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.
I would call attention to the following as an illustration of what I am talking about. First to the following report on Boxer's relationship to the California's Big Ag: San Francisco Chronicle: Aug. 02, 2007
Sen. Barbara Boxer said Wednesday she would not support a $250,000 limit on farmers receiving federal crop subsidies, saying it would be a disaster for the state's cotton and rice growers.
"It's not an easy issue for California," Boxer said. "We have our rice people and we have our cotton people."
Then I would like to outline the problems I see with those cotton farmers and the large scale government subsidies that they require.
These huge subsidies are at the root of many of this nations problems:
- locally they support environmentally damaging cotton production where it need not be.
- nationally they are causing the demise of the family farm and the rural economies that depend on those farmers.
- internationally, these same subsidies are destroying the agricultural sector of the economies of some of the poorest countries (e.g. sub-Saharan Africa), forcing rural land owners into the cities and creating breeding grounds for anti-American terrorism.
It is truly unfortunate for the environmental movement in this country that Boxer is just about the best that we have. She has done much to roll back the abuses of a Pombo / Imhofe formulated legislative agenda. But, she, along with the other 54 members of the California Delegation to Congress, prove again that Newt tell the truth.
I guess it is best not to put public people on a pedestal before they retire.