The number one cause of the food price explosion is corn shortages resulting from subsidies for ethanol production and other agribusiness subsidies, all of which are allowed by your Congress. However, by a fluke of human error, or perhaps a God-given reprieve, this one biggest cause of food inflation can still be fixed by killing a bill called HR 2419. Your congressman will swear it is already “law” and it is too late to object. We do not think so.

You will find this law as HR 2419, and your congressman would probably know it as “The Farm Bill.” It is 1700 pages long and it appears on the surface to have been passed, vetoed by President Bush, and on May 22, the day before the Congress took a spring recess, was supposedly overridden by the House and Senate, making it law ... or was it? *1

Food preservation activist Bob Singer reported the response of one supporter of the bill, Congressman Brad Sherman of California, who while home on recess, talked about HR 2419.

Here is the amazing yarn Sherman told his constituent Singer: “It’s not that big a bill” compared to other things we spend for, such as the war, and, “if we had not passed it, the Agricultural Act of 1943 would have gone back in effect and that was much worse”(or like words).

Congressman Sherman went on to tell Singer that President Bush vetoed the bill for the same reasons. I don’t believe a word of this, and I hope you don’t either. For one thing, $293 billion dollars is not small change, though Rep. Sherman may now think so, now that he is in Washington. It would buy the entire corn crop raised in the U.S.A. four times over, and that is at today’s record corn prices.

As for the alternative of returning to the Agricultural Act of 1943 ... how outrageous. Why didn’t the Congressman forecast that Prohibition would be re-enacted if the new farm bill did not pass? Our politicians must laugh at us when they get away with lines like this one.

Is it a law or a bluff?

I prefer to describe this almost-law by what it does, The Food Stamp Expansion, Subsidies for Not-Producing Farms, Price Guarantee for Large Farmers, and Agribusiness Incentive for Food Incineration Act. For short let’s just call it “The Food and Money Incineration Act of 2008.” Its stated purpose is “to provide for the continuation of agricultural programs through fiscal year 2012.”

The facts seem to be that a bill numbered HR 2419 never legally passed the Congress and cannot be law because law means legal. It lacks legality because of a technical procedural error by some unfortunate clerk in Congress, and the error has never been addressed. The public should get a second chance to examine the food price monopoly created by this act, while Congress corrects its error.

Instead all but a very few of your cowardly Congressmen appear to be cowed into allowing it to become a pretend law that everyone will treat as legal for the next four years, or more. Congress was bypassed in a very similar way when the Federal Reserve money control monopoly was created 95 years ago. We have never gotten rid of it. *2

President Bush called it a “bloated monstrosity” when he vetoed the supposed bill. This writer suspects President Bush wants The Food and Money Incineration Act of 2008 to be passed because his big friends benefit from it, but he vetoed it, not wanting his name on this scandalous give-away. Congress overrode his veto because the President is so unpopular ... or did they?

The clerical error prevented the veto override from being legal because the original bill was illegally passed, therefore, the veto was of no effect, nor can the override of it mean anything. Neither we, nor our congressional contact, Congressman Jeff Flake, who told us about this, can be sure of its status. But the only legal logic seems to be that Congress needs to start from scratch and pass a corrected bill all over again. What is so wrong with doing it right?

The president pretended to oppose The Food and Money Incineration Act, and says he vetoed it, but now he will, without a doubt, allow it to become law by failing to object on technical grounds. He and his lawyers know he has the power to stop a bill he called a “bloated monstrosity,” if he really wants to stop it.

By pretending to oppose The Food and Money Incineration Act, President Bush gives John McCain a talking point in the general election because McCain, bless his heart for once, opposed The Food and Money Incineration Act. Both Obama and Clinton foolishly gave pubic support to this act, though none of the three actually voted, all being too busy trying to become President.

Why is the Act so important?

So great is the federal spending deficit that we consumers now pay for most of what Washington spends in higher priced goods and services. This is another way of saying the government is printing most of the money it spends. Our descriptive name only begins to describe the damage that will be done by HR 2419. By its supporters’ own admission, it will cost consumers in excess of two hundred ninety thousand million dollars ($290,000,000,000). *1

HR 2419’s most significant feature is that it drastically increased the total subsidy to be paid to some 200-300, or more, huge new agribusiness plants that convert corn into ethanol. The subsidy is so huge as to virtually assure a shortage of food grains, and ultimately meat, for the entire world. We in the U.S.A. face drastically higher prices, but those in the third world face ethanol-induced starvation, as we have previously written about. *2

I just noticed my favorite bulk six-grain cereal out of the barrel at “Sprouts” now costs 99 cents per pound, up from 66 cents a month ago, and 33 cents two years ago. Oats are a corn substitute for animal feed, so corn burning forced up the price of my oatmeal. It’s that simple. I can still afford a dollar for breakfast, but what about people who live on $2.00 per day? The subsidies given to agribusiness are only a small part of the cost to consumers in vastly higher prices for food and even energy.

One Congressman Stood Up

Arizona congressman Jeff Flake noticed The Food and Money Incineration Act had an undisclosed section that actually guarantees a commodity price for big farmers if prices go down! This, he said, is a fact never disclosed by the agribusiness lobbyists who summarized and promoted the bill to the Congress. If food prices go down, consumers have to subsidize farmers more! Congressman Jeff Flake was irate when he discovered this section after it passed the House, and spoke on CNN News.

The Food and Money Incineration Act of 2008 was passed with a gross and egregious technical mistake in it that every one of the congressmen who voted for it should have noticed. An entire section consisting of some 34 pages, was simply left out of the printed the 1700 page bill that 535 congressmen supposedly deliberated over. It should be obvious that no one read it, else they would have noticed a section was missing.

The House Leader, Nancy Pelosi, upon learning of the mistake, proceeded to lead a campaign to override the president's veto anyway. But it seems she did not want to take time to go back though the entire congressional procedure, pass the corrected bill, and then re-submit it to the President for his signature a second time. Congressional leaders all know it is unconstitutional to vote on a bill that is not in final correctly written form, which is what they did.

The House leader's master plan to dodge the law was to pretend the faulty Food and Money Incineration Act was satisfactory as is and scheduled a vote to override the veto, ignoring the missing section, which they did on May 22, taking a vote just before adjournment. Pelosi’s intent is to later pass a new little bill which presumably will consist of the 34 missing pages.

But passing the same stuff in two bills does not make either of the parts legal for some easy-to-see reasons.

First, The Food and Money Incineration Act as originally written and passed must have a table of contents, indexes, and references, which, we assume without much of a stretch, would make reference to a section that was in fact not there. This can not be fixed by pretending!

Second, it is also overwhelmingly likely that the missing 34 pages are integrated with other parts of HR 2419, in at least one case, with linking references to the missing pages. It is not our job or intent to check this out, we don’t have time to read 1700 pages either, but such a link would cinch its illegality.

At the very least, HR 2419 was passed, indexing non-existent parts of a law. So why doesn’t Congress just do it over? Answer: Because this time they would have resistance. It can not be sneaked past the public who is paying $5.00 a gallon for milk and $4.00 for a loaf for bread.

The President should be yelling and complaining to the Supreme Court, if he really opposed The Money and Food Incineration Act of 2008. It would be exposed and killed. By staying mum Bush can have his cake and eat it too. He will not be blamed for the disasterous food inflation caused by the act, so long as he is officially viewed as a veto.

You may think We Hold These Truths has left out the cowardly Congress in our criticism, for how could 650 elected Congressmen of the people pass The Food and Money Incineration Act of 2008 without even reading it? We simply consider that most of the congress is bought and paid for by the Washington lobbies, including the farm and agribusiness lobbies.

Among the few who opposed HR 2419 is Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona. To his credit, Flake understood a major part of it and effectively told the story on CNN just before the vote. We ask you to join us to encourage Congressmen Flake not to give up. See that this paper is read far and wide, and circulate our paper on ethanol and a global food monopoly. *3

We Hold These Truths rarely spends time trying to influence Congress, and never with the Office of the President, because we know from experience both parties’ leaders are controlled by others.

But let's shoulder the blame, we cannot expect Congressmen to stay clean in Washington because they are politicians, elected at home, but then sent back to serve the federal government. No wonder they are influenced by the power lobbies with literally hundreds of millions of dollars to spend inside the Beltway. For us to spend our money to elect and send congressmen to Washington is about like arranging a job for your daughter selling flowers in a brothel. You cannot expect to keep your influence once you allow him to keep this kind of company he finds in Washington.

We must demand of each Congressmember that he or she raise the issue of the legality of the obnoxious farm bill. It needs to be reviewed by the Supreme Court, who would likely declare it unconstitutional.

We, the activist public, have been given a small chance to avoid this disaster because of a clerical slip-up. But in the longer run, only a truly revolutionary change can return Congress to the people. Maybe it’s time for an idea: how can we recapture our Congress without going through a shooting revolution like in 1776?

Endnotes:

Original Article

*1 The Food Stamp Expansion, Farm Subsidies for Non-Producing Landowners, Price Guarantee for Large Farmers, And Agribusiness Incentive for Food Incineration Act, aka HR 2419

*2 High school student, on the Federal Reserve: what we all need to know “Analysis of the Federal Reserve” by Chuck Carlson Jr.

*3 “Corn-to-Ethanol: The U.S. Agribusiness Magic Path To A World Food Monopoly” by Charles E. Carlson


Boycott "Shirley Q. Liquor"
This is a white gay man who is raking in tons of money doing racist blackface comedy "all in good fun", mocking imaginary, stereotypical black women.
Citizen Up! Please sign this petition. Visit BanShirleyLiquor.com for details.

Civil Liberties and Freedom
Threat of Subpoenas Temporarily Withdrawn!

Jan 11 2008 9:30 a.m. Gathering in New York to Support "The Welfare Poets" The FBI/NYPD Anti-Terrorism Task Force (Joint Terrorist Task Force) has been visiting Puerto Ricans in NYC and serving them with Grand Jury subpoenas, claiming to be investigating the “extremist group: The Welfare Poets.”

Anti-War
Protest U.S. Aggressions for Profit
"The Great Money-Laundering Scheme"
The Iraq Body Count Exhibit

Video
Best Anti-War Protest Quote: "Fuck you for letting the soldiers die!"
June 2004 Democratic National Convention Protest Footage. A short video documentary on the harshly squelched protests at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Features speeches by Amy Goodman, Dennis Kucinich and Chuck Turner.



Boycott ExxonMobil