Monday, March 29, 2010

Weekly Comments: Will dives into milk and meat debate #596

March 28, 2010

COLUMBUS: Politics takes a back seat to basketball this week. You’re gonna be hearing a lot about "Hoosiers" (the movie), as Butler takes on the big boys in their hometown, Indianapolis. If Butler gets by Michigan State they will be playing either Duke or the West Virginia Mountaineers for the NCAA championship. I have my own favorite among these Final Four, but I’ll save it till next week. Don’t want to influence your picks in the office pool.

Friday I was in Michigan State territory speaking to young dairy farmers in Lansing. These milk producers survived a tough year and are hanging on. They are counting on us to drink more milk and order extra cheese on our pizzas and hamburgers.

Their governor is no help. She proclaimed a No Meat Saturday, and it riled the farmers so much they turned around and declared the same Saturday as Michigan Meat Day. You might remember a few months ago Michigan capitulated to Wayne Pacelle of the mis-named Humane Society of the U.S. and put him in charge of farm animal care. He’s a vegetarian who wants to rid the whole country of meat.

The farmers won that Meat Battle. Michigan set a record for the most meat eaten in one day. You may wonder, why would dairy farmers be upset; they still have Kellogg’s Corn Flakes to pour milk on. Well, if the HSUS succeeds in banning meat, the dairy farmers will have as much trouble getting rid of old Holsteins as we do old horses.

I just read that a lot of farmers do not have health insurance, so you may wonder where they stand on this new health care law. They’re pretty independent and frugal, and if they get sick they go to the doctor and just pay for the visit and any prescriptions. And if they get really sick and need an operation, they call their veterinarian.

Not really. But I did say, in 1927, that "the best doctor in the world is the Veterinarian. He can’t ask his patients what is the matter. He’s got to just know."

President Obama took a quick trip to Afghanistan to compliment our troops. They have a tough job and need all the support we can give them. And with the continuing arguments over the health care bill, he figured he was just as safe in Kabul as in Washington.

Historic quote from Will Rogers:

"A farmer at Claremore named Morris Haas hid $500 in bills in a barrel of bran and a cow ate it up. He has just been able to get $18 of it back, up to now." DT #1740, Feb. 21, 1932


Randall Reeder
Will Rogers Today http://willrogerstoday.com
614-477-0439 willrogers@aol.com
Need a Speaker? Hurry up and hire me before I die... again.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Weekly Comments: Will reports from Washington: economy booming #594

March 14, 2010

COLUMBUS: If you want to see a city on the move, go to Washington. Buildings are being built and renovated. Cars and buses pack the streets. No foreclosure signs, and seldom a vacant store. When the President looks up Pennsylvania Avenue all he sees is a booming economy. No wonder he thinks his stimulus plan is working.

Can’t be much unemployment. Around the Capitol it’s just crawling with traffic cops and security folks. If you can blow a whistle and say, "No, you can’t go there," (in English), they’ll probably hire you. At the Department of Agriculture they checked visiting farmers to be sure they weren’t trying to sneak in a pitchfork or ax handle, even if they was wearing a 3-piece suit.

I didn’t get into the Capitol. They closed it on Wednesday for a big ceremony honoring civilian women pilots from World War II. I read in the newspaper that some of the men back then did not believe a woman could fly one of those Army airplanes. A plane would land, a woman would climb down out of it, and the guy on the ground would ask her, "Where’s the pilot?" Shucks, I could have told them about plenty of fine aviatrixes way before 1940, like Amelia Earhart. The women used to have air races, called them Power Puff Derbies.

An Ohio farmer got excited when he came across an old newspaper article where Nancy Pelosi said she wanted to "drain the swamp." See, there is millions of acres of farm land in Ohio and other states that floods about every spring and stays wet. The government has said it should be called a "wetland" and leave it alone. So he thought Speaker Pelosi had changed her mind and would let farmers put in more ditches and tile. But she was only talking about cleaning up Congress, mainly Republicans. She was surprised to find a few Democrats mired down in the mud, too.

Almost a hundred of us Ohio Farm Bureau members got to meet in the Longworth House Office Building (named for Nick Longworth, Speaker from 1926-31) with Mike Pence of Indiana and several Ohio Congressmen including Boehner, Tiberi, Jordan, Austria and Marcy Kaptur.

John Boehner is the loyal opposition to the Democrats and Speaker Pelosi. He does not think the Health Care bill will pass. "The minute the Democrats can round up a majority for it, she will hold a vote. She’s been trying since Christmas, and is still short." On the Estate Tax bill, Boehner says they will compromise and pass it. But Congressman Tiberi says he doesn’t think Congress can make it retroactive to January 1. "How can we tell a family that lost Grandpa in February, when the tax was zero, that we’ve changed our minds and now we want 45 percent?"

Social Security payments are now borrowed from China. They used to come from payments by younger American workers, but those are short this year and they’ll have to borrow $29 Billion. A fellow who has been working for forty years is going to be thrilled to learn that all his Social Security money has been squandered and now he has to depend on the generosity of China and India to loan us enough to cover him. Social Security was started in 1935 by Franklin Roosevelt, and since about 1970 it was run by Bernie Madoff.

Personally, I think the best security for old age is to be nice to your grandchildren.

Historic quotes from Will Rogers:

"Retroactive. I like to use that word. I just learned it. Retroactive. It means that you can go back and get something that you forgot to get at the time. In other words they can turn around and go back and run over you after missing you the first time." Radio, May 26, 1935


Randall Reeder
Will Rogers Today http://willrogerstoday.com
614-477-0439 willrogers@aol.com
Need a Speaker? Hurry up and hire me before I die... again.