Got Pull?

Hah! And you thought I was paranoid when I said the reason so many food products contain unnecessary ingredients that are deadly to me is because "This country has for decades been run from behind the scenes by the dairy industry."

Well, the proof is in the policy. Look at what happened in Washington just yesterday.

Finally, Congress has started trying to inject a little sanity into runaway spending, and one of theCow1_1 targets is our swollen agricultural giveaways. So they vote to save $3 billion by cutting farm commodity payments over the next five years.

Good enough so far. But one subsidy is left intact. Which one? You’ve got it! Milk.

The excuse is that small dairy operators have to have it. That’s kind of like the famous "Big Bird" defense, whereby S.C. ETV staved off budget cuts years ago by claiming the network would have to cut "Sesame Street:" Big Cheese’s lobbyists plead on behalf of their most sympathetic clients. The big ranchers out West don’t even want it.

2 thoughts on “Got Pull?”

  1. Mike C

    You are onto something, Brad. With the outcry against junk food and several attempts to sue McDonalds for purveying fatty, unhealthy food, why have none of the hired guns gone after Big Dairy?
    On page A15 of today’s WSJ, Stephen Moore has this to say about Ben & Jerry’s ice cream:

    Herein lies a second irony: This product [Ben & Jerry’s ice cream] is probably about as good for your health as a pack of Camel cigarettes — and at least cigarettes carry the Surgeon General’s warning labels. At Ben & Jerry’s, the saying goes “if you can’t eat a whole pint … in one sitting, you aren’t really trying.” But if you do, you might as well be injecting your arteries with Elmer’s glue. And they have no qualms about marketing this dangerous product to children. If you want to know the definition of a liberal’s dilemma, just wait till the trial lawyers slap Ben & Jerry’s with a billion-dollar lawsuit.

    But will they? Does even the plaintiff’s bar have enough muscle to sue Big Dairy?
    I was surprised that Minnesota’s Democrat Senator Mark Dayton voted against the dairy subsidy bill until I learned the reason: he was upset that the subsidy wasn’t even larger.

  2. SC Source

    I can just hear the outcry in Piggly Wiggly about the price of milk going up to $4+ per gallon. Or think about the kid who won’t be able to enjoy his daily bowl of Captain Crunch. Let’s face it..Milk ranks right behind Gas on our list of needs (Food, Shelter, Clothes, Gas, and Milk). I think they better leave the Dairy subsidy in tact.
    Just My 2 Cents…
    SC

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