Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [130]
Because the meat industry in this country has become vertically integrated, Big Meat has put the small independent hog farmer out of business. Twenty years ago there were 27,500 family hog farmers in North Carolina alone. Now there are none. Today, a single company named Smithfield owns more than 70 percent of the state’s hogs. Small farmers are learning that you can’t beat Big Meat.
Nobody claims that factory farming is pretty. But its defenders say that it brings economies of scale that drive down the price of meat for consumers. This is true as long as you don’t factor in the shit. Bobby Kennedy, Jr., president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, told me that, if the waste were disposed of legally, the cost of pork from factory farms would be higher than pork from family farms.
They cannot produce hogs, or pork chops, or bacon more efficiently than a family farm without breaking the law. They aren’t about the free market, because they can’t compete without committing criminal acts every single day. Their whole system is built on being able to disable or capture government agencies.
They’re not in favor of responsibility, or democracy, or private property. It’s just about privatizing the air, water, all the things that the public’s supposed to own. They are trying to take them away from us, privatize them, and liquidate them for cash.
That’s the only coherent philosophy they have. That’s it.
Yeah!
To be totally honest, I wish the Clinton administration had done more to address the pig shit problem. But at least he was pushing in the right direction. Toward the end of his administration, the EPA issued stringent new CAFO regulations, requiring hog factories to take responsibility for their waste and initiating suits against some of the violators.
When Bush took office, his appointees gutted the regulations. Eric Schaeffer, head of enforcement for the EPA, resigned in disgust after being told to drop the agency’s cases against the offending conglomerates. The administration cut a deal granting immunity to factory farm air polluters, and its Republican allies in Congress defeated a proposal by Paul Wellstone to bar hog producers from also owning the slaughterhouses. As Bush’s stance on pig shit became clear, you could hear the squeals of joy at Smithfield.
They say that a rising tide lifts all boats. But in a pig shit lagoon, the only boat that rises is the one on top of the geyser.
Perhaps there is someone reading this who is saying, “Give me a break, Al. I don’t care about pigs, or pig shit, or family farms, or mountaintops, or this pfiest-a-mahoosey, or the environment.” To you, I have this to say: You were not legitimately elected president, sir.
But I respect the office you hold, and I’m honored that you’re reading my book.
40
I Meet Former First Lady Barbara Bush and It Doesn’t Go Well
During my adult life, the most popular First Lady by far has been Barbara Bush. There was something about the ease of her matronly bearing that made us all feel comfortable. She was everyone’s grandmother. Even, it sometimes seemed, her husband’s. And for those of us on the liberal side, there was always the niggling suspicion that she was secretly pro-choice but had chosen to keep that between herself and George. Barbara Bush was the benevolent matriarch, somehow above the fray. Oh, an occasional unpleasantry might slip out, like when she called Geraldine Ferraro a “bitch.” But that was to be expected in the rough and tumble. All in all, Barbara Bush was a role model for wives and mothers throughout the land.
That’s why I was thrilled when I found myself on a flight from Houston to Washington, D.C., sitting across from our former First Lady. It was January of 2000, just a week or two before