Today's Stories

June 4, 2008

Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie

Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth

June 3, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny

Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy

Steve Early
San Juan Showdown

Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony

George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry

Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway

Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?

June 2, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal

Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler

Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria

Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?

Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun

John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico

Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List

Website of the Day
Man on Earth

May 31 / June 1, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come

Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers

Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush

Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall

P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day

Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo

Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan

Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?

Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle

Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes

Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again

Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God

Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo

David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter

Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch

Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...

Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts

Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes

Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep

Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies

Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse

May 30, 2008

Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From

Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession

Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess

Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists

Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba

Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap

Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People

Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror

Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)

Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9

Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement

May 29, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women

Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race

Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead

Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States

William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game

Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil

Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter

David Macaray
A Union Fable

Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil

Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com

May 28, 2008

Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul

Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?

Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola

Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan

Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You

Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan

Website of the Day
Older Than America

May 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader

Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?

Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions

Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem

Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn

Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16

Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting: Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates

Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup

Susie Day
Gone with the W

May 26, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option

Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day

Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day

Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me

Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?

Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?

Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital

Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System

Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters

David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips

Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama

May 24 / 25, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem

Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections

Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture

Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq

David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch

Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba

Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing

John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point

Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx

Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968

Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?

Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work

Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger

Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep

Daniel Cassidy
My Mother

Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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Big Ag's Deceptive Accounting Practices

Farm Economics

By GEORGE WUERTHNER

The US Congress, defying a threatened veto by President Bush, just passed a $ 307 billion farm bill. A significant percentage of that farm bill consists of food stamps and other food assistance for the poor. But the farm bill has plenty of goodies for farmers. For instance, the bill allows producers with an adjusted gross income of $1.5 million annually to obtain subsidies. Furthermore, price supports kick in if commodity prices drop a mere 10% over two year averages.

These and other financial and other benefits are showered upon American farmers despite the fact that nation-wide full-time farmers are doing quite well. The average full-time commercial farmer will earn $229,000 this year according to the USDA—many times what the average American earns. In 2007 approximately 1 million farmers received more than $5 billion in direct crop subsidies, with 60% of that funding going to the top ten percent of producers. This figure does not include many other subsidies from the Conservation Reserve Program, drought insurance, and numerous other payments that help to booster farm incomes.

Despite the fact that we continue to borrow money at unprecedented rates, there are still limits to the federal treasury and every dollar going to farmers is one less dollar available for some other worthwhile project or sector of society—many in far more desperate need of federal assistance.

HOW DO THEY DO IT?

One has to wonder why an industry that really makes up a small proportion of the American public is able to assert such political power. One factor is that farmers are a cultural icon in America. Ever since Thomas Jefferson lionized the yeoman farmer as the ideal citizen, America has put those in Agriculture in an exalted position. Farmers and ranchers are perceived to be among the most worthy of Americans, and “family farmers” are always described as “hard working” and “independent (implying that the rest of us don’t work nor are independent). Most people at least believe they would like to live in the “country” and bucolic rural settings are among our most idealized landscapes. Farmers and ranchers are seen as inherently “good” people, grounded in the earth, and being a third or fourth generation rancher and/or farmer is considered a badge of honor.

Beyond the cultural reasons, others support Ag subsidies believing we will starve if we do not support farmers. This is another deception perpetuated by the Ag industry, based more on hype than truth. Most of the cropland in the country is used to grow forage crops for livestock, not food for direct human consumption. If we were really concerned about feeding ourselves and the rest of the world, we’d eliminate red meat from our diets. A small fraction of America’s farmland is used to grow crops for direct human consumption—most of our good soil produces cattle forage and other livestock feed.

For instance, last year we planted 90 million acres to corn—not the sweet corn you might eat on a summer picnic, but feeder corn to fatten cows, pigs, and chickens. Another 75 million acres went into soybeans—with only 2% used for human foods like tofu and soy milk. In fact, since Ag subsidies go mainly to producers of corn, soy and other livestock forage crops, most subsides are not really helping to feed the nation, rather they help feed cows.

Finally the last major reason Ag enjoys phenomenal support has to do with the public perception of Agriculture as the economic backbone of many state economies. Such assertions may be true for states like Iowa and Kansas in the heart of the Mid-West farm belt, but in most states Ag is a minor part of the economy. However, since the assertion is repeated ad nauseum by those in Agriculture, politicians, even conservation groups, few question this assertion.

Of course, Ag does everything it can to foster such a perception. It is not uncommon for any industry to try to inflate its economic value in hopes of gaining more power and taxpayer subsidies.

WHO IS A FARMER?

A good example of this exaggerated economic value of Agriculture can be seen in Vermont. In the Green Mountain State everyone from political progressives to fiscal conservatives flatly assert that farming is the backbone of the state’s economy. No one questions such claims. And this exaggerated importance of Agriculture is fostered by the US Dept of Agriculture Economic Research Service which lists more than 63,382 Vermonters (15.8%) out of 409,000 plus employed state residents as working in “farm or farm related employment.”

However, the largest sub category of Ag workers—some 44,331 people--are involved in what the USDA euphemistically categorizes as Ag retail trade and wholesaling. What is Ag retail and wholesaling? That’s the people working in grocery chain stores selling food, microbreweries, and even selling ride-on lawn mowers. In some Ag economic studies I’ve read, those working at coffee shops, and restaurants—even bottled water “manufacturing” are counted as Ag related workers. Indeed, any one who touches, handles or sells equipment, food, shoes, clothes or other product that can remotely be traced back to Ag production are frequently categorized as “farm related workers”. And when people talk about these “Ag related” workers, over time t he “related” is shortened to “ag workers.” By such deceptive accounting, AG grossly exaggerates its real economic significance.

A more accurate accounting Ag’s true economic importance in Vermont is found at the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. By their estimates all agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting COMBINED accounted for only 1.6% of Vermont’s gross state product and less than 1% of all state employment, far below other economic sectors like health care, manufacturing, finance, real estate—to name a few. Indeed, there are far more used car salesmen in Vermont than full time farmers—unfortunately for the car salesmen there is no romance about their occupation, nor an entire Cabinet level post promoting their employment. Yet that hasn’t kept Ag proponents from asserting, falsely, that Agriculture is the backbone of the Vermont economy.

Of course, given how few farms there are in Vermont, one could suggest that such statistics do not characterize real farming states. However, such deception is not limited to the Green Mountain State. For instance, Montana has the majority of its land area devoted to farming and/or ranching. And if you look up farm and farm-related employment for Montana, you would find that the USDA classifies 18 percent of the state’s workers as Agricultural. Thus approximately one in five people in the Big Sky State is considered to work in Ag. However, like in Vermont, more than half of those jobs are in Ag retail—in other words, the check out clerks employed in the Albertson’s grocery store or the bar tenders at the local micro brew, and only a small percentage, perhaps no more than 1% of the state’s citizens are genuinely earning a full-time living farming and/or ranching.

WHAT IS A FARM?

There are several other ways that Agricultural accounting methods are deceptive. First, is the low bar established to qualify as a farm operation. Any business that grosses more than $1000 dollar a year selling “agricultural” products is considered to be a farm.

For instance, I have a friend who is a professor at the University of Vermont. In the spring, he tends a sugar bush to produce maple syrup. If you asked my friend what he does for a living, he’d tell you he’s a professor. But if you were to consult the Dept. of Agriculture, you would find out that my friend is classified as one of Vermont’s 6000 farmers because he grosses more than a $1000 a year in sales—the minimum amount needed to qualify as a farm producer by USDA standards.

Most of the “farmers” in this country are like my friend the professor who depends on a non-farm job to provide for their primary income—in other words farming for most of these people is more of a hobby and/or a source of extra cash rather than a full time occupation. In reality people like my friend, the professor, usually do not benefit from Ag subsidies, but those who do, benefit from including them among the “farmer” category to inflate their purported economic value to local and regional economies.

A similar exaggerated view of Ag exists in Montana where the USDA lists 27,870 “farms” in the state. Surprisingly, despite all the talk about subdivisions wiping out Ag land, there are now more farms in Montana today than in 1987 (24,500 farms) suggesting that the bar for what constitutes a farm is pretty low. Of those 27,870 “farms”, more than 10,000 of them produced less than $2,500 in product. In fact, only 10,000 out of the nearly 28,000 farms produced more than $25,000 in gross sales. And even $25,000 is likely not an economically viable operation. In essence, less than a third of the farm operations in Montana are likely full-time viable economic entities—with the rest more or less hobby operations or supported primarily by off farm employment.

By aggregating the part-time hobby farmer with the much fewer full-time commercial enterprises, the USDA is able to inflate the perceived employment importance of farming/ranching in the local/regional economy.

Dispelling the myth that Ag is a major industry may help put Ag subsidies in perspective. Most of the money that goes directly to Ag industry is directed towards a few major crop commodities like corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton. Indeed, most fruit and vegetable growers get few, if any direct financial support from Ag subsidies.

Because Ag is believed to be an economically important sector of local and regional economies, it enjoys special exemption from many environmental laws and standards. For instance, in Vermont, the state’s endangered species act does not apply to farmers and though it is the most important source of water pollution in the state, it is exempt from water pollution laws. Similar exemptions exist in most states. It’s time to rein in Ag and look at it clearly. We need to feed ourselves, but we don’t need to line the pockets of Ag producers. We shouldn’t think that just because someone grows something they automatically deserve special treatment or support.

For many who are considered farmers/ranchers, lifestyle is the real reason they continue to work (and/or abuse) the land. But should we subsidizing a lifestyle choice and more often than not, an ecologically destructive “deathstyle”?

George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer. He is a descendant of a reformed farmer and proud to be a second generation non-farm worker.He is the author of 34 published books, including Wild Fire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy and Montana, Magnificent Wilderness and, most recently, Thrillcraft: the Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation.

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