Another reason food prices are high. Millions of bushels of grain is rotting on the ground in North Dakota because of a shortage of rail cars to ship it to market… and there is a shortage of rail cars because Warren Buffet’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway is busy shipping oil… and the railroad is busy shipping oil because Obama refused to approve the Keystone Pipeline.
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Hey Obmana -
here's a concept you and yours may not be very familiar with -
Actions have consequences.
Think about it for a few months.
Ok. I grew up in North Dakota, and I bet some other bloggers from that part of the country can confirm, Rail care shortages have been going on for decades. Part of the problem has been Burlington Northern and it's predecessors, Great North, and Northern Pacific shipped grain kind of as an afterthought. The prices paid to ship it is not that high. I remember bumper crops of wheat, barley, oaks, flax, rye and corn, dumped on the ground next to elevators cause they could not get rail cars.
North Dakota's public Utilities Commission fined BN a number of times.
Funny how Buffet and company now have ALL the oil cars they have dreamed of and the state is upset because grain shipments are getting the shaft again. And Farmers are the losers. If it rots it can't be sold. many small town elevators went out of business in the 70's because of this shit.
One interesting note, North Dakota mines Lignite coal in the western part of the state. It is a cleaner burning coal with less ash and is shipped all over the Midwest and West. It was nothing to see 110 car coal trains while waiting at the tracks..Yea we got bored and would count them..They NEVER had a shortage of coal cars either.
Buffet is a prick, and treats grain like dirt. If you can ship it to market, you can't sell it and the price of food goes up. South Dakota and several other states have the same problem.
When confronted BNSF has more excuses than an Obama press conference, I am surprised Buffet doesn't blame Bush, although this has been going on since the 1960's.
I am sure billionaires like buffet don't worry about food prices...
MY father in law farmed about 1100 acres, in a GOOD year he might have made 50,000 dollars before expenses. In the 70's he along with other planted everything because the government said it was a good thing to feed the world. That's when piles of grain rotted, farmers lost farms and then the government refused to pay subsidies and give loans to farmers and a lot of them lost farms..The USDA doesn't even look at this as a problem, they are too busy with SWAT teams going after natural milk farms....
I don't Obama even knows what a farm is, I am sure he thinks they grow food at the grocery store, and He may not even know what a rail car is....
Just another example of government supporting a few rich guys and the hell with the rest of us...And NOBODY is going to throw Buffet under the bus now since he gives money to Obutthead and company.
Not so silent, spot on. I knew some of that, but not all of that. Thanks.
http://wiredrightcommentary.blogspot.com/2014/08/crony-capitalism-in-action.html
What a great post. A whole shitload of information plus a healthy dose of pure-D pissed-off-osity. Love it.
Sometimes I actually know something, not very often.......:0
speaking of rails: http://images.sodahead.com/profiles/0/0/3/0/2/1/1/7/9/TAR-AND-FEATHERS-75490130558.jpeg
More cronie captiolism and Buffett repaid the favor by financing Burger King purchasing Tim Hortons and moving the corporate office to Canada. All to get around paying their fair share.
Let's see if Buffet's name gets dragged through the mud over Burger King trying to purchase Tim Horton's & move it's HQ to Canada. I have a hard time believing that will happen, at least from the Obama asskiss media, who have touted Buffet as a lovable regular guy who is basically like your grandpa. The man plays hardball, & will make billions by imposing his will on the market, & works the political system to further his goals. That is the truth, & nobody in the MSM will bitch about it.
i think buffet's still lookin for his lost shaker of salt.
They keep moving it.
Another reason is all the EBTers. More demand, higher prices. If you look at your average EBTer you will notice they have lots of demand for food.
I get $189 a month and spend about $60 on food. I don't eat out at all. The system is designed to support food prices - taking care of the needs of the fiscally challenged is secondary.
76% of SNAP households included a child, an elderly person, or a disabled person. These vulnerable households receive 83% of all SNAP benefits
The average monthly SNAP benefit per person is $133.85, or less than $1.50 per person, per meal.
I get much less. much much much less. and I ain't overweight. And I hate NOT being able to work and having money so I can eat at least once a day, every day. been eatin' pasta for the last week, by itself ceptin for some mrs. dash (which ran out) or some mustard (which also ran out) and seasoned salt (which I really ought not use cuz the sodium fooks with my diuretic) but then I'm not average, I guess. MY point is... well, i forgot my point, so i'll leave you with this.
SNAP error rates declined by 57% since FY2000, from 8.91% in FY2000 to a record low of 3.80% in FY2011.[vi] The accuracy rate of 96.2% (FY2011) is an all-time program high and is considerably higher than other major benefit programs, for example Medicare fee-for-service (91.5%) or Medicare Advantage Part C (88.6%). [vii]
Two-thirds of all SNAP payment errors are a result of caseworker error. Nearly one-fifth are underpayments, which occur when eligible participants receive less in benefits than they are eligible to receive.[viii]
The national rate of food stamp trafficking declined from about 3.8 cents per dollar of benefits redeemed in 1993 to about 1.3 cent per dollar during the years 2009 to 2011.[ix] As you may have read in local news, USDA is aggressively fighting trafficking, but while there are individual cases of program abuse, for every one instance of fraud, there are hundreds of stories of heartbreaking need.
Those statistics are all well and good, but they're provided by the people who depend on this program's survival for their survival, the bureaucrats that administer the program.
The true test of abuse of the program is to be in a Walmart checkout line behind a group of 4 adults, none of whom speak a word of English, buying 3 shopping carts full of high end groceries, sodas, chips, and cakes, with 2 SNAP cards. Or, some 400 lb sow with 6 sniveling brats, buying a cart full of candy, soda, and every other junk food imaginable with her SNAP card.
The real abuse in the program is the people being allowed to buy empty calories with the money we give them to provide nutritious food to their families, while people like you, wingater, and Rose, can't get the help they truly need and deserve.
That's true. I was really torqued when I found that Colorado ppls can use EBT to get weed. "wtf? grow your own ya leeches." is how i feel about THAT particular issue. We have too many ppl who're scamming and stealing and lying and just generally being wicked. But then with the crooks in high offices getting away with their bs what the hell else can we expect? burns my grits.
And an online friend that I just got to meet in person a couple of days ago, who has gone through a period of disability, but is ready to return to the work force, but guvmint regulations stop him from doing so.
Ironic that the definition of Keystone is something on which associated things depend for support ; a species of plant or animal that produces a major impact (as by predation) on its ecosystem and is considered essential to maintaining optimum ecosystem function or structure.