In this podcast, editors and reporters take a look at how agriculture figures into the presidential election, Monsanto’s latest foray into genetically engineered wheat, and lawsuits taking aim at the pork and beef checkoffs.
Read Tim Hearden's blog at timhearden.blogspot.com
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This week's Capital Press editorial explains why rural voters largely rejected the Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumvirate.
A snippet:
People who wager their livelihood on the weather and the markets each growing season don't run scared every time the economy tanks. They deal with the issues up close and personal every day, and they have a clear understanding of the facts.The upshot:
They are not against government. Even the most conservative farmer or rancher understands that there are a few big things government does well -- defense, air traffic control and law enforcement, for instance. They are against a big, intrusive government that reaches into the smallest aspects of their lives.
They resist unreasonable rules and regulations formulated by unelected and unseen functionaries. They resent the patronizing paternalism of the nanny state.
Rural voters are unwilling to surrender their independence. They don't want a government that dictates what they should eat, what they should think, what they should do with their own property. They are tired of the arrogance of a ruling class that assumes Washington bureaucrats know better than the rest of us how we should live.
The elite might say it's simplistic, but farmers and ranchers really do expect a legislator to read and understand those 2,000-page pieces of legislation before voting "yes." It's just common sense.
Many farmers and ranchers still unapologetically believe in America's exceptionalism. To them this is still a special place, where great things happen. It's a country where people of the most humble origins can make something of themselves if they are willing to work hard. They believe in providing a helping hand to those in need, but balk at creating ever larger groups dependent on entitlements.
Farmers and ranchers are the epitome of individual responsibility and self-reliance. Faith in themselves, and in the grace of God, drive them to plant the next crop, raise their families and provide stewardship for the resources in their care. And rather than bitterly clinging to these values, they happily embrace them as the guiding force of their lives.
Candidates who hold similar values earn their support.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Californians are souring on a ballot measure to legalize adult recreational use and cultivation of marijuana, according to a new poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California.
The poll found that 44 percent of likely voters support Proposition 19, the marijuana ballot measure, while 49 percent are opposed. The results are a significant decline from last month, when the same survey found Prop. 19 leading 52 to 41 percent.
Prop. 23, which would suspend the state's greenhouse gas law, lost support in the latest poll as did Prop. 24, which would overturn corporate tax breaks. Prop. 25, which would allow the Legislature to pass a budget with a simple majority vote, gained slightly, and is the only measure of those polled that is winning. Five other measures on the ballot were not polled.
Are you the type who wants President Obama to stay the heck out of your state?
Well, you may get your wish -- provided you don't live in a presidential swing state.
I've gotten caught up in all the election excitement, and disappointment, swirling around this week. I can't help but wonder what impact things like the election of President-elect Barack Obama, the passage of Proposition 2 in California and the defeat of Sen. Gordon Smith in Oregon might have on West Coast agriculture for the next 4 years or more.
Who will Obama pick for key Cabinet posts? Who would farmers and ranchers hope to see as the next heads of Agriculture, Interior, Homeland Security, Energy, Labor, Environmental Protection Agency, Transportation and Commerce?
Mark Nicholas at HuffingtonPost.com has a list of possible cabinet appointments that have reportedly been leaked already. There are some names Westerners will recognize in there, like:
• California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a possible Energy secretary.
• Former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber as a possible head of Health and Human Services.
• Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire as a possible appointee as Interior secretary.
• Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon in Transportation.
TheHill.com has some different names in it Cabinet list. The Associated Press has a different version too. But who is on your list?
If you have ideas of who could, or should, be appointed to an Obama Cabinet to best serve Western agriculture and the people of the West, feel free to post a comment of let us know where we can see your suggestions on another blog or website.
During the last presidential election — actually during the last four (five if you count college) — I was working at a general news, or mainstream, newspaper. This is my first presidential election working for an agriculture weekly. The pace is decidedly different.
Election Day is always a big day at mainstream papers and is generally a long day for staffers, particularly editors. Lots of pizzas will be consumed in newsrooms around the country today as journalists work to report the most up-to-date news and election results from the presidential race right on down to local boards and commissions.
Here at the Capital Press, we are not so wrapped up in political coverage. For one thing, our paper won't come out until Friday, so everyone will know who won what where (except perhaps for the Washington state gubernatorial race). And since we cover four states, the hyper-local races, which may be highly important to some of our readers, will be of absolutely no interest to most of our readers. So our political coverage will be confined to reaction to the results in the presidential race, a couple of U.S. Senate races, some statewide races and a ballot measure or two.
Another contrast between the Capital Press and the mainstream press, is that the mainstreamers will be burning the midnight oil to get results out while our staff will be working a pretty normal schedule today. But if you are an election news junkie and a capitalpress.com reader, I'll be posting some of the major election results for you tonight on our website. Maybe I'll order a pizza to make the experience seem a little more like old times.
Perhaps the only surprise about this week’s election was it took at least 13-15 minutes before most news organizations officially declared Barack Obama the winner over Hillary Rodham Clinton in Oregon’s Democratic primary.
With the majority of precincts reporting late election night, Obama claimed 58 percent of the vote versus Clinton’s 42 percent. This gave Obama 1,961 pledged and super delegates, against Clinton’s 1,779.
While Obama came just short of claiming victory of the party’s nomination, since he needed 2,026 to cinch the nomination, the math supports that he will be the one that squares off against John McCain.
McCain has already sealed his place with 1,501 delegates when he needed 1,191. He coasted easily to 85 percent of the votes over Ron Paul’s 15 percent in Oregon’s Republican primary.
For the agricultural community in the West, this signals it’s time they seriously evaluate what the next president will mean for their farms and ranches.
Whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat in the White House, putting aside whatever traditional allegiance the farm community feels for a specific party, which candidate will likely impact them the most?
Now is the time to nail down what are the agricultural platforms, and responses to certain issues. Forget the staggering millions of dollars that have been spent on advertising with 30-second clips of promises, or the rock star gathering of more than 70,000 cheering on their candidate in Portland. What are these candidates vowing will be their priorities?
It has been fortunate that the race has lasted so long for one reason: All roads led to Oregon for the candidates as they continued to fight each other. Small towns and cities in this state that never or rarely saw presidential candidates before now could claim they were part of the campaign trail, and they made a difference.
Or at least it appeared that way. Although it was expected to be a record- breaking number of more than 1 million votes in Oregon, that’s still only a bit more than half of registered 2.02 million voters in the state, and a long way off from the almost 73 percent that took part in 1968.
Democratic voters participated more and broke records, with 68 percent of 867,000 registered Democrats voting this week.
While Oregon has been in the center of the political spotlight in recent weeks, it’s too bad that it’s so rare that they are allowed to make a difference: Being this important to an election race once every 40 years or so is unacceptable and cries out for change.
Too often, under the primary system, the battle is over long before the elections are held here.
Hopefully, when the next round squares off between the inevitable Obama and McCain, the candidates won’t forget Oregon and the other western states.
After all, people in eastern Oregon won’t forget that Obama said he’d like to come back for the Pendleton Round-Up.
Hopefully, these presidential candidates will remember the small towns they saw here, the farmers and ranchers they met, and the stories they heard as people sought solutions and answers to challenges they face.
People in rural communities are looking for change. They are clinging to hope. But they will demand and deserve action, and not just goodwill promises made during the heat of an election race.
President Bill Clinton visited California yesterday, and Oregon today as part of the campaign to elect Sen. Hillary Clinton to represent the Democrats in the presidential election. Clinton spoke in Medford, Ore. last night, and today’s visits include Portland, Salem and Bend.
It’s expected that Hillary Clinton will be through this area of the West in another week or two.
This follows within a couple of weeks of Barack Obama’s visit on March 21.
All these visits — by Democrats and Republicans — to Western states has that stirred people to feel like their vote might actually matter here. The last time presidential candidate came through here was a couple of decades ago, and since then usually election candidates are decided well before primary season hits Oregon.
It’s nice to see people feel like their opinions and votes actually count and that politicians care about them. There’s more than a political buzz in the air: People are being encouraged and influenced to participate, in everything from writing letters to the editor, to attending speeches, to working as volunteers for campaigns they support.
One of the differences from four years ago is the role the Internet is playing in all this. Whether it’s citizen journalists, bloggers, or even families e-mailing each other across the county or country, more people are participating in sharing their latest political news and views. In some ways, the traditional media can end up being ignored or irrelevant because people are turning to so many alternate sources to influence them. The sources might be word-of-mouth (or is that word-of-type?) from people they know, or it might be reading blogs of online political pundits.
At Capital Press newspaper and www.capitalpress.com, we’re still considering what should be our role, especially with our website giving us new ways to not only communicate the news to a wider audience — and much faster — but also be able to encourage our audience to be more interactive and send information to us that we can post.
We invite people to send us their opinions, but also photos, video, etc. that we can post online of what they’re seeing, attending, thinking. If any of you have attended any of the speeches by some of these politicians on the road to the presidency, what was it like? Why did you go, and what did you get from the experience? Did it strengthen or change what you plan to do with your vote? Did you take any pictures you can send us?
To contact us, e-mail us, or send e-mail to me directly.
As each new day arrives on the election campaign, and as I hear the different politicians swap "I had it worse, more dangerous, more death-defying, more miserable than you" conditions, I am reminded of Monty Python, with Michael Palin, Graham Chapman, and Terry Gilliam in the "We were poor" skit.
They keep comparing how bad each of them had it when they were growing up, and it degenerates into the following...
------
GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! We used to have to live in a corridor!
MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpaulin, but it was a house to US.
GC: We were evicted from our hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!
TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.
MP: Cardboard box?
TG: Aye.
MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for 14 hours a day week in, week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
-----
You get the general idea of where the skit goes from there.
Today I was reminded of this as I read an AP story about Hillary Rodham Clinton admitting she misspoke, or perhaps made a mistake, about a claim of being under hostile fire while visiting Bosnia in 1996. Guess this is her way of comparing herself to John McCain's prisoner-of-war experiences, or Barack Obama's stories about his family and life.
According to AP, "In a recent speech and interviews, the New York senator described a harrowing scene in Tuzla, Bosnia, in which she and her daughter, Chelsea, had to run for cover as soon as they landed for a visit in 1996. But video footage of the day showed a peaceful reception in which a young girl greeted the first lady on the tarmac.
"Clinton told reporters in Pennsylvania on Tuesday that she erred in describing the scene, which she now realizes after talking with aides and others."
She then explained she was tired, it's been a long campaign, and ... well, what's a little mistake like that?
Hmmm. Is this how it begins? Today ... it's mixing up a greeting by a friendly young girl on the tarmac with being fired at by enemies ... Tomorrow ... you think you saw weapons of mass destruction hiding under somene's dining room table at some state function in a foreign country?
This is more than just a mistake, and this isn't that funny. Clinton is running for the top job in the country, the top decision maker in time of crisis, and the country is relying on her word regarding what is fact and fiction in time of national crisis.
What's a little exaggeration on the campaign trail? The question is, when would the exaggeration stop and what should we believe?
And while yes, 1996 was a few years ago, and perhaps she had travelled a lot and maybe she was in more dangerous circumstances at other points in her life, these things do stick in the memory. One remembers if there was real danger or not.
For example, in 1996 I remember doing an interview at a university in Chile when water cannons and tear gas were used to break up a student demonstration on that campus. I recall the university personnel attempting to rush my colleagues and me away from the danger, asking us to run away as fast as we could up a hill from the campus — and I recall the burning sensation of tear gas affecting my eyes and throat.
Was I in real danger? No. But there definitely was an adrenaline rush and fear of what happens next.
A person tends to remember what's real and not real, even if it was more than 10 years ago.
While Clinton might have been caught this time on her "mistake," it will be interesting to see what she and other political candidates learn from this.
Hopefully we won't hear next about them living in shoebox houses.
Former senator (and actor) Fred Thompson dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination today.
His one vote in the Blogriculture poll wasn't enough to save his candidacy.
A television report this morning showed how much Iowans are being bombarded with political messages during this holiday season.
As Jan. 3 nears for presidential caucus voting in that state, people are receiving more candidate literature than Christmas cards. Phones are buzzing with calls from volunteers urging people to support their leaders.
For example, one of the television networks visited a home where the guy showed he had received 20 pieces of mail in two days — and his phone showed 60 calls since Dec. 1. All of these were attempts to sway his vote.
As the victim — I mean, potential voter — noted, this is the time of year when people are more interested in the Christmas cards than the political flyers, and you think more about Christmas than elections.
Unfortunately, political campaigns are influenced by polls, and obviously the polls have shown politicians they need to do more to sway people to support them.
Perhaps the date for that caucus meeting needs to be changed, or politicians need to come to some sort of joint agreement to “cease fire” and give people a break from politics for at least two weeks around the holiday season.
Wouldn’t that be refreshing?
Technorati tags: Agriculture
Christmas
election
Iowa caucus
While Ted Kulongoski has won a second term as governor of Oregon, voters have sent him a strong message: he has a lot of work still to be done to gain the respect of rural Oregon and particularly of the farm and ranch community.
Unofficially, Kulongoski received just under 51 percent of the votes in this week's election. Republican Ron Saxton received 43 percent. As expected, Saxton did best in the rural areas, as well as the eastern and southern parts of the state. Kulongoski won Portland, the place Saxton needed to crack if he wished to be a serious contender.
Considering how poorly Republicans did nationally, in both the House and Senate, and how Oregon has been more traditionally a Democrat stronghold, Kulongoski should find it sobering that almost half of the state's voters would rather have someone else lead them.
Nationally, polls before yesterday showed that three out of four voters were leaning towards Democrats because of disgust against corruption and scandals involving politicians, and in particular Republicans. There were also great discontent about the Iraq war.
In that context, Kulongoski's win shows it is even more shaky. Getting just over 50 percent of the votes does not show the state's voters are confident in his leadership. The votes may have emerged because of fear of what might happen if Saxton won, especially with some of the comments he has made about the employment of state workers and how he wanted to continue to attack their retirement plan.
So what should Kulongoski do during a second term if he wants to create a legacy or at the very least earn some respect from farmers and ranchers?
First, keeping director Katy Coba in her job in the agriculture department would be admirable. She has done an impressive job of representing the interests of agriculture at the state, national and international levels.
Secondly, Kulongoski should immediately arrange to start meeting more with the agricultural organizations and their representatives in this state. Instead of waiting for a big issues to hit the wall and be forced to react or veto what he doesn't like, Kulongoski should do more to understand and work with the agricultural and rural communities. Learn more about the issues, seek common ground and resolutions, and more importantly show respect for those people who toil the land.
Kulongoski needs to be more than just more visible to rural areas, but actually show he listens and can be influenced by those he meets.
Thirdly, Kulongoski needs to show leadership. This includes working with other politicians on both sides of politics. Kulongoski needs to find the solution so appointments can be made to commissions and boards; influence the government to work towards solutions; and move the state ahead to where it needs to be in the future, as a progressive, viable, dynamic place to live and do business. Kulongoski should meet with the small business association and see what can be done to encourage and support the growth of that sector.
Fourthly, the universities and education system are relying heavily on Kulongoski to deliver on promises he has made in recent months. They will watch the next state budget closely to see whether he truly believes Oregon State University and others should continue to have the resources and support they need.
And finally, Kulongoski needs to work to restore the faith of voters in politics here in the West. Under Kulongoski, the agricultural community has become very disillusioned with him and the Democrats. They have felt more than just a power vacuum in Salem: they have felt ignored, frustrated, and forgotten.
If Kulongoski feels the election gave him a mandate to continue doing what he has in the last four years, then he didn't deserve to win.
If he uses the election as a wake-up call and lesson on how to do things better, and makes an honest attempt to work harder with the agricultural community, then there is hope for the future.
Agriculture
Well, I've watched enough election drama for tonight and made my final post for the night on the Capital Press website. Tomorrow, is production day for Capital Press, and we will be working to put some analysis of how tonight's election results will effect agriculture in California, Oregon, Idaho and Washington.
There will undoubtedly be fallout for farmers and rancher, both positive and negative, as there always is when politics is involved.
The big question in my mind is what Democrats nationally think the message was from voters who have turned over control of the U.S. House of Representatives to Democrats, and could still gain control of the Senate when all the final counting is done.
Have farmers and ranchers abandoned the Democratic Party, or have Democrats abandoned the people who grow food and fiber? Can they find common ground again? That will be vitally important to how the 2007 Farm Bill plays out. Of course the agriculture community is not completely unified on issues that will be central to the farm bill either, like crop subsidies and who should, or should not, be getting them.
I'll let the "experts" sort it out. I'm going to take a moderate position, smack dab in between the sheets of my bed.
Agriculture
Elections
Politics
It looks like the pundits were right. Several news organizations are projecting the Democrats will gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives. And at this hour, it appears the Democrats still have a shot at gaining a majority in the U.S. Senate as well.
I'm posting election number over on CapitalPress.com, but I'm trying to monitor four states, and the numbers are changing quickly. The governor's races in Idaho, Oregon and California appear to be decided, with the incumbents winning in Oregon and California and Rep. Butch Otter appears headed to the governor's office in Idaho.
Agriculture
Elections
Politics
Check the Capital Press website for results as they become available on issues related to agriculture.
Agriculture
Elections
Politics
The polls will close on the West Coast in about an hour, but early results out of the East indicate that Democrats are gaining ground in congressional seats. Will the trend continue in the West?
If so, and if you subscribe to the conventional wisdom that the Grand Old Party is now the party that best represents agriculture and agribusiness, what would Democratic control of Congress mean to America's farmers? How might that effect the 2007 Farm Bill, which the next Congress will take up after the first of the year? How effective would a Democratic Congress be able to be with a Republican president? And how effective will the Republican president be in his final two years if there is a Democrat-controlled Congress?
Even if the Democrats don't get control of the House and/or the Senate, it appears likely the Republican majority, if it remains, will be slimmer.
Agriculture
Elections
Politics
Northwest Oregon and western Washington are being bombarded by heavy rains and flooding again today, creating inconvenience for some and outright disaster for others. But will it effect today's election?
There will undoubtedly be some impact, as those procrastinators who haven't yet dropped off their ballots at a collection site (or mailbox in the case of Washington voters). But if voters had to physically go to the polls today, like they do in most states, turnout in the areas hardest hit by this late fall storm would likely be down significantly.
Those in the rural parts of the state east of the Cascade Mountains may wish Oregon and Washington, why generally find it more convenient to vote from home than to drive to town to vote may be wishing this election wasn't a vote-by-mail variety this time. If voter turnout were down significantly in west-side precincts, those on the drier side of Northwest life may actually see their vote count for more.
I'll be trying to post some results tonight on some key West Coast races and ballot measures affecting agriculture on the Capital Press website after the polls close at 8 p.m. and vote tallies become available sometime thereafter — that is, weather permitting.
Election
Rural life
Weather
Agriculture
Well, here goes nothing.
My first attempt at podcasting is, well, as done as I know how to make it. James Earl Jones has no reason to fear I will cut into his voiceover work.
But, if you are dying to hear our first Capital Press podcast you can find the file here. We'll work on getting an RSS feed and registering with iTunes as we do here.
I'm calling the podcast the Farmers' C.A.P. or Farmers Capital Press Agriculture Podcast. Episode 1 features music by Capital Press reporter Mitch Lies. Our theme music is called "Proud" from Mitch's "Escapist" CD.
We also have a few audio clips in there from our editorial board endorsement interviews with
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and his challenger Ron Saxton. More audio from those sessions can also be found online here (and the bonus on those audio files is that I only asked a couple of questions, so you don't have to hear my voice on those!).
Feel free to download Farmers' C.A.P. episode 1 if you like. It's about a 5 megabyte file and is about 5 1/2 minutes long. Download at your own risk.
Agriculture
Podcast
Capital Press
Election
Want to hear what Oregon's two leading gubernatorial candidates have to say on issues related to agriculture? Now you can.
The Capital Press editorial board and the editorial boards of our sister papers in the East oregonian Publishing Co. interviewed Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Republican challenger Ron Saxton on issues like the minimum wage, climate change, the estate tax and more.
Now you can hear what the candidates had to say for themselves on these issues and more.
And see who the Capital Press is endorsing in the race on Friday, Oct. 20, in Oregon editions of Capital Press and online at CapitalPress.com.
Agriculture
Oregon
Election
Politics
Ted Kulongoski
Ron Saxton
Like agriculture, or any other field of endeavor, reporting election results has changed in the last 20 years.
Unfortunately, the state of Oregon is not as far along the technological spectrum as some of our neighbors.
For the last 8 years or so I've worked at general circulation newspaper and election coverage has made for some long days, and nights, in the newsrooms where I worked in California. But the Internet changed the way the news media and the general public monitored election returns. Ten years ago, media outlets sent reporters to county court houses and election offices to wait for the latest poll numbers to be released by county and state election figures. But about eight years ago that started to change as county registrars in California, and the Secretary of State started posting election returns online.
For the last several years, anyone with an Internet connection has been able to get the results as, or more, quickly online as they could on site at an election office.
I expected to find something similar here in Oregon. Based on today's primary election, I was sorely disappointed.
Oh, I could still get the most up-to-date election news online, but the Secretary of State's election site was virtually worthless, except for links to county election sites. Fortunately, the Associated Press had its act together and provided the most up-to-date information through links from other news media sites.
According to the Secretary of State, as of the end of day Monday, only 27 percents of registered voters had returned ballots in the state's vote-by-mail election. Voters had until 8 p.m. tonight to drop off their ballots at approved drop-off sites.
One area where Oregon does now seem to be taking the lead from California and other states is in a drop-off in voter turnout.
Districts seeking bond measures that required a majority of votes and a majority of registered voters to cast ballots for passage were defeated by virtue of simply not enough ballots cast, regardless of whether those who did vote approved, or disapproved, of the measures.
Oregon's vote-by-mail system was seen as a way to keep the electorate involved when it was established. But that now seems to be a going by the boards like the analog telephone, over-the-air television broadcasts or a mule pulling a plow.
While voter registration in Oregon is higher than ever before, fewer ballots were cast in this primary than in the last one four years ago. Idaho will go to the polls next week. Californians next month. But in this representative democracy, where there is an ever-growing number of politicians in Congress, state houses and local governments, the proportion of those who choose those representatives is ever-shrinking.
In the wake of terrorism fears we've allowed government to infringe on our rights to privacy in our airports, public places, on our telephone lines and other places with hardly a whimper. In ever-greater numbers, Americans are surrendering their right to vote as well.
And we wonder if right-to-farm laws will hold up.
Agriculture
Oregon
Primary elections
Governor's race
Voter turnout
