Six cows are helping millionaire Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) dodge $43,000 in property taxes on his 55 acres of land on the Indian River, reports the Tampa Bay Times.

While no one begrudges any American from striving to pay as few dollars in taxes as are legally feasible, the fact that Sen. Nelson, an ardent supporter of President Barack Obama’s big government agenda, performs agricultural gymnastics to avoid helping fund Mr. Obama’s deficit-exploding programs is, well, hypocritical.  So says Sen. Nelson’s 2012 Senate Republican challenger, conservative rising star Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL).

In a statement, Rep. Connie Mack said:

With his astonishing hypocrisy on taxes, Senator Bill Nelson has exemplified the term ‘limousine liberal’ — someone who says one thing and does another.  Not only has Senator Nelson cried out that local and county workers are being robbed by tax loopholes, we now know the identity of that robber is none other than Bill Nelson himself.  Senator Nelson’s six cows may have found him a legal way to avoid paying the taxes that help pay the county workers he claims to defend, but it is certainly the despicable and dishonorable way.

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President Obama says we should allow the federal government to take charge of our healthcare; as usual, the “experts” are best positioned to instruct us how to live our lives.

Except they’re not.  Today, according to the AP, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans that they eat too much bread and rolls, and that such foods account “for more than twice as much sodium as salty junk food like potato chips.”  No wonder we’re fat.

Unfortunately, the federal government that now tells us that we eat too much bread is the same government that originally told us to stuff our pieholes with … bread.  Remember the original food pyramid?

I remember this pyramid – I grew up learning about it in my vaunted public school.  Notice how the bottom section is enormous, and suggests 6-11 bread, cereal, rice and pasta servings each day.  Why did the government originally mandate that?  According to Harvard Medical School’s Eat, Drink and Be Healthy (Simon & Schuster, August 2001), the government was attempting to help out farmers via the Department of Agriculture’s recommendations.

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Continuing his fight against costly food stamp fraud and abuse, Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has sent a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack requesting an immediate explanation of the USDA’s oversight procedures combating food stamp fraud.

Sen. Sessions’s move came in response to a USDA press release announcing “new tactics to combat fraud and enhance SNAP program integrity.”

As Sen. Sessions explains in his letter:

I have a responsibility on behalf of taxpayers to hold federal agencies accountable for how public funds are being spent. I would therefore ask that the Committee be immediately provided with a thorough explanation of all oversight actions your Department is taking, as well as a list of recommended federal reforms that would reduce waste, inefficiency, and abuse in the food stamp program. I would further ask for a follow-up report within the next sixty days detailing the findings of all oversight that USDA will have conducted….Unmonitored welfare programs, over time, can hurt the very people we are seeking to help. Our goal is not only to improve the outlook for our indebted Treasury, but to help needy Americans achieve a better future through work and personal development.

Annually, the nation’s food stamp program–officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)–costs taxpayers $89 billion, a figure that has more than doubled under President Barack Obama.   The number of Americans receiving food stamps has skyrocketed in recent years.  Today, 46 million Americans–1 out of 7 citizens–receive food stamps, a jump of more than two-thirds prior to Mr. Obama’s vast expansion of the program. (more…)

With a record 46 million Americans now receiving food stamps and rampant abuse resulting in what the Wall Street Journal calls a “food stamp crime wave,” Nation reporter Lizzie Ratner believes that “deep racism” is “at the heart of conservative food stamp critiques”:

The deep racism at the heart of conservative food stamp critiques offers at least one clue as to why the Obama administration has been unable or unwilling to champion SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] as a valuable recession antidote: as the nation’s first African-American president, Obama is vulnerable to racist innuendo, which his opponents are only too happy to exploit.

Furthermore, Ms. Ratner contends that “the food stamp program has remained surprisingly sensitive to people’s needs” and “is, in many ways, a model entitlement program.”  Still, says Ms. Ratner, the food stamp program’s benefit levels are too “stingy,” and sensible anti-fraud efforts to reform the program, such as those proposed by Sen. Jeff Sessions, can only be the result of racism.

Equally troubling, Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican with a record of racebaiting, led a charge in the Senate this past fall to “reform” food stamps by restricting eligibility and undoing a planned $9 billion budget increase, supposedly to crack down on fraud and government excess.

Ms. Ratner’s baseless racial attack obscures an otherwise noble effort: Sen. Sessions’s amendment was an attempt to save taxpayers billions in mismanaged funds resulting from so-called “categorical eligibility”–a provision that makes recipients of other federal benefits automatically eligible for food stamps.

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I just sent a comment to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) regarding its proposal to list the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard (DSL) on the “endangered” list of the Endangered Species Act, and I feel great about it.   Absolutely great!  After I pressed the “enter” button on my computer and sent this comment to the FWS, I celebrated by eating a third of a roll of raw Christmas cookie dough instead of baking these cookies for an up-coming Christmas party.  My friends at the party will understand – this was done in the name of something big!

My comment to the FWS can be found here.  I encourage everyone in west Texas and eastern New Mexico to submit a similar comment (either e-mail or snail-mail) to the FWS by using this link.  Your jobs and economy are at stake. All comments are due by January 19, 2012.

In fact, you don’t even need to live in west Texas or eastern New Mexico to submit a comment to the FWS.  You can write as an American who will be affected by such a ruling.  And believe me, if this little lizard is listed as “endangered,” we will all be affected in a big way.

Here is how it works: some critter somewhere gets listed as endangered, and the US government springs into action.  To stop everyone else’s actions.

In this case, this lizard hangs out in a small bush called the shinnery oak tree and sleeps in the sands nearby.  This lizard seems to live only in an oil-rich part of the country (oil exploration companies, take note), specifically the Permian Basin area of west Texas and eastern New Mexico.  There have been previous efforts to list this lizard as endangered, and last year a formal proposal was made to do just that.  The proposal was originally to be acted on by this month, but Senators Cornyn and Inhofe wrote a letter to the Interior Department, which prompted new deadlines for this proposal, including the new comment deadline.

An endangered listing for the DSL would ruin the oil drilling industry in the Permian Basin, that area of west Texas and eastern New Mexico that produces about 20% of all the oil from the lower 48 states and 5% of total oil produced in the US.  The oil produced there also constitutes 68% of all oil produced in the state of Texas.

The FWS proposal itself, found here, contemplates not only denying all new oil-drilling permits, but curtailing current oil drilling, seismic testing and even operating oil pipelines in the area.  All these activities supposedly disrupt the DSL, possibly leading to its extinction.

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A bipartisan pair of congressmen are taking on a new battle in the House of Representatives, one that could grab some attention a month out from the Iowa caucuses.

In a “Dear Colleague” letter issued last week, Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.) and Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) call on fellow congressmen to help block “EPA’s actions to allow 15% ethanol blended with gasoline (E15) to enter the marketplace.”

In the letter, Sullivan and Peters state that last year, EPA “made a premature decision to permit E15 to be used in model year (MY) 2001 and newer vehicles.” However, according to Sullivan and Peters’ letter, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) “has weighed in and agrees that mid-level ethanol blends are not ready for primetime.”

Concerns about E15, which relies on a greater proportion of ethanol blended with traditional gasoline, run the gamut from worries about market intervention and “picking winners and losers” on the conservative side, to arguments that ethanol is not a “green” energy source on the liberal side.  Both conservative and liberal critics of ethanol believe policies benefiting the ethanol industry constitute a giveaway to big corporate agriculture interests, and that the use of food to generate fuel can promote hunger, especially in corn-dependent Third World nations.

Engine manufacturers in the automotive industry and elsewhere charge that E15 is not sound from an engineering perspective and could cause damage.

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From Western Farm Press:

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack

Racism is dead at USDA. Discrimination has gone the way of the dodo. Since 2009, when Secretary Vilsack called for a new era in civil rights, racism and discrimination have been banished to the scrapheap of USDA history.

And what a costly scrapheap — more akin to gold than garbage. A rough tally of USDA discrimination settlements: $1.15 billion for black farmers; $760 million for Indian farmers; and $1.3 billion for Hispanic and women farmers combined. If legislative and man-hour costs are tacked on, that towering scrapheap reaches well over the $3 billion mark. Settlements? Makes you wonder what the high-water mark was for the plaintiffs’ lawyers if they ‘settled’ for $3 billion.

As the green is doled out to a conga line of aggrieved farmers, ‘The Last Plantation’ atmosphere is apparently no more at USDA; buried in an act of monetary absolution. A contrite USDA wishes to be absolved of past sins. But sins require sinners. Where are they? Has USDA fired anyone? Have the guilty been named? Years and years of bias reportedly inflicted on over 100,000 U.S. famers — and no perpetrator to show for it? USDA admits guilt to the tune of billions in discrimination claims — and no heads roll? (more…)

From The Commercial Appeal:

Thomas Burrell

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has agreed to a settlement involving a class of at least 40,000 black farmers who claim they were discriminated against by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and who missed the deadline for an earlier settlement.

U.S. Dist. Judge Paul L. Friedman certified a class of plaintiffs aggregated in 23 separate complaints, including one made by the Memphis-based Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Inc., and its president, Thomas Burrell.

Burrell testified against the proposed settlement in a “fairness” hearing on Sept. 1, arguing that potential claimants should be able to access the much more liberal benefits of the earlier, 1999 settlement known as Pigford I. More than $1 billion has been paid out to more than 22,000 claimants in the first settlement.

Burrell said this morning that he plans to appeal Friedman’s ruling on due process and equal protection grounds. He maintains that a 1998 law signed by President Bill Clinton holds open the door to claims the previous settlement labeled too late and that prospective claimants aren’t limited to the cause of action Congress created for late filers in 2008 or to the $1.15 billion Congress appropriated in 2010, which he said is inadequate. (more…)

More than 50 years after Sam Cooke first sang about his educational deficiencies, many American teens “don’t know much about history.”  Or so their latest test scores suggest.

Only 12 percent of all 12^th graders are “proficient” or “advanced” in U.S. History according to the 2010 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP).  And less than half of all high school seniors display even a “basic” knowledge about American History.

The latest NAEP scores for civics are almost as bad:  Less than two-thirds of all seniors show a “basic” understanding of our system of government.  And a 2010 study commissioned by the American Enterprise Institute concluded that “civics, once the cornerstone of public education, has fallen off the radar” as teachers have felt increasing pressure to show progress in other areas.

That many educators today give considerable attention to other subjects would not disturb America’s founders.  While we tend to think of them largely as political figures, America’s founders recognized that there are many higher and grander pursuits in life than those in the political realm.

This no doubt explains why the scientifically-curious Ben Franklin went outside in a thunderstorm with his kite – and why the educationally-minded Thomas Jefferson had his gravestone identify him as the founder of the University of Virginia, but not as the third president of the United States.

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Who doesn’t love soap? Well, the obvious answer is the #OccupyWallStreet crowd, but put them aside for the moment. Everyone else loves soap. Or should. But not everyone does. It turns out that environmentalists don’t care much for soap either. Certain kinds of soap, anyway.

Learning that the “occupiers” and environmentalists have a mutual dislike of certain kinds of soap comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever sat next to them on a subway, but the why is different for each group. Where the protesters, presumably, haven’t used soap in a month out of the necessity of circumstance, the environmentalists shower but want to take your choice of soap away from you.

I’ve written about this before, twice in fact, and while it’s not the most exciting topic on the planet (that honor goes to a tie between the start of NHL season and release of the new iPhone), it’s every bit an affront to liberty as banning incandescent light bulb was. Only with soap, there’s still time to act to stop it.

The offending ingredient in soap is called Triclosan, it’s what makes anti-bacterial soap anti-bacterial and stops you from getting sick an untold number of times every year. But to environmentalists, benefits to humans is of little concern, nor are facts, it’s the agenda of control über alles.

Zealots like Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) are pushing Congress to ban antibacterial soap under the time-tested Washington favorite motivation “just in case.” Just in case it’s dangerous, just in case it causes problems, just in case…

Under the “just in case” model there is much that wouldn’t be banned, or never have come into being in the first place. That’s why we have science and why science studies things such as this. And science has weighed in.

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Every five years, the National Agriculture Statistics Service (NASS) conducts a “Census of Agriculture” that includes a snapshot of America’s black farmers–how many, average farm size, sales, etc. Since 2007 was the last year the census was conducted, election year 2012 will give us our next best picture of how agricultural communities generally and black farmers in particular are managing through the economic downturn.

Because the 2007 agriculture census was conducted before the economy began to slide, it is probably safe to say that what we think we know today may not necessarily be true when fresh data becomes available. At the time of the census, there was plenty of room for optimism, though.

The numbers showed that the U.S. farming and ranching population was becoming much more diverse and the number of black farmers and ranchers was on the upswing. Blacks have a history of small business entrepreneurialism in this country, and farming and ranching represent a natural entry point for them. Because their enterprises are smaller, however, economic shocks put them in a more precarious position financially.

Having grown up on a tobacco farm and worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, I can tell you that the concerns that keep black farmers up at night are not unique and are shared by farmers of all stripes. Aside from some specific issues of discrimination, black farmers worry about access to capital, pray for a little luck with the weather, and wish for a more predictable regulatory environment. High levels of uncertainty translate into a lack of investments and lack of jobs on the farm, just as on Wall Street. (more…)