MOMocrats

The 2008 Farm Bill: Food & Fuel

I'm no policy analyst, but I do eat and I try to give my child as many organic foods as we can afford, starting with organic milk (at $3.19 $3.49 $3.99!! a half gallon). For a lot of moms, organic milk is the "gateway drug", so to speak, that leads to more organic food in the overall family diet.

And I try to keep up with all the movements that have made me more politically aware about food, and eating: slow food, the organic food movement, locavores/eating locally (aka the 100-mile diet). It's our family's way of trying to eat more nutritiously, support local farmers, reward the use of fertilizers and insect control by means other than dangerous pesticides, and reduce the carbon footprint (miles traveled, for one) of the way our food gets produced.

Where individual consumer habits intersect with policy is the government's USDA Farm Bill (final version of the bill posted here, a summary of commentary here).

Dreams of a Mother: Have Something to Eat

What I dream for the world is that we all eat a good meal, three times a day, with two small snacks. By good I mean nutritious and tasty. By all, I mean ALL. Every last person.

Being hungry is a primal worry. If anxiety had a sound, it would be the gurgle of stomach juices rumbling in an empty stomach. Every new mama has "Failure to Thrive" engraved on her heart as Fear About Your Infant #1. When a baby loses weight instead of gaining it. When you can see the ribs on a toddler. When a kid is peckish. Refuses to eat or has problems eating or gaining weight. When your mama looks at you and clucks, "You're looking thin. Are you eating well?", no matter how old you are. Invariably you'll hear or perhaps you've said, "Here, have another helping."

Bush threatens to veto foreclosure bill

In the face of a veto, the House passed a housing aid bill aimed at helping 500,000 borrowers over five years.  Bush has threatened to veto the bill and the White House calls it a burdensome bailout that would open taxpayers to inappropriate risk.

We can certainly all see the humor in that statement, given all the risk this Administration has subjected America to in the last seven years, but I digress.

I had the opportunity to participate in a town meeting this week where constituents came and listened to public/private folks speak about the foreclosure crisis.  It would have been impossible not to notice that nearly all the attendees were people of color, ranging from grandmothers to babies and all ages in between.  These folks were scared; scared of what's happening to their neighborhoods, of the rise in vandalism and crime, of making ends meet and about being on the brink.  These hard working decent community members were looking to their leaders for support, for someone to tell them it's going to be okay.  And while the mood was relatively positive, no one could make those assurances. No one could tell folks exactly how they could survive what is happening and what is yet to come. When entire cities are filing for bankruptcy and entire states are in crisis we must wonder: how far can this go? 

So the attendees went home to their neighborhoods, with houses next door that have boards on the windows, to rising gas and food costs and they will continue to hope like we all continue to hope that someone will figure out a way to get us through.  And I for one am exhausted at my relentless preoccupation in looking for someone who can actually lead our country through.

Jen also preoccupies herself over at one plus two.

Hannah Montana and the Politics of Desensitizing America

Last week, while the Momocrats were here celebrating our no small victory of getting a substantive blog-terview with Senator Obama, the rest of the interwebs were a twitter with the latest incident of inappropriate celebehavior, namely Miley Cyrus disrobing for Annie Lebowitz in Vanity Fair.

Now, I’m as avid a participant (though closeted, must maintain my brainy Clark Kent disguise) in the celeb-culture as the next gal. Though I would not dream of filling my home or my daily commute with any of the dozens of celeb-rags that cover newsstands in techni-colored rainbow splendor, let’s face it, there’s little as satisfying as doing the treadmill or the elliptical while voraciously snarfing down a Star or an Ok! or even a Life & Style (you can pretend to workout, and get some culture too!) So I know about Hannah Montana and Heidi Montag (except for why she’s famous?) and Gossip Girls and of course Ms. Brittney.

So when the Miley Cyrus brouhaha erupted, I was tempted to dismiss it with the usual sleight of hand that I reserve for news that isn’t news. But then this most appalling thought stopped me short: how could I, a mother of two girls, be so non-plussed about a 15 year old “role model” cavorting half-naked in a theoretically “reputable” general interest magazine? When did I become so desensitized that it no longer phased me that a girl that I could imagine my own daughters emulating was basically set up to seduce the entire world with her tousled hair, lacquered lips and bedroom eyes?

Because every day, in this life we lead, our values are getting chipped away, one little nick at a time, by those who profit by doing so.

Tax Credits & Gas Holidays & Stimulus Checks -- Oh My!

Barack Obama says the way to help out the average American is with tax cuts and credits.

Hillary Clinton says we should have a happy gasoline tax holiday this summer!

Don't even get me started on the "stimulus" package.

All the presidential candidates, including John McCain, want us to believe that they're just like us -- regular folks who have to worry about how to afford filling up the tank and whether clipping coupons makes sense. 

Yup, just ordinary people.

They all want us to believe they understand our budgets and our lives, but none of them really do.  When was the last time any of them had to stop by the Giant with just a $5 bill in their wallet and realize they couldn't afford bread AND milk?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm glad my parents are going to be getting a few hundred dollars from the feds.  But they're not going to be taking advantage of all the deals egging consumers on to spend their checks on big screen TVs. 

My mom and dad will be buying groceries for the Memorial Day picnic they're having.  I'm not talking anything fancy -- hot dogs, BBQ and potato salad will pretty much be it.

I'm going to use an unpopular word here -- they don't get it, because they are all elite.

Go Read It: Clinton and McCain's Gas Tax "Vacation"

Not sure what to think about the summer vacation from the 18.4 cent federal excise tax on gasoline proposed by both Senator McCain and Senator Clinton? (It's a bandwagon you won't find Senator Obama riding.)

Economist Thomas Friedman weighs in. The title of his op-ed piece? "Dumb As We Wanna Be." A notable quote: "This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering..."

I get the strange sensation he doesn't like the idea, what about you?

ETA: It was hard to find any other economist or policy maker who thought the gas tax holiday was a good idea either, as Huffington Post's Sam Stein discovered.

Cynematic has used her preschool son's scooter as a mode of transportation around her neighborhood. You know, you stand on it and kick with the other foot?

She blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.

Go Read It: Hillary's "Obliterate Iran" Remark and the Overseas Response

Maybe the one big piece of news that came out of the otherwise content-free ABC News debate was Clinton's stance on the "what-if?" situation where Iran uses nuclear arms to attack Israel. Clinton spoke about maintaining an "umbrella of deterrence" and that the U.S., under her lead, would "obliterate Iran"--with nuclear weapons, if need be--to protect our ally Israel.

It wasn't a mistake, she said it again when interviewed a few days later.

Contrast this with Governor Bill Richardson's more reasoned comments on Iran:

Clinton's remark disappeared into the ether, we were all so rightly annoyed at the overall vapidity of George Stuffin'envelopes and Chuck Gibson's moderation of that so-called debate.

But the international press certainly sat up and noticed--go read it here.

A Tiny Glimmer of Hope on Family Leave

As I noted in a previous post, the U.S. is pretty much at the bottom of heap when it comes to family leave policies.

But today, the U.S. House of Representatives provided a tiny glimmer of hope. Or, well, the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia (what a mouthful!) did.

The subcommittee voted 7-3 to to approve a bill (H.R. 5781) that would give federal workers four weeks of paid leave. Originally the bill called for eight weeks paid leave but it was amended down during the subcommittee mark-up.  The three who voted nay were Darrell Issa (R-CA-49th), Jim Jordan (R-OH-4th), and Kenny Marchant (R-TX-24th).

Yes, I know how sad it is that I'm excited over four measly weeks of paid leave that would only apply to federal workers. But you have to start someplace, right?   

Barack Obama -- It's Not a Question of Being Elite, It's About Understanding

Barack Obama continues to be under attack for comments he made that many have called elitist:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," ...  "And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Some have spoken out saying there was nothing "elite" about his remarks.   

Maybe "elite" was the wrong word.    Elite or not, his comments weren't very politic, especially if he was hoping to win over more voters in the Keystone state. So on the heels of those remarks, I wanted have a chat with Barack Obama and his campaign staff about this:

My Pennsylvania parents found your comments  condescending.

Clinton Taxes, the Boom that Wasn’t and Government Reconsidered

Three seemingly disparate topics, but let’s see if I can crescendo them into one, giant yalp for a revival of government for the people.

The Boom that Wasn’t is the title of an article published in the New York Times this week. It and a related article by the Pew Research Center on the demographic trends of the middle class reiterates what many of us suspect and some of us are experiencing first hand, that while Americans may numerically be seeing positive economic progress, what they are actually experiencing is relative economic decline. Here are some figures from the Times article:

In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less - about $60,500.

This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records. In every other expansion since World War II, the buying power of most American families grew while the economy did.

Real median family income more than doubled from the late 1940s to the late ’70s. It has risen less than 25 percent in the three decades since. Statistics like these are now so familiar as to be almost numbing. But the larger point is still crucial: the modern American economy distributes the fruits of its growth to a relatively narrow slice of the population. We don’t need another decade of evidence to feel confident about that conclusion.

Numbing indeed.