The Pullins Report (TPR) - Dailey Cashes in on Farm Subsidies
Republican congressional candidate Fred Dailey will have to answer lots of questions from conservative primary voters in the next few months. For example, why did the Ohio Department of Agriculture, under his leadership, launch a legal assault on raw milk? Was he a shill for factory farms as some have alleged? Did he support the Voinovich/Taft tax increases? What does he think about corporate welfare? And how can a candidate that claims to be a conservative drink at the big government trough of farm subsidies?
Public records indicate that Dailey took in just under $20,000 from 1995 through 2005 in corn subsidies for his family farm. I can see the Club for Growth ad campaign now.
At the same time, Dailey indicates that ethics will be an issue in the district.
Dailey says ethics are a major concern to voters he meets on the campaign trail.
Publisher,
The Pullins Report
Public records indicate that Dailey took in just under $20,000 from 1995 through 2005 in corn subsidies for his family farm. I can see the Club for Growth ad campaign now.
At the same time, Dailey indicates that ethics will be an issue in the district.
Dailey says ethics are a major concern to voters he meets on the campaign trail.
"People speak openly," Dailey said. "They feel betrayed and some of them are quite bitter about it."
Dailey said voters' ethical concerns mean any blemish on a candidates record could be a tremendous disadvantage. "You have to have a candidate that is ethical and honest with people," Dailey said. (Campaigns and Elections Magazine).
It's good advice. Dailey should probably apply it to himself first.
Publisher,
The Pullins Report
Fred Dailey is a solid conservative, a distinguished public servant, and a great candidate for Congress. To address each of your concerns/allegations, I submit the following:
ODA is primarily a regulatory agency. The actions taken against those selling raw milk were taken because those farmers were operating outside of the letter and spirit of the laws and regulations regarding raw milk. The current administration felt it would be more fruitful in terms of public relations and political capital to ignore the regulatory responsibilities of the situation.
Your question about "factory farms" is flawed in its premise. You assume that large livestock operations are inherently bad, which is no more true than saying Honda's manufacturing facilities in the state are bad. There are pros and cons to every system of production, and when managed properly, large livestock operations are no more harmful, nor are the families that own and operate them any less admirable, than any small farm in the state. That being said, Fred Dailey is no "shill" for these operations. Fred is an average sized family farmer himself, and his actions and priorities as Director facilitated the development of the most stringent permitting and enforcement regime in the country. Ohio's large livestock operations are the most fairly and effectively permitted and regulated operations in the country. The Livestock Environmental Permitting Program has ensured that EPA doesn't unduly burden the farmer as it had in decades past, and at the same time ensures that irresponsible operators like Buckeye Egg are put out of business. The success of this program is undeniable.
As a commenter to your post on Ohio wines noted, the money spent in Ohio to promote Ohio agricultural products (including but not limited to wine, beef, pork, lamb, corn, and soybeans) is generated not from taxpayer dollars, but from producer contributed "checkoff" funds. These funds are dedicated to industry research and promotion under the oversight of the Ohio and US Departments of Agriculture. The success of Ohio's wine program is obvious, with the growth of the industry generating excellent economic returns for the state in terms of tax revenues and additional jobs. This isn't corporate welfare in any sense of the word.
And the weakest charge of all is the allegation of "drinking at the trough" of federal farm subsidies. The "records" cited indicate average Farm Bill payments of roughly $2000 annually for the past decade. These could be anything from disaster payments in years of drought to conservation cost sharing funds for implementing practices designed to improve the soil, air, and water quality of the region. Neither you nor I turned down any of the Bush tax cuts, and in the same vein, no farmer should be expected to turn down federally mandated dollars designed to keep agricultural production strong in this country. Look at it this way, Scott - I spent more money last year with my attorney.
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Of all of the statements, comparing farm subsidies, which are essentially welfare payments to the rich, to accepting tax cuts is amusing. A tax cut is when government takes less of my money out of my pocket. A farm subsidy is obviously something much different. It is a handout, pure and simple. Government takes money out of my pocket and gives it to someone else that doesn't need or deserve it.
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The premise of your statement is flawed - saying that subsidies are delivered to those who neither need nor deserve them is indicative of your complete lack of understanding (or worse, disregard) for the humble men and women who produce your food and take care of the vast majority of our natural resources. 98% of farms in Ohio are family owned and operated - these families work tirelessly to earn a living, at the same time providing a food supply that is wholesome, abundant, and affordable. These are not "the rich" receiving welfare. To compare this to another profession, you receive a price that you set for practicing law or consulting for your clients. The farmer receives a price set for him by market conditions regardless of his skill of proficiency. Furthermore, a drought, flood, or swarm of locusts won't preclude you from practicing law or offering consultation. Any one of those conditions or a hundred others will keep the farmer from harvesting a crop. Those circumstances are the reason the federal farm program is considered a "safety net." Your next comment, I'm guessing will be that no other industry has such a safety net, which may be true, but at the same time, no other industry is as essential for our very survival as the production of food and fiber.
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Factory farms are inherently and immorally wrong and trying to compare chickens or beeves to Honda cars is lubricous. Chickens are not meant to be stacked six high in building containing a thousand or more birds with its beak cut off and fed growth hormones; and beeves are not meant to be confined to dirt paddock and fed corn and slaughter remains with growth hormones. When we treat our animals like Honda automobiles what does it say about our norms?
Andy did a drive by on me yesterday too. It seems that when one disagrees with factory fecal farming techniques Andy is going to be the great defender. But what Andy fails to understand is that I am a traditional conservative, who believes in free enterprise, but I too care about the environment as strong conservationist. And I care where my food comes from and how it produced. But as a free thinking conservative I do not trust what big government tells me, and I can research on my own.
As a resident of Meigs County I am also very concerned about the high unemployment rate. Meigs should have a significant number of small family farming enterprises supply fresh meat, poultry, dairy, and produce seasonally grown to the south Columbus region, but they don’t because of poor legislation from the state and federal government, poor policy from the USDA, and the massive global agro-corporation practices that have squashed small farming businesses. Now rather folks here either grow dope, draw unemployment, or have to travel long distances to work. So tell me how big agro helps Meigs County Andy? It doesn’t.
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You're right, heck we don't treat our fellow living creatures as well as we do our cars. And you're also right, conservatism used to mean that we wanted to conserve something, something important. Our environment, our small businesses, family farms, living close to the earth and so on.
The lobby for big ag is just the same as every other big lobby, they pathetically troll for government handouts, they fall all over public officials that should be run out of office, and they use their influence to try and crush their small business competition.
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This "debate of the issues" has very little to do with large farming operations, or at least my response to the original post had very little to do with these operations, but since we've diverted from any other topic, let me address this one:
Once again, the premise of the argument is flawed from the start. "Factory farms are inherently and immorally wrong" is a base statement with no basis in reality. Saying something like "people who treat animals inhumanely are immoral and unethical" is a much more accurate statement. The concept of the production system is not the issue, but how those responsible for the stewardship of our animal resources administer their systems of production. To be perfectly blunt, humans domesticated livestock to eat them. This is the way it is; you may choose not to eat meat, you may choose to eat meat procured only from local farmers meeting your own set of criteria, but what you may not do within the bounds of reason and responsibility is brand all livestock farmers as "immoral and wrong." First and foremost, it is not in the best interest of the farmer to treat his stock poorly. As the commercial says, great cheese comes from happy cows, or something to that effect. This is true - there are a whole host of production efficiencies, product qualities, and lost profits to deal with by sacrificing animal comfort and well being. Farmers have spent millions of dollars researching and implementing best management practices - each major commodity organization has either a quality assurance certification process or set of written policies and standards their members adhere to. In the case of dairy cattle, for example, farmers are constantly evaluating the bedding their cows rest and sleep upon. We use everything from water beds to air mattresses to ensure that our cattle can rest comfortable because if they are doing so, they have more energy to convert feed to milk. The same is true for the hog industry - sows that are "unhappy" or handled poorly have fewer pigs, and those pigs don't convert feed to meat as efficiently, thereby costing the farmer money. And yes, the industry has evaluated the use of various feedstuffs over the years, determining if we could use byproducts such as bone meal or poultry litter to both conserve potential resources and to increase efficiency. In some cases, the practices have been abandoned because they either didn't provide the desired economic return, or the risks were determined to be too large, as in the case of ruminant tissue and the issue of BSE transmission. But these are issues that the USDA and the private industry continually address to maintain the most wholesome, most abundant, and most affordable food supply in the history of the world.
You're welcome to buy your food from whomever you want based on whatever criteria you choose and I support your right to do so. Please do not denigrate the right of those stewards to choose to employ modern farming practices instead.
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