LINK 1: About the nomination
LINK 2: Post-Confirmation
LINK 3: Nuclear Option Video:
LINK 4: Fox News. More Flattering
LINK 5: Video + Changing the supreme court
Monday, April 3, 2017
Saturday, March 18, 2017
A little about agricultural subsidies
Although Wikipedia is not always the best source, I believe that it has a good definition for what an agricultural subsidy is.
“An agricultural subsidy is a governmental
subsidy paid to farmers and agribusinesses to supplement their income, manage
the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of
such commodities.”
The definition is so good because it explains why we have these subsidies. As I am sure we all know, farming is one of the riskiest professions because it relies so heavily on the weather. One important aspect of government subsidies is that they allow for farmers to be better protected against droughts or floods. These subsidies also allow the government to control the price of the food made in the United States. This helps our farmers to stay competitive in the global market, and also keeps the price of subsidized foods down.
The important part of that last sentence was that it keeps the price of SUBSIDIZED foods down. The issue with our current system is that much of the money is being used to subsidize corn and other products that make up much of processed foods. In the United States, nearly over 35% (nearly 3 billion dollars) of the subsidies go to corn or other feed grains. Americans obviously do not eat that much corn, so where is all the subsidy money going?
Well, there are numerous different uses for these grains (other than the small we eat directly). One of the most common uses is in the name, feeding animals. The American diet has transitioned over the years, and we are eating more and more meat. The animals are fed grains farmed on governmentally subsidized farms. Because feeding the animals is so cheap, we have inexpensive meat like the burgers at McDonalds. The fact that you can buy a burger for a dollar is not helping Americans avoid unhealthy eating.
A second, important, use for the subsidized grain is to create ethanol. A large percentage of corn subsidies are used to grow corn that can be blended blended into vehicle fuel each year. This is an good government subsidy for corn, and one that does not negatively effect our health.
Overall, there are good government agricultural subsidies, and some that are more harmful than good. We see that the majority of the subsidies go to help grow corn which is used to make ethanol but and to make cheap, unhealthy food. What we need is to convince our government that subsidies would be much more beneficial if they lowered the price of fruits as opposed to burgers.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
A brief look into food under the new administration
Our topic for this semester, food, is a very interesting one because it isn't often thought of as a major issue. Although millions of Americans suffer from food insecurity, the 2016 campaign did not focus on this issue. Now it is 2017, and a new president is being ushered into the white house, replacing an administration that was fighting for healthier meals. Because it is only the beginning of a new administration, we still do not know what the plan is with relation to food, but we can still make some guesses.
I managed to find an article about Trump and school lunches (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/will-trump-fast-food-fan-remake-healthy-school-lunches/), and it had a couple of interesting points. The article began by talking about Michelle Obama and the work she did to help improve healthy diets in America. The article believes that there will be changes that span beyond the school lunchroom. Although there are no specifics, some believe that a major area of change will be in regulation. It is possible that the new administration tries to loosen regulations on large food companies. I do not know enough about the regulations themselves to know whether or not this is a bad idea, but I believe that loosening the regulations won't stop the trend of awareness we see today. I don't think it is possible for the new administration to stop Americans from trying to find out what is in their food.
The final topic that the article touches on is food stamps. There is more known about what the Republican party has planned for food stamps, and it isn't promising. What has been said in the past leads us to believe that there may be cuts or tighter restrictions on food stamps, which we already saw were difficult to get by on. We don't know what the next 4 years have in store for food in America, all we know is that we must keep an eye on what is going on.
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