Depression

[WTA]

I have lived overseas, for almost 20 years of my life, and I'm the ONLY one complaining loudly about gas prices around here. I ride my horse to town even to get gas for my tractor and food for dinner quite a bit now and I have a huge protest sign that I hang on the back of my saddle. I've written my congressman, without any response, several times and it really seems like I'm alone. If people are really mad about gas prices, I sure don't see a lot of action about it.

Growing up in a military family and doing 15 years myself in the service, I had the opportunity to really see the world. I've lived in Japan, Cuba, the PI and Guam. Also the outer islands of Alaska. Believe me I have seen HIGH gas prices! When I was 18 and stationed in Japan I got stupid and bought a dodge hemi cuda for 500 bucks off someone that was transferring out and gas was 7 bucks a gallon. In America it was about a dollar a gallon back then. That car got sold pretty fast and I got a V max motorcycle instead. Wasn't much better but it helped with the gas.
The big difference between living in Japan, as an American at least, was we got a nice little thing called a cost of living allowance from the Government. Because their economy was so much better than ours things were rather pricey for us Americans. I think as an E-4 my cost of living allowance was about 400 a month which pretty much evened things out for me. Married couples got a little more. I found that out in California where I got married. That might as well be a foreign country as expensive as everything is. We got COLA there too.

As a civilian now, there is nobody giving me a check to make up the difference in the falling dollar so I'm pretty much screwed every time I go fill up the gas tank, my tractor, or the 500 gallon propane tank that heats my house in the winter. That tank only lasts a month if the weather is real bad! We haven't even used propane in the last two winters because it costs too much. I've been burning trees instead.

We grow high quality alfalfa and Bermuda hay for horses here and nobody can tell me that prices have gone up. It may have in the feed stores but not for me. Feed stores are charging well over 10 bucks a bale for trash alfalfa right now but if I go over 6.50 for top quality fresh stuff nobody will buy it. Go figure. I'm sure not making much money off of it but I'm working on it. Were increasing production and acres and advertising everywhere we can that is free. I'm doing a few paid ads this summer too.

The big difference between other countries and America is that we designed our system originally to be different from the ones that were oppressing us. We declared our freedom a long time ago from the mess everyone else was in and still there are way too many people here that want to emulate other countries. This country has forgotten how to take care of itself first. When everyone starts to wake up and drill in our own back yards and build a few more refineries then things will get better. We also need to tell the environmentalists who the highest on the food chain is. I've spent considerable time in Alaska too and anyone that tries to tell me that polar bears are endangered I just tell they are on crack. They are being shot every day up there for coming into towns and endangering people. That's not the act of an endangered animal.

This is America. We don't have to pay what other countries are for gas and it's making me sick that people think it's ok. We've won two major wars now because we had the natural resources that the countries against us didn't have. We won by denying them the lands they needed to obtain oil and iron and other things they needed. We won by destroying their refineries and oil depots.

Does this sound at all familiar to what is happening to us now?

 

[dmccarty]

The latest Progressive Farm arrived this week.

Large farms, operations over 1,000 acres, are growing at 17%.

Small farms, operations 50 acres or less, are growing at 14%.

The farms in between are shrinking.

Most farm land, 66% is held by the 1,000+ acre operations.

The surprising number is the growth of the small farms. Farms have been getting larger and larger and larger for a long time. My guess is that the smaller farms are the ones providing products to a very local market. That is happening in my area. Our county used to have lots of dairy farms. You see silos all over. They have been out of operation for years. Heck, the wife's family used to have a dairy. The dairy barn is still there but the operation was shut down decades ago.

Their family land is now rented to a very large grower who farms thousands of rented and owned land. I was shocked a few weeks back when I saw he had planted tobacco. Not much of that is grown anymore. Just a few short years ago you would see small fields, even an acre in size, growing tobacco. Those little fields were all over the place. All gone.

Some are getting into making special cheeses, grass fed meat, lots of produce, etc. on smaller operations. Course those don't make as much a tobacco but there seems to be a growth of these smaller farms in my area.

Later,
Dan

 

[riptides]

I have lived overseas, for almost 20 years of my life, and I'm the ONLY one complaining loudly about gas prices around here. I ride my horse to town even to get gas for my tractor and food for dinner quite a bit now and I have a huge protest sign that I hang on the back of my saddle. I've written my congressman, without any response, several times and it really seems like I'm alone. If people are really mad about gas prices, I sure don't see a lot of action about it.

So we are finally paying world prices for gasoline. I think it is fair. We import most of our oil. Perhaps if we drilled more of our own, and refined it, we could catch a break.

I think it is a great wake up call. And in my area, appears to be working. For my family and I we got rid of our SUV and curtailed our trips by car, greatly.
I have noted longer lines at ride share spots and commuter pickups. I have NOT noticed less cars on the road at o'dark thirty.

Perhaps when more of us curtail our use, and if and when the magical alternate fuel shows up, this will all be remembered as the drive to cure of our oil dependancy.

Too bad, but my tractor time is 1/2 of what it was this time last year. No finishing mower use for me now, it is all BushHog time.

 

[WTA]

That's not it at all.

Small farms, like mine, are growing out of necessity.

A few years ago I could bring home roughly 30,000 in the hay I sold. So far this year I'm not even breaking even. It's due to fuel and fertilizer costs eating up my profits while the products I'm selling can't be sold for any more than they were 5 years ago. I grow hay here for horses and it's the best in the area. People that own horses are buying trash hay though because they are as broke as I am.

We are increasing our total acres just so I can make the same profit I did a few years ago. It's simple as that. My work load has quadrupled, my expenses gone up even more than that and I'm still only able to charge the same amount as a few years ago when diesel was 2 bucks a gallon. That's the whole problem with this country now. Everyones daily expenses have gone up way more than their income in a very short period of time!
To make the same profit now, I'd have to charge the same as the feed stores for hay which is between 10 and 12 dollars a bale.
I'm really working hard getting the word out about buying it off the farm instead. I'm using the see what you are getting approach with my customers.

I'm hoping if they care at all about their horses they will come on out and walk around my pastures and see exactly what is going into the bales I'm making for them. Then hopefully I will be able to charge a reasonable rate pretty soon.


Paying world prices is NOT fair. This is America. NOT the rest of the world. We have the resources to do something about it but some people believe the trash on the news and care more about polar bears than our own well being. It's NOT fair!
The Bio fuel thing will not happen. When people smarten up and realize they are paying the same amount for corn nearly as their gas there will be a major revolt against the bio fuel industry. Just wait and see.

I'm kinda tired of people telling me about mass transit and carpooling. It's not an option for most people in this country. There is NO mass transit out here, no carpools, no way we're going to own a little car that can't even get down any of the roads out here. This is how the majority of this country still is. Not everyone has all the luxuries of a nearby large city. Most of us don't want them either.

 

[riptides]

Small farms, operations 50 acres or less, are growing at 14%.

I read that too and laughed out loud. In my area those small farms are McMansions that now sit in foreclosure.

Large lot, larger house.

 

[riptides]

I'm kinda tired of people telling me about mass transit and carpooling. It's not an option for most people in this country. There is NO mass transit out here, no carpools, no way we're going to own a little car that can't even get down any of the roads out here. This is how the majority of this country still is. Not everyone has all the luxuries of a nearby large city. Most of us don't want them either.

My observations are based on actions I see people taking now to help ease their fuel costs. People are taking action which is what your previous note seemed to miss.

I would not consider mass transit or carpooling a luxury. It has not come to that, yet.

 

[dmccarty]

I recently self discovered my own misery and stress from years of talk radio and national news, especially lately. I am turning it off for now.

Its the best thing you ever did. Though I would put the period to end the sentence after the word "off".

As far as I'm concerned if you want to be well informed read history, get a good newspaper like the Wall Street Journal(its not perfect but its pretty good), and use the Internet to go to websites that cover specific areas.

Fox News, CNN, MSNBC are all but the same. The news media has always been problematic but over the last few decades it seems like news is just people yelling and screaming. There is no intelligence or knowledge shown. Just sound bite production.

Before CNN I could watch an hour of national news. And I did. I slowly realized that this was a waste of time. This awakening started wth a PBS series regarding the media that was done in the 80s. I sure would like to have that on tape or DVD. Listening to Rather, Brokow, and some other so called journalists was an eye opener. Watching the expressions on the faces of Admirals and Generals listening to Rather was educational to say the least.

I have not watched a full news show, local or national in years. The time is better spent getting lint out of my belly button. Watching Loons on TV yell at each other is hurful. Not helpful.

Think about what the Talking Heads were saying 9-12 months ago. There was a certain candidate who had the race won before the race started. Now that the race is over, did Hilliary win? Nope. If you spent the 9-12 months listening to the Loons what did you get for your time spent? All of the polls endlessly and mindlessly discussed are meaningless. There is one poll that counts. Its the election day poll. Everything else just fills newsprint and airtime. 99% of it is just fluff.

Obama was just in my state. The local paper had a headline that he was hear to discuss his vision for our economic future. I read the article. Not ONE word in a very long piece regarding Obama's positions. They had it buried else. The details were maybe a quarter the size of the headline story that said NOTHING.

People say that Party A is the problem. Other people say its Party B. I agree though one party is worse than the other. But the big problem in this country is an ignorant, arrogant, biased press who think they are educated, smart and unbiased. We would be better served if the media would go back to the old days and just admit that they support a given party/candidate instead of lying that they don't. Can't fix thier ignorance and arrogance though...

Just turn them OFF.

Later,
Dan

 

[N80]

Perhaps when more of us curtail our use, and if and when the magical alternate fuel shows up, this will all be remembered as the drive to cure of our oil dependancy.

I think you are totally right. But there is a problem. This country, sometime back in the late 40's or 50's made a conscious decision to move away from a rail based system towards an interstate based system with suburbs. They didn't know it at the time but this chained us to the auto.

And some people cannot drive any less than they are now, and many, if not most people can't afford an expensive hybrid. We have to get to work. We have to get our kids to school, etc etc.

I also totally agree with alternative fuels etc. It has to happen. But it isn't happening now, and its going to be a long time.

But the big problem with driving less is this: Outside of work, why do most of us drive? To buy stuff. Therein lies the rub. If people aren't driving then they're not going to Walmart, Home Depot, Tractor Supply, McDonalds and vacation areas. The worse thing in the world for this economy is for us to stop buying stuff.

And that's where we get the double whammy. It is bad enough that our infrastructure ties us to the automobile, but we are also tied to continuous consumption. This is a consumer economy that is driven by large corporations that sell stuff. The key word is corporation. Why is that the key? Because companies, as opposed to corporations, used to be able to survive by making a good product that paid their employees and made the owner some money. But a corporation, on the other hand, is never satisfied. There is never a point at which there is enough profit for everyone to be happy. And we've taken this to extremes. A corporation can have a great year, but if it wasn't as good as the year before, its stock loses value, sometimes in a panic.

Soooo, if we drive less, then we are buying less and if we buy less some corporations will not grow as well as shareholders and traders want it to. They lose confidence and the company founders. When Walmarts founder, so does the economy. (Which incidentally makes these corporations pets of the federal government to the point where you can't tell Walmart for Washington without a program....but that's a whole other topic.)

So the infrastructure and our consumer driven, corporation fueled economy locks us into a viscious cycle.

So when the governement suggests we drive less they are either being foolish....or more likely, just duplicitous.

 

[WTA]

N80, there is no excuse for taken the most widely used farm crop in the country, corn, and turning it into fuel. If people eat the crop or wear it then it needs to be off limits for anything other than human or animal consumption. This is where I think the government needs to put their foot down. All of the garbage about bio fuels and ethanol is causing people to starve all over the world. That is not right, not fair and it needs to stop. Corn or any other crop like it will NEVER be able to replace gasoline as long as people are eating it too. Even if we didn't consume so much of it we could never grow enough in this country to make enough gas to replace the stuff coming out of the ground. It's not going to happen. People down here now are growing corn because it's paying so much and corn has never been a good crop here. NOT enough water. Millionaire farmers with miles of center pivots and government grants running out their ears can afford to do it though. Meanwhile they are killing the aquifer that used to be stable enough for all the cotton farms and small farms like mine. Our well here has never dropped a foot in 25 years. We had it checked last night when I was having problems with it and it's dropped 50 foot this season. My big well is dry now too.

It's because of all the new pivots that went in early this year so people can grow corn in the desert! This stuff has much farther reaching implications than just the price of gas.

My take on the media:

When the mail lady came out here the other day she was all upset over what she had just heard on the radio. It was a local Christian station here and they had a news show on. I asked her to turn up the radio so I could hear and my jaw almost hit the ground. That nut on the radio was actually telling people that the government has satellites and planes that are equipped to control the weather patterns around the country and is using them to cause global warming and raise gas prices so everyone will be forced to buy corn gas.

The really sad part about that crap was this poor lady was almost in tears believing it!

It took me a while to reassure her that it's a bunch of crap and I also called a good friend of mine with a radio show here to tell him about that story just in case he missed it. He heard it too and really got a piece of that story teller that night.

Most of the media is pretty sick these days and I can't figure it out. I can't bring myself to understand why anyone in our country, enjoying all of it's great benefits would want to harm it and I get so mad at the garbage I hear sometimes I don't know what to do. This global warming garbage and bio fuels get me the most. It's all lies.
It snowed up in Washington state last week according to the weather channel. We had a record low for a couple days last week too but most of it's been pretty typical. The reservoirs here are all extremely low and it's being blamed on global warming.

In the case of where our nearest cities water comes from I blame it on the 17 other cities that are now feeding off that lake when it was only designed in 1962 to support two large cities. The water level is so far down right now that the West half of the lake is bone dry and all of the boat ramps are 50 to 500 yards from the water making it impossible to launch a boat.

It's more demand that's causing it. Not global warming!

 

[N80]

N80, there is no excuse for taken the most widely used farm crop in the country, corn, and turning it into fuel.

I totally agree. I don't even consider ethanol an alternative.

My take on the media:

When the mail lady came out here the other day she was all upset over what she had just heard on the radio. It was a local Christian station here and they had a news show on. I asked her to turn up the radio so I could hear and my jaw almost hit the ground. That nut on the radio was actually telling people that the government has satellites and planes that are equipped to control the weather patterns around the country and is using them to cause global warming and raise gas prices so everyone will be forced to buy corn gas.

The really sad part about that crap was this poor lady was almost in tears believing it!

For every nut willing to say something in public there are 100 nuts willing to believe him.