Waving My Tweak Flag High

Naissance de "Sympathy for the devil " (one+one... by cinocheproduction

[ed. Fascinating video by Jean-Luc Godard documenting the creative process behind the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil. If you find this article interesting be sure to read the comments section, too.]

In my years of writing and performing songs I’ve come to realize that small, even accidental, lyric changes can greatly improve (or screw up) a song. Sometimes I notice it in my own songs; an accident of vocal delivery on stage one night might turn a light bulb on and then remain an integral part of a song forever, leaving me to lament that my officially released album recording is weaker than the currently performed version.

This might be because of a mere couple words’ difference. Sometimes I notice it in other artists’ work when hearing an unearthed early demo version of a well-known song, or a slightly different live performance. Some tweaks are noticeable only to obsessives, but other tweaks, equally small in terms of how many words are changed, can become legendary. Woody Guthrie wrote a song in 1940 with the recurring tag line, “God blessed America for me,” and it sat ignored in his pile of unused songs for years. But with those few words changed to “This land was made for you and me,” the entire song became part of the bedrock of 20th-century songwriting.

Getting an insight into this process is part of why it’s a joy to see a songwriter’s original lyric sheet, like Bob Dylan’s 1965 original typed page of lyrics for “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” which became widely accessible to public view when it was acquired by Christie’s for an auction in 2011 (it was valued at more than $50,000, but was ultimately removed from the sale). All of Dylan’s ballpoint pen corrections and additions surely made it a cooler, more valuable auction piece than if it had just burst from his forehead as a complete, finished work. Why? Because you are not just getting his handwriting, you are getting a map of the inner workings of the famously elusive Dylan’s mind at a specific moment in time. (...)

Sometimes small lyric changes are due to practical circumstance, but end up meaning more than perhaps intended. On June 4, 1968, for example, the Rolling Stones entered Olympic Studios in London to begin recording “Sympathy For the Devil,” which at that time included the lyric “I shouted out ‘Who killed Kennedy?’/when after all, it was you and me.” But within 24 hours Robert Kennedy too had been murdered, and the recorded lyric had to be changed to the plural, “Who killed the Kennedys?”

The original line can be seen as asking a specific, non-rhetorical question, which we just happen to still be asking: Who did kill John Kennedy? However, because Robert Kennedy’s killer was undeniably Sirhan Sirhan, the revised line, “Who killed the Kennedys?” still asks “who,” but in the new context that “who” seems to really ask “Why?” — no longer merely a police procedural question about facts but a more deeply resonant question about human nature: Why do such assassinations happen? It can be argued that the line now more clearly questions the general human spirit — not just the specific spirit of whoever shot J.F.K.

by Jeffrey Lewis, NY Times |  Read more:
Video: Jean-Luc Godard

Ryan Adams

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Winslow Homer: Coconut Palms, Key West (1886) Watercolor
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Massimo Nota
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The Cheapest, Happiest Company in the World

Joe Carcello has a great job. The 59-year-old has an annual salary of $52,700, gets five weeks of vacation a year, and is looking forward to retiring on the sizable nest egg in his 401(k), which his employer augments with matching funds. After 26 years at his company, he’s not worried about layoffs. In 2009, as the recession deepened, his bosses handed out raises. “I’m just grateful to come here to work every day,” he says.

This wouldn’t be remarkable except that Carcello works in retail, one of the stingiest industries in America, with some of the most dissatisfied workers. On May 29, Wal-Mart Stores employees in Miami, Boston, and the San Francisco Bay Area began a weeklong strike. (A Walmart spokesman told MSNBC the strike was a “publicity stunt.”) Workers at an Amazon.com fulfillment center in Leipzig, Germany, also recently held strikes to demand higher pay and better benefits. (An Amazon spokesman says its employees earn more than the average warehouse worker.) In its 30-year history, Carcello’s employer, Costco, has never had significant labor troubles.

CEO Craig Jelinek

Costco Wholesale, the second-largest retailer in the U.S. behind Walmart, is an anomaly in an age marked by turmoil and downsizing. Known for its $55-a-year membership fee and its massive, austere warehouses stocked floor to ceiling with indulgent portions of everything from tilapia to toilet paper, Costco has thrived over the last five years. While competitors lost customers to the Internet and weathered a wave of investor pessimism, Costco’s sales have grown 39 percent and its stock price has doubled since 2009. The hot streak continued through last year’s retirement of widely admired co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jim Sinegal. The share price is up 30 percent under the leadership of its new, plain-spoken CEO, Craig Jelinek.

Despite the sagging economy and challenges to the industry, Costco pays its hourly workers an average of $20.89 an hour, not including overtime (vs. the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour). By comparison, Walmart said its average wage for full-time employees in the U.S. is $12.67 an hour, according to a letter it sent in April to activist Ralph Nader. Eighty-eight percent of Costco employees have company-sponsored health insurance; Walmart says that “more than half” of its do. Costco workers with coverage pay premiums that amount to less than 10 percent of the overall cost of their plans. It treats its employees well in the belief that a happier work environment will result in a more profitable company. “I just think people need to make a living wage with health benefits,” says Jelinek. “It also puts more money back into the economy and creates a healthier country. It’s really that simple.” (...)

Like his predecessor, Jelinek, 59, preaches simplicity, and he has a propensity for aphorisms ending with “good things will happen to you.” “This isn’t Harvard grad stuff,” he says. “We sell quality stuff at the best possible price. If you treat consumers with respect and treat employees with respect, good things are going to happen to you.” He vows to continue Sinegal’s legacy and doesn’t seem to mind a widespread characterization of himself as a “Jim clone.” “We don’t want to be casualties like some of these other big retailers, like the Sears of the world and Kmart and Circuit City. We are in for the long haul,” he says.

by Brad Stone, Bloomberg Businessweek |  Read more:

Image: Ryan Lowry

The Most Dangerous Court in America

While journalists and academics pay much attention to the Supreme Court and “the Nine,” the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered by some to be the second most important U.S. court, often goes ignored. The D.C. Circuit is the training ground for the Supreme Court and the place where much of the nation’s regulatory framework is decided. In its current form, it is one the most dangerous courts in the land.

Much has been written recently about the four vacant seats (out of eleven) on the D.C. Circuit and the Republican filibuster on all of Obama’s nominations to the court. However, most writers have followed Obama’s lead in treating the vacancies as creating a problem of “timely access to justice,” Democrats have become so accustomed to Republican efforts to weaken legislation or federal agencies through the filibuster of key personnel that they are unable to notice when something different is happening. As the D.C. Circuit’s current constitution and body of decisions show, Republicans have effectively transformed the court, which now provides a second shot for Republicans to overturn and amend legislation and regulations, into an alternate route to defeat government regulations. What we’re witnessing is a spectacular power grab by conservative legislators, a twenty-first-century version of Marbury v. Madison in slow motion.

Some have argued that the D.C. Circuit’s character is different as a matter of historical accident—lawyers simply treat it as the proper venue for challenging (or supporting) executive power. But there are important structural qualities that distinguish it from other federal courts. For one, it is among the most politicized of the already-partisan federal courts; the D.C. Circuit is often regarded as a stepping stone for the Supreme Court, with four of the nine current justices having served there. Yet the D.C. Circuit is not just a springboard to the big leagues. It is also accorded a special privilege that other circuits are not: it has jurisdiction over any case involving a federal agency. This means that if a company is fined by the EPA in San Francisco, for example, it can choose to appeal its case in California or with the D.C. Circuit. In the term ending in 2012, over 40 percent of the D.C. Circuit’s cases involved a federal agency, compared to less than 14 percent for the remaining circuits. As a result, the D.C. Circuit has a disproportionate influence on federal regulatory power. Whether a regulation concerns banking institutions (through the Securities and Exchange Commission), labor relations (through the National Labor Relations Board), power and utility companies (through the Department of Energy), the D.C. Circuit has a hand in shaping it. This undeniable fact should cause concern for anyone who still be believes in a traditional separation of powers.

On its face, the D.C. Circuit, which hears cases in three-judge panels, appears roughly split between four Republicans and three Democrats, with four vacancies. However, this simple count ignores a key feature of the federal judiciary: senior judgeships. Many judges do not retire, but instead choose senior status, which makes their seat officially vacant but places them on part-time work.

On the D.C. Circuit, there are six senior judges, which is almost the number of active judges, with five having been appointed by Republicans. In all the cases decided in 2013, almost 70 percent of the three-judge panels included at least one senior judge. As a result, almost 80 percent of the panels in 2013 were composed of exclusively or a majority of Republicans.

by Moshe Z. Marvit, Dissent |  Read more:

Image: Wikimedia Commons, 2008

The Future of Armani

It was Giorgio Armani's obsession with health that led to his brush with death. For 10 days in May 2009, Armani, one of the most influential fashion designers and entrepreneurs of our time, lay in a hospital bed with what he describes as "a very serious" case of hepatitis. The cause of his illness wasn't the stress that comes from juggling a global empire of clothes, accessories, furniture, cosmetics and real estate. It was the supplements. Then 75 years old, he was drinking them every morning in a small glass as he hit the gym. "My doctor told me: Get rid of all this shit you're drinking," Armani recalls.

Armani won't say exactly what he was taking, only that the substance poisoned his liver. Why he was taking it, however, is clear: The house Armani has built is a reflection of himself—the trim, toned, tanned and T-shirted figure that is synonymous with the brand—and he wants to secure a long life for both.

Few people in the fashion world are as entwined with their brands. In most companies, a creative director designs and an executive manages. Armani does both. Many important designers, including Karl Lagerfeld and Marc Jacobs, work under contract for brands that aren't their own. Armani hasn't designed for anyone else in more than 30 years. Most houses are owned by large conglomerates, and for those that still belong to their founding families, ownership is usually shared. Armani owns 100 percent of Giorgio Armani SpA.

Armani takes full responsibility, and credit, for anything that bears his name. At a meeting last year about a new Armani-branded hotel in Marrakech—hotels are the designer's latest big venture—Armani sparred with the architect Jean-Michel Gathy over the layout of the rooms. "This bathroom is too big. It's a bathroom with a house on the side," Armani said in French. "I tell you this is a beautiful room. You can walk around naked, and no one will see you," insisted Gathy. "You don't need to walk around naked every day," snapped Armani. "This is too structured, too busy. I want simplicity, simplicity." The layout has since been changed.

Gathy says that when he was negotiating his contract to design the hotel, Armani did not want him to be publicly recognized as the architect. Gathy, who has designed many luxury hotels worldwide, had to persist for several months before Armani backed down. (Armani did not comment on Gathy's contract.) "He's a control freak," says Gathy. "But that's what it's like to work with Armani. He's the old man, the icon, the alpha male in the room. And that's no problem."

The Armani way has bred huge success. The Italian designer revolutionized the wardrobes of professional women in the 1980s, taking them out of floral skirts and putting them into chic, deconstructed pantsuits in elegant neutral colors. He unleashed the marketing power of Hollywood and introduced high fashion to the red carpet. His company's unified direction and financial heft—it had $800 million in cash on its books as of 2010—have allowed it to remain independent, even as much of the world's fashion business has coalesced into the hands of two large French corporations. People trained at Armani are among the best recruits in the fashion business, according to executives at rival firms. More than $8 billion worth of Armani products was sold around the world in 2010. He is worth $7.2 billion, according to Forbes, and owns nine homes and two yachts.

"Giorgio is one of the few designers in the world who has always understood consumers," says Gabriella Forte, a consultant for Dolce & Gabbana who was a top executive at Armani for nearly 20 years. "His brand isn't only about fashion; it's bigger than that."

by Allasandra Galloni, WSJ |  Read more:

Images: Paul Wetherell

Dave Matthews, Tim Reynolds

Seasteading

The Seasteading Institute was founded in 2008 by PayPal founder Peter Thiel and Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer best known for being Milton Friedman’s grandson. Although both men are outspoken libertarians, the nonprofit institute insists that it isn’t politically motivated. It claims to want more space for political experimentation—and the beauty of aquatic governance experiments is that they’re free to fail on their own merits. “If we can solve the engineering challenges of Seasteading, two-thirds of the Earth’s surface becomes open for these political start-ups,” explains Friedman, a self-styled cult leader who’s known to the community as just Patri. The Seasteaders have chosen as their motto “Let a Thousand Nations Bloom’—an apparent spin on “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom,” a Maoist policy which encouraged dissidents to speak out and then used their views as a pretext to jail them.

The mantra was repeated many times during the Seasteading Institute’s third annual conference, which took place one week before Ephemerisle in the basement of the San Francisco Grand Meridien Hotel. The Institute hasn’t been officially affiliated with Ephemerisle since 2009, but a number of attendees, many of them Seasteading Institute staffers, had plans to go to the festival and encouraged me to come party with them. A few older donors to the Seasteading cause planned to make appearances at Ephemerisle, expecting to look out of place in the festival’s trippy, offbeat surroundings. There was a rumor that Peter Thiel would go, too, but no one could confirm it.

The crowd at the conference was disproportionately white, male (I counted maybe ten women in the room) and wealthy (tickets started at $715), and the vast majority of attendees needed no prompting to profess their tax-hating libertarian views just minutes into a conversation. The junket also brought together a number of academics, who, I later learned, had been courted by the Seasteading Institute because their expertise—legal, environmental, or technical—happened to contribute to the greater Seasteading project. The experts had no plans to visit Ephemerisle; in fact, the movement’s radical, libertine side seemed to elude them completely.

Like Ephemerisle, the tenor of the conference was scrappy, defiant, and idealistic. The event was staffed by a group of a dozen Seasteading Institute “ambassadors,” who proselytize for the cause all over the world, and talks ranged from the highly speculative—“Seasteading for Medical Tourism,” “The Economic Viability of Large Floating Structures”—to the practical: “Seastead Security,” for instance, outlined how water cannons and noise machines can protect the cities from pirates and government agents. A panel of legal experts offered a dense explanation of the legal aspects of Seasteading, which is theoretically possible since no one nation has jurisdiction over the high seas. Still, as one lawyer on the panel pointed out, there’s no way of knowing how existing countries will react to this assault on their dignity. The Seasteaders I spoke to were undeterred by the possibility of a seastead shutting down at the hands of a belligerent country or the international community. One Institute “ambassador” who spoke of Patri Friedman in hushed, reverent tones, told me she was confident that the movement was on the right side of history, and that they would be vindicated in the end.

A Costa Rican professor of agricultural engineering named Ricardo Radulovich gave one of the session’s most impassioned talks, about how terrestrial crops like tomatoes could thrive at sea and how algae could provide a sustainable energy alternative to fossil fuels. I met Radulovich, a dapper, ponytailed man in his fifties, over breakfast on the first day of the conference. After telling me about his passion for seaweed, Radulovich pulled a small vial of dried algae from his pocket and opened it on the table. Between bites of his Continental breakfast, he assured me that the powder, which smelled like fish food, would someday “feed the world.” He described his involvement in Seasteading as a conversion: “I couldn’t care less about land anymore. I was able to transcend land. It is too limited for the solutions we need.”

by Atossa Abrahamian, N+1 |  Read more:

Image: Ephemerisle, 2009. Photo by Liz Henry via flickr.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

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Brett Amory Study #15
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Government Phone Surveillance for Dummies

[ed. See also, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans]

And, this from Amy Davidson with the New Yorker:

As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says…

And, from Megan Garber at The Atlantic:

How is the Obama Administration explaining and trying to justify all this?

This way, according to talking points sent to Marc Ambinder:

* On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the Government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls. The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call. 

* Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States. 

* As we have publicly stated before, all three branches of government are involved in reviewing and authorizing intelligence collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Congress passed that act and is regularly and fully briefed on how it is used, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizes such collection.

So this would seem to be a continuation of Bush-era surveillance policies.

Yes. And it might well be an extension of those policies.

Okay, but ... seriously, how is this not a violation of the Fourth Amendment?

So the Fourth Amendment generally requires that the government obtain a warrant when it's seeking private information about individual citizens. And the warrant, in turn, should be granted based on probable cause. There's a slight exception to that broad approach, though. Many Supreme Court rulings have held that you don't have a reasonable to privacy when it comes, specifically, to information you share with a third party.

And the courts have now applied that standard to other areas. Which generally makes sense, except for one substantial tension. As David Cole, a Georgetown law professor who focuses on national security and constitutional law, told me: "Basically, everything you do now shares information with a third party." The numbers you dial on the phone, the amount of time you spend on the phone, the location from which you make a phone call -- all of that, because of how our technologies and businesses are structured, is de facto shared with the third party that is your phone company.

And the rub, as Cole explains it, is that the Fourth Amendment doesn't limit the government's ability to obtain any of that third-party information. Bank records, credit card records, Internet searches: none of that, on its own, has protection under the Constitution.

How is it that a FISA court -- a court established under the auspices of the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" -- is authorizing the government to monitor metadata from domestic calls?

This is where things get dicier. FISA, which was adopted in 1978 and has been amended several times since then, permits the U.S. government to obtain records that are related to a target of a foreign intelligence investigation. While "foreign" can be defined fairly broadly, it's notable -- and legally questionable -- that the FISA court order, in this case, includes purely domestic surveillance.

Furthermore, FISA, as it's been widely understood, has allowed governments to gather third-party information in response to investigations into individuals'actions. It's unclear in this case how that translates, legally, to the kind of collective surveillance the NSA seems to be engaged in.

I keep reading about the PATRIOT Act. How does that fit into all this?

A section of the PATRIOT Act -- section 215, to be precise -- is what's ultimately guiding the legal affordances here, at least as the Administration is interpreting them. (You may know the section as the "library records" provision, named that way because of the breadth of personal information that can be investigated under its auspices.) Section 215, following the terror attacks of September 11, expanded the powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (the court that, in this case, issued the Verizon order). It established a process, through that court, for compelling businesses to turn over records that may be relevant to the gathering of foreign intelligence or the prevention of international terrorism.

Here's the section language as it currently reads:

The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution. ``(2) An investigation conducted under this section shall-- ``(A) be conducted under guidelines approved by the Attorney General under Executive Order 12333 (or a successor order); and ``(B) not be conducted of a United States person solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 

`(b) Each application under this section-- ``(1) shall be made to-- ``(A) a judge of the court established by section 103(a); or ``(B) a United States Magistrate Judge under chapter 43 of title 28, United States Code, who is publicly designated by the Chief Justice of the United States to have the power to hear applications and grant orders for the production of tangible things under this section on behalf of a judge of that court; and (2) shall specify that the records concerned are sought for an authorized investigation conducted in accordance with subsection (a)(2) to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.

So am I reading right that it's basically one judge who makes the ultimate decision about the legality of proposed surveillance?

Yes.

by Megan Garber, The Atlantic |  Read more:

Intro link: Amy Davidson, New Yorker

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Piet Flour

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Wi-Fi-Enabled Windows

[ed. I've always thought something like this was coming. But why stop here? Pretty soon it should be possible to project any view you want -- on your windows or on micro-thin, transportable wall coverings.]

If you have a killer view from your house but curtains or blinds are cramping your style, installing Wi-Fi-enabled window shades you control with your smartphone could be an option to consider.

Northern California startup SONTE has designed a high-tech alternative to traditional window coverings: it's a Wi-Fi-enabled window film you put on existing windows that can switch from clear to opaque via a smartphone app. This means you can enjoy the view through a window when you want and then get privacy when you need it.

SONTE film can be retrofitted on your existing windows through a do-it-yourself installation. You measure your window, cut the film to size and, using the film's self-adhesive, stick it on the glass. You then add special conducting clips on the film and plug it into the Wi-Fi-enabled transformer. After downloading the companion app (iOS and Android), you can control the film's transparency. SONTE says the film can turn solid by an electric current moving through, changing transparency within a second.

by Vignesh Ramachandran, Mashable |  Read more:

Image: SONTE

Zhao Shao’ang
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The Amish Are Getting Fracked

Their religion prohibits lawsuits—and the energy companies know it.

It was late 2010 when a chipper agent for Kenoil, Inc., a drilling company in Eastern Ohio, drove to the nearby hamlet of Millersburg to visit Lloyd Miller. His car slithered down the hill overlooking the Millers's home and white farm buildings, past a set of pine green drums, pipes, and gauges—a shallow oil well that Kenoil had drilled on the Millers’s property many years ago—and stopped in front of the aluminum barn where the family, who are Amish dairy farmers, lodges its horses and buggy. The agent had an unexpected business proposition for Lloyd and his wife, Edna: Kenoil wanted to lease the right to drill on the Millers's land for shale gas. And for a lease of five years, he could offer them $10 an acre that same day.

The timing felt providential. The couple, who have several young children, were still paying off a 2006 loan they’d used to buy a small farm adjoining theirs. Gazing in the direction of his 158 acres, as he talked with me at his kitchen table in March, Miller said, “We thought, ‘Hey, that’s $1,500 we didn’t have.’” Still, he asked the agent about rumors of farmers who’d been given much larger signing bonuses in similar deals. He remembered the agent grinning dismissively as he said farms in the area were not leasing for more than what was offered. Miller, 46, considered the Kenoil well on the hill, and the years of good relations he had enjoyed with the company. “I just trusted him,” he said. The Millers signed the lease.

It was maybe two weeks, Miller figured, before they realized the enormity of what they’d done. First, their local paper, TheBargain Hunter, carried a front-page story advising farmers their land could be worth hundreds per acre to oil and gas companies. He compared notes with landowners nearby while on trips to the sale barns where farmers trade livestock, and when other farmers delivered hay for his cows. Miller is physically imposing—stout and broad-shouldered—but also painfully timid. When pressed on what his neighbors had earned, he gazed for a long time at Edna, who, with one of their daughters, was chalking the outline of a man’s pantleg onto a bolt of wool rolled out on the table. “My wife and I took turns kicking each other in the butt.” He paused for a long while. “Our ten dollars an acre compared to $1,000.”

Indeed, many area farms had leased for thousands. Even by a conservative calculation, the couple said they had missed out on a $79,000 signing bonus. (Kenoil declined to comment). Several times, they have felt the sting of their mistake, as during last year’s drought, when a decimated corn crop forced them to buy extra feed for the milking cows, costing thousands of dollars. The Millers have also tried to undo their misstep. Around the beginning of 2011, Lloyd presented his lease and his story to a lawyer, who said that by telling the Millers that $10 an acre represented the best deal available to them, the agent had committed fraud. He told Miller he could take Kenoil to court. “But I said, ‘Hey, that’s something we don’t do,’” Miller said. “He’s got to live with his conscience.”

Miller means that literally. The Amish interpretation of the Christian bible prohibits the use of the courts: Except in rare circumstances, the Amish do not sue. This has created a unique problem in the region. Home to the largest Amish community in the world, Eastern Ohio sits squarely on top of the Utica and Marcellus Shale formations, which contain billions in oil and gas recoverable through advances in hydraulic fracturing technology, or fracking. From the portions of the Utica Shale play that underlie Ohio alone, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has estimated that companies may be able to extract up to 15.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon has estimated the value of the Utica’s resources at $500 billion.

Accordingly, extraction companies are buying up the rights to drill on private property with unprecedented speed. At stake are geysers of money. And in the thousands of cases in which the landowner is of the Amish faith, their business partner would never dream of taking them to court should things go awry. This, obviously, has enticed some companies to take advantage of Amish farmers—who are finally figuring out how to fight back.

by Molly Redden, TNR |  Read more:

Image: Mladen Antonov/AFP

Cressida Campbell - Nasturtiums
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Welfare for the Wealthy

The critically important Farm Bill is impenetrably arcane, yet as it worms its way through Congress, Americans who care about justice, health or the environment can parse enough of it to become outraged.

The legislation costs around $100 billion annually, determining policies on matters that are strikingly diverse. Because it affects foreign trade and aid, agricultural and nutritional research, and much more, it has global implications.

The Farm Bill finances food stamps (officially SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and the subsidies that allow industrial ag and monoculture — the “spray and pray” style of farming — to maintain their grip on the food “system.”

The bill is ostensibly revisited, refashioned and renewed every five years, but this round, scheduled to be re-enacted last year, has been in discussion since 2010, and a final bill is not in sight. Based on the current course of Congress it seems there will be an extension this fall, as there was in 2012. Extensions allow funding changes for individual “titles,” as programs are sometimes called; last year’s extensions didn’t do much damage, but this year’s threaten the well-being of tens of millions of Americans. (...)

The current versions of the Farm Bill in the Senate (as usual, not as horrible as the House) and the House (as usual, terrifying) could hardly be more frustrating. The House is proposing $20 billion in cuts to SNAP — equivalent, says Beckmann, to “almost half of all the charitable food assistance that food banks and food charities provide to people in need.”

Deficit reduction is the sacred excuse for such cruelty, but the first could be achieved without the second. Two of the most expensive programs are food stamps, the cost of which has justifiably soared since the beginning of the Great Recession , and direct subsidy payments.

This pits the ability of poor people to eat — not well, but sort of enough — against the production of agricultural commodities. That would be a difficult choice if the subsidies were going to farmers who could be crushed by failure, but in reality most direct payments go to those who need them least.

Among them is Congressman Stephen Fincher, Republican of Tennessee, who justifies SNAP cuts by quoting 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

Even if this quote were not taken out of context — whoever wrote 2 Thessalonians was chastising not the poor but those who’d stopped working in anticipation of the second coming — Fincher ignores the fact that Congress is a secular body that supposedly doesn’t base policy on an ancient religious text that contradicts itself more often than not. Not that one needs to break a sweat countering his “argument,” but 45 percent of food stamp recipients are children, and in 2010, the U.S.D.A. reported that as many as 41 percent are working poor.  (...)

Fincher is not alone in disgrace, even among his Congressional colleagues, but he makes a lovely poster boy for a policy that steals taxpayer money from the poor and so-called middle class to pay the rich, while propping up a form of agriculture that’s unsustainable and poisonous.

Knowing that direct subsidy payments are under the gun, our clever and cynical representatives are offering a bait-and-switch policy that will make things worse, and largely replace subsidy payments with an enhanced form of crop insurance — paid for by us, of course — which will further reduce risks for commodity farmers. As Craig Cox explained, “The proposed crop insurance would allow — no, encourage — big farmers to plant corn on hillsides, in flood-threatened areas, even in drought-stricken areas, with subsidized premiums and deductibles, and see a big payout if” — should we say “when”? — “the crop fails or is damaged.”

You should get such a deal on insurance: the premiums and deductibles are subsidized and there’s no limit to what can be paid, so bigger farms and bigger risks reap bigger rewards in the event of failure, even if that was a failure of judgment.

Even without boosting the program, crop insurance payments came in at a whopping $17 billion last year. That was unusually high because of the drought, but only a climate-change denier believes that was the last drought we’re going to see. And if you think any of this can be justified because it supports the insurance industry and creates American jobs … well, no: most of the subsidized insurance providers are based offshore.

by Mark Bittman, NY Times |  Read more:

Image via: The Atlantic