Take another bite

The question is “How do you eat an elephant?”

The answer for the old joke is of course “One bite at a time!” The moral of that conundrum is that when confronted with a large task the answer is to break it into small pieces that one can better address and solve one at a time.

Tomorrow evening there is scheduled at our fairgrounds a public session to address our socialist-leaning politicians’ proposal to implement a climate-saving movement, the green new deal, called 30X30. In your columnist’s mind, it is the progressive movement to implement their socialist agenda one bite at a time.

We have seen it happening in agriculture a little bit at a time. During WWII our government put price controls on about all agricultural products. Following the war, due to the unpopularity of price controls, most were relaxed or dropped completely. Still instead of letting capitalism manage prices through supply and demand the Department of Agriculture guaranteed prices for corn and wheat plus there might have been other commodities as well. The producers had the option of either selling their bushels on the market or if the prevailing price was too low the government would take the grain and store it to be moved later. If the price setters at the Department of Agriculture misjudged those ever accruing massive amounts of stored government grain were sold on the world market at a loss but no problem the government could just print more money to cover their losses. Just a small bite, even if enormously expensive and it still happens today.

The question remained as to how to address the ever-accumulating surpluses in grain and some wise person in charge dreamed up ways to cut production by taking paying landowners to set aside portions of their land in programs called CRP (whatever those ever-changing initials stand for?) and they paid to the landowner dollars each year through a contract to not produce. Another small bite.

Originally the CRP contracts only applied to the farmers who farmed their own ground. Absentee landlords were left out. Big hue and cry so the rules were changed to allow all landowners however far away and perhaps caring less about preserving our national treasure of productive land. Another small bite.

In full disclosure, your old columnist farmed for 19 years and did all the paperwork required by ASCS (federal agriculture) to get my handout during that time. I’m sure it is totally more complicated now. On the other hand, I have friends at Grant, Neb., who avoid that governmental agency altogether by raising non-program crops such as popcorn, black beans, etc. to avoid the governmental hassle. Oops, they missed that bite.

Another ploy to mess with the production of crops was to mandate that gasoline to fuel our automobiles has to contain a certain percentage of alcohol. Ethanol made mainly from corn which decreases supply and raises the cost of the beef and other meat that we eat. Probably an unintended consequence by our socialistic leaning betters but may be intended to be another bite.

An interesting thing happened in Nebraska some fifty years ago. The movers and shakers in this area went all out to get the federal government to build large flood control dams on our major tributaries. We all have benefitted greatly in preventing floods like what happened on the Republican River in 1935. Now we have water recreation, fishing, public hunting and all the other good things that are available nearby. Large areas around us benefit by the irrigation ditches supplying water to Ag producing good farmland. All well and good. When landowners at that time signed up for future irrigation water they wrote a contract to pay fees per acre to help pay back the costs of constructing our dams. Also as part of that contract, those landowners also gave up any right to the underground water underlying their property. Check your title to any land you might own and not only do you have title to the surface but all minerals beneath, oil or any other valuable minerals that might be found. Everything but what was given away to the Bureau of Reclamation for the control of your water. Not addressed is the rural need to drill and provide water for household use or for livestock---yet. Another bite.

We who live in Nebraska are fortunate that our legislature enacted legislation to make us a “Right to Work” state. What that means is that unions are authorized but those unions cannot force their workers to join the union as a requirement for their employment nor are workers, union or not, required to pay the union dues. Look at the damage the teachers' unions are doing in Democrat-run big cities of non-right-to-work states that still today are keeping kids from attending school in class. We in Nebraska are fortunate to not have that nonsense happening here. Keep watching though, because our present union-loving progressive US Congress might be trying to slip legislation banning “Right to Work” into one of their omnibus bills while they still have the majority. It would just be another small bite.

It is a big elephant yet that is getting nibbled on bite by bite so what can we individually do about the current trend toward socialism in our beloved country? Pay attention to what is actually happening in the political world around us, keep informed and vote accordingly. Yes, vote.

Now on a happy note. This weekend it was a pleasure for Grannie Annie and me to attend several grand parties honoring our high school graduates. Proud parents sending their beloved children out into the world on a happy note. It is a big step and we wish them all well. Oh, the memories and you know I wouldn’t change a thing in how my life unfolded. May our dear friends be so fortunate in their journeys through life.

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail