OCR Text |
Show Page 2 UTAH FARM BUREAU MR. BUMBLE AM January 1969 NEWS HIS LABLE Secretary of Agriculture, Clifford Hardin has a job few people really desire. He is expected by those who know him, to do as good a job with the role as anyone can. We hope his view of the job is considerably different than that of his predecessor. and he assumed the job Secretary Freeman viewed the job as a policy-makcarried with it the responsibility "to insure a completely adequate supply of food for the American people, and to meet our foreign commitments." We have a considerable amount of difficulty understanding how he got that notion. We can't recall Congress conferring that responsibility. We can't recall the American people amending the Constitution to give him that responsibility. He must have inferred the duty by i extrapolation, or something. But, however he obtained the understanding, he certainly operated under that assumption. He explained to a group of high school students in Falls Church, Virginia that, "This responsibility extends, further than just the assurance this food is clean, wholesome and available to the grocery store; this responsibility extends to seeing to it this families and to the plates of children food gets to the pantry shelf for in school and other activities with special emphasis on reaching children in areas." programs. These Apparently the notion was bom of the vast farm support-pric- e programs were initially established to keep America's farmers in business. From this you could assume, we suppose, that the programs were designed to keep many of these farm acres in production. But, these programs in later years were designed to hold down overproduction and eliminate surpluses. And we suppose, a man could decide that his job as Secretary of Agriculture is to balance the goals and somehow, determine the desirable production figures for the nation. From the remote-contro- l position the Secretary holds, he can in fact, affect the prices (and indirectly the supplies) of commodities without price supports or conand when trols. For example, the Secretary can increase the acreage of an oversupply of these feed grains hit the market, the prices drop drastically. This has been demonstrated far too many times while Mr. Freeman was in office. Cheap feed grains mean cheap beef and cheap pork. It has happened. Whether it was deliberate in Mr. Freeman's case is hard to say. Yet, the effect of controlling the nation's food supply and the nation's food prices does fit into Mr. Freeman's view of his job as keeper of the nation's soup ladle. Not only has there been evidence of juggling of farm prices, there has been a wide expansion of programs to directly feed those whom Mr. Freeman considers "the hungry." At first the programs were designed to use some of the surplus commodities held by the USDA Now the goal is to extend the Food Stamp program to every county in the nation. With the Food Stamp plan, a man trades cash for stamps which will buy food at a participating grocery store. For example a family of four with a monthly income of $20 in Virginia, now pays $2.00 for $58.00 worth of food stamps. It's not the purpose of this editorial to question the worth of this program or of the participants' worthiness to receive help. Our question concerns the reason for changing the program. What happens to those surplus commodities? Welfare cases who used to receive surplus commodities are no longer eligible for these foods under the Food Stamp program. The program should soon be in every county in the country. Secretary Freeman stated during December, "There I are still about 480 counties where no food program is available or planned intend to begin steps to assure the families who need food assistance in these areas will be served before another year passes." That's quite a goal for less than two months time but Mr. Freeman may have set the wheels in motion by the 20th of this month. It's possible. Mr. Freeman has already demonstrated how his department can move in and set up a program even though the county officials want no part of it Secretary Freeman saw himself as being responsible for feeding the hungry regardless of whom he had to step on to do it. He also saw his responsibility as balancing supply and demand for food in this country and abroad. We have no doubts as to the sincerity of his convictions. We simply happen to disagree. We feel that the role of the Secretary of Agriculture is not that of Bumble standing over the porridge pot, ladling out the porridge to Oliver Twist and his friends, deciding when they have had enough and when they haven't We cfeel that the role of the Secretary of Agriculture is not to plan production of food and fiber for the nation. That should be done by the producers. We believe that the Secretary of Agriculture should administer existing programs and iiot use his office or his staff to campaign for new ones. We believe that the Secretary of Agriculture should strive to listen to the views of this country's farmers, rather than attempting to speak for them. It's a demanding task and we wish Secretary Hardin all the good will in the world. er low-inco- me low-inco- feed-grai- ns ... me Another (Look flhe Electoral College by Ken Rice Congress is back in session now, the temporary platforms on Pennsylvania Avenue have been taken down following the inauguration and things are steadying down in Washington. With business starting to hum in the nation's capital, much attention is focused on the Electoral College. Shortly after Congress convened, the Senate took it upon itself to officially certify the results of the electoral vote. One of the reasons it was done in the way it was, was to focus attention on one of the problems in the electoral college system. It was done by pointing out the fact that an elector from North Carolina voted for George Wallace, even though the state had gone to Richard Nixon. The elector, Dr. Lloyd W. Bailey, claimed that he had the legal and moral right to vote as he did. Some senators disagreed and in a resolution tried unsuccessfully to give his vote to Richard Nixon. Apparently the Senate doesn't have the right to change the vote of an elector. However, they do have the right to initiate a move to amend the Constitution and change the electoral system. Some of the members of Congress intend to make an effort to do just that With the concern over the challenge posed by George Wallace's third party movement there is a good possibility that there will be a substantial amount of support for such a move. Proposals for change vary from a switch to the popular vote to various modifications of the present system. Booth Wallentine, former UFB staffer and now Director of Radio-TServices for the Iowa Farm Bureau, suggests that if the electoral college system must be changed it should move to the district system. "This plan," he writes, "would retain the electoral college, giving each state one vote per House member and one vote for each U.S. Senator. Thus, Iowa would have a total of nine votes." (Utah would have four.) "Two of these nine votes would be decided at large, just as the Senate races now are. But the vote apportioned for each congressional district would be determined by the popular ballot for president in that district" In Utah, such a plan would have made no difference in the vote, since Nixon took both districts. The difficulty envisioned by the men who proposed a change in the system is twofold. First there is the problem of a third, or even fourth, party taking enough electorsd votes away from the two major party candidates to deny any candidate a majority. The presidential race then goes to the House of Representatives. To illustrate the problem let's suppose that Richard Nixon had taken the greatest number of popular votes but that George Wallace had taken enough electoral votes to deny Nixon a majority. The race then would have been decided by the House which is heavily Democratic in party make-up- . The probable outcome would have been the selection of Hubert Humphrey as president, even though Nixon had taken the greatest number of popular votes. The second problem is the loss of franchise in the electoral system. If you vote for a candidate that doesn't win in your state, your vote cannot count for him, even though the race in your state may have been very dose. In a popular vote contest, even though your man didn't win in your state, your vote will still count in his totals. In the electoral system, the winner takes his votes while the loser's votes are thrown away. This may not seem significant, but in a heavily populated state like California there are many political philosophies and substantial numbers of votes for each candidate. The winner takes all the dectoral votes, even though his opponent may have racked up millions of votes in the same state votes that no longer count for him. Hie disadvantage of the overhaul of the system is that it would make the influence of the small states like Utah, even weaker. The federal system has put small states like Utah, Nevada and Wyoming on a more equal footing with bigger states. A straight popular vote presidential race would place the bulk of the campaigning in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey and California. Fact is, under that kind of set-uwe would probably never see a presidential candidate in Utah. As Booth Wallentine says, "Hie advantages of the modified dectoral college are convincing. It would retain the federal system. It would give you, the people more say in who shall be our president But it would still provide some protection to minority states like Iowa against the overwhelming vote power of the big right or ten states." Perhaps. However, even this modification doesn't solve all the problems. Solution to a challenge like this doesn't come easily. Let's hope that the men in Washington consider this very, very carefully before jumping into a slightly considered recommendation. And then, thank goodness, they have to leave it up to the citizens of the country to make the final derision. The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the Utah Farm Bureau News or of the Utah Farm Bureau. V p, |