by Les Weaver
Clash Daily Contributor
From the time I was a small lad on the farm, I have witnessed and heard about how the government gets in the way of free enterprise as applies to agricultural products. Regulations, regulations, regulations created by idiots that don’t know fertile soil from closet lint. I left the farm when I enlisted into the service but continue to have roots to the farm. I remain particularly close to a cousin that owns both a small business and wheat acreage in the Palouse country of eastern WA. His battle to continue to farm “his land” is becoming more difficult because of the ever increasing government regulations and resulting costs vs. price controls. He is the one that stimulated the idea for this “opinion”. Thanks, M.!
Government B. S. About Green Energy and Recycling.
Few persons are any longer surprised at the ever increasing Bovine Excrement, (hereinafter referred to as B.S.) surrounding both Green Energy and Recycling. I believe that I can expose that the American farmer practiced Recycling and applied Green Energy long before the Political Liars claimed that they were the champions of either. First I offer a little history for any readers that might be “City Slickers”.
Decades before I became a foster child on a dairy farm in the late forties, Green energy and Recycling that I both witnessed and was part of, had been in long practice to some degree on almost every farm that had bovine type mammals. The absolute proof is to research the historical machinery products manufactured by companies like John Deere and so many others. In particular, I bring your attention to manure spreaders and tank type manure slurry spreaders. The farm implement manufactures produced these and many other types of machinery as response to the farmer’s needs and demands, not the other way around. In many cases, the farm machinery manufacturer was actually stimulated by a farmer’s prototype. The too common phrase; “Dumb Farmer” is a terribly misplaced misnomer.
Cattle feed lots and dairy farms are populated with bovine mammals. These animals require the intake of water, dry and/or fresh foliage, grains, etc. and therefore produce not just leather, gelatin, meat and milk but also liquid waste and excrement; large amounts of GREEN excrement. Feed lots and dairy farm barnyards are known to be bare of any foliage growth because of the massive amounts of B.S. But both feed lot and dairy farm operators must continue to toil at the major task of removing and disposing of the B.S.
Solid wastes are generally gathered and piled to compost for either commercial packaging for sale to the urban gardener or to be carefully distributed by spreaders onto the very fields that produce the foliage for feeding the bovine mammals that it came from. From foliage to manure and back to foliage is clearly
RECYCLING!
Early in the 20th Century, some dairy farmers came up with an idea for their particular solution to the B.S. problem. Near the “milk barn” they constructed a large, below ground, concrete cistern. The liquids and B.S. exuded inside the milk barn were hosed into the covered cistern to become a Green colored, fermenting slurry. When time and weather permitted, the slurry was pumped into tank trailers and just like the solid waste, carefully distributed on the very fields that grow bovine feed. Again, this is RECYCLING.
But in the last half of the 20th century, the methane gas produced by B.S. was being pointed out as bad for the environment. Again the farmer, not the government, invented a solution. They more tightly capped the cisterns to pipe off and burn the methane gas. An advancement of the farmer’s brainstorm resulted in modifying a diesel engine to run on methane and with a generator attached, produce electric power. Since B.S. in its natural state is Green; the result is GREEN POWER.
I recall more than two progressives stealing the credit due others ;(i.e. the internet and “you didn’t build that….”) so I expect that some lying politician will soon step up to take this credit due the American farmer. After all, if they have flown over or driven by a farm, they promote that they are an expert at all that falls under the heading of “agriculture”. As my grandfather and father before me and existing family that actively farm, to this old “farm boy”, those devices require land that often could be farmed or put to other benefiting use. We who have been farmers are experts at recognizing B.S. by smell, sight, when orated and when in written form. We are also true experts at near always identifying the source. We experts conclude that the greatest pollution does not come from the barn yard or feed lot, it comes from Crapitol Hill.
My two Senators and my Congressional Rep. proudly carry and tout the B.S. “Green” label. This is because they promote their definition of “Green Energy” by reference to Wind Power and Solar Panels. Both of these so called energy producers are not only terribly costly, they also require continuing subsidies. They do not come under the label of recycling unless they can be RECYCLED as trash or redirected for other use such as the Obama promoted solar panel factory, Solyndra, (but at great financial loss to the taxpayer). How many thousands of acres have become sterilized under the shade of Solar Farms? What is the ecological effect of covering mother earth with acres of panels?
The only Green I give them credit for is the green that can be imagined from the figure of speech; “B. S.” I have clarified that B.S. is green and therefore their B.S. covered promotions of wind and solar energy cost vs. benefit claims should be granted a “smidgen”, (Obama term) of green credit. For the entire past two plus decades, just like bovine mammals, these politicians have exuded pure B.S. on the subject of Green Energy. They have not truthfully demonstrated that the American taxpayer has benefited by cost and subsidies vs. benefit in power delivered.
I remind my peers that feed lots and barnyards are sterile of foliage. That is the result of an excess of B.S. Equally but on a much larger scale, politicians seem totally unaware that their lying orations are sterilizing our country from producing. Where we once saw factories we now see wastelands just like the feed lots and barnyards. It is past time that we recognize who those producers of excessive B.S. are and remove them from office so that we can return those wastelands to productivity.
At this time, some European countries are rejecting Green Energy and taking the first steps to return to fossil fueled energy. But here in the U.S., many progressives are conspiring to deprive “deniers” of their “Freedom of Speech” rights under penalty for defying promoted law. The goal seems to be that they alone define what Green Energy is and what it is not. I charge that they are betraying their oaths of office, abusing their powers and behaving unethically. And many are lining their bank accounts with “green dollar bills”.
A suggestion is that all of these Green Energy promoters be compelled to take a minimum 6 months leave of absence from Crapitol Hill, relocate to either at a feed lot or at a dairy farm and work as laborers tending the clean-up of B.S. It just might cure them of several things. We could pray that they would then stop lying about what Green Energy is and is not; they would accept a true definition of Recycling; they would begin to control their exuding of pseudo B.S. from their political pulpits; and perhaps important to them, they might get back a smidgen, (repeating the Obama term) of respect from their constituents, (that is if they even give a damned).
Yes, the American farmer has been practicing Green Energy and Recycling long before either became a costly, regulated burden sponsored by the government. But We the People are tired of the B.S. that originates from The District of Corruption, State Crapitols, County Seats or City Halls. Many of these sites have become as sterile of freedom and innovation as the feed lots and barn yards of the American farmer and for the same reason; a surplus of B.S. Like the American farmer practices; when the pile of B.S. becomes over-high, it is time to Recycle and/or rid us of the source.
photo credit: SPIngram Moo North via photopin (license)
Les Weaver: Born into abject poverty in 1934, he spent his teen years on farms as a foster child and was classified as a farm laborer when he joined the Navy in 1952. After that service, he had a short stint at a University but moved on to 35 years associated with the engineering and technical sciences in Aero-Space, retiring from two Aerospace giants in senior positions and a small business. Until retirement, his writing experience was limited to technical occupational reports. His wife is a German immigrant, now a proud American and together they enjoy gardening. Les takes breaks from gardening to express himself to the politicians by phone, email and now thru ClashDaily/DougGiles.
