Posted on 03/12/2015 2:10:41 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A FEW years ago, while reporting on the madness that is European farm subsidies, this columnist came up with a “Richard Scarry” rule of politics. Most politicians hate to confront any profession or industry that routinely appears in children’s books (such as those penned by the late Mr Scarry). This gives outsize power to such folk as farmers, fishermen, doctors, firemen or—to cite a fine work in the Scarry canon—to firms that build Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. The rule is seldom good news for taxpayers, and there is a logic to that too: picture books rarely show people handing over fistfulls of money to the government.
The Scarry rule was tested afresh on March 7th at the inaugural “Iowa Ag Summit”, a campaign-style forum for politicians pondering White House runs in 2016. Reflecting Iowa’s clout as host of the first caucuses of the presidential election cycle, the summit lured nine putative candidates, all of them Republicans. Democrats were also invited, but declined. Such grandees as Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey took turns to sit on a dais beside a shiny green tractor, to tell an audience of corn (maize) growers, pork-producers and hundreds of reporters how much they love farmers.
The gathering was an unprecedented show of strength by the farm lobby. Rather than wait for journalists to tease out candidates’ positions over months on the campaign trail, the nine Republicans were each quizzed on stage for 20 minutes by the summit’s organiser, Bruce Rastetter, an Iowa ethanol and pork magnate. His most pointed questions concerned the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a federal mandate...
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
That cartoon is quite creative and diabolical! Heh heh heh
No way Iowa should be the kickoff game of the primary/caucus schedule.
Those folks were +6 Obama in 2012.
And no blue wall states in the first 20 either.
That’s right, Economist, if “crazy” Ted Cruz is making a rational, principled argument, something must be wrong. Because we all know he’s insane and not worth listening to. Morons.
The notion of a standard order for primaries each year is quite simply anti-democratic.
States should draw their dates for primaries at random four years in advance. That gives everybody plenty of time to adapt.
Every election year different states should come up as first in line.
Is there any even vaguely logical reason to give IA and NH, in perpetuity, so much power over who becomes our next president?
Or, there’s something wrong with everybody else. My POV.
The “Renewable Fuels Standard” (RFS) is just another example
of the federal government trying to pick winners and losers.
Thank George W. Bush for it.
It must’ve physically hurt them to write those words.
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LOL! I was about to post the same thing. We take The Economist (my husband likes it though it regularly infuriates me!) so I’ve read through a lot of their woefully lopsided view of the U.S. I can’t believe they published this. Reposting it to my Facebook libby-com friends....
I’d like to see Texas, Arizona and Georgia early on.
“Today, the shrink-the-government right is more confrontational. Mr Cruz sensed a political advantage in flying to Iowa to sit beside a tractor telling farmers that they are wrong to want federal help. The coming months will reveal if he is right, or if the Scarry rule remains in force.”
Not a negative word about Ted Cruz.
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