In recognition of planting season and the intersecting geopolitical crises now upon us, I am proposing that home growers finally catch a break. Not from bugs, weather, or clunky garden shoes, but from taxes. It's not as silly an idea as it may sound. We give tax breaks to people to encourage them to put hybrid cars in their garages and solar panels on their roofs, so why not offer incentives for solar-powered, healthy food production in their backyard?
It wouldn?t be the first time that our country encouraged its citizens to grow some of their own food. The government?s wartime "Victory Garden" campaign was a success by every measure. By 1943, 20 million gardens were growing 8 million tons of food (an amount comparable to that of the nation?s farms), and Americans were eating more healthy fruits and vegetables than ever before.
More home gardens would offer us victory not only over rising food and health care costs, but also foreign oil dependency and climate change. Researcher estimate that locally-grown foods use up to 17 times less climate-warming, fossil fuels than foods from away. And when it comes to local foods, it doesn?t get any "localer" than one?s own yard.
wealthy people are being given money NOT to farm on their land. Nothing goes to the elderly farmer who still works dawn to dusk trying to pay for his own farm, but to the very wealthy.
There is so much bullshit going on in this country and we still MUST see CNN reporting on ridiculously irrelevant shit. My mind boggles.
Guess people are missing the point from reading the thread. Don't expect "help" in any fashion from the U.S. government for your welfare. Any "help" will result in distortion and dilution of its surface intent. Their only true intent is intrusion and control for its own sake. Many people will not be better off with such "help". If you want to garden, fine. If you want to raise edible food in the garden for your own consumption, fine. Keep the U.S. government, and its piggyback, large corporations, out of your garden.
Too bad you didn't watch the whole program. It's not "ten-thou" and it's not "a few farmers". Orders of magnitude greater. The total of these kleptocratic subsidies is in the BILLIONS. That's with a "B".
And I fail to understand your logic that condescendingly opposes dealing with one form of corruption because there are others, such as the frivolous one you cite
You also ignore the key issue of US food subsidy impact on the rest of the world..
I didn't address that issue in my original posting, but the fact is that US taxpayer subsidies to crops like corn and sugar are RUINOUS to farmers in the Third World, who can't compete with Uncle Goliath's subsidized food shipping all over the world.
It's difficult for some to comprehend that we really ARE One World, and that starving people in the Third World may not hold still for our food hegemony when things get really dicey. Which they are already, thanks to global warming.
If you had watched a little longer, you would have noticed that Moyers' guest , an economist and minister, said 35,000,000 people ***in the US*** go hungry. Not all get food stamps, and for those who do, their food stamps run out the third week of the month. He suggests that some of the BILLION dollar subsidies paid to millionaires via lobbyists might better go to augment food programs so poor people could eat all month.
Still only ten thousand for a given farmer, on average, so if you're committed to this, be committed to admitting you begrudge a few farmers a rather small amount of money, as well as begruding the entire budget only a percentage of which will farmers ever see. This at a time when the same people "fighting" this outrage are also fighting to cut school lunches and veteran benefits in this list of "waste."
An impact that shrinks to insignificance next to transferring food resources to "bio fules."
So which bothers you most, that the US doesn't produce ENOUGH food because of tax give-aways to farmers to stop growing it, or the US producing TOO MUCH food so that we keep giving it to undeserving skanks in the Sahara desert who should PAY for it from growers closer to home? If you want to mix applecarts with little red wagons, why not worry a bit more about the TRILLIONS wasted on killing people & getting our own people killed in moslem nations?
I already knew that. We don't all rely on one tv show for basic knowledge.
Yep, and the same representatives who are trying to stop farm subsidy want to stop the waste of too many people getting food stamps.
So the "answer" to the problem remains relying on the same beurocratic system that got us where we're at. Seems like that's as close to giving up as you'll ever get.
I gleaned this sometime ago. T'would appear to me that she looks down on humanity in general. I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one noticing this.
Damn right. The strawman technique she employees has become quite tiresome. Kinda reminds one of a rodeo clown, making all the fuss over here to distract from the big deal going down over there.
Oh well, like they say, ya' f*ck with the bulls long enough and you'll get the horns.
This old-time union maid and hardcore lefty hasn't been mistaken for rightwinger in forty years! A new low for perceptivity, gal! But it fits in with all your perceptions. Attending to only half the facts is why you have to admit irrational capital-lettered rage, rather than an comprehending state of mind.
The beautiful daughter of Demeter and Zeus, Persephone is the focus of the story resulting in the division of the seasons, giving us the sweetness of Spring and the bitterness of Winter. Hades did not woo the beautiful Persephone, he abducted her and took her to his underground kingdom. After much protest, Persephone came to love the cold blooded king of the underworld but her mother, Demeter, was consumed with rage and sorrow. She demonstrated her anger by punishing the earth?s inhabitants with bitter cold and blustering winds. Unless Persephone was returned to her mother?s side, the earth would perish.
Hermes was sent to the house of Hades by Zeus to reason with Hades. He entered the kingdom of Hades and negotiated a compromise between the (usually cold and selfish) Hades and the (usually loving and caring) Demeter. Before Persephone could leave the underworld, Hades gave her a pomegranate seed to eat. By doing this he bound her to himself and his kingdom. When Demeter found out about the trickery she was angry but she was also resigned that there was nothing she could do... her loving daughter was bound to the Lord of the Dead. With no alternative, it was agreed that Persephone would to spend part of the year with her husband, Hades, and part of the year in the sunlight with her mother, Demeter.
When Persephone is with Hades the earth is wracked by the sorrow of her mother. But, when Persephone returns from the underworld to walk the earth again, Demeter pours forth the blessings of Spring to welcome her beloved daughter home.
Nice strawman again. What about your "undeserving skanks in the Sahara desert", that you didn't address and quickly erected some diversion.
Nice try again. Your insult about my intellect means nothing.
You should really investigate the backstory on Obama and see whence his support comes. You think he is doing so well just because the sheeple speak? You apparently watch too much TV.
Your willingness to participate in their election indicates your lack of understanding of the true nature of the situation in the US, and your backing of Obama, despite your rhetoric, is still voting for the lesser of two evils. I do believe there will be others on the ballot than dem/rep.
By the way, my wife and I manage and live in a group home and provide support for four individuals with severe physical and mental disabilities. I've noticed your use of retard in sevearl of your posts. No, it doesn't offend me, it simply demonstrates your ignorance and hypocrisy.
It never ceases to amaze me.....
Charlie
"The United States has only one party - the property party. It's the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican." Gore Vidal
You noticed "regardo" in ONE post in five years, that where the meaning was apropos. But hey, lie your ass off if you wanna, shows you're aware you have no facts to rely on. Cuz that's just so gay!
The Ovidian myth is late-occurring and literary rather than religious. It's nice but even though the "ravishing" kind reduces Persephone to a victim of rape, which was not how she was viewed in active cults. Thus in early Greek sources she is a Trickster who brings memories and illusions of lost loved ones but never the loved ones themselves, grim-visaged & called Maid to placate her and to avoid the forbidden use of her terrifying name.
In the Homeric hymn to Persephone, Hades does not ravish or kidnap her, but places his value as a husband before her as he begs him to be his mate. In the Homeric viersion, they come together in a meadow of black poplars in abject darkness, and Persephone was comforted by Hades. As Homer tells it she became Queen from this desirable marriage, but many are pretty certain that in some earlier version she would've been Queen and he obtained kingship through her, as in the Ereshkigal myth.
That's much cooler than Hades carried her off by force, but for modern retellings it's more fun to remember the late-occurring versions that she was an unwilling captive rather than an actual sovereign as Homer took for granted. I think if you look more into it you'll be glad to have the name of a Death-goddess rather than some wussy teenage patroness of rape victims.
Persephone as a chief Death-goddesses was so wholeheartedly cthonic that she had no place in heaven, being the "fair maid of the underworld," a youthful reflex of Hecate (the one Olympian over whom Zeus had no authority). Homer called her not beautiful but "the Grim Persephone" which is cooler'n hell. If you prefer to see her as a Hallmark card or Little Golden Books of Myths type goddess rather than the cthonic Great Mother, that's fine, it's all just myth anyway.
Among her Greek worshippers her name was forbidden to be spoken because she was so terrible, ferocious, a destroying Queen of Death, called "She of the Two Names" only one of which permitted to be spoken. Thus she was addressed as Maiden so as not to evoke the dreadfulness of the Queen.
All Great Mothers had rule of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, she no different than other earth goddesses, but with particular association with rule of the dead. The popular rape-myth seems to have overlaid a grain-god myth of seasonal slaying and rebirth in plantlife of a MALE consort of the queen (no other goddess than Persephone was ever presumed to be a sacrifice for the rebirth of spring, and there is no evidence of that aspect of her story in the oldest references to her. In some lost protohistorical version of her myth, she probably gave birth to plantlife (as Inanna did after usurping that role of her dark twin in the underworld) after teh resurrection of her slain consort. The evidence of this earlier role is in her association with the crocus, the name of an obscure fertilitly daemon. Krokus as dying & reborn grain-god shows the blood-red evidence of his slaqughter in saffron stamens.
A bit on her association with the Crocus -- going away with the autumn crocus and returning with the spring crocus -- can be found here:
The only problem with this is that with government support comes government controls; just imagine the regulations you'll have to comply with to get your garden deduction. Every special-interest group in Washington, D.C., will get their hands in it to ensure that you end up with a garden properly balanced among the government's definition of an acceptable diet. Plus, I'm sure that your garden would have to be representative of the diversity of our population to qualify for tax relief. Finally, anything you save on taxes by the garden deduction will be offset by higher government spending to employ the thousands of home gardening inspectors they'll need to ensure compliance with the new regulations. Not that I'm cynical.
And once the government inspections are in place, if you should happen to feed your kid a sprig of parsley from your flowerpot herb garden and neglect to get it inspected first, then you'll be charged with child abuse and youth services will be writing you up every time you leave a crumb on the table until your kids graduate from college.
Heck, if the cat gets into the uninspected catnip patch it will probably be "animal cruelty".
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