doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Ticks and tick prevention

You are a foul mouthed boor, and I will have nothing else to do with you. It was my mistake to ever address you in the first place. My bad. I'll chalk it up to a learning experience.

SRH

BrentD, If I were an Iowa farmer, I'd be embarrassed to be the recipient of the ethanol subsidy. Republicans are supposedly opposed to government boondogles, but this one is blatant and pointless.

Why these liberal foul mouth scum bags aren't banned from this site is beyond me Stan.

Hell they should be banned from breathing...

If you think I'm being critical of your stance or lack of judgement, I'm still waiting for you to intelligently express it. It's just plain you.

If I were you, I'd be embarrassed to have to force myself to consider nca a patriot.

When I said �meaningful conversation� I meant a respectful presentation of our differing viewpoints with an expected back and forth, not an abject capitulation to your delusions. That conversation stopped because when I asked to move it from PM to email, you refused, citing paranoid concerns about being �identified�.



I�ve put forth nothing under false pretences. Falling on the right of the political spectrum, supporting the 2cd and knowing Hilliary and Bill to be liars and crooks are not mutually exclusive of civil discourse. I refer to you �ranting� because of your foul mouth personal attacks on everyone so far who has disagreed with you.



In fact you have attacked everyone who disagrees with you. You did it before Trump was elected and you continue to do it now.

As time has passed and you have revealed more of yourself through your posts here, I have come to regret ever engaging with you. Your juvenile tantrums serve no purpose but to demonstrate your immaturity and lack of self control. Those are the issues at the heart of Keith�s beef with you and you continue to give vent to them despite years passing and the opportunity for growth that comes with the passage of time.

I think if he had the self control to be deceptive, he would still be exactly the same patriot for progressivism.

So Stan . . . sounds like YOU don't raise any corn or soybeans. Cotton . . . sure, overseas traded. Is there a Chinese tariff on cotton? If not, that might explain why cotton prices have "recovered", while soybean prices have not. And given that corn and soybeans are, for all practical purposes, the only two crops of significance in Iowa, it's not likely that Deere will be selling much new equipment to Iowa farmers this year . . . in a state where a lot of that equipment is produced. So, a double whammy for the economy in Iowa.

I'd also note that staunchly conservative Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has sent Trump a letter pointing out the impact of the trade war on his state's economy. Long term gains? Will there be any? Many economists don't think it's a good bet.

As for Dems putting more money into farmers' pockets than Republicans, it's worth noting that the Conservation Reserve Program, which basically solved the farm crisis in Iowa (a result, under your former Governor Carter, of pushing farmers to farm fencerow to fencerow and feed the world--and then slap a grain embargo on Russia to punish them for invading Afghanistan) came into being under President Reagan. Certainly in this part of the country, Carter's grain embargo hurt a whole lot more than any tariffs imposed in recent history. A lot of Iowa farmers went broke during the 80's farm crisis. Fortunately, CRP--which many tend to forget was at least as much an attempt to reduce oversupply and raise prices as it was a conservation program--succeeded on the supply/price side.

I don't really have a "business", Stan . . . other than cashing the occasional check for magazine articles. My belief has always been in the welfare of my country . . . proof of which being that my main source of income is my monthly retirement check, based on 30+ years' military service. Uncle Sam was a good boss. And including Social Security, I'm now a happy double dipper.

Bill, I take the position that man is fallible. That power corrupts. Whether in politics or any other sphere of life. As a business owner I made a point of trying to create systems of inventory (and cash) management that did not allow for people to be tempted. I view theft in the workplace to be largely a failing of management through lax controls, not of the individual. Because workplace fraud usually starts very small and only grows larger as the individual discovers they can get away with it. I see no difference with politics or public service.

Of course we can always point to individual examples of those who have resisted temptation. But I would suggest they are few and far between when the history of human governance is examined. In fact, it is the false hope for exemplary behavior that leads, IMHO, socialists to make their fatal errors. Rather than be realists, they are idealists. And the rest of mankind doesn't live up to their ideals.

So I advocate what I believe to be systems that helps men to act in the best public interest, rather than a system that hopes they will act in the public interest.

Bill, there is no "ethanol subsidy". And back when there was one, it didn't go to the farmers. It went to the ethanol plants. What remains in place now is the Renewable Fuels Mandate, which requires that so many gallons of "blended fuels" be produced per year.

We tend to forget that when the whole ethanol thing kicked off, we were producing far less oil in this country than we have since the Bakken was opened up. And oil prices were a whole lot higher. The idea was to increase domestically produced fuel so we wouldn't be a captive to the foreign countries from which we were buying much of our oil. And ethanol is a fuel that we can produce in this country should the need ever arise. I agree that there's far less need for it now. And in fact, the Renewable Fuels Mandate cap is being reduced as a result of the fact that oil prices are lower and we are now capable of producing more.

It's quite possible to look at everything connected to agriculture--from the Renewable Fuels Mandate to crop subsidies to the Conservation Reserve Program--as a "boondoggle". But for better or worse, the government has been tampering with agriculture--in order to give Americans a reliable supply of relatively cheap food--since at least the Depression years. The problem is figuring out how to disentangle all the boondoggling while still providing that reliable supply of cheap food--but not putting a lot of farmers out of business. It's all really complicated.