Obama To Farmer,....Don't Worry Be Happy, and Call The USDA. Timeline.

[twyacht]

In agriculture? Have a question/concerns? Meet the POTUS? Get a chance to call the USDA?

Here's our gov't at work. Can you say Rope-A-Dope?

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2011/08/18/obama_to_farmer_your_fears_may_be_unfounded_regarding_government_regulation

Katie Pavlich  
Obama to Farmer: Your Fears May Be Unfounded Regarding Government Regulation
8/18/2011 | Email Katie Pavlich | All Posts By Blogger

Arrogance at its best.

When a hard working farmer politely asked the President to refrain from imposing even more burdensome EPA regulations on his industry, including regulations that would require farmers to control dust, yes, dust, Obama responded with "don't believe everything you hear" and told the man "some of his fears may be unfounded." Obama also suggested the famer call USDA, where "many of his questions would be answered."

This is just another example of the President thinking he knows better than the working man. The farmer mentions during his remarks that he already takes a common sense approach when it comes to farming safely and effectively and that government regulation only makes business harder.


POLITICO reporter MJ Lee called USDA to find out if they actually could answer the farmer's question, here is the exchange:

Here's a rundown of what happened when I started by calling USDA's general hotline to inquire about information related to the effects of noise and dust pollution rules on Illinois farmers:

Wednesday, 2:40 p.m. ET: After calling the USDA’s main line, I am told to call the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Here, I am patched through to a man who is identified as being in charge of "support services." I leave a message.

3:53 p.m.: The man calls me back and recommends in a voicemail message that I call the Illinois Farm Bureau -- a non-governmental organization.

4:02 p.m.: A woman at the Illinois Farm Bureau connects me to someone in the organization’s government affairs department. That person tells me they "don't quite know who to refer you to."

4:06 p.m.: I call the Illinois Department of Agriculture again, letting the person I spoke with earlier know that calling the Illinois Farm Bureau had not been fruitful. He says "those are the kinds of groups that are kind of on top of this or kind of follow things like this. We deal with pesticide here in our bureau."

"You only deal with pesticides?" I ask.

"We deal with other things … but we mainly deal with pesticides here," he said, and gives me the phone number for the office of the department’s director, where he says there are "policy people" as well as the director's staff.

4:10 p.m.: Someone at the director's office transfers me to the agriculture products inspection department, where a woman says their branch deals with things like animal feed, seed and fertilizer.

"I'm going to transfer you to one of the guys at environmental programs."

4:15 p.m.: I reach the answering machine at the environmental programs department, and leave a message.

4:57 p.m.: A man from the environmental programs department gets back to me: "I hate to be the regular state worker that's always accused of passing the buck, but noise and dust regulation would be under our environmental protection agency, rather than the Agriculture Department," he says, adding that he has forwarded my name and number to the agriculture adviser at IEPA.

On Thursday morning, POLITICO started the hunt for an answer again, this time calling the USDA's local office in Henry County, Ill., where the town hall took place.

9:42 a.m.: Asked if someone at the office might be able to provide me with the information I requested, the woman on the phone responds, “Not right now. We may have to actually look that up -- did you Google this or anything?”

When I say that I’m a reporter and would like to discuss my experience with someone who handles media relations there, I am referred to the USDA’s state office in Champaign. I leave a message there.

10:40 a.m.: A spokeswoman for the Illinois Natural Resources Conservation Service calls me, to whom I explain my multiple attempts on Wednesday and Thursday to retrieve the information I was looking for.

“What I can tell you is our particular agency does not deal with regulations,” she tells me. “We deal with volunteers who voluntarily want to do things. I think the reason you got that response from the Cambridge office is because in regard to noise and dust regulation, we don’t have anything to do with that.”

She adds that the EPA would be more capable of answering questions regarding regulations.

Finally, I call the USDA’s main media relations department, based here in Washington, where I explain to a spokesperson about my failed attempts to obtain an answer to the Illinois farmer’s question. This was their response, via email:

“Secretary Vilsack continues to work closely with members of the Cabinet to help them engage with the agricultural community to ensure that we are separating fact from fiction on regulations because the Administration is committed to providing greater certainty for farmers and ranchers. Because the question that was posed did not fall within USDA jurisdiction, it does not provide a fair representation of USDA’s robust efforts to get the right information to our producers throughout the country.”

Bottom line: Farmers don't have time, and shouldn't be required to run through endless levels of bureaucratic red tape in multiple government agencies only to not find out if they are violating a farm dust regulation.

Parting thought: How long do you think President Obama would last working on a farm?

*****

What Me Worry?

A**Clowns....

[tombogan03884]

Something I notice here, a request to a FEDERAL agency resulted in referrals to a series of STATE and Private organizations.
How much could we put toward the national debt if we disbanded this "do nothing" bunch of drones ?

[twyacht]

Money well spent I'm Sure...

EPA's Budget and Spending,.... 5seconds of Google Fu.

 View EPA expenditures on USA Spending.Gov.

Budget Resource Use

http://www.epa.gov/planandbudget/budget.html

Oh and it's in BILLIONS of dollars.....

But if you poll the grass eaters, and tree huggers, and propose polling questions like "Should the gov't make sure baby seals don't die, and the food that is grown is safe, do you agree?"

The state's could do this just fine,.....

But, we need a Federal Agency,...(just the Dept. of Education),.. that sucks up billions..........

[Solus]

Parting thought: How long do you think President Obama would last working on a farm?

He might not be much good at working, but think what a blessing all that BS would be 

[Rastus]

BHO was lying.  It's what he does.

[Sponsor]

[MikeBjerum]

I posted on this late last night, but it didn't take 

This is the new agency BS to get around the representation issue.  Just like OSHA tried to make ammunition and relaoding supplies unaffordable a few years ago, this does exist at EPA.  They got caught with their pants down last year or the year before, and have hidden it in a closet.  However, it is still there!

The best I could tell from web searches of political groups, activists and the EPA itself is that this is a full on attack on agriculture.  Not just the so called corporate and/or factory farm, but farming and ranching as a whole.  It has ties to PETA to do away with animal husbandry and the meat markets, it is a push for full on organic, and to do away with all GMO usage.  It was even said in one activist's site that they realize this measure will harm some of what they want, but they will destroy all, rebuild what they want and burn the enemy.

Note that these are paraphrases since this was researched quite awhile ago, and I have had two major computer melt downs during this time.

Do not let them pull the wool over your eyes!  This crap lives!

[Pathfinder]

I posted on this late last night, but it didn't take 

This is the new agency BS to get around the representation issue.  Just like OSHA tried to make ammunition and relaoding supplies unaffordable a few years ago, this does exist at EPA.  They got caught with their pants down last year or the year before, and have hidden it in a closet.  However, it is still there!

The best I could tell from web searches of political groups, activists and the EPA itself is that this is a full on attack on agriculture.  Not just the so called corporate and/or factory farm, but farming and ranching as a whole.  It has ties to PETA to do away with animal husbandry and the meat markets, it is a push for full on organic, and to do away with all GMO usage.  It was even said in one activist's site that they realize this measure will harm some of what they want, but they will destroy all, rebuild what they want and burn the enemy.

Note that these are paraphrases since this was researched quite awhile ago, and I have had two major computer melt downs during this time.

Do not let them pull the wool over your eyes!  This crap lives!

Actually, big Ag is 100% behind everything the .gov is doing. They want this, they want to drive the small independent producers out of the market. The Big Ag firms can afford the regs, they will pass the added costs on to the consumer. And if you cannot afford the new food, oh, well, sucks to be you.

Looked at another way, this is not so much an attack on ag, but about control over people through control over food production. If you are not allowed to grow food, you are thereby forced through starvation to go to the .gov and/or their agents (think Big Ag companies) to obtain your daily allocation.

Why do you think Big Ag is buying up the seed companies as fast as they can? Why do you think most of the seeds out there are hybrids, and therefore cannot be propagated from year to year, you always have to buy new.

All of these, BTW, are doing huge research into GMO, so a lot of food will be GMO just as soon as they can get .gov approval. Approval from the so-called regulatory agencies staffed with once and future Big Ag people.

PETA's not that powerful, but they sure are valuable and useful idiots at the moment.

[r_w]

BHO was lying.  It's what he does.

Is it lying when you don't know the answer, or is it straight up bullshit?

[MikeBjerum]

Both!

At his level of management he must either have the answer himself, or he must be able to get you the answer.  As Pres. Truman said - "The buck stops here."

[fightingquaker13]

Both!

At his level of management he must either have the answer himself, or he must be able to get you the answer.  As Pres. Truman said - "The buck stops here."

I think you are being a bit harsh here, but still making a good point. I,mean you can't really expect the POTUS to know the minutia of the Ag Department's dust regulations. Do you expect him to even know it exists unless someone brings it to his attention? However, you are right about him getting the guy the information. The correct answer would have been:
"Sir, we try to support family farms. I don't know the the answer to that question. One of my aides will take your information and you'll have an answer in 48 hours. We'll both learn something. Thank you for asking". And then you make damn sure its followed up on.
No one would have a problem with this. Not even the farmer. If he gets a call from the White House he will remember that forever. He might not like the answer and might still vote GOP, but you know he will say to his dying day "BO was ok, I asked a question and the White House called me at home with an answer". Its politics 101. Every time a constituent asks you for something you give them an answer. Even if the answer is no, they will respect you because at least they know you cared enough to pay attention to them. Brush them off like BO did to this guy and you are going to regret quitting your day job.
FQ13