#Farm Bill

[gwydionmisha]

#Tribal Nations #Food Systems #Farm Bill

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

After a new session begins, the first order of business for the House of Representatives is to pick a Speaker. For a century this has been a mere formality, with the party in power having enough organization and respect for the country to move swiftly on to other matters. But on Tuesday the Republican party broke this streak of basic competence, failing in three separate ballots to come up with the votes to install Kevin McCarthy, the presumed frontrunner, as Speaker.

With the group of hard-right irreconcilables opposing McCarthy getting larger rather than smaller as the day went on, it quickly became clear that the wannabe Speaker had no plan for breaking the deadlock. If he hoped that his opponents would eventually tire of symbolism and bow down to practical reality, he was mistaken – for a large group of Republican lawmakers, particularly those in the far-right Freedom Caucus, symbolism is the entire purpose of holding office. They came to Washington not to construct but to destruct, and taking down McCarthy is just the beginning.

The spectacle of a party unable to even decide who should lead it is illuminating to voters, and Democrats should certainly celebrate these Republican misfortunes. It was the Democrats’ surprisingly strong performance in the fall’s midterms which put Republicans in this position to begin with. Having only a thin majority in the House means that McCarthy can easily be held hostage by his party’s most far-right members – not a good look for a party already suffering from the perception that it is extreme and out of touch.

But Republican irresponsibility doesn’t just endanger the party’s own electoral prospects – it also endangers the country. America needs a functioning House of Representatives with a responsible Speaker in order to discharge basic functions like funding the government and increasing the debt limit. The stakes are huge, and gridlock is not an option. The last shutdown cost the economy $11bn, and a failure to increase the debt limit could be even worse, leading to the US defaulting on its debt and shattering the global economy.

Yet it’s precisely these basic functions that Republicans want to either sabotage or weaponize, a process which could ultimately lead to the same result. Even the “moderate” Republican position represented by McCarthy is to refuse to raise the debt limit without spending cuts, and in any negotiation over the issue he would quickly become hostage to the Freedom Caucus. Some of its members have pledged to oppose any debt ceiling increase at all, while others demand unpopular cuts to programs like social security and Medicare in return. A government funding vote would come with similar demands. In both cases, the result is likely to be paralysis as the party struggles to achieve unity.

Another hazardous moment will be passage of the Farm Bill, which is due to be renegotiated in 2023. This bill, passed every five years, provides both subsidies to farmers and welfare programs for hungry families, and Republicans are looking to enact deep cuts in the latter. Nearly 40 million Americans use food stamps every year, and Republicans want to dramatically cut that number by scaling back the program or imposing work requirements. Once again, the result will be a game of legislative chicken.

These games will not end well for the country. In all of these cases there is a huge risk that a party that can’t even agree on who should be speaker will struggle to pass anything at all. The Republican majority is so thin, and their extremist members so nihilistic, that they are likely to prove incapable of fulfilling the country’s most basic needs. Whoever eventually becomes Speaker will be on borrowed time, subject to being booted from office unless they go along with the Freedom Caucus’s demands. Because more moderate Republicans are unlikely to agree to what the right wants, the result will be paralysis – and economic chaos.

In lieu of governing, House Republicans will have other priorities – namely pursuing a series of ludicrous investigations into Hunter Biden, the treatment of insurrectionists after the January 6 riot, and “the weaponization of the federal government”, a catch-all phrase for what the right alleges is the politicization of the Justice Department and FBI. McCarthy has already agreed to give committee spots back to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, both of whom were previously stripped of their assignments for engaging in violent rhetoric.

All of this goes to show that the Republican party’s problems with extremism extend far beyond the person of Donald Trump. Even if Trump were to step down from politics tomorrow, House Republicans would still spend the next two years mired in intractable ideological battles and shrill partisan investigations, with the most hardline and ludicrous members soaking up the media spotlight.

The Republican party will head into 2024 with its reputation for extremism and incompetence magnified. Americans can only hope that it doesn’t do too much damage to the country in the meantime.

#us politics #news #2023 #118th congress #us house of representatives #Andrew Gawthorpe #op eds #the guardian #rep. kevin mccarthy #speaker of the house #house freedom caucus #alt right #conservatives #republicans #gop #republican platform #2022 midterms #Farm Bill #food stamps #medicare #social security #welfare #welfare programs #political extremism #political incompetence

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

This year’s midterm elections will decide the direction of a massive legislative package meant to tackle the nation’s agricultural problems. Republican Senate and House members are already vowing they won’t pack it with climate “buzzwords.”

Roughly every five years, lawmakers pass The Farm Bill, a spending bill that addresses the agriculture industry, food systems, nutrition programs, and more. This legislation is up for reauthorization next year. The political fighting comes on the heels of both the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law including billions of dollars for climate provisions.

John Boozman, a Republican Senator from Arkansas who is a high-ranking member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, is among a growing number of Republicans who have said they will not allow additional climate provisions into the upcoming Farm Bill. If Republicans win back the House this November, which is still a possible outcome despite tightening Democratic races across the country, GOP members will be in control of drafting next year’s Farm Bill.

Over a dozen members of the House Agriculture Committee, which steers the Farm Bill draft process, are up for reelection this November.

Ahead of the November elections, House Republicans have already released insight into their priorities for this upcoming legislation. The Republican Study Committee, whose members make up 80 percent of all Republican members of Congress, released its draft budget in July. This draft document outlines a plan that completely defunds federal programs that support conservation efforts, as well as slashes federal food stamp and crop insurance programs. The draft document heralds the preliminary budget as “ undeniably pro-farmer.”

As Farm Bill debates continue, a group of over 150 progressive, agriculture, and environmental groups, from the nation’s largest federation of labor unions to the Sierra Club environmental group, have urged President Joe Biden to add climate reforms in the upcoming legislative package. In a letter to Biden, organizations urged the President to pass a Farm Bill that would help mend economic and racial divides in the industry, increase access to nutrition, support fair labor conditions in farming communities labor conditions, as well as tackle the climate crisis with a focus on agriculture.

#farm bill #farming legislation #climate change #politics

[thepotentialof2007]

the majority of [united states] government funding and taxpayer-backed programs in agriculture support corporate-controlled livestock and poultry operations and the production of grains (like corn and soybeans) to feed their animals

[x][x]

#united states agriculture #farm subsidies #crop insurance #corporate farms #food not feed #farm bill

[trmpt]

#farm bill

[languagenerd24601]

#farm bill #feeding america #food insecurity #agricultural workers

[pasquines]

#Congress #Contextomy #Farm bill #Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon #Lares #Tropical Agricultural Research Service

[meadowslark]

10 Farm Bill Proposals That Could Reshape the Food System

#civil eats #lisa held #farm bill #farm bill friday

[govtshutdown]

Piling on, yes, but the House isn't returning until September 12th, where they will have 18 days to pass all but one of the spending bills or a continuing resolution, as well as "reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, pass a farm bill and reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program so that home sales in flood-prone areas can continue."

What a mess.

#house of representatives #congress #senate #August Recess #two months left #spending bills #appropriations #government funding #farm bill #FAA reauthorization #National Flood Insurance Program #Wall Street Journal #government shutdown?

[kp777]

Alliance of 60+ Groups Demands Farm Bill That Rejects False Climate Solutions

#farm bill #fossil fuels #climate change

[inkskinned]

no, but really, we need to talk about the casual objectification that has become the fallback discourse of the internet: if you're pretty and dressed nicely, you're a slut. and if you're even vaguely outside of their body standard, you're fucking disgusting.

too-frequently, people position sex workers as being "the problem". they sneer you're addicted to pornography, you don't know what a real woman looks like. but real women are in pornography. the real bodies on display are not the issue here: the issue is that other people feel extremely confident when commenting on someone's physique.

2000's super-thin is slowly worming its way back into the public ideal. recently i saw someone get told to "go for a run", despite the fact she was on the thinner side of average. not that it would ever be appropriate to say that: but it's kind of like sticker shock when you see it. people think that is fat? holy shit. do they just have no idea about things?

but what are you going to do about it? that's the problem, right. because chances are - you're a normal person. we can say normalize carrying fat on your body, but we are not the billion-dollar diet industry. we are not the billion-dollar fashion industry. we are just, like. people. who are trying to make content on the internet, without being treated shittily.

as someone who has been on both sides of things: you are treated better when you are thin and pretty. this is statistically correct. i am not saying that you cannot be bullied for being thin; i'm saying there are objective institutional biases against certain bodytypes. there are videos of men and women who lost weight all saying: i now know for a fact exactly how much worse you're treated. in the comments, some asshole inevitably says something akin to you deserved to be dehumanized when you were fat.

which means that ... the easiest thing to do is be pretty and thin. it is the path of least resistance, because of course it is, because any time you post a picture of yourself without a thigh gap, someone immediately comments something like you need to try a diet.

the other half is also dehumanizing though, huh, just in a different way. when i put on makeup and nice clothes, i am told i slept my way to the top as a professional. do you know how many women in STEM have told me they purposefully dress to "unimpress" because they already struggle to be taken seriously and if they're ever considered pretty - it for some reason takes away from their authority.

so they make it seem like it's your fault. you, existing in a body - it's your fault! if you didn't want shitty comments, don't have a body. they position us against each other like chess pieces; vying for male attention we don't even need.

and i can be an authority on this unless you think i'm fat and unattractive. when i am pretty and thin, i'm an activist. when i am just a normal person who makes a good point: i am immediately dismissed. nobody fucking believes you if you're not seen as attractive. you literally lose value. you cease to exist.

but the whole time, it feels like - is anyone actually grounded the fuck in reality? the line of "pretty and thin" keeps shifting. nobody seems to understand what "a normal weight" even looks like, because it's not something that exists - you cannot tell a person's health by looking at their body. even if you think you could tell that, even if you're sure a person is dangerously overweight - people are not your dolls. they do not need to be dressed up or displayed properly to soothe your aesthetics. you aren't concerned for them, you're stealing their agency. you don't get to say if they're "allowed" to take pictures and post them on the internet - you don't get to tell them how to exist.

people hide behind "the obesity epidemic" without any actual qualifications. they crow things about "normalizing unhealthiness".

but it's bullshit. i have visible abs. there is a pair of parallel lines on my body, even when i'm relaxed; where my obliques meet my abdominal wall. i am proud of this because it means i'm strong, because i overcame an eating disorder only to be ripped as fuck. it is genetic and physical luck that i even get any definition, i'm pleased as punch.

but it does mean that my abdominal wall sticks out a little bit. the other day i posted a video of myself dancing, and, for a moment, my shirt slipped. you could see a little bit of my stomach. i was cartwheeling to the floor. moments before this, i'd had my foot over my head.

a guy slid into my DMs. a row of vomiting emojis prefaced: you should really lose some weight before you think about dancing.

i stared at it for a long time. there was a time when i would have been triggered by this, where it would have encouraged me to starve myself. i would have ignored the fact i'm flexible, agile, good at jumping: i would have lost the weight for a stranger's passing comment. i would have found myself and my body fucking disgusting.

and for what? to please what? because why? so that he can exist in this world without an unchallenged eyeball? what would my self-hatred even accomplish? usually i write paragraphs. obviously. on this particular occasion, in this body i've been at war with for ages: i just felt exhausted.

it shouldn't be even worth saying. it shouldn't be hard to explain. all of this emotional turmoil when he cannot even comprehend the most basic truth: i am not an object on display for him.

#spilled ink #writeblr #warm up #like if im getting fatshamed. babe......... wake up #is there fat on my body? yes :) #btw this behavior wouldn't be okay even if I WAS overweight!!! that is my point!!! #it is both that people have no idea what weight is supposed to look like #and even if they DID... they do not seem to understand that PEOPLE ARE NOT DOLLS #YOU DO NOT GET TO TELL THEM HOW TO EXIST #if you respond anything akin to ''but raquel there IS an obesity epidemic'' #you're blocked and reported. #go fucking DONATE TO A FOOD BANK THEN. volunteer in a food desert. start a free fitness program #GO GET A DEGREE AS A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL AND PRACTICE IN NUTRITION IN UNDERPRIVILEDGED LOCATIONS #FIGURE OUT HOW TO LOWER FOOD COSTS. FIGURE OUT HOW TO NORMALIZE AND STANDARDIZE #ACCESS TO FARM-FRESH FOOD. PROVIDE ACTUAL FREE ACCESS TO OUTSIDE ACTIVITIES #FIGURE OUT HOW TO TEACH PEOPLE HEALTHY CHOICE MAKING WHILE ALSO LOWERING THE COST OF MEALS. #THE AVERAGE GROCERY BILL OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN HAS QUADRUPILED IN THE LAST YEAR. #SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!!!!!!!!! #you don't want to help these people!!!!! #you want to bully them but still feel like a good person! #you want to be justified in your hatred of an entire CLASS of people!!! #you don't give a fuck about how it makes them feel!!!! #you care ONLY about whether or not YOU get to VIRTUE SIGNAL that YOURE so thin and pretty!!!! #it is BECAUSE of people like you #and the fact you tolerate fatphobia - BECAUSE of that normalization. that men like the one who called me fat #feel like they can get away with it. #bc there's a line for you where you WOULD be okay with it. where if i WASNT thin you'd be okay with it. #which means the line can always be pushed in a certain direction. and it's always going to appeal to male aesthetics. #''well you didn't deserve it'' maybe fucking NOBODY does babe. maybe we should just all agree not to comment on ppls bodies!!

[politicalviewpoint1]

#farmers of punjab #narendra modi #farm bill #msp for farmers #bjp #india #Congress

[seagull-scribbles]

Happy valentines! what says ‘love’ like two smelly, unwashed teen boys?

Drew this after a lovely convo with @less-depresso-more-espresso, who also gave me this song to listen to 💕 so this one’s for you bestie aha

#tmnt 2012 #rasey #casey jones #raphael hamato #less-depresso-more-espresso #I love the farmhouse arc a lot actually #I think Casey went and got a few jobs on ‘local’ farms to help pay for food and bills #and April got a job helping in a shop or something she’s not very outdoorsy #and after Leo wakes up raph would start going outside #mikey looks after the animals and the farm there but we know ralh likes animals and flowers so I think he’d keep pretending to be too macho #his main jobs looking after Leo #but Casey could get him to goof off and sit in the sun and stuff #maybe raph would help chop wood or just sit near by drawing or trying to make daisy chains for mikey #something silly #anyway #I don’t do romance but I like using today as a chance to tell my friends I love them and to spend quality time snuggling my dog so #I hope everyone has a good day xxx #thank you again depresso xxx #Spotify #I tried to make this so it couldn’t be platonic but who am I kidding I sit on my friends like this all the time lmao #oh I drew this in my usual grunge way I do for 2012 and then tried to make it look softer with the same brushes so lmk if it worked

[languagenerd24601]

#farm bill #worker’s rights #agricultural workers #fighting climate change

[pasquines]

#Congress #Puerto Rico #Biden #Contextomy #debt ceiling #Farm bill #Hurricane Fiona #Kirsten Gillibrand #Republican Party #SNAP #USDA

[meadowslark]

If you are in or from the U.S., and if you eat food, then this note from the Center for Rural Affairs is of interest. As things develop I will try to post them here but there are no guarantees.

We’re about halfway through August, which marks a unique point in farm bill negotiations. The farm bill is being drafted now, and we could see Congress take action soon. This means we may need your help in the near future.  Every summer, members of Congress spend a month in their home states during what is known as August recess. This year, in the weeks leading up to recess, members introduced a flurry of marker bills intended for the final farm bill. With many staff still in Washington, D.C., marker bills continue to be released this month.  The Senate will reconvene on Sept. 5, followed by the House on Sept. 12. Around that time, it is possible we will see a farm bill draft released by one or both chambers. When we see a draft, the clock begins ticking before it is “marked up” by its agriculture committee.  This will be a critical time for you to get involved. We will ask you to join us to relay feedback to committee members, who during mark-up can make amendments to the draft. This could be a quick process, and we urge you to keep an eye out for our calls to action via email.  We will only know what to respond to when a draft is released. We may need to defend good elements of the draft, or advocate against bad ones.  Once a draft is passed by its agriculture committee, it will be brought to the entire chamber for consideration and vote. This will also be an important time to engage.  In these proceedings, the House and Senate will be working with their own versions of the farm bill. The next step is for leaders to negotiate a version that satisfies both chambers. That version will need to be approved by a vote of both the House and Senate, and finally receive the president’s signature.  This is likely to be a long process peppered with quick-turnaround, important needs for advocacy. As rural residents, we thank you for engaging and staying involved. As always, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me at [email protected]. 

#farm bill #cfra