Clinton’s CAFO tie narrows choices

Clinton’s CAFO tie narrows choices
By KEN MIDKIFF
Published Friday, January 4, 2008 (http://www.showmenews.com/2008/Jan/20080104Comm002.asp)

Like most folks, I had no real favorite among the three front-runners in the Democratic presidential run Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. The Des Moines Register said in its endorsement of Clinton that any of the above would make an excellent president and it was a most difficult decision. The Register also noted that although the Democrats had several eminently qualified folks vying to be the party candidate, no such thing existed among the leading Republican candidates.

Overlooking Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani, the Register looked deep into the ranks of Republicans and came up with John McCain as its choice.

But I digress. I am not a political junkie, and most of what I know on political matters comes from the media - newspapers and radio, primarily. Sorry, TV news staff, I don’t watch the "vast wasteland" very much. Besides that, the Missouri primary is more than a month away. No decision needs to be made before entering the voting booth on that faraway date.

Then I received a press release from the Hillary Clinton camp announcing she had appointed Joy Philippi as co-chairwoman of her rural campaign effort. Having never heard of this appointee, I entered her name into a search engine.

Lo and behold, it turns out Joy Philippi was, until March, president of the National Pork Producers Association (NPPC) and owns and operates a giant hog CAFO on her land in Nebraska. She is still one of the chief pooh-bahs of the NPPC, on its national board of directors. Big Pig. Big Meat.

The NPPC is notorious for promoting takeovers by corporate agribusiness and generally being opposed to most legislation in our nation’s Capitol. For instance, the NPPC opposes country-of-origin labeling, opposed any attempt to impose environmental regulations on CAFOs ("hog excrement don’t stink") and is opposed to local control. However, the NPPC was totally in favor of NAFTA and has all of the major hog-rearing corporations behind it - Cargill, ConAgra, Smithfield, Seaboard and Tyson among them. There are no independent hog farmers on the board of directors of the NPPC.

Philippi seemed to be an enemy of the independent farmer and was in favor of most things that would lead to their demise.

So, becoming alarmed, I took a look at the other rural campaign co-chairs. There are three of them - tri-co-chairs. The other two are Ron Sparks, agricultural commissioner (an elected position) of Alabama and U.S. Rep. Darlene Hooley.

Sparks has political aspirations, according to my friends in Alabama. That is not bad - at least he tries to pacify all sides. He has even helped establish a "sustainable farming" group in that state. He has taken credit for things he had nothing to do with, but, hey, he’s a politician.

Darlene Hooley is much the same. She is an elected official, representing the state of Washington’s Fifth District since 1997, and also has not done much to irritate anyone. To the contrary, she seems to keep in touch with the folks in her district.

It appears Hillary Clinton made good choices when she appointed Sparks and Hooley to run her rural campaign. Two folks engaged daily in the lives of their rural constituents.

So, what happened when she appointed a Big Pig advocate? Why did candidate Clinton think Philippi would be an asset? At first, I thought maybe Philippi was being rewarded for contributions. But it turned out that, although she has given some money ($2,300) to the Clinton campaign, it wasn’t nearly enough to warrant an important seat in the campaign. But the fact remained that Philippi would have Hillary’s ear and would whisper the sweet nothings of CAFO proponents. Philippi will attempt to steer the rural campaign in a direction favorable to agribusiness corporations, to the detriment of independent farmers.

I was left with only two conclusions:

Hillary Clinton is under the impression that the NPPC is an organization of real farmers.
Clinton was courting the largesse of the members of the NPPC that include some of the largest corporations in the United States.

In the first of the two conclusions, Clinton comes across as an ignoramus. Given that she is a rather brilliant person, the second conclusion is more likely. Money. Influence. Power. She is singing the same song that has always been No. 1 on the D.C. hit parade.

So, cross off Hillary Clinton. When she appointed a Big Pig proponent and a CAFO owner that espouses taking away local control to head up her rural campaign, I was left with only Obama and Edwards.

That makes my choice a bit easier.