

They say they plant everywhere in Africa to tap into unused soils because the soil is too poor to sustain long term agriculture.  Soil requires fertilizer or else it gets depleted. Fertilizer is expensive.

Part of this is backdrop to the growing insistence that farm subsidies are not in our best interest. That may be true to some extent and is certainly true to some extent. It is also prophetic, in that pundits are telling us the future is going to require more intelligent management of resources than we do today.

You don’t need to hoard rice from Costco just yet. Not unless you want to. Might be more fun than collecting Hummel or ceramic salt n’pepper shakers.

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