I read with interest Alan Guebert’s column, “Who do we blame for not farming the way we know we should?” [4/15/21 TPP]. His question at the end, “Who do we blame for that?” Who, indeed, causes me, at 83 years of age, remembering my youth on the little 120-acre farm in upstate Minnesota.
Almost all the farmers at that time used a method of farming we now call “organic farming.” We didn’t know that’s what we were doing, we just did what was taught to us by earlier farmers.
You didn’t see huge farms who raised only crops of corn, oats, soybeans, etc. The farms had cattle, mostly dairy, who provided the fertilizer that that was spread on fields during the winter and spring that fertilized the crops planted during the spring. Little did we know we were using compost to feed/nourish the plants and creating topsoil. We were not losing topsoil, we were increasing topsoil. The plants were held up and nourished by that topsoil.
Then, along came Big Fertilizer companies, telling the farmers it was “better” and “easier” to use their fertilizer and eliminate the need of cattle to produce it. Farmers were told, “Why be stuck on the farm seven days a week, 365 days year, tending to cattle, when you can use their products and eliminate the cattle. What happened? The soil was only used to hold the plants up while their fertilizer fed the plants. What was not known was the topsoil was not being added to and enhanced, but instead the used-up fertilizer was contaminating the soil with salts and chemicals that remained in the soil at the end of the growing season.
It’s Big Business and the fertilizer companies that you can blame for what has happened. The small farmers loved their farms and the cattle and the land, but got sold a “bill of goods” by Big Business. They then could not maintain the farm and lost it. Big Business bought the land “on the cheap.” They did not and do not give a damn about the land. They just keep dumping in chemicals and using up the land sto where we are now.
My last question is, where does it end? Greed is what is destroying us and our country. End, indeed.
GARY L. ANDERSON, Land O’ Lakes, Fla.
Hal Crowther [in “Staring down the barrel in the land of the smoking gun,” 4/1/21 TPP] makes a good argument for his views on why guns are bad and what needs to be done about them. However, I believe we need to go a lot deeper into the issue in order to understand the root causes of the gun problem so we may deal with it.
Daniel Boone carried a gun, and so did most Americans for most of our history. People had to. There were not many stores for people living far from communities where one may buy food. If one wanted to eat, one had to depend on one’s self, family and help from other people, if possible. But most of these people most likely lived far, and had their own families to look after. And in case of danger, one needed a gun for protection. There was no such thing as a phone to call 911. Even today there are people in America living in areas miles from police help. These people need a gun for protection, unless they are mentally unfit to have a gun.
Now, after every war, Americans have returned from wars knowing how to use guns. Take a look at World War One as example. How many men learned how to use machine guns in that war? What about World War Two and other wars that followed? Yet, from the era of Al Capone on up, I have not read of mass murder of innocent people like today, which includes grade school children.
So why now? If it were just a question of too many guns, would not the numbers of death by guns in the past been close to what they are now? When Truman Capote wrote “In Cold Blood” in 1966, and the movie of the same name came out in 1967, people were shocked at the murder of a whole family. How shocked would people be today if the same thing were to happen today? We need to look at a number of changes in America over the years. One: Hate groups growing because of the Internet. Two: Medication taken to prevent violence being the cause of violence. Every mass shooter in America had at least one of these factors in common: Full of hate, on medication that triggered the violence, found guns easy to come by, a follower of a hate group, or mentally unstable.
There are many other factors that cause violence in people, such as lead poison in the blood. Indeed, when lead is removed from a body, the violence that person had goes down. The same thing happens when people who are violent stop eating a bad diet. A school principal in New York City found this to be true when he got rid of his school’s junk food and replaced it with good food. In short, we need to open our minds to the real cause of the gun problem, which are not just too many guns.
DAVID RAISMAN, Brooklyn, N.Y.
So, Ted Rall, copy Rush Limbaugh? [“Don’t hate Rush Limbaugh, copy him,” 4/1/21 TPP]. Copy a professional liar who wouldn’t recognize accuracy if it backhanded him in the face? What you bizarrely describe as “his success, his incredible effectiveness” was his unfailing loyalty to the dimwitted incompetence of a blatantly right-wing-dominated mainstream media, which is why he reached a listener peak and stayed there for so long, and why (in my opinion) he would have lasted half a minute in a debate with Amy Goodman or Thom Hartmann.
Bravo, you can drive hundreds of miles and hear him only. I’m sure the 300 million people in the US who wouldn’t listen to him at gunpoint are just plum-tickled at that. And, by the way, that sort of “Limbaugh every station” occurs, or rather is inflicted on, all sorts of blue areas, i.e. Washington, D.C., thanks to media monopolies. And someone who tried to paint angry reactions to his lies as people having no sense of humor shouldn’t have tried to label himself as a “truth meter.”
You are getting worse by the column, Mr. Rall! Keep on being dead wrong on everything and you will be thoroughly qualified to take over for Limbaugh.
BRYAN HETZEL, Buffalo, N.Y.
Built into the philosophy of capitalism is an inconsistency that not only preserves, but intensifies class rigidity and oppression.
When an owner purchases anything for his business, he may pay whatever the vendor charges, or bargain for a lower price. This rule of capitalism is observed for every expense an owner has — except for labor. By and large, the price of labor is decided by ownership — by the industry standard, not the standard of living.
The very fact that labor, the flesh and blood that creates wealth, is not accorded the right to bargain for its own worth — that it in fact must fight vigorously, repeatedly, and usually without success just to form an agreement to bargain — points to a fundamental precept of our socio-economic system, that anyone who would work for another must accept a status of mere servitude, being inferior in every way. This stands in stark opposition to the basic tenet of democracy, the promise made to us, that we are all equally human.
Businesses, of course, oppose all restraints on their avarice, which is what they mean by the word “freedom.” Currently, they can keep workers begging in the streets for years for a raise that will be almost meaningless by the time they get it. Government should be helping to level the field, but it still accepts the canard that taxes and regulations are “job killers.” But the purpose of taxes and regulations is not to “punish success” but to penalize excess. And there is plenty of excess.
It should be standard policy for workers to be organized, to bargain for their pay and working conditions, and to live out their dreams; instead, it’s become the rare exception.
JEFFREY HOBBS, Springfield, Ill.
The national drive for term limits is headquartered in Florida, which sent even more Republicans to Congress in November.
Its senatorial sponsors are all arch-conservative Republicans: Ted Cruz (TX), Rick Scott and Marco Rubio (FL), Todd Young and Mike Braun (IN) and Pat Toomey (PA, the American Conservative Union rates him at 92.8% favorable on lifetime votes).
The idea surely is to inject more novices into Washington to weaken government and make lobbying even easier and more successful than it is now.
No to a Constitutional amendment.
As I see Term Limits, they would tend to work well for [homeowner assocation] boards, okay for municipal government, maybe so-maybe not for state government, and not for the federal government.
Term limits at the federal level would likely reduce corruption by politicians, but would enhance lobbyists’ success on issues that require quick (for government) action.
The lobbyists would also have an increased advantage with matters that could be delayed, for the new congresspeople would take time to learn about the issues or to develop trustworthy relationships with people who could inform them. (Henry Waxman, Demo representative from California 1975-2015), would have lunch with people to subtly probe their minds to find out their values, attitudes, motivators, psychological triggers and maybe personal details — work history, family, sense of humor, emotional intensity, religion, sports interest, whatever.)
Politicians’ intuition is a poor substitute for their actually knowing.
RICHARD SIBLEY, Phoenix, Ariz.
From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2021
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