All The Power To The Top

It should come as no surprise that when Republicans gain power, as they have in Indiana's and New Hampshire's legislatures, they try to take away make it so that workers have even less say about their work conditions. We have a bad economy, and it's a golden opportunity for them to return to the Gilded Age.

Never mind that more than 285,000 residents are looking for work and that public schools are trying to minimize harm to students from a $300 million, two-year budget cut. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels and his allies in the state legislature have decided that their No. 1 priority this legislative session is to enact a so-called right-to-work law that research shows will lower the average worker’s wages by $1,500 a year.

A Victory

While the long-term effects of what's happening in Wisconsin are still up the air (and the lack of a strike in protest is absolutely shocking and deflating), Democrats in Indiana managed to completely defeat Republican efforts to not only further decimate unions but also gut education. Indiana hasn't gotten much press, but Democrats there did a hell of a good job of holding the line and forcing Republicans to capitulate. We don't see enough of that these days.

Bayh

Good riddance.

I know it's always better to have a Democrat than a Republican, but having a Democrat who constantly whines about how he hates Washington and who is disengaged in the process except to parachute in to make progressive change impossible is not exactly a great thing. Given the effectiveness of a filibuster-proof majority is a myth anyway, I don't see that losing Bayh is a huge problem. It should be a competitive seat, especially given the national Democrats blew up Dan Coats' entrance last week through some seriously excellent knee-capping.

10 Observations from the Rust Belt

I just returned from a week-long trip to rural Indiana. Some observations:

1) Everyone is unemployed and getting (understandably) impatient. Now that the economy is starting to turn the corner, announcing another unemployment benefit extension would be a smart gesture on the part of the Obama administration. There was, however, much celebrating over the success of the Cash-for-Clunkers program.

The reports from the media about Obama's numbers slipping makes sense with what I was hearing from people I talked to-- nearly all of whom voted for him. What the media doesn't report, however, is that as much as people are getting frustrated with Obama, they really, really fucking hate the Republicans. The Congressional speeches that the Southern Republicans like Mitch McConnell made about the domestic auto industry will make it a hard climb for Republicans in the Rust Belt.

2) Places that are green are really awesome. Amazing what water can do.

3) I didn't see a single non-Big Three car once I got outside of Marion County.

4) I saw the funniest use of scare quotes in Zionsville, IN-- a sign was nailed to a telephone pole that said:
"JESUS" is Coming!

5) Fried pork tenderloin sandwiches are outstanding.

6) My parents don't have any internet connection whatsoever; they live way out in the sticks and can't get it. It was nice and strange to be away.

7) An iPod full of NPR podcasts and episodes of Bill Maher's HBO show are great for flying.

8) I had the best Italian-American (or, more aptly, American-Italian) meal in Marion, IN at Rosie's Little Italy. The place has been there for over 50 years and not a damn thing has changed in the interior.

9) The small town of Royal Center has a weekly newspaper called the Royal Center Record. Each week, they publish little bits from editions past. Apparently, about a 100 years ago, some local townsfolk loaded up all the Italians and sent them away on a train. I would love to know more about this incident.

10) It is awesome to fly from California to Indiana through Colorado, knowing that I was in Blue States the whole time.

Historical Image of the Day

This week's photo series concerns the land. For an environmental historian, I have done a very poor job of using environmental images. This is largely because environmental history doesn't actually lend itself very well to this sort of series. Photos are important, but because we are talking about change to the land over time, really a series of photos are necessary to display that. I'm trying to alleviate that a bit this week.

Erosion and abandoned farm near Roanoke, Indiana, date unknown.

Historical Image of the Day

The transcendentalist community of New Harmony, Indiana, 1832-33

Forgotten Bastard Blogging: Earl Butz

The unfortunately but perhaps appropriately named Earl "Rusty" Butz was a true American bastard. Not only was he a complete asshole and racist, but he has contributed more than any single person in American history to the obesity epidemic in the United States today.

Butz was the Secretary of Agriculture under both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. I know you are surprised that an appointee of Nixon would make Bastard Blogging, but sometimes shocking things take place. Butz was born in beautiful Albion, Indiana in 1909. In 1932, Butz graduated from Purdue University, which by chance will be losing to the University of Oregon in a football game this fall. In 1935, he received a Ph.D. from the same institution in Agricultural Economics.

He quickly rose in the farm world. By 1948, Butz became vice-president of the American Agricultural Economics association and in 1954, President Eisenhower named him Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. He served there until 1957. He resigned that year and went back to Purdue, becoming a member of the school's administration. Occupying high posts in a university administration is a pretty good reason to make Bastard Blogging but that is not the reason we are discussing Butz today. He also served on the board of directors of several food companies, including Ralston Purina.

In 1971, Butz became Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon, a position he served in until 1976. This is where he really earned his bastard stripes. First, he was an incorrigible racist. He made fun of Pope Paul VI's Italian accent publicly, which was bad enough. But in 1976, he was on a flight to the Republican National Convention with Pat Boone and John Dean. Boone asked why black people didn't vote Republican (um, perhaps because the Republican party of 2008, er, 1976 was openly racist). Butz responded:

"the only thing coloreds are looking for in life are tight pussy, loose shoes, and a warm place to shit."

John Dean leaked this to Time magazine, which jumped on the story. Perhaps they also explained the loose shoes reference, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Anyway, Butz was forced to resign.

Classy, eh? I'll bet Nixon and Butz had a good ol'time telling racist jokes in the Oval Office.

Butz also served time for tax evasion in 1981, though all but 30 days of his 5 year sentence was suspended. Typical. You know, if we threw wealthy tax evading criminals into real prison for their offenses and made them serve their sentences, I bet we'd see a lot less tax evasion.

What I really hate Butz for is his role in spurring unregulated corn production. You might ask how corn production is worse than a racist joke. Certainly his racist joke is reprehensible, but it doesn't make him any different than just about anyone else in the Nixon administration. But his corn policies are a major reason for the food problems we have today.

In 1972, the Soviets were suffering from bad harvests. The US offered to sell the Soviets all the grain they needed. From a geopolitical perspective, this was a sensible move. It was a nice peace gesture to the Soviets and saved people from dying. It was also intended to undermine support for George McGovern in farm states that fall. This turned out to be an unnecessary worry.

According to the environmental writer Michael Pollan, the problem with the grain sell off is that it took place at the same time that bad weather undermined the nation's grain crops, sending food prices spiraling up and leading directly to the big inflation problems that began in 1973. Butz, a free market fanatic, responded by encouraging farmers to grow all the grain they could. He dismantled the New Deal program of price supports for farm goods and replaced them with direct payments to farmers. Butz believed that the New Deal was nothing more than socialism that hurt American farmers because its programs didn't allow them to grow all the crops they wanted. Nevermind that the New Deal agricultural programs worked pretty well before Butz' time and had helped end the continual farm crises that plagued the nation throughout its history. Butz was a true believer in the free market. Reality be damned.

The transition from ending price supports to paying farmers directly sounds minor, but as Pollan explains, what this did was end the price floor for corn. When corn prices got low, the government subsidized farmers to ensure they still would keep growing up. The American taxpayer picked up this cost. American consumers would have cheap food. Agribusiness could handle the cost of low-priced corn. Small farmers got squeezed pretty hard by this and were forced to keep growing corn (and then soybeans for the same reason) because it became the only cash crop to sell, despite the abysmal prices.

The effect of Butz's policy was to make it in farmers' interests to grow as much corn as possible. This led to an immense amoutn of corn. The food industry began inventing ways to use that corn. The most profitable and widespread was high fructose corn syrup. This was invented in 1980 and today makes up an enormous part of our diet. Corn syrup replaced sugar in many products, most notably soda. And when just changing from sugar to corn syrup wasn't enough to consume all that corn, the soda companies just made their products bigger. Americans liked that a lot. High fructose corn syrup found its way into many other foods as well, from hot dogs to ketchup to chips to bread. All of this corn-based sugar that Butz and his agribusiness friends forced us to eat has led to not only high levels of obseity but also the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes that we are now only coming to terms with.

Perhaps Earl Butz doesn't deserve all the blame for this transformation. Agribusiness would have found some other tool to make massive crop production and low prices happen anyway. But Butz did start the process, changing the way Americans farm, eat, and live. And all for the worse. Combine this with his racism, tax evasion, and just general bad nature, and you have yourself one fine example of an American bastard.

I consulted Michael Pollan's The Omnivore Dilemma and this Tom Philpott post from Grist, which goes into more detail on the changes to farming.

Wait a minute, where's MY name?

While we are on the topic of home towns, I called my mother (who lives in Indiana) today and she told me a great election story. Apparently, a Republican in Tippecanoe County wanted to vote in the Democratic primary. No harm, no foul-- Indiana has an open primary, so one can declare on the spot and choose which primary in which to participate. But you can't vote in both.

This particular Republican, in a delightful twist, was running for county reporter. By choosing the Democratic ballot, she was unable to vote for herself.

"...she realized she had only Democrats listed on her ballot once she put her voter card into the machine, but by the time she told election officials it was too late to change it."

Hilarious.

Historical Image of the Day

Albert Thayer, "Indiana Crazy House," 1880s

Historical Image of the Day

Dan Quayle