Liberty
Matters News Service
May 15, 2002
As
he signed the biggest, most wasteful farm bill ever built by Congress, President
Bush remarked, “It’s not a perfect bill, I know that.”
So much for Bush’s vow to return U.S. agriculture policy to a “market
driven approach.” The new farm
bill ignores a recent report from Agriculture Secretary, Ann Veneman, that
concluded, “government intervention distorts markets and resource
allocation….” “We cannot
afford to keep relearning the lessons of the past,” Secretary Veneman,
observed. The Farm Security
and Rural Investment Act of 2002, provides a nearly 80 % increase ($83 billion)
in farm subsidies over the next ten years.
The Title II Conservation section is funded at an unprecedented $17.079
billion, which President Bush praises as the “strongest conservation
provisions of any farm bill ever passed by Congress.” The Conservation
Security Program gets $2 billion; Environmental Quality Incentives Program $9
billion; Conservation Reserve Program $1.52 billion and increases the acreage
cap from 36.4 million acres to 39.2 million acres.
The Grassland Reserve Program aims to protect prairie lands by buying
ranchers’ development rights with a cap of 2 million acres and $83 million
over the life of the bill, coupled with The Farmland Protection Program, another
tool to buy development rights, the total package is funded at the $1 billion
dollar mark. Congress has resurrected old subsidies, as well.
Mohair, wool and honey producers stand to receive $300 million, peanut
growers are rewarded with a new subsidy program costing $3 billion plus a $1
billion buyout of the old program. There
is now a new national dairy subsidy, thanks to the defection of Jim Jeffords,
estimated to cost $1.3 billion over its three-year span.
The Heritage Foundation estimates that the new bill will cost Americans
$462 billion in higher taxes and food prices and the average family will pay
$4,377 more for necessities. Farmers
make up only 2% of the U.S. population, yet Congress continues to control
markets, farmer’ livelihoods and the purse strings.
Bush
Signs, Praises Farm Bill
The
Farm State Pig-Out
NCBA Partners with TNC
The
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association with their partners, The Nature
Conservancy, proudly announced their approval of the creation of the new
Grassland Reserve Program in the greatly expanded conservation portion of the
2002 farm bill. The NBCA
press release stated that the two organizations had been working for two years
to create the program, which they claim is “an important buffer against the
loss of grasslands to suburban sprawl and other incompatible development.”
The program will pay grassland owners to relinquish their development
rights for 10, 15, 20 or 30 years or will buy permanent easements outright.
The system prohibits development and other activities considered
incompatible with conserving grassland ecosystems and allows third-party
organizations, such as land trusts to hold easements.
“By partnering with the Nature Conservancy, we were able to develop a
constructive program that meets our common goals,” said Chandler Keys, VP of
Public Policy for NCBA. Karen Berky,
VP and Director of Government Relations for TNC, echoed Keys’ bombast, “This
new program embodies the notion that through partnership and cooperation we can
find conservation solutions that can protect wildlife and way of life.”
Cattlemen
and The Nature Conservancy Jointly Hail...
Senate Committee Asked to Approve Treaties
Henry
Lamb reports that more skullduggeries are afoot regarding U.N. treaties.
Assistant Secretary of State, John Turner is pressuring the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee to approve six environmental agreements that he
claims are uncontroversial, “generally supported by the public and private
stakeholders.” The treaties are a
means to further implement the U.S. Treaty on Biological Diversity that the U.S.
Senate refused to ratify in 1994. No
matter. The previous administration
skirted that obstacle with Clinton’s Executive Order 13158 that states,
“Federal agencies taking actions pursuant to this Executive Order must act in
accordance with international law…” One
of them, SPAW (Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife) was originally designed
to promote cooperation among Gulf of Mexico countries to address oil-spill clean
ups. The SPAW Protocol goes much
further. Its stated objective is
“To significantly increase the number of and improve the management of
national protected areas and species in the region, including the development of
biosphere reserves….” And, “To coordinate activities with the Secretariat
of the Convention on Biological Diversity.”
These treaties are being forwarded under the same kind of secrecy that
produced the Convention on Desertification in October 2000, when 34 treaties
that were ratified without debate or a recorded vote.
Six
New Treaties Go to Senate
Administration Nixes World Court
The
Bush administration formally ended any connection to the U.N. backed
international criminal court by stating in a letter to the Secretary General of
the U.N. that the “United States has no legal obligations arising from its
signature on December 31, 2001.” Former
President Clinton signed the treaty weeks before he left office, but it was
never sent to the Senate for ratification.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has long held that the treaty was a
serious threat to American sovereignty. “The
United States will regard as illegitimate any attempt by the court, or state
parties to the treaty, to assert the ICC’s jurisdiction over American
citizens,” he said. Opposition to
the withdrawal has come from within the U.S. itself.
Officials in the State Department have been supportive of the treaty.
“William H. Taft IV, the State Department’s top legal advisor, has
been a key advocate of keeping the United States involved in the treaty,
according to a Washington Times article.
Human rights organizations and most of America’s NATO allies were
critical of the decision. Tom
Malinowsky of Human Rights Watch belittled the administration, calling the move
“a purely symbolic step,” that would accomplish little beyond stripping the
U.S. of leverage to shape the court’s powers.