And Frontpage Mag says the swamp hates it.
A time-tested political gambit is moving new public services to areas in which a party needs support, but rarely does a politician move an existing service.
Flashback to the 80’s when Grant Devine started the Fair Share Saskatchewan program. This seems to be a similar program, but for very different reasons.
Devine wanted to shore up his support among the rural constituencies and diffuse the strangle-hold the NDP and public sector unions had on Regina. His public motivation for the program was to help support the economies of rural Saskatchewan. The voters saw it as punitive because he went whole hog on the public service and it was a factor in the PC’s losing the election. Romanow killed it almost immediately on taking office.
Trump isn’t doing that. He’s moving one department closer to the people the public servants are there to support. It’s one thing to move the Saskatchewan Dept. of Agriculture from Regina, surrounded by farms to Kindersley, surrounded by farms than it is to move it from the east coast of the US to Kansas where it’ll be surrounded by farms.
The Democrats have moved Agencies into their favorite States, The Fed has a major business presence in Detroit…. Who knew?
Why not? This is a good idea to get some of the principle staff out of the government bubble and into areas that they in theory are to serve.
The Saskatchewan Pension Plan head office has been in Kindersley for decades and seems to function there quite well. It also provides local employment
There are farms in Virginia too. What Trump is shrewdly doing is encouraging swamp dwelling USDA lifers who aren’t serious about helping farmers to go mooch off someone else.
What American farmers need is to be permitted to make a good living feeding Americans. Not lectures from agricultural economists paid to come up with excuses why fifty-year-old farmers should sell their grandparents’ bones to the Chinese and…go do what? Learn to code?
(Or reasons why piggeries that make people vomit from the stench ten miles away aren’t a problem if they’re exporting pork to China.)
“and…go do what? Learn to code?”
Yes. Whatever keeps entitled farmers out of my pocket.
I almost wish Jason Kenney would do the same with some Alberta Gov’t departments, moving them from Edmonton to Calgary or Red Deer or Lethbridge. Except that I’d be worried that too many of those employees would agree to move and bring their socialist/unionist/NDP mentality with them.
I love this guy! Its a perfect swamp trolling move. Most of these USDA weenies have never seen a live cow, much less a farm. “Guess what, homies? You get to move to KANSAS! No more Beltway Bandit sh1t for you!”
Never mind seen, they never smelled one either. Glorious move…
My youngest brother agreed to move to Charlottetown, PEI back in the early 80’s after graduation (he was with Veteran’s Affairs). He vaulted up the paygrade scale because so few people wanted to be there. He was there for 2+ years and was “doing his time”. My brother was a snappy dresser and hated working in PEI – he complained that his co-workers wore short sleeved polyester shirts with pocket protectors. But he did it anyway.
With a little luck, many of the Deep State grifters in the USDA will quit. MY President is using every option at his disposal to drain the swamp. Damn! He’s the BEST Republican in my lifetime!
A typically stupid and pointless waste of time. At least he’s not doing anything damaging.
The USDA needs to be abolished not moved around. Further, there are no ‘customers’ here and putting bureaucrats closer to the action is probably a really bad idea-you want those people as far from your business as possible. If you want them close, there’s thing called ‘the internet’ you can use to communicate with them.
I think Justy, sneaks on here and posts under the monicker “UnMe”.
UnMe,
Keeping those bureaucrats physically distant does not prevent them from exercising power over your business.
One of the biggest problems businesses have is negotiating with distant regulators from OSHA to EPA to USDA. It’s tough to do when the regulators are reading their inspectors’ reports on purported “violations”, and making determinations and judgments (and indictable offenses and fines) from a thousand miles away.
Keeping these bureaucrats in close proximity is the perfect way to impress upon these mindsets that they will have VERY angry “customers” in striking range and in their faces if they do something outrageous. Not “outrageous” by Washington DC standards – and that’s the point – but “outrageous” by the average American standards.
It’s the State Dept Stockholm syndrome effect. Many FSOs get in the bad habit of identifying with foreigners more than with their countrymen back home and doing the job of foreign missions for them. The US DOD ends up having to do the State Dept’s job – duplicating State functions and advocating American interests in such matters as economics and legal, in addition to foreign intelligence – on top of its logistics and defense responsibilities.
In the USDA’s upper echelon’s case, this effect will be a GOOD thing.
And just to throw it out there; Rural Kansas has 6 to 7 times the gun ownership rate of Washington DC – and these are legal guns with owners who know how to use them to hunt animals who’s instincts and senses are more acute than any human’s – not black thugs and gangsters who think firing sideways is hip. That’s not to say these farmers will threaten the bureaucrats anymore than the inspectors, but in many ways, the inspectors will be able to impress upon their superiors the people they deal with – a respectful citizen who knows how to handle himself with legal representation is in many ways more intimidating than a black thug.
Yeah, I would say bullying “farmers” from afar is very different from bullying them face-to-face or at least a very manageable drive away.
LOL what a fantasy. Armed farmers aren’t going to do anything. They’d just get themselves killed. And I highly doubt highly educated and trained USDA employees are going to start identifying with ‘salt of the Earth’ farmers over their EMPLOYER just because they are closer. I guess we’ll see but I’m pretty sure this has been tried before.
Like I said: just abolish it.
The hell?
Farmers and Ranchers aren’t going to get killed by pushy USDA officials, particularly rural communities in Kansas. Armaments are no different from any other tool on the farm, whether you’re talking traditional tractors to Deere mobile broadband interfaces. Many kids practice marksmanship just from whittling down the sparrow and rodent population (sparrows are just rodents with wings) using air guns, for example. It’s the kind of practical culture more than a few DC bureaucrats could learn from and inform their worldview – because many of the problems they create are matters of acting on their own ignorance.
It’s this ignorance that caused DC officials to command from on-high numerous stunts and policies to try and move in on farmers’ territories, thinking land-grabs, taxation, and environmental restrictions are free from risk to themselves – that kind of arrogance is what ups the ante on their Federal agents into armed confrontations they had no idea they were getting themselves into – then needing to put on stunts and armed shows of force by storming elementary schools and public squares. It just didn’t occur to some of these Federal bureaucrats in the upper echelons in the FBI to the BLM that regular Americans would protect their own communities when threatened by distant powers with no appreciation of how their capricious use of power affected the people living there.
Needless to say, none of this has impressed the locals – from across the Midwest to Oregon to even Massachusetts – who either brought this to court, sought political redress, and even confronted the Feds with armed defense – at which point the Feds realized they needed to back down (It turns out nobody is willing to die by the edicts of the Obama administration.
It’s since been stopped in the Trump era, but Trump won’t here forever, and it’s better for these idiots in DC to get to know the people they pretend to serve, before the American People give another would-be King George III and his court a real-world lesson in who holds power in these areas.
If push comes to shove and farmers point weapons at USDA officials, they’ll probably get slaughtered by the military. Spare me your Braveheart fantasy. It’s all so null because the ‘family farm’ is increasingly a relic of the past. Obsolete.
“It’s since been stopped in the Trump era”
Nothing’s been stopped. Hell, those farmers are suffering worse than ever under Trump thanks to his trade wars and war on immigrants.
You’re the one living in a fantasy.
I’m ex-Navy, in the defense industry, and with friends and associates still in and connected to the Military, both active and reserve/guard. None of us were ever going to, nor are ever going to be attacking civilian farmers to enforce something like Obama’s land-grabs – not the National Guard, and especially not the active-duty US Military. That’s why Obama attempted to create his own domestic military force and sanction light and heavy military equipment to agencies like the BLM and FBI.
It did not end well for the BLM – and that is the agency that the USDA is likely to call in – and the BLM has already been eviscerated.
Obama’s newly militarized agencies got into conflicts with farmers and ranchers ALREADY – and were forced out in humiliating fashion across the Midwest during Obama’s second term. Again, you’re talking about civilian agencies trying to duplicate military functions because the US Military and National Guard refused to do Obama’s dirty work.
Those tactics were unviable then, even with a complicit President – a President who got humiliated publicly when his “rangers” (they weren’t US Army Rangers, just some wannabes that the Obama admin gave military weaponry and resources to).
They are unimaginable today with a US President who is just waiting for someone to give him justification to dissolve their Federal agency.
So not only do you not even understand basic American law, but you don’t even understand basic concepts of power.
The US Military’s raison d’etre would be to fight the foreign invasion entering our borders (it gets mentioned all the time that the US Military should be guarding American, not Asians or Europeans) and here you are claiming that the US Military is egging to attack American farmers?
And the Federal government does not have nearly enough men under arms to overcome even a small section of the US rural populace – the vast majority of “enforcement” occurs on a state-level, and ultiamtely comes from the willing compliance of the population in general because armed Americans outnumber Federal agents by 1000 to 1.
BTW, if there were a military confrontation, in all likelihood, individual US servicemen would be siding AGAINST Obama’s crowd – that is part and parcel why Obama couldn’t garner any support from the DOD funds and industry for his “domestic” policies. By contrast, Trump has had support from the DOD funds and industry for his “domestic” policies, especially as regards immigration enforcement and building of the wall (although the judiciary is trying to frustrate those initiatives).
As a matter of basic fact, you are bewilderingly misinformed.
Also in trade, US farmers are doing fine because soy beans are either redirected to other uses such as livestock or saved in grain bins with water content removed. China was slaughtering millions of pigs, which is the real reason for the tariffs from China – to protect their own domestic industries. Ultimately, agriculture in the United States is healthy, manufacturing is on the upswing, and wages are up. The bottom line is that the tariffs have been good for America – please try to keep up.
🙂