A Tea Partier’s caucus view: Patriots, let freedom ring at your caucuses
February 6, 2012 at 6:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
“If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
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Being part of the Tea Party might be an option, however, I am white and therefore I must be a racist, since I am a racist I would not be allowed to be a member of the Tea Party. How do they feel about the “Un-Fair” campaign?
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You obviously have never been to the Central Hillside. When I was working there, I had a customer who in less than four years years popped out three kids, by three different guys.
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The Tea Party IS America ! Occubama and his comrades are the Soviet Union !!
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We want more “Obamafication”.
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I see he’s had a frontal lobotomy!
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Typical tea-partier~~ Waves Flag~…Let Freedom Ring..we’re like the founding fathers…we’re patriots…see, we even dress like them….we want to get back to our constitution…we want to cut spending and have less government interference in our lifes and make taxes fair…~waves flag~…
Me~ Cool…so you want to eliminate Homeland Security and stop the spying on own citizens without due process, eliminate the unfair tax breaks the wealthy get and cut our unbridled spending on national security and defense, …are for gay marriage and want to repeal zero tolerance guidlines and drug war that is used to wage war on own citizens….
Tea-partier~ Oh no, we need all that…~puzzled look~
Me~ Ahhhh….yeah, right…you don’t really know what the founding fathers intents were do you?
Tea-partier~ ~waves flag~ Of course I do…it was all about Freedom and less government interference in our lives…Whoo Whooo…~waves flag~
Me~….Ohhhhhhh…nevermind…
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Wow , it’s the funny farm for this guy !!
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Typical occupy liberal: “Down with the corporations! *sips starbucks* Down with corporate greed!! *kneels down and ties nike shoes* “End all corporations!!!” *eats snickers bar*
Me: Shakes head and walks away.
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The “typical occupy liberal” would probably love to make their own shoes and grow their own food, but it’s nearly impossible to do so when typical teabag Republicans, like yourself, praise huge conglomerations that flood the market and ruin competition. What other choice do people have when everything people use, from sandwich shops to seedlings, is bought, consolidated, and owned by these massive corporations, before we are even born? There isn’t a single product or service I can get that doesn’t involve a corporation. And believe me, this was not always the case.
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Excuses, excuses, excuses, Merv. Radical occupy liberals, like yourself, are full of them. Nobody is stopping you from making your own shoes. Nobody is stopping you from growing your own food. Nobody is forcing you to live in the United States! Answer this question, Merv: How to these “big conglomerations” become big? Success! You and the other occupy scum want to penalize business and people because they are successful. The occupy movement is the biggest group of hypocrites on the planet.
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That’s the typical response I was expecting, dark knight. You believe that, since nobody is putting a gun to anybody’s head, then we are all free to do what we want. But that ignores the basic economic principle of incentives. Why would anybody spend all that money to make their own shoes, if they can just buy a $20 pair of Chinese-made shoes at Walmart? How can a small farmer compete with big-agribusinesses that sells their crops for less than half of what the small farmer can? Sure, nobody is physically FORCING anybody to do or not do anything. But they can sure make it completely irrational to invest in something. If I save up $1,000, sure I COULD use it to buy some shoemaking equipment… But that’s probably the most irrational thing I could do with that money.
When a huge conglomerate floods the market, it has an inevitable outcome – dislocation. And these companies know it. When the U.S. flooded Mexico’s market with cheap corn, it sent millions of farmers into unemployment because they couldn’t compete. ~*Sure*~ they still have the physical means to grow their own food, but there is a huge disincentive not to (not getting paid). That’s what you don’t get. Companies that do this, do it intentionally, because they know they are going to create people who are dependent on corporations. Yes. DEPENDENT on CORPORATIONS. Not the government. If it didn’t work that way, corporations wouldn’t do it.
As for “success”… that’s just as esoteric as the word “freedom”. If a company becomes “successful” by consolidating, laying off workers, and capping wages (which is nearly always the case), then their “success” hinges on the failure of others. A company can’t become rich and powerful without paying its workforce less than the value that they produce. And, to me anyway, that’s exploitation, not success. It’s just like the concept of “freedom”. The freedom of the slave owner to enslave people goes directly against the freedom of those who are being enslaved.
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How about all the petro chemicals needed in today’s giant agri-business? Think that the money needed to pay that monkey had anything to do with the way we farm today?
I pay more for better products for myself and my family. I buy in bulk and cook from scratch so it isn’t really costing me since I buy no packaged processed foods. which to me are garbage and expensive.
I have heard many people from other countries remark when they move here that they miss the taste of the fruits and vegetables from home. That ours are flavorless. Try it people, food grown without chemicals tastes better. For example look at the bell peppers; the organic are smaller and more irregularly shaped, but in my opinion are much more tasty!
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The quantity of petrochemicals used in “organic” farming are likely higher than in conventional farming practices due to the necessity for more tillage to control weeds. I can understand why people from other countrys might feel that their fruit and vegetables taste better. In most countys the distances those vegetables and fruit have to travel to the consumer is much less, so they van be harvested closer to optimum maturity. There is a lot of difference in the durability of fruit and vegetables traveling 200 miles as opposed to traveling 2000 miles. I commend your choice, racer x, of using no packaged processed food as that is a healthy choice. Todays consumers demand fast food that can be served with little to no effort, which I agree is the wrong direction. I think there is more danger in what is added to food when it is processed than what is applied in the form of fertilizer and weed and insect control on the farm. The one place I have reservations to that is when the chemical is applied directly to the produce prior to harvest where the edible portion of the plant is exposed. I think common sense would dictate that we be especially careful at that point.
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The only thing stopping the Occupy crowd from making their own shoes and growing their own food is there isn’t anybody available to do the work for them for nothing as they are most assuredly too lazy to do it themselves. Paul Erlich the arch-liberal author of The Population Bomb predicted mass starvation to occur in the 70s and 80s due to overpopulation. He apparently gave little thought to the capabilities of humanity to solve problems through technology largely facilitated by the ability of large corporations to finance cutting edge technology. Today we are faced with Paul Erlich’s left fighting the very technology that has so far allowed the human race to stave off mass starvation. The life expectancy has increased in this country to an unprecedented level due to advances in plant breeding, medical technology, etc.. Sorry, I don’t want to go back to the time when you had to plant your own garden to keep from starving to death.
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Greasy ken, with all of the inefficiencies build into mass-scale industrial food production, it is actually LESS effective to feed the world that way. Soil erosion, petrochemicals, transportation, waste runoff, and monocultures are all inefficiencies. If you want to feed the world, mid-scale organic farming is the way to go. Just because big-business bought up all the small farms and monopolized the industry, doesn’t mean that’s the only possible way food can be produced on a large scale.
It still shocks me… the mentality that: “since that’s the way it happened, that’s the only way that works.” With that mentality, we would still be in the Dark Ages.
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“Mid-scale organic farming” will and does result in reduced yields every time it’s tried. Chemical control of weeds is not an option, so multiple passes to control weeds with farm implements are required in row crops. Oh yea, there are those nasty carbon emmissions you rail about. In small grain fields organic farming is weed farming as there are no effective controls in those other than, to a very limited extent, later planting which reduces yields.
Big business didn’t buy up all the farms. Smaller farms absorbed other small farms where the farmers couldn’t make a living due to the small scale and low prices. Those small farms became larger farms and in many cases large corporate farms largely out of necessity.
I don’t see any evidence that organic farmers are reducing erosion of soil any more than conventional farming practices. I don’t think either group sees any advantage in their livelihood flushed into streams and lakes. Conventional farming has embraced no-till and other conservation practises.
Sure, there’s less transportation with organic farming because there’s less to haul. The fact is though, we need more, not less.
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Where did you get your information from? Soil erosion and degradation comes from when large-scale farmers plant just one crop on the same piece of land, year after year. Small-scale farmers employ the use of crop rotation, an age old method that allows the soil to replenish its nutrients. Anyone with a garden knows this.
Big business actually did buy up the farms. The reason smaller farms couldn’t “make a living due to low price and small scale” is because mass-scale producers dramatically drove prices down. It’s basic economics. And once the small farmers left the farms, the big guys bought the land.
And, yes, organic or near-organic production is move efficient. We just don’t know what that would look like, because we hardly do it here in the U.S. “A 2008 report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) analyzed 286 projects encompassing 37 million hectares in 57 countries. They concluded that where organic and/or near‐organic practices were adopted, crop yields increased by more than 100 percent, compared to existing practices.” This is because organic growing improves soil quality, and allows soil to utilize water more efficiently. Right now, big-business farms are essentially creating a desert.
And furthermore, food created through organic farming is proven to be more nutritious too. So, while big-ag farms here in the U.S. might SEEM more productive, they are actually giving you more of a lesser-quality, watered down product. This seems to be the inevitable outcome of the free-enterprise system. Mass-produce low quality crap, and disregard the waste the comes out the other end.
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Merv, I have seen a multitude of actual “organic” fields which I drive by nearly every day in the summer and your claims are nothing but utter nonsense. None of it is born out in actual practice. Farmers up till the 40s were all using “organic” practices and you had the dust bowl, low yields, and low prices after the war. The organic industry isn’t at all responsible for the skyrocketing yields from products developed by the large seed and chemical companys. The key is in the genetics. Your claims are a total fabrication. Yours is a recipe for starvation.
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Your argument seems to be, “since big-agribusiness happened, it’s the only possible way farming can work.” And I think that’s utter nonsense. If farmers would have spent more time mastering crop rotation, natural pesticides, and other organic methods, we might already be eating all organic foods. But the profit-motive encouraged business to do it the quick and cheap way instead. You say I’m promoting mass starvation? That’s ridiculous! I’m doing just the opposite. You are promoting mass experimentation, by claiming that untested, unregulated genetic modification is the “key”. The slightest mistake in that system, and everybody’s health is in jeopardy: a missed recall, a new pesticide-resistant insect, a toxic genetic modification, or a spike in energy prices. Our current food system is massive and highly concentrated. This makes it much MORE vulnerable, not less vulnerable, to sudden unexpected changes in production.
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If anything, you are the one promoting mass starvation by claiming that we can keep growing the same crop with the same genes, year after year, on the same land. The soil’s nutrients break down over time, and organisms can evolve against genetic modification. That’s why having a diverse farm is important. If a new bug evolves and kills all of crop A, at least you still have crops B, C, D, E, F, and G. If you put all your eggs in one basket, like you suggest, that one new bug will wipe out the entire harvest.
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The simple fact is that technology has been what’s kept us from starvation. I have been involved with farming in one facet or another all my life and I see it every day. Your contention that only “organic” farmers rotate their crops is total b.s.. While in some cases farmers grow corn on corn that is not the norm as a whole. Wheat on wheat and soybeans on soybeans are two examples where disease problems make it impractical. Organic farming is in a large part an emotional issue based on just that and not on the science. Increased yields are due to the science, coupled with favorable weather, not on the practices of the distant past.
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I can’t even believe what I’m reading. How can you say that the ONLY POSSIBLE way that we’re not all going to STARVE TO DEATH is through genetically-modified, mass-produced agribusiness controlled in the hands of very few corporations? It’s preposterous at best… and you haven’t argued any of my points at all either, except maybe crop rotation, which you merely brushed over. I think you are driven more by ideology, greasy ken, then actual evidence.
And the sad thing is, there are food recalls that happen almost annually because of your food system. Tainted meat that kills hundreds. Tomatoes. Peanut Butter. Spinach… Nothing is safe to eat anymore, because of the massive food systems you advocate for. And you don’t even acknowledge it.
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Merv, I would like to see as many smaller farms as possible but at this point the smaller ones are being absorbed by larger ones. It has more to do with low farm prices over the last several decades that have caused the small farmers to go out of business. The genetic modified plants do produce much higher yields but the companies that produce them want a bigger piece of the pie as commodity prices have increased. The same goes for fertilizer companies. As farm prices increase they want a bigger piece of the pie regardless of their cost of producing fertilizer. It isn’t that their products don’t do the job.
The “organic” products industry has a far from squeaky clean record. Just this week there was an article in the paper about an “organic” farm that sold unpasteurized milk that sickened many of their customers. Organic businesses aren’t allowed to use chemical pest control. I’ve seen first hand the results of that policy and it doesn’t make me want to jump up and buy too much of it.
You can’t believe what you’re reading Merv, because the facts don’t fit your political views which are stalled in the Soviet era. It’s time to fast forward to 2012.
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Let me just ask you this… Would you feel comfortable if only a tiny handful of corporations controlled all of America’s water supply? And say they were using genetically-modified ingredients in the water. And say they regularly recall water in certain areas, because it’s so unfit to drink that it kills people. And say it tasted worse than normal water. And say there was like 50 different untested ingredients in the water. And say these big water companies were hiring Mexicans illegally to process your drinking water, just to keep costs down. Would you support that? If not, then what’s the different between that and big-agribusiness?
Now what would you say if all the water in America was nationalized? If all the water in the United States was solely owned by the U.S. government? Who knows what they would put in the water if they had total authority? If that seems unsettling to you, then please know that the difference between 3 or 4 corporations owning something and 1 government owning something is very trivial when it applies to a nation of well over 300,000,000 people.
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Your hypothetical is based on a false premise and is nonsense.
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Monopolism is a very real problem in our current capitalistic system because we are depending so much today on everyday consumer products– which a walmart or target store has essentially monopolised.
I believe that the anti-trust laws could be used against these corporations. They encompass an enormous amounts of goods today from grocery to pharmacy– small business in this country will not survive with monopoly on this scale. We desperately need the competition of small business on the local level. It isn’t happening anymore.
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Merv, I have a few questions to ask you, because, it seems to me you have thought this out, and have probably stated my answers someplace or could direct me to the answers.
What should happen to these big-ag farms?
I understand that these large scale farming operations; purchased the smaller farms that were failing for whatever reason. Yes, some lost the farm because they could not or did not produce enough. I know of people who are glad that they got off the farm. The people who I know that farm now, do it as a hobby. Some of these people grew up on farms and are thankful that they don’t have to farm for a living, “it‘s just too much work for one or two people.” Have you ever worked on a farm?
Should the government (Obama) forcibly have these businesses divide up their holdings or “farms” (I would consider them plantations)?
If we did that, who would the parcels go to?
Are you suggesting that we as a people have never manipulated a specific fruit or vegetable to obtain a certain desired property, such as drought resistant, larger yield, bigger kernels, or different colors? I am pretty sure that tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, gourds, and corn, to name a few were manipulated by native cultures long before electricity or microscopes.
You said in reference to “since big-agribusiness happened, it’s the only possible way farming can work.” You think that is “utter nonsense. If farmers would have spent more time mastering crop rotation, natural pesticides, and other organic methods, we might already be eating all organic foods. But the profit-motive encouraged business to do it the quick and cheap way instead.”
Hey, it happened! What is your solution? If you do not have a solution, are you “big hat no cattle” or all talk no action?
The problem with society today, is we find it easy to see faults and complain rather than see faults and come up with a solution to the problem.
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Hard to believe that Santorum can win GOP nomination. He didn’t even make the ballot in Virginia, Illinois, or Arizona.
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Wow, the DNT not wasting anytime taking down those GOP stories. Their home boy Jeff Anderson getting his butt kicked didn’t even last a half day either. So as I was saying….
Just when you thought the media had this all wrapped up for Romney, Rick Santorum comes in and screws everything up. What’s the deal with Michelle Bachmann not endorsing her man Ron Paul?? They practically founded the Tea Party together! Very disappointed in her for not having the courage to endorse the one she has the most faith in to right this ship called America.
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The Tea Party embraces conservatism. The republican party doesn’t necessarily, ala Mitt Romney. The republican party doesn’t necessarily shun you if you aren’t conservative, either fiscally or socially. On the other hand, there is one brand of leftist extremism and that is the democrat party. I went to the local caucus on Tuesday and the Romney wing didn’t even get honorable mention. Why is it on these threads that the leftists feel they are qualified to tell republicans what is good for the party? They are only qualified in the path towards fiscal and social decay and the resulting decline we are currently experiencing.
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Maybe it’s because so many of the people you label ‘lefties’ used to vote Republican?
I know I did, until the GOP was overrun by this bunch who are hell-bent on “outconsevativing” each other to the point they just don’t care about the country.
Look at the recent ads…”I’m more conservative than Romney”. “I’m more conservative than Gingritch”. “Ron Paul’s more conservative than the other two combined!”
Ridiculous.
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I used to be a democrat so that cancels you out. I know a lot of others the democrats left behind as well. Sorry, all the democrats have left is the extreme left fringe groups.
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greazy ken said, “I used to be a Democrat, so that cancells you out.”
If that isn’t the most inane, childish post I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what is.
And her/his thumbs up/down are beginning to look just a bit suspicious. Multiples of five all the way? I don’t THINK so.
Just another troll with multiple accounts.
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Bad day at work,huh?
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I supported the old IR. the Independent Republican party. I’m not a religious person. When the religious wing of the republicans stormed the party in the 1980s, I left.
What is called ‘conservative’ today, it up to debate.
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Hey Grease ball,
I’m a fiscally conservative liberal who’s also a veteran and I don’t think you can pigeon hole me into any one category with all of the left wing extremists. Here is an idea; try to make a post without insulting anyone; also try getting off of your high horse. I’m sick of the tea party making arguments and not proposing solutions as if: because my way isn’t right, yours must be. If you really have all of the answers and are the smartest man in America I think we would like to hear more of your wisdom and less of your BS.
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Andy, from your name calling post I think you can be pigeon-holed right along with the rest of the liberals. I haven’t called any of the people, I have discussed things with, abusive names. I can understand a leftist being ashamed of being a liberal. I have been known to ridicule their ideas but I don’t believe I’ve ridiculed them personally. In the time you spent typing that personal attack on me why didn’t you use your obviously superior brain to come up with that ultimate crushing reply that we know a person of your superior intellect is capable of ?
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So, Samuel Adams is still trying to dupe we the people to serve his corporate interests? Samuel had a lot of nice words about freedom and liberty, just like those corporate powers behinds today’s Tea Party. Of course, when the majority of new Americans realized that the spoils of the Revolutionary War weren’t to be enjoyed by them after all, they too rebelled. Shay’s Rebellion didn’t stand a chance against the corporate backed Adams, John Hancock and all, of course, and the farmers and workers that led Shay’s Rebellion were eventually defeated, imprisoned and put to death.
Let’s not be fooled by such rhetoric again; rather let’s stand up to those who use such rhetoric to maintain systems of unjustice.
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I see that all mention of the ‘race project’ has been scrubbed from all the boards, since the story has broken on national news. Too bad.
Just a bit embarassing, Daloot?
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Just watch TV and you will see the adds or commercials. I just won’t stand for it.
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