Posted on 05/18/2002 4:35:27 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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Most of the lobbying in Congress to open up trade with Castro is coming from Senators and Congressmen with large farm interests in their states.
Price-fixer to the world **ADM bought Carter's peanut farm for $1.5 million.***
[Many references to Carter] ARCHER DANIELS MIDLAND: A CASE STUDY IN CORPORATE WELFARE ***When former president Jimmy Carter decided to get out of the peanut business, Andreas was there with a check for $1.2 million to help Carter promote Habitat for Humanity…….After President Carter named Gartner to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 1977, news of the ADM windfall leaked out…….. When OPEC restricted oil production again in 1978--and the Carter administration tightened oil and gasoline ration- ing, creating artificial panic--Andreas arrived at the White House with a salvation scheme….. According to Frank Greven, who is working on a book on Andreas and ADM, "During the 1978 Persian Gulf oil crisis, he convinced Carter that using ADM's ethanol as a lead-free octane booster in gasoline would promote energy independence and cleaner air."(39) As part of its grandiose solution to the energy crisis--which the president pro- claimed to be the moral equivalent of war--the Carter administration drove through Congress a plan to exempt gasoline with 10 percent ethanol from the 4-cents-a-gallon federal fuel excise tax…….
On the eve of the 1980 election, the Carter adminis- tration announced a deluge of loans to companies to build processing plants to make ethanol. On October 9, 1980, Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland announced $341 million in new loans to finance construction of gasohol plants.(41) On January 27, 1981, the new Reagan administration rescinded all the loans after its inspector general discovered that the Carter administration had violated official procedures and federal law in awarding many of the grants. Testimony by private investigators at a congressional hearing in February 1981 revealed that some of the loans were "reviewed in a matter of days, some in a matter of hours." Bruce Yellen of the Chicago-based Better Government Association told Congress, "Two loan guarantees were approved for individuals who had contributed to the Democratic National Committee or the Carter campaign. And 10 of the 15 guaran- tees went to states that were, at the time, considered critical to the president's re-election bid. These elements suggested that this last-minute rush was politically in- spired, and our interviews with agency officials substanti- ated that point." He said that one official said that an October 10 announcement of the guarantees was timed as "a public relations ploy for political gain."(42)
Although the Reagan administration initially blocked the loans, the farm lobby prevailed and the new administra- tion added its seal of approval to ethanol. Nevertheless, 9 of the 12 recipients of the loans the Farmers Home Adminis- tration made for ethanol plants went bankrupt. The Energy Department also got into the ethanol game and has lost more than $100 million on recipients' defaults on ethanol loans. [The Energy Dept. was begun under Carter's watch.]
………. President Carter's EPA announced in 1978 that "recent EPA and Department of Energy tests . . . show slight increases in nitrogen oxide emis- sions and substantial increases in evaporate hydrocarbon emissions" from cars using gasohol."(59) But because ethanol amounted to only about 0.005 percent of the nation's gaso- line sales, EPA administrator Douglas Costle ruled that "there is no significant environmental risk associated with its continued use."(60)
Since 1978 far more evidence has accumulated showing ethanol's harm to the environment. As a 1986 USDA report noted, "Alcohol blends are significantly more volatile than alcohol-free gasolines.
…… In 1980, despite the enormous subsidies it was already getting, American gasohol was being under- sold by Brazilian gasohol. American gasohol producers lobbied for a tariff, but the Justice Department, the Office of the Special Trade Repre- sentative, and the Treasury Department objected on the grounds that a tariff would raise costs to consumers, provoke retaliation from Brazil, and grant too much power to ADM. On October 7, in the White House, Jimmy Carter hosted a small luncheon for campaign contributors, including Dwayne Andre- as. Former ADM lobbyist Joseph Karth, who was at the meeting, told me that Andreas told Carter he would announce plans for a big new grain-alcohol plant in Iowa if the Administration would guaran- tee the plant's profitability by imposing the tariff. . . . In the last weeks of the election campaign Carter overruled his advisers and ordered Treasury Secretary G. William Miller to impose a tariff, by administrative means if necessary. On October 31, ADM announced the new plant, but canceled its plan after the election.(90) ****
If Carter were smart enough to understand, he'd wear a bag over his head for the rest of his life.
Thank you for the posts.
If Carter were smart enough to understand, he'd wear a bag over his head for the rest of his life.
Yes, but...but…speaking for myself, I haven’t had such great entertainment in such a long time watching Yimi making a jackass of himself for 5 whole days, and it was free.
Subjunctive duly noted.
Science deserves most of the credit for advances in food production and nutrition, but so do education, the economics of wealth-creation, philanthropy and enlightened political leadership. Together these have put to rest the old Malthusian fear that population would outstrip our capacity to feed the world and that there was nothing we could do about it. There was something, and we did it: Today we feed 6 billion people much better than we fed 4 billion 20 years ago.
Yet this is no time to rest on our laurels. The 1996 U.N. World Food Summit reported that 800 million people are chronically undernourished, and the International Food Policy Research Institute projects that we will have to increase grain production 40% by 2020 just to keep up with population growth. We can do that; but to bring better nutrition and more food to the neediest people of the world, we have to use every resource at our disposal.
Superstition and sheer misunderstanding, however, are being used to browbeat the public--particularly in Europe, but increasingly in the U.S.--into opposing agricultural biotechnology, which the world needs to feed its growing population, improve nutrition and head off famine.
………Despite numerous studies, there are no known hazards associated with bioengineered foods, which sound science shows to be as safe as--or safer than--the foods that have been on supermarket shelves for a generation. Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work to attack world hunger with better food crops and who now heads the Carter Center's effort to improve crop yields in Africa, points out that what some in Europe are calling genetically modified foods are just advances in conventional plant breeding, which has been used for years to increase yields, nutritional value and pest and disease resistance. Some critical studies of genetically engineered crops merit further investigation, while others can't meet the basic standards of scientific peer review. Surely we can agree on sound science standards for bioengineered crops, as we should for all scientific breakthroughs with commercial applications.
The extremist opposition may be satisfied with nothing less than halting the agricultural advances altogether. Already, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. has asked farmers planting its genetically engineered soybeans to segregate those crops, and Monsanto is apologizing for bringing more disease-resistant crops to market."Solid scientific evidence" has been all too lacking in this debate--a war of words and slogans, not ideas and initiatives. Let us suggest some facts that must not be forgotten: Without dramatic improvements in crop yields, people will starve; they will suffer disease and death from malnutrition. The world's wildlife, habitats, endangered species and entire ecosystems will be put at risk as we are forced to draw more agricultural land into production. Pest-resistance, which we now know can be bred precisely into plants, will be supplanted by wider use of chemical pesticides. The promise of improving the nutritional value of indigenous crops in the developing world may be lost for a generation.
[I must note Carter did not observe the Zimbabwe election that has been condemned as out and out theft by Mugabe. Now, because of the confiscation of white farms and the displacement of their workers, famine has gripped the country and terrorism is the order of the day. Are they being sacrificed as a lab experiment for ADM and the Carter Center? ]
Do you suppose Jimmy could be a puppet and Roselyn a ventriloquist? I dunno. Just reminds me of Howdy Doody or Mortimer Snerd.
I'd be interested to see a donor list for the Carter Center. Went to the web site, and they provide info to donate, but no list of donors that I could find. As a non-profit are they required to give out that info, and if so to whom, do you know?
I must note Carter did not observe the Zimbabwe election that has been condemned as out and out theft by Mugabe. Now, because of the confiscation of white farms and the displacement of their workers, famine has gripped the country and terrorism is the order of the day. Are they being sacrificed as a lab experiment for ADM and the Carter Center?
Yes, I noticed Yimi’s absence from the very beginning and viewed him for what he really is – a coward -- as are most socialist. He knew darn well Zimbabwe was/is a powder keg and was afraid for the future of his own little, useless, meaningless, ineffectual, crooked existence. (Did I leave anything out?) Basically, he wimped out.
You could be right. I once saw her participate in a panel on TV, and her tunnel and myopic vision were exactly like that of her cowardly husband’s. I thought at that time it was Yimi dressed as a woman. No joke.
Such an understatement of reality. Jimmy Carter hasn't got a mirror clean enough to see himself and the egg he has on his face.
Some people don't know how to leave the scene gracefully.
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