{"id":4335,"date":"2009-03-05T08:38:07","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T13:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4335"},"modified":"2009-03-05T08:38:07","modified_gmt":"2009-03-05T13:38:07","slug":"farmers-thank-goodness-for-small-favors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4335","title":{"rendered":"Farmers:  Thank Goodness For Small Favors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The MinnPost notes that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.minnpost.com\/community_voices\/2009\/03\/05\/7109\/important_science_left_out_of_stimulus_research_funding_agriculture#5-7109\">agriculture is apparently &#8220;left out&#8221; of Porkulus:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In the blizzard of new research funding created by the federal stimulus bill, however, an important science has been left out in the cold: agriculture. The stimulus package approved by Congress and President Obama includes $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $3 billion for the National Science Foundation and $2 billion for the Energy Department \u2014 but not a penny for competitive research in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). One early version of the Senate&#8217;s plan included $100 million for agricultural science research, a tiny amount relative to the other research spending, but it did not survive the negotiating process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Right.<\/p>\n<p>Because the ag sector is <em>so <\/em>undersubsidized in normal times.<\/p>\n<p>Because federal pork isn&#8217;t so seductive that rock-ribbed conservative farmers on the plains, real Americans who wouldn&#8217;t vote for a Democrat for President (and haven&#8217;t in generations), keep sending pork-snuffling gerbils like Kent Conrad and Tom Daschle and Byron Dorgan and Chuck Hagel to Congress.<\/p>\n<p>Because almost eighty years of comprehensive farm subsidies have made agriculture such a stable enterprise, have rescued the &#8220;family farm&#8221;, and have kept food prices down.<\/p>\n<p>Thank goodness Obama skipped <em>something\u00a0 <\/em>we need.\u00a0 Perhaps even <em>he&#8217;s <\/em>too smart to risk <em>those <\/em>consequences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The MinnPost notes that agriculture is apparently &#8220;left out&#8221; of Porkulus: In the blizzard of new research funding created by the federal stimulus bill, however, an important science has been left out in the cold: agriculture. The stimulus package approved by Congress and President Obama includes $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $3 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-midwest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}