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).

gas tax holiday: let's get our heads out of our asses

There's been much hoopla in recent weeks over McCain's gas tax holiday.  Clinton supported it, Obama ridiculed it and yet folks are still divided.  At the end of the day an average American might save about $30 this summer.  That savings won't mean a lot to the middle class, and for the lower class, chances are they can't afford the gas they'd need to consume in order to maximize their "holiday". 

But the real question is how long will we allow ourselves to be pandered to?  How desperate are we for a glimmer of hope that we jump at the first UFO sighting in the sky?  I mean, some people even say it's a good political move but not a smart policy one and that just makes me feel more insulted.  A good political move?  Pandering? About buying oil?

We all know we need to decrease our dependence on oil.  Hell, even Bush knows it and if he knows it, trust me, we all know it so why, in the face of raging cyclones and devastating earthquakes are the candidates not making the environment front and center of each of their campaigns?

Because we aren't asking them to.  Even on MOMocrats, if you look at the poll to your right you'll see how less concerned folks are about the environment over the economy.  But isn't that putting cart before the horse (ha, horsepowered carts!) because there is NO economy without our planet.  There is nothing. But there are also no quick fixes there, no incentives to drive votes.

And that's a shame on all of us. 

Dreams of a Mother: Preserving the Green and Blue Planet

(Photo from Planet Ark, an excellent source of information about recycling and recycling education programs. This image show how far one recycled carton of milk or juice can go...instead of to a landfill.)

I dream of a clean earth, litter-free, zero-waste.

I dream of a culture committed to one extra second of thought and effort to reuse or recycle, instead of a culture that accepts trash because it's easier. And cheaper.

I dream of a little girl with light brown hair growing up on a clean planet that is healthy, and that will be good for her and her children.

I dream of a society in which we all learn a lesson from that little girl with light brown hair, because she's my daughter and she loves the earth, its flora and fauna, and she wants to take precious careful care of it, she says. I dream that her dreams will only grow, and not shatter and become disillusioned because people don't want to have to think about recycling.

My daughter is the master of reclaimed materials for art. This weekend she salvaged a gum case and turned it into a bead sorter. Seriously. The little plastic tray that once held pieces of gum is perfect for sorting little objects like beads. She loves to look at things and think, "What else can they be?"

It hurts her mind to think of burying trash in the ground. She's part of the generation who gives "throwing it away" a second thought, automatically. I love to see it.

At the park last week she picked up some litter---a plastic bag, some paper, those plastic rings that link drink cans together. It hurts her heart to think that people would be so careless as to leave litter on the ground, mostly because it could hurt an animal. She's a natural born naturalist, that one.

Later, she asked me, "Why do people just throw stuff on the ground, or in the trash, if they could reuse it, Mom?"

How can I possibly explain? And yet...I had to try.

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."

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.

All Politics ARE Local

I used to not believe the phrase about politics always being local, and I didn't understand why presidential candidates pounded the pavement in small towns across the country, but after becoming involved in local government and community work as well as state, national and a bit of international, I realize how much translates at all levels.

Take the environment, for example - it's one of the best - I was at an Emerge event last night for South Bay and Peninsula community Democratic women leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a few of us were discussing the local environmental activities in Menlo Park and Atherton. A (male) candidate for the California Assembly, Paul Fong, was part of this discussion and since he's endorsed by the Sierra Club and running as the environmental (and educational) candidate, I asked him what he thought about what was going on at the state level and he said the current bill under discussion is "realistic." It concerns me that we still may not doing enough to keep the polar ice caps from melting, but we all agreed that if we don't start doing something at the city and state level, we'll never accomplish what we need to do nationally and internationally.

MOMocrats WTF of the Day: Drugs in Our Drinking Water

So just when I thought I was doing the right thing by not buying as much bottled water and going back to the tap,  I hear this --

There are prescription drugs of all kinds in out water supplies across the country.

Antibiotics, anti-depressants, sex hormones.

Nice, huh?

Supposedly there's nothing to worry about because the "experts" claim the amounts are so small.

Doesn't that beg the question of what they're doing there in the first place?  It's supposedly a "natural" process, if you catch my drift.  But that doesn't make much sense to me.

The EPA says it's taking the news "very seriously."

Oh, I'll sleep so much better now knowing the government that allowed tainted Chinese drugs and lead-coated toys into the country is on the job.  I'm sure the government that let potentially tainted meat to be served in school lunches across the country won't drop the ball on this one.

I've been seriously thinking about cutting back on my wine consumption, but now I guess I'll have to buy my wine by the case and give up water.  Or go back to hurting the environment with my empty Evian bottles.

When Joanne is done pouring her next glass of Valpolicella, you can find her over at PunditMom.

Where's the Beef?

My family is (sorta) a beef lovin’ family.  My husband LURVES himself some beef.  I’m more of a pork-gal, but I definitely get burger cravings.  My girls?  Eh, not so much.  In fact, they don’t really like meat at all, which is ok because we live on a pan-asian diet which includes lots of soy-protein.

But we have, more or less, been on a beef boycott since 2004.  Entirely at the direction of my husband, even though he LURVES his beef.  Why?  Because he’s seriously pissed at the USDA for the crap they pulled the last time (in 2004) they faced a beef recall based on the presence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or the mad cow disease, in one American cow.

When the US found that one mad cow back in nought four, one of the first things that happened was that Japan (at that time the largest importer of U.S. beef) immediately put a ban on all beef imports from the United States.  Now, I don’t know if you know Japan, but I know Japan, and the Japanese seriously lurve themselves some beef.  And I ain’t talkin’ ground beef, but the good stuff.  You know the stuff that have fancy European names like mignon or angus, or are raised on beer like Kobe.  The stuff that is priced by the oz and not the lb.

Something Everyone Should Watch

This is perhaps one of the most creative, hilarious, pointed videos I've ever seen.  Great message for all the candidates.  Don't ask, just watch.

John Edwards has made his position on this clear.

--Glennia