At the Unity convention in Chicago this past weekend, Obama said of Haitian immigrants:

"The fact that it is much harder for Haitians to immigrate than it is from persons from other countries, in some cases, despite relative similarities in need, that's something that we should examine."

It seemed to me at the time a brave thing to say in today's climate.    

And then I read this story in today's Guardian:  

The global food and fuel crisis has hit Haiti harder than perhaps any other country, pushing a population mired in extreme poverty towards starvation and revolt. Hunger burns are called "swallowing Clorox", a brand of bleach.

Critics of nuclear power like to claim that nuclear power is heavily subsidized and one of the biggest alleged subsidies (and one that makes activists positively apoplectic) has to do with the Price-Anderson Nuclear Indemnity Act (PAA) and accident liability. It is obvious from recent comments made on Kos that many people are under the mistaken impression that Uncle Sam cuts annual checks to Acme Insurance to pay the liability premiums for the country's 104 nuclear plants and have suggested, for example, that those tax dollars would be better spent installing solar panels on everyone's roof. PAA isn't that kind of subsidy, if you want to call it that.

Data on construction costs for Concentrated Solar Power facilities is hard to come by.  I usually defer the analysis of solar energy costs to the esteemed Dr. Buzzo, but this weekend I came across a solar array data set on The Gristmill, to which which  commenters had applied useful and illuminating analyzed on this usually very dark subject.   The data was on Navada Solar 1, a 64MW CSP facility completed last year.  The Nevada Solar 1 site covers 400 acres, and was completed last year at a cost of over 260 million dollars.   Nevada Solar 1 was upon completion the third largest solar generating facility in the world.  

When agricultural subsidies were institutionalized during the New Deal era they kept the country fed and farmers solvent in the face of overlapping economic and environmental disasters. Subsidies were first offered in exchange for not growing major commodities after a decade of oversupply and declining crop values. The policy allowed production to be reduced while the farmer’s income remained constant. A three-part system of subsidies was introduced in the 1934 farm bill with the intent of regulating supply and stabilizing income for farmers regardless of market conditions (Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933). While the details and names of the programs have changed over time, the overall policy of subsidizing commodity production to guarantee an ample supply of food has not (USDA, a).

First, a recommended podcast for your wavering ostrich. Frank Schaeffer, whose Crazy for God tells of a journey from helping found the evangelical right, to enthusiastic support for Barack Obama. One perspective - recognizing the profound  commitment made by our military men and women vs. how they've been betrayed by the Bushite Cabal. Schaeffer sees parallels between the Obama-led youth movement and the best instincts of those who sign up to serve.

Speaking of ostriches, let's look past the struggles for the Democratic nomination at the big picture.  Care for another look at my own two sets of suggestions?  First, a few neglected policy planks that the Dems have missed so far (some of them sure winners), and second a fully-fleshed-out list of arguments to split that honest-but-reluctant conservative uncle of yours away from a movement that has thoroughly betrayed him, couched in terms a conservative might understand.

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And now... our feature: "Corn, Ethanol, Farms, Food and the Logic of the Granary."

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Congress passes its share of boondoggles, but there’s a real doozy on the docket April 18. If the nearly $300 billion Farm Bill passes in its current form, the American public will pay billions of dollars to large-scale farmers and food corporations for the following end results...

Something to think about on this tax day... where will more than a quarter trillion dollars go over the next few years?

^{Answer: The [Food &] Farm Bill.}

The corn kernels you eat, whether on the cob, frozen or canned is sweet corn and is less than 2/10th of 1% of the corn grown.

Independent Lens will be showing the documentary film, King Corn (lots of really good stuff to explore at that link) which was released last October. About a couple guys who buy an acre to see what it takes to grow corn. This is an important film (and pretty fun) since the [Food &] Farm Bill is currently in Congress being reconciled (not too late to call).

In today's Los Angeles Times:

Meat roulette

By Christopher D. Cook
February 25, 2008
Nauseating as it was, last week's record-setting beef recall and the apparent feeding of meat from crippled "downer" cattle to our nation's children and others should come as little surprise. Although egregious to the point of obscenity, this latest meat scandal fits a pattern of regulatory anemia -- the byproduct of a decades-long bipartisan assault on "big government" -- that has opened the floodgates to all sorts of contamination shenanigans. The deregulated chickens, cows and pigs have come home to roost...

       Some of you may have read my first Diary about the Mock House of Representatives that I am a part of in my American Congress class that I am taking at the University of South Florida. For those others here is a quick recep. We have 26 D'S, 21 R's, and 1 Independent who is caucusing with the republicans. We are working with a rule of budget nutrality, in that any money we want to spend has to either cut money from somewhere else or raise taxes. Remember the House requires at 3/5ths majority vote in order to raise taxes. This means I would need to get the vote of two Republicans in class to raise taxes, not an easy thing to do! Which brings me to the title of my diary.

Americans, Europeans and pretty much the rest of the world who dug deeper into their pockets for groceries last year will face sticker shock again this year when shopping for food.

"There's going to be real food inflation in this country," C. Larry Pope, president and chief executive of U.S. beef processor Smithfield Foods Inc., said at the U.S. Agriculture Department's annual outlook conference.

While the ethanol boom can be expected to bring higher incomes to farmers and reduce government outlays for farm programs, it also will contribute to higher crop and livestock prices. That is a given. How much more can the average consumer stand? I'm not sure, but we must remain vigilant. Start with examining closely all packages in supermarkets. Why? Over the flip.

Everyone should watch Bill Moyers Journal from last night. Both of his guests last night spoke to the problems of today and how we got there. First up was David Cay Johnston of the NYT. The second was Harvey J. Kaye a professor at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay. Their books that they discussed last night are now on my list to read in full. Mr. Johnston's book Free Lunch: How the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense (and stick you with the bill) exposes grants subsidies and other ways we pay to support the likes of Donald Trump, Geo. Steinbrenner, and a former Texas business man, turned Governor, turned (stole) President, George W. Bush. I'll get to Mr Kayes book after the flip.

I guess being a Democrat is no guarantee that you are always going to do the right thing.

The most important element of the Farm Bill of 2007 was defeated today by the filibuster threat of Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln (D).  The vote was 56-43 but not enough to affect cloture.

International aid to poor countries, through institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, does often help, but also comes with many strings that do needy countries little good.

The World Bank and IMF insistence on privatizing practically every non-military government function tends to further impoverish, and sometimes kill, the poor people of such countries.

Generally, only countries with control of natural resources like oil escape the not-so-tender mercies of development agencies like the World Bank.

And then there's Malawi, a remarkable African success story, in spite of the World Bank, according to this New York Times story headlined "Ending famine, by ignoring the experts."

Infuriating details, below.

Welcome to your Edwards Evening News! I just got back from a weekend volunteering for the Edwards campaign in New Hampshire, so tonight we have my special report from the Granite State. I'll tell you about door-to-door canvassing, making phone calls to voters, putting up a really large sign, and a visit to a house party for Elizabeth Edwards. All this, and the rest of the Edwards news, in tonight's EENR.

Manchester, New Hampshire City Hall

Cross posted @ http://www.standingbeforethefire.com

The President’s veto of 35 billion dollars over 5 yearsfor children’s health care is amazing considering his signing of Medicare part D, at a cost of 700 Billion dollars over 10 years (Much of it corporate welfare to big pharma). Is it really more important that we help old people, who have already enjoyed 60-90 years on earth, get prescription drugs then expand the SCHIP program, at 1/10th of the cost? This is the same president who signed the 2002 farm bill, which results in  farming subsidies of 25 billion a year, subsidies which mostly went to big agriculture. This makes the veto seem perplexing, unless one considers the lack of corporate welfare in this bill.(more in the body).

Congress has recently passed groundbreaking legislation that raises the maximum Pell Grant award and halves the interest rate on federal loans, resulting in an increase of $20 billion for student financial aid. However, as Higher Ed Watch's Jason Delisle -- a former member of the Senate Budget Committee -- points out, sunset provisions in the law obscure its true costs, and set up a likely future showdown on whether students will be able to keep their hard-won benefits five years from now.  

In the past 6 years, we have been watching the middle class get squeezed.  Tax cuts for the rich, stagnant wages, removal or contraction of vital parts of the safety net, increasing retail prices and insurance premiums, etc...  We lament the growing distance between the rich and the poor and how those in between are looking more and more haggard.  

But we have to keep hoping and believing that someday, we can change this.  We have to believe that someday, when the last of the neocon Republicans is quieted, swept out of office or - better yet - locked up, we can restore the strength and vitality of the middle class.  This is a two part series on how I believe that can be accomplished.

I ran across the following quotation today attributed to Newt Gingrich.

What’s the job of the candidate in this world? The job of the candidate is to raise the money to hire the consultants to do the focus groups to figure out the 30-second answers to be memorized by the candidate. This is stunningly dangerous." —Newt Gingrich

This is very cynical.  Unfortunately it seems to be to be very accurate.