MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘pork’

Rolling Pork and Rolling Vacations, or Limiting?

Posted by M. C. on November 20, 2023

By James Anthony

In short, decentralized CRs will be used as always to condemn legislators who vote no—but now not just occasionally and especially during holiday seasons, but instead every month of every year.

Rolling Pork and Rolling Vacations, or Limiting?

On November 14, nearly all Democrats joined with a plurality of Republicans to pass House Speaker Mike Johnson’s continuing resolution. The CR was rapidly passed in the Senate and signed by President Biden.

The CR appropriates funding for some programs through January 19, for most others through February 2, and for the Farm Bill through September 30.

This gives the CR a couple of seemingly-new twists. Kicking the can past Christmas is superficially new. In reality, this just makes governing by CRs last longer, which is nothing new. Fanning out a single resolution so funding allocations expire not on one date certain but on three is new. In reality, this likely will work out to be not-at-all different.

Johnson claimed before the vote, “I’m done with short-term CRs.” But at each of this CR’s three dates-certain, the pressures and incentives will remain the same, and the same bipartisan majority will stand ready to pass still-more continuing resolutions.

Like the latest CR, each new CR could stagger the dates certain for its remaining programs, setting another one of its program’s date certain about a year out. And as each fanned-out CR would come due, the same old script would likely get acted out again.

Rolling Pork and Rolling Vacations

Decentralized CRs will be used as opportunities to condemn any legislators who vote no to an omnibus bill, a near-omnibus bill, another decentralized CR, or an appropriation bill. Voting no would be shutting down the government department, depriving everyone of vital services, ultimately defaulting on honoring Treasury bills and Social Security and Medicare repayment obligations, and ultimately costing people their jobs, standard of living, housing, medical care, even food. Legislators could only avoid condemnation by voting to fund essentially all pork, and to repay any federal pay and contractor payments that would get temporarily shut down one program area at a time.

In short, decentralized CRs will be used as always to condemn legislators who vote no—but now not just occasionally and especially during holiday seasons, but instead every month of every year.

Heating up the public debate without taking action is a losing strategy we’ve seen play out before. President Trump talked about building a wall and prosecuting Hillary Clinton. Trump got all the blowback while delivering none of this action.

When Republican nominal leaders and Republican rank and file have faced blowback in the past, the leaders have scheduled votes, and hefty minorities of the Republican swing votes have joined with all Democrats to fund pork plus shutdown vacations.

Mike Johnson has at times personally supported pork and other coercion. Included in the major votes scored by Conservative Review in the period from 9/8/2017 through 1/11/2019 were votes by Johnson to pass the Pelosi-Schumer-Trump debt deal, pass an $81 billion spending increase, advance a $1.3 trillion omnibus, pass a $1 trillion crony-socialist farm bill, extend government flood insurance, pass a nation-building bill, pass a $900 billion socialist farm bill, end debate on USA involvement in a foreign war, release dangerous criminals from federal prisons, and make federal pay mandatory spending.

As speaker, Johnson quickly said that his “first priority” is to reach agreement on funding government.

Limiting

See the rest here

Be seeing you

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Where’s the Beef? – Not on the Horizon – Gold Goats ‘n Guns

Posted by M. C. on May 7, 2020

In fact, this is what I’ve been banging on about as the real problem
with our response to the financial crisis and the Coronapocalypse. Why
has the private sector been shut down, tens of millions thrown out of
work, while no one is talking about downsizing the costs of local, state
and federal government agencies?

https://tomluongo.me/2020/05/05/wheres-the-beef-coronavirus-horizon/

Author: Tom Luongo

The reports continue to come in that there’s a real problem with the U.S. food supply. From McDonald’s reviewing their supply chain for beef to the pleas of ranchers already staring at feeding issues with last year’s poor harvests the signs are there for a major supply dislocation in beef going forward.

Kroger is limiting the amount of beef and pork people can buy. My local Winn-Dixie has had limits on large cuts of pork for the past couple of weeks. Pork loins have been gone for weeks now, so no pork jerky for us, which is a tragedy.

Now Wendy’s, which doesn’t use frozen beef, is reporting more than 20% of their stores are out of beef.

Stephens analyst James Rutherford noted 18% of Wendy’s restaurants were “completely sold out of beef items as of Monday evening,” reported Bloomberg.

“By our count 1,043 Wendy’s units were selling zero beef items yesterday evening,” but within the figure, about 128 restaurants were still selling beef chili. Rutherford added that the shortage varies across the country and said some restaurants still have full menus, while states like Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Connecticut, and New York are “fully out of fresh beef.” The note also said Wendy’s is “more exposed” to meat shortages because of its reliance on fresh beef compared with its competitors.

If you subscribe, like I do now, to the idea that this Coronapocalypse is mostly a cover story for the failures of the global financial and political system to usher in a new round of totalitarian control then destroying the most vulnerable, yet important, part of our food supply would be a key strategic goal.

My talk with Patrick Henningsen of 21st Century Wire recently covered the motive, means and opportunity for why this perspective should be our default setting.

But this beef shortage has been a year in the making. Last year because of poor grain harvests, especially corn, where millions of bushels came in at quality not even fit for silage, we were already expecting disruptions in the beef market as ranchers were thinning herds and bidding up the price of feeder calves earlier in year.

I’ve spoken with ranchers here in Florida about this. And this is an area which 1) grows a lot of cows, and 2) where meat packing plants have been mostly unaffected by COVID-19. So, it’s important when I tell you this dynamic in January and February has completely reversed itself.

Finished cattle are fetching excellent prices while feeders are down. Comex Live Cattle futures, however, have yet to get the news because the dislocation in the supply chain has farmers slaughtering animals faster than they can be processed and brought to market.

And just like in the oil industry, once you kill a heifer or cap a well it takes a long time to bring that lost supply back into the supply chain. Read the rest of this entry »

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