Ethanol and The Dust Bowl

Lisa and I recently watched the Ken Burns' documentary "The Dust Bowl". It was very interesting, very informative and very moving. The stories featured told of the causes of that environmental catastrophe, the impact of the event on the people in the area and the fragility of the land. It featured a lot from Timothy Eagan's wonderfully written book on the subject "The Worst Hard Time" - I highly recommend reading it.


Today I read this article "The Secret, Dirty Cost of Obama's Green Power Push" which details how the EPA, Department of Agriculture and the White House have pursued pushing ethanol as a sustainable biofuel, when the evidence is more and more to the contrary.

There are several things stated in the article that brought to mind the Dust Bowl, but this one really stood out to me:

Investors from as far away as Maryland and Pennsylvania have bought thousands of acres in Wayne County, sending prices skyrocketing from $350 per acre a decade ago to $5,000 today.

One in every four acres of in the county is now owned by an out-of-towner.
Those who still own land often rent it to farming companies offering $300 or more per acre. Perkins could make perhaps $27,000 a year if he let somebody plant corn on his land. That's nothing to dismiss in a county where typical household income is $36,000.
But he knows what that means. He sees the black streaks in his neighbor's cornfields, knowing the topsoil washes away with every rain. He doesn't want that for his family's land.

This is similar to what happened in the 1920s when the cost of grain skyrocketed and the government expanded homestead settlement programs. Investors from the big city or even out of state would purchase acreage or pay to farm someone's previously untouched existing acreage. The land hadn't previously been planted with crops because it was unsuitable for that type of farming. The huge increase in demand and price led to a boom of converting prairie land to farm land. Yet the fact remained, the newly converted land was historically known as not being suitable for crops. When the unusually wet years turned back to the normal dry years, the ground dried out and the soil began to erode and blow. When the drought of the 30s hit the former prairie lands, there was nothing to hold the soil down and it literally took off with the wind.

It would behoove us to learn from past mistakes and not farm land that is not meant to be farmed. It would be wise for our government to eliminate subsidies for programs that produce little benefit, encourage a misuse of the land and place us in a position that could lead to another environmental disaster.

In short, it would be beneficial for us as a country to learn from our own not-too-distant history.

On the Fiscal Cliff

Thomas Sowell expresses his thoughts about the Fiscal Cliff, and these portions echo exactly what I think and feel:

First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days.

No previous administration in the entire history of the nation ever finished the year with a trillion dollar deficit. The Obama administration has done so every single year.

Referring to the Federal Reserve System's creation of hundreds of billions of new dollars out of thin air as "quantitative easing" makes it seem as if this is some soothing and esoteric process, rather than amounting essentially to nothing more than printing more money.
Debasing the value of money by creating more of it is nothing new or esoteric. Irresponsible governments have done this, not just for centuries, but for thousands of years.
It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

But it is not the same politically, so long as gullible people don't look beyond words to the reality that inflation taxes everybody, the poorest as well as the richest.

And there are these nuggets from Part 2:

A key lie that has been repeated over and over, largely unanswered, is that President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" cost the government so much lost tax revenue that this added to the budget deficit-- so that the government cannot afford to allow the cost of letting the Bush tax rates continue for "the rich."

What is remarkable is how easy it is to show how completely false Obama's argument is.

What both the statistical tables in the "Economic Report of the President" and the graphs in Investor's Business Daily show is that (1) tax revenues went up-- not down-- after tax rates were cut during the Bush administration, and (2) the budget deficit declined, year after year, after the cut in tax rates that have been blamed by Obama for increasing the deficit.  

And here are the table and images referred to above:

Questions About the KONY 2012 Campaign

A couple of brief thoughts on the KONY 2012 campaign:


- If people (myself included) proclaimed the Gospel as vocally as they promote a viral campaign, it would truly change the world.

- Social awareness may grow through social media, but it doesn't change the situation unless people actually put hands and feet to the problem.

- A well produced video can create a lot of noise on the web, but can it really bring about change?

- If an organization is willing to promote certain things as fact in such a way that is misleading, do you really want to give them your money?

- What happens if all these people donate to the charity and later find out that their money never impacted the life of a child in Uganda/Africa/anywhere?

- It is appropriate and responsible to question the motives behind such a movement and to use the past history of that organization to determine your involvement in promoting or donating to an organization.

---

If you want to help children in Africa, there are plenty of ways through various charities that are more efficient at getting the money to impact children, more transparent in their operation and more Bible-based in their approach.

A few charities worth considering:
WorldVision
Compassion International
Save the Children
Blood Water Mission


If you want to know why I think some of these things, do some research. Below are a few articles I found helpful.

Challies: KONY 2012

KONY 2012: A Survivor's Perspective

Kony 2012: Why I’m Opposed To The Campaign

Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things)

On KONY 2012: I wanted to stay as far away as possible...


The REDDIT comments are quite intriguing

Our Current Position Visualized

This was the front page on CNN this morning and I couldn't resist capturing it and posting it here.

To me, this is a perfect example of what is wrong with our economy and country right now.
Warning: Generalized statements are about to be made which may not be true for all parties involved.

Standing for Nothing
There is a group of people who feel entitled to something without doing anything, or whatever it is they want. (see Occupy Something)

Speaking for Nothing
There is a group of wealthy people who feel that government should place even more of the burden on the rich. The fact that this call is now also coming from a couple dozen wealthier people does not change the fact that it is just another call to redistribute wealth. The fact that Warren Buffet is being used to champion this idea is simply ludicrous. (Buffet has sheltered his wealth from Federal Taxes and has admitted that he thinks the government would not handle the money as effectively and efficiently as a private organization.)

If the wealthy are so concerned with how much they have, they should stop making so much profit (money) or start giving a lot more of it away. This is their personal problem and not the government's problem. If they truly were struggling to sleep at night because they honestly believed that they had too much money and that it could be used to aid other people who desperately need it, they would have already set into motion the actions required to reconcile that conviction on their own. There is no role for the government required here. Thus, it is a cheap political stunt.


Neither of these groups represent a majority opinion. Far from it.

How did we end up here?
Our government has adopted the strategy of the one offered by the company to the right of the page. Spend what you do not have now, pay off less than the interest later and at some point down the line you will realize you are in way over your head and you will desperately need to change your behavior. However, like most Americans, our government refuses to change its spending behaviors, even after after the cost of continuing down the same road become patently clear and the outcome unavoidable.

How do I think we get out of this mess?
- We stop catering to the minority of the population  who screams the loudest. We stop handling them with soft gloves. If you want to protest anything, you need to do it within the bounds of the law. If you go beyond the law, then you should have the entirety of that law brought to bear against you and the organization you claim to represent.

- We need to stop listening to people who claim to offer solutions that appear selfless, when the reality is that their "solution" will not solve the problem. In fact, their path only leads to people other than themselves having more money taken away from them, thus increasing the gap between the ultra-rich and the wealthy.
- We stop spending money we do not have. We force our government to work for us, as it was intended. I do not work in order to pay for a government program. I work in order to have the ability to provide for my family's current and future needs. I am planning for my own future, as best as I can. It would be a lot easier for me if the government that is charged with protecting me woudl stop attacking me financially.
- We stop putting people in positions of power that cannot balance a budget. If you cannot run a household or business without going into debt, we do not need you attempting to guide the country. If you cannot run an election campaign without bungling your finances, we don't need you "helping" solve the crisis we have placed ourselves in as a nation.
- We stop electing people because they seem nice or energetic or young or whatever. We need to elect good, strong people to lead this country in a new direction. We need politicians who see it as being allowed to offer their services to their country and fellow citizens for a season, instead of having politicians who see it as the ultimate SWAG party and ridiculous retirement plan.
- We need to stop electing non-representatives. You work for me as well as the guy who disagrees with me. I am a fellow citizen of yours, just like he is - we are not just your constituents. You answer to me, even when you don't want to. If you make a choice that I find different from my desire, I have the right to express that opinion, regardless of how it might make you feel. If you do not want to hear the opinions of those that you claim to represent, then you have no right to claim to be their representative.
- We need to throw political correctness and sensitivity in the trash can. At the moment, there is very little room in political discourse for us to skirt around certain issues on our tippy toes because you or one of your lobbyist friends might take offense. Please be offended. Be offended that it took so long for you to feel or recognize how poorly you have done your job. Be offended at the fact that many of your actions have led us to this place. If you are too sensitive to deal with these very real, very large issues without getting your feathers ruffled through a lively, boisterous and heated debate, then there is no place for you in politics. Go home and cry in your bed for a while - the country will be better off with you there. This isn't to say that we should be hateful or disrespectful, but we should get fired up about what you are and are not doing with and to our country. That is patriotic. If you cannot handle grown up conversation in a real world that isn't filled with fairies and color-blindness, then you should go write children's stories and not attempt to tell us what stories we can and should read to our children.
- See Why I Think America is in Deep Trouble

Sorry about the length of this post. I got a bit carried away here. It started out as a quick picture and ended with me getting all riled up. I do not apologize for my convictions nor my vocalization of those beliefs, merely for the length of the content.

I hate politics as they are and dream of how I think they could be.
There are so many people on both sides of the aisle that do not deserve to be called representatives or leaders of our country. I am hoping that real world Americans begin to be better represented in the Washington DC.
That starts with you in the voting booth.
Get informed.
Get fired up.
Get represented.
Get America back on track.

Why I Think America Is In Deep Trouble

Last week I was thinking about all of the hype surrounding the debt-ceiling when it occurred to me that I haven't check the status of the Federal Reserve's Monetary Base lately. What follows is a lengthy post where I try to recapture all of my thoughts on this and various topics that I have written about over the course of the past few years.

I started tracking the Monetary Base prior to attending the April 15, 2009 Tea Party in downtown St. Louis, after which I posted my reasons for attending the tea party event. Included in that post was a graph showing the National Debt Per Capita and the Adjusted Monetary Base.

Does Universal Morality Exist?

Sam Harris at the TED conference: Science Can Answer Moral Questions


I found this talk quite interesting. I had literally no idea who Sam Harris is while watching this video, but I have since learned that he is an avowed atheist who has written some fairly popular books critical of Christian faith. While I would fully disagree with his false opinion that there is no God, I do agree with quite a bit of what he said in this talk.

It sounded to me a lot like this scientist/philosopher was imploring the educated people in the room to finally admit that there is such a thing as absolute morality, which in my mind is a reflection of the fact that there is absolute truth. Perhaps in his endeavors to convince fellow scientists to begin expressing their beliefs in firm statements of truth, Mr. Harris will be granted the understanding that these universal moral truths have an Author who created the universe in which they exist.

This article nicely captured these points from the talk:

We should not feel constrained to assert what we think is an objective truth — that such behavior is wrong — for fear that it will be taken as subjective meddling or demagoguery, Harris argued. There is a moral imperative not to hold one’s tongue but rather to speak out.
...
We can no longer respect and tolerate vast differences of opinion of what constitutes basic humanity any more than we can take seriously different opinions about how disease spreads or what it takes to make buildings and airplanes safe, Harris insisted.

(HT: Abraham Piper)