An apocryphal quotation attributed to Otto von Bismarck runs along these lines: "To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making." KEYC-TV, the CBS affiliate in Mankato, decided that the fomer made good television, and visited a local sausage maker for the segment, Season of Sausage in Waseca:
A meat cutter since the age of 15 Bob Lau has made a living making dozens of different types of sausage.News 12's Max Jensen caught up with Lau today and watched the Sausage King of Southern Minnesota at work. It's been the same thing day after day for Bob Lau coming to work for the past 25 years:Sausage, sausage and more sausage.
The Sausage King of Southern Minnesota and his merry elves are busy now making 1200 pounds of sausages a day, now that there's venison to be processed. (Yummy).
The process of putting together the Farm Bill in the House this summer was fairly transparent as well, what with live audio of committee markps and press conferences, but more akin to the unappetising sausage-making Bismarck supposedly cautioned political observers.
That segue moves us to an article in this morning's Bemidji Pioneer, in which Blue Earth County farmer and Minnesota Farm Bureau President Kevin Paap cites need to pass farm bill. The legsilation stalled when all but four Republicans--including Norm Coleman--filibustered the Farm Bill over partisan manuvuering to add non-related amendments to the measure. The MFB isn't happy about that bit of meat -grinding:
“It’s going to take time, but we at the Farm Bureau are willing to work as hard as we can to make sure we keep moving it (the farm bill) in the Senate,” he said. “There’s no way we can have 230, 250 amendments. They have to be germane to the farm bill, to agriculture.”
He praised both of Minnesota’s senators — Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Amy Klobuchar — for supporting cloture on the bill, or allowing it to come to a vote.
Passing a new farm bill rose as MFB’s top legislative priority when delegates debated farm policy. They further issued their support for the House version, which was spearheaded by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, DFL-7th District.
“We’ve got to remember that the farm bill — we call it the farm bill — but it’s really more than farm bill,” Paap said. “Sixty-six cents out of every dollar in the farm bill goes to nutrition. A lot of it is conservation, a lot of it is rural development.”
While it’s called the farm bill, he said that “it’s really more the energy bill, nutrition, conservation. We’ve got to move forward and those programs need to continue as well.”
While only about 15 percent of the farm bill goes to direct payments to farmers, that measure is also controversial as President Bush has threatened a veto since the farm bill doesn’t go far enough to curtail subsidy payments to non-farmers or to cap them to the wealthiest producers.
The article quotes House Ag committee member Walz extensively. Walz, who like Senator Klobuchar, spoke at both the Farm Bureau and Farmers Union conventions last weekend, questions Bush veto threats in light of Iraq War funding:
A lot of compromises in the bill are fragile, “but they help bind us together,” he said.
“There are issues of concern to rural Kansas, of rural Minnesota, of rural Mississippi and it doesn’t matter if you’re Democrat or Republican,” Walz said. “You share those in your passion and it brings us together. Seeing this fall through and us admitting we can’t get something done on this is bad in the bigger picture of trying to move other legislation.”
He doesn’t believe Bush will veto a farm bill, saying he appreciates Bush’s call for fiscal responsibility but it needs to be held to all.
“He has never lived that. Now all of a sudden we’re getting it on things we want to hear about,” Walz said of fiscal responsibility. There’s no fiscal responsibility on Iraq, but there is on farmers. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
“The president says he’s the decider, but not really. The American people are,” he added. “And on this farm bill, I’m hearing them decide that we’ve got a good one, let’s move it.”
Papp is one of Walz's constituents. Go read the whole article.
In other news, a letter writer at the Winona Daily News urges the readers sign a petitition to Save the Delta Queen. Local congressmen Ron Kind and Tim Walz--who did not see eye-to-eye on the Farm Bill--agree in their support of a stand alone bill that would allow the Delta Queen to operate on the Mississippi River.
A post on patients forum says that House Vets committee chair Filner and Walz are looking into placing Parkinson's Disease on the presumptive list of diseases caused by Agent Orange.
Not all members of the GOP 4-pak hoping to win their party's endorsement to run again Walz have time to blog about encounters with the winsome D.J. Danielson. According to the Pipestone Star, State Rep. Randy Demmer was looking for solutions to Southwest Minnesota's housing shortage; he even got his smiling face in the paper's online edition.
However, we read in Officials mull solutions to housing crunch that while pictorial evidence suggests that the Hayfield Republican doled out his fair share of smiles, solutions to the issue were not as forthcoming:
The meeting, organized by the Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership and three key state legislators who are members of the I-90 Coalition — Rep. Doug Magnus (R-Slayton); Randy Demmer (R-Hayfield); and Bob Gunther (R-Fairmont) — focused on the difficulties presented by the lack of affordable housing, the problems faced by local employers in attracting quality employees and available funding streams. The meeting, though, was short on the solutions that can help them out of the economic wasteland and into the land of milk and honey.
Funny, but although Demmer is part of the I-90 coalition, he doesn't seem to have earned much of a name for himself in affordable housing circles. Nor has the I-90 Coalition, a bipartisan group formed in 2006, yet to put affordable housing on its list of legislative priorities ( 2006 and 2007 lists).
Meanwhile, it's getting cold out, and Santa has brought a warm scarf to the Green Giant in Blue Earth, according to kEYC-TV: Santa Helps Warm the Jolly Green Giant. And to think the citizens of New Ulm wouldn't let Hermann the German wear a giant red boa.
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