51 Replies to “Back In The Summer Of ’00”

  3. Ax Those Feminists
    Now back on topic:
    Absentee Tenant Farmers
    Always Taking Funds
    At first it looks like abuse of subsidies, but if it doesn’t say in the contract that you have to stay down on the farm, well what’s to ma and pa there?The idea is to keep the farm producing, right?

  5. Beauty. The truck don’t look bad either.
    Waiting for Mary-Manny to rail against those farm subsidies.

  7. “I met all my wives, in traffic jams. There’s just somethin’ women like about a pickup man.” – Joe Diffie

  11. What d’ya mean “it’s a Dodge”?
    What d’ya mean “it’s a Dodge”?
    Consider your answer carefully. I have the power to ban your ass outa here.

  13. I think the sad part is;
    [Most studies agree that the subsidies are capitalized into the price and rental value of the land. So the more generous the farm payments, the higher the rents that the absentee farmers in New Yorkers can charge.]
    Not sure why this is.
    Because the subsidies help the landowner hang onto the land ? — less for sale, drives up the price.
    Or, because land is expensive, the farmer just rents it — income for the landlord, so they do not have to sell it. Keeps land off the market.
    If farmers refused to be tenants, stopped renting — would force land owners to sell it, no income. More land for sale, drive down the price.
    Is the key in all this the ever increasing size of farm machinery ? Allows farmers to operate large acre farms —- quicker and easier to assemble big spreads by renting than by buying.
    So, even if some farmers would like to own the land they operate, it would be hard to compete against the large rented-acre boys.
    Vicious circle ? Catch 22 ? Self perpetuating ?
    Sad part, for the farmer — which is the better investment ? What do people like to hang on to ?
    Ever seen a ‘Machinery Lord’ ?
    Back to the Feudal System of 19th Century Europe ? —- that North America tried so hard to prevent from setting roots ?

  14. “Is the key in all this the ever increasing size of farm machinery ? Allows farmers to operate large acre farms —- quicker and easier to assemble big spreads by renting than by buying.”
    Backwards. Ron.
    Margins are so narrow in farming that “big spreads” are required to make a living. Labour costs are prohibitive, so the farmer must do it all himself, thus the requirement for the “ever increasing size of farm machinery”.

  18. Kate
    You obviously aren’t a Gabor type gal but foofooing it up in the big apple is not a deadly crime. I bet that valet considered your ride to be an “exotic”.
    What I really want to know is does the Dodge have a Cummings, a 360 or did you do a hemi transplant?
    BTW your plate is appropriate in a Zen sort of way but that is the nature of Zen.
    As far as the viability of farming as an occupation, it wasn’t when I had a chance. As you stated, acreage and equipment efficiencies are the only way that farmers can make it today.
    I came from a family farm near NB and have witnessed the demise of family operations (interest rates in the late seventies and early eighties being the most egregious factors) to the point that it became either go big or go to the city.
    On the other hand there are those who advocate turning food into fuel (acreage seeded for ethanol production purposes) in an effort to save the environment. Good for the farmers on the short term but maybe not so good for overall food production.
    I wonder what the urban intellectuals will do when the Safeways and Sobeys close due to lack of product.
    I’m sure their solutions will be all civil and conducted with the utmost respect for caloric diversity.
    Syncro

  21. “We learned about love in the back of the Dodge,
    It was a lesson that had gone too far”
    Harry Chapin – Taxi

  22. Ahhhhhh…now I know why my Dad owned a Chrysler/Dodge dealership 🙂
    So isn’t this absent tenant/landlord thing sorta like the fuedal system of old?

  24. I was a teen when my dad bought a used ’59 Dodge. It had the big fins, a L-head lemon 6 cylinder, a push button transmission and a HUGE back seat. Loved that back seat! Thanks for helping to bring back some great memories Kate. Oh, sorry…..this is about subsidies or something like that….right?

  27. Bronfman on the US federal dole? Why not? The federal wealth redistribution system of corporatized FDR welfare statism is inclusive…it certainly includes the corporate ruling class…who most certainly are on the public dole through hundreds of ruling class tax subsidies (Tax exempt foundations) or corporate welfare transfers (USDA farm payments to wealthy absentee corporate agriculturalists).
    By the early 1990s, the traditional skeleton of US Constitutional Republicanism remained in place, but it was permeated with structures of extended welfare/absolutist statist power inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution. Similarly Canada has gone the same way with our liberal democracy being turned into a wealth redistribution center.
    Operating these structures provides a living to millions…either through various kinds of welfare or though employment in federally subsidized industries or federal marketing and trade agencies.
    Much of our formally private economy was corporatised and cartelised and regulated and subsidized in ways that made it often another arm of government. Our ruling class establishment has become a danger to the primary concepts of liberal democracy and constitutional republicanism. The ancient civil concepts of small unobtrusive government, of non intervention in markets , in private sector laissez faire capitalism are largely gone in the new statism rising from the ashes of former limited government liberal democracies.
    We are seeing the rise of a corporate feudal statism which wants to become globally omnipotent….direct by a “Crony Capitalist-Crony-Oligopolist” ruling class who have a totally different civil ethic than Washington-Jefferson-Locke or Blackstone.
    From the 1970s onward, however, this ruling class (and its handmaiden the political/governing class) has, in its ambitious new transnationalist agenda, been inhabited by people whose view of the world makes them fundamentally hostile to the governing principles of liberal democracy and all the other broadly conservative institutions of this country.
    This new ruling class, and particularly its sycophant governing class is aiming at the establishment of more autocratic and unaccountable power.
    The establishment of such power may at some point involve force. But more efficient than force, it involves a reshaping of our convnetional thinking of governance…Part of that pacification is denouncing rightious civil outrage as “terrorism/criminal violence/sedition/hate speech” and cowing the population with an ever expanding litany of politically incorrect “sins/cromes” whaich leave the person open to state sponsored abuse. Political Correctness is a soviet cultural control meachanism….Remember the are mass graves all over the worls filled with 300 million people who were “politically incorrect”.
    This might seem a bizarre to a lot of you, or perhaps even a tin-foil hat exaggerated, claim.
    But it is true.
    The ruling/governing class that we presently have is not satisfied with us as we presently are. It wants a new people over which it can exercise a new kind of dominion. Politically correct dogma creeping into law and governance is the leading tool of social re-engineering.
    Nowhere can this be better displayed that in the working documents of UN committees, and the federal counterparts in our countries, our corporate welfare organs, the current Jurocracy which holds us accountable to the dictates of foreign courts and laws.
    I urge SDA readers to jump out of the partisan box of left-right paradigm…largely constructed to keep us fighting among ourselves, and see how our governing systems have become civilly restrictive except to privileged governing class groups. One must now be politically or corporately connected to gain mobility. Civil freedom is now a dispensed privilege given only to trustees or vassals of a political ruling class.
    There is NO left or right…there is only those who value their freedom and those who don’t.
    This is the core conflict with transnational progressivist statism…THIS is your enemy.
    Rant mode off.

  28. Ron asked why
    “But studies indicate that the subsidies provide little financial benefit to these tenant farmers, who grow and harvest the crops and put food on our table. Most studies agree that the subsidies are capitalized into the price and rental value of the land.”
    Not only the fact that this would happen, but why, was all explained in tedious detail in a book published a few years ago . . . in 1776 to be exact, by a Scotsman named Adam Smith.
    Start out knowing that the tenant farmer needs to make a return on his investment in seeds, cattle, equipment, wages paid to the help etc until harvest (or as Adam Smith put it, the “average profit of stock”).
    If farmers, year over year, are making a very poor return on their investment, some will go out of business or invest their effort and “stock” elsewhere. This will reduce supply, drive up prices, etc. and profits will increase.
    If farmers are making exceptional profits, say due to subsidies, more people will try to go into farming to take advantage (or existing farms will expand using modern equipment). This drives up the demand for land. As land costs increase, profits decrease towards “normal”. So most of the subsidies end up going to the landlord.
    This was all explained 235 years ago. And yet we still have people surprised when the subsidies end up in the wrong pockets. That should be what is expected (and maybe that is the plan anyway).
    Adam Smith’s life overlapped that of Isaac Newton. Every student learns the laws of gravity in high school. The laws of economics are almost as simple. Why does not every school child (and politician) learn then?
    Recently, our Conservative MPP, in a display of exceptional economic ignorance, wanted to impose price controls on gas.
    I tried to explain to his campaign staff that this would result in shortages, as has been proven by every attempt including Louis XIV, Richard Nixon, Mugabe and Chavez. I don’t know if I got through or not.

  30. I want to be a Dodge pickup truck when I grow up.
    Is it hot in here, or is it just that photo?
    Whew.

  31. “Recently, our Conservative MPP, in a display of exceptional economic ignorance, wanted to impose price controls on gas.”
    As I stated in my “rant” Doc…it is not a left right problem it is an inherent problem in governance…who they think they are and what they think their reason to exist and exert power is.
    Here we see political brand names transcending traditional left-right ideological paradigms.
    A so-called Conservative advocating government market intervention, demand economics and cost/price fixing mechanisms…every idiom he expressed is diametrically opposed to the traditional conservative institutions of a liberal democracy.
    What is this MP really advocating pr responding to? He will tell you this is “necessary” if we are to compete “globally”…so this justifies the tenets of transnational progressivist statism.
    But do we? Most agrarian output is consumed locally. Do you suppose this has more to do with land, land prices, some elite idea of “best use” agendas…ever herd of Buffalo commons ?

  32. WLMR
    I fear that overall you are correct, but at levels well above the garden varity MPP. I suspect he’s just an idiot.
    I have heard our politics desribed as being similar to Professional Wrestling. Ultimately, it’s just a distraction.
    See what is going in Britain regarding the new EU constitution. When the proles could not be convinced to vote for it, it was reworded as a treaty. Gordon Brown just signed it anyway.

  33. “See what is going in Britain regarding the new EU constitution. ”
    Watching the process very closely…I think we in North America were/are well on our way to the same fate of transnational jurisdictional amalgamation (SPP) and Economic amalgamation through expansion of NAFTA…the talk of the “Amero: still pervades economic policy tanks like the CFR and Trilaterals.
    I think North American Union would be a reality within the decade if they had not had the set-back of some whistle blowers like Dr. Corsi et al catching the robber barons and polis with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar this year in Quebec….Vincente Fox has a story that is at odds with the official line we are getting from Bush and Martin and Harper.
    What the EU process demonstrates most, and what we in North America must learn and be on guard against, is the “NEW DEMOCRACY” by which the EU economic and political uber-structure has been fomented.
    Essentially the “NEW DEMOCRACY” is all about repressing dissenting voices warning of the anti-sovereignty of the EU constitution, denying it is happening then going ahead and quietly (bipartisan conformity) signing onto each stage of its implementation regardless of public will.
    In Europe we are seeing the incremental dissolution of the sovereign nation state.
    This was accomplished by telling you some major agreement does not exist, ignoring the majority will of a sovereign democracy and carrying forward the EU governing agenda of the transnational elite….this is the “new democracy” practiced by transnationalist puppets in all governments..plebeian agendas get lip service, elite agendas get implementation.
    You can see the same process at every level of authority in this nation from city councils to federal caucus.
    This is the “new democracy” practised by the new mega state.

  34. @Justthinkin’:
    Not quite. The absentee-landlord phase was more characteritic of the feudal system at the point it began to break down. During its heyday, the most common reason for living under an “absentee landlord” was that the lord (or landed knight) was away at war. Even then, the most likely majordomo, or majordomo-overseer, would have been his relative(s). They, after all, would have the greatest stake in preventing the feif from falling apart because they’d lose status in the eyes of their class peers if it did.
    (I know enough about the system to know that the intercession of a viscount, or of an earl/count, would have been seen as a major humiliation for a baron. The same thing goes for intervention of any caste superior for a lord of any rank, up to and including prince.)
    Common sense indicates why such absenteeism wouldn’t be much of a reason for credible complaint.

  35. @WLMR:
    You, and others who liked your editorializing, may enjoy reading this PDF-format book available from the Mises Institute: The New Deal In Old Rome.
    http://www.mises.org/Books/newdealoldrome.pdf
    It’s a history of the breakdown of the Roman republic, using a revolution-within-the-form framework. One of the interesting parallels I gleaned from the book was that, if FDR is the American analog to the older Gracchus, then John F. Kennedy is the analog to the younger Gracchus.

  36. But the ‘Why” part.
    In Canada, in say, the fifties, sixties, almost all of the acres farmed by the farmer were owned by the farmer.
    Today, almost all are rented. Why are we reverting back to the tenant system ? Just a subsidy thing ? Don’t think so. In Kate’s link, that is what seemed to be implied. No ?

  37. Kate,
    I had the same thing happen when we arrived at the Gorham Hotel in NYC back in 2001; our Ford Expedition from Texas (a most uncommon sight in Manhattan) was received without any reaction at all by the parking staff. (We later found out they did have to find a special spot for it; it was too tall for the normal underground garage!)
    The only trouble we had on that trip was crossing into Canada at Windsor. The Canadian immigration/customs people were letting other cars through with just a bit of chitchat. We got pulled aside, and I was grilled about did I own firearms (yes), have any with me (no – I’m not stupid, Mr. Border Agent…..), or have a concealed carry permit (yes – so what?) while a VERY thorough search was done of everyting, focusing on under the driver’s seat, and the storage areas within reach of the driver. It seemed like they assumed everyone from Texas carries firearms with them everywhere. Not me – I’m only packing here at home in good ‘ole Texas, where it’s quite legal.
    (And for sceptics – no, I DON’T have a gun rack, NRA sticker, or other “gun-owner” type of thing on the SUV.)

  39. My buddy Drove his Dodge Diesel 4×4 dually six pass. cab from a SW Sask. farm all the way to about four blocks from “Ground Zero” in New York.
    The biggest problem was parking space. He had to wait for a parking spot. Finally a Limo “chauffeur” let him have a parking spot for about an hour. (A $25.00 tip helped the gesture unfold!!!
    And by the way, your are one fine looking lady!!

  43. Wow thanks for the picture…..reminds me just how butt ugly those Dodges were……..yikes….. they look alot better but still ride like a wagon

  44. WL Mackenzie Redux: Just to tell you that as a fellow libertarian I found your posts here superb. You too DocBrown and Daniel Ryan (and thanks for the von Mises link).
    I would encourage all sda visitors to take the time to read this about the the EU Lisbon Treaty, creating for the first time a brand new suprastate.
    What if they had 27 coup d’etat and no one knew

  45. went outside and checked out my dodge , can’t figure out were the HOOD ornament went, maybe the first owner kept it:-)))))

  48. @Me No Dhimmi:
    Thanks. If you’re interested, the Ludwig von Mises Institute has been good enough to web hundreds of e-books in PDF format. They’re on an “American Affairs” kick right now, because the magazine’s proven to be quite a find for the regulars, but you’ll find several other books in this RSS list of the latest sixty:
    http://www.mises.org/guide.xml
    One of them in the list is Hayek’s Counter-Revolution of Science.

  49. WLMR:
    I can’t say I have followed the events of Europe too closely but I have often wondered about politicians “raison d’etre”. Given the age and maturity of our government, at what point do we reach the limits of legislation (a key purpose of the elected)?
    There should really be nothing other than deciding spending allocations (budgets) and conducting foreign policy. Everything else is either superfluous or attempts at expanding gov’t intrusion in places it has no business (ie. HRC’s, etc.)

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