Indeed, the boondoggle bill deserves a White House rejection for its almost $300 billion of farm programs that will be paid for by taxpayers and consumers. Farm bills, however, no matter how wasteful, have a way of surviving, and this legislation may be no exception, since it’s a case study of bipartisanship gone bad.

Besides the sugar provisions we’ve written about here and here, the biofuels programs’ grants and loan guarantees, plus moneys for R&D and “energy efficiency” projects, together with the extension of the tariff on imported ethanol, will continue to exacerbate the food vs. fuel program.

That’s what I was asking myself this morning, after I had fully digested Tim Russert’s shocking midnight announcement on Tuesday that the Democratic Party’s primary was over. Russert is the host of the most prestigious Sunday morning news talkie, Meet the Press, so he is a big player in the world of political coverage, and his word is paramount.

The establishment took its cue. Twenty-four hours later, every commentator of note had declared the race over. Today, Time Magazine is releasing a cover story titled “And the Winner Is…” accompanied by a glamour shot of the anointed nominee, Senator Barack Obama.

But there’s a problem: the race isn’t over! Senator Obama doesn’t have the requisite number of delegates to win the nomination outright. In fact, he doesn’t even have a majority. What is more, he hasn’t been all that effective in the states that the Dems need to win if they are to beat Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee.

The Wednesday morning headlines should have read: “Candidates Split; Race Goes On.” Instead, Senator Clinton was buried by the media. Who would support her campaign now that every new political story touches upon the fact that a “deluded” Clinton is doomed? And without money, the lifeblood of politics, there can be no campaign.

Yogi Berra could probably say it best, but I’ll give it a try: This one’s over, not because it’s over, but because they say it’s over.

To be sure, I am no fan of Senator Clinton. Her style of politics repulses me. But I am even more disgusted by a media establishment that thinks it knows best.

You see, I am a global warming “denier” because energy poverty frightens me more than rising temperatures. So I empathize with Hillary, because all too often, the media decides to take the ball out of my hands, too.

Take Arianna Huffington, whose hugely popular website, the Huffington Post, dominates the policy blogosphere. While promoting her new book, she has been telling reporters that the media should not report both sides of the global warming debate. Her rationale? According to Huffington, it doesn’t serve the public’s interest. In effect, she is admitting that she thinks she knows what’s best for the public.

Huffington and Russert both labor under the misapprehension that what they believe is what we should believe. Unfortunately, they are indicative of their peers. The media’s inability to separate reporting from preaching has cost the Democratic Party a fair primary, and it is robbing American voters of honest debate on global warming.

The architect of the bill, Congressman Barney Frank, calls his own bill the payment of an economic ”ransom,” admitting that it rewards irresponsible people by bailing them out.   His excuses for paying this ransom are decidedly lame.  Moreover, his bill contains political pork for left-wing special interest groups like La Raza and the National Urban League. 

Prior to its passage, I criticized GINA’s ban on employment discrimination in the National Law Journal for lacking a “direct threat” exception for public safety.  The Economist’s blog suggested its ban on insurance discrimination could fundamentally undermine insurance markets and the availability of private health insurance in the long run. 

I am not pointing this out because I lament the loss of research funding, I think this type of funding belong in the private arena and should be funneled through 503(c)’s. I am pointing this out because this is a great story about the end results of the horse-trading that goes on in Congress.

This man’s laboratory might be the $100,000 spent by Congress on the High Falls Film Festival in Rochester, NY or the $200,000 spent on the American Cotton Museum in Greenville, TX. Not that I mind buying rich congress people tickets to museum openings and film festivals, but do they have to be so expensive?

The upcoming CEI dinner is a great alternative. It is amuch cheaper for taxpayers and we can offer speaking presidents, authors, great food, and great company.

Glad you posted about the bloated farm bill and how sugar is treated.  A “Sweetheart Deal” – how right the Washington Post is in its editorial today blasting farm bill proposals that would make the U.S. sugar program an even sweeter deal for producers while consumers foot the bill.

The current sugar program – which has expired but has been extended with other 2002 farm programs — is a system of price supports, domestic production restrictions, and restrictions on sugar imports.  The new bill would distort the market even further.  It would raise the price supports for U.S. sugar cane and sugar beets, thus guaranteeing sugar producers twice the world price; provide domestic producers with 85 percent of the U.S. market, and protect them from competition by turning imported sugar into ethanol. The Sweetener Users — a coalition of food, beverage, and confectioners pushing for reform of the sugar program — estimates that the farm bill will cost consumers about $2 billion over five years.

That sweet deal is one that the Bush Administration doesn’t like and is one of the issues that may indeed provoke a presidential veto.  The Administration thinks real reform of the programs was needed, and income caps for who can receive subsidies should be lowered. But farm programs, especially sugar, get heavy support from their lobbyists and from Congress.  Add to that the fact that the majority of farm bill money goes for food stamps and nutrition programs – which almost guarantees that urban, suburban, and rural representatives also want the bill to pass.  

In a period where farmers are making unprecedented profits, and consumers are feeling the pinch of higher food prices, it should be a time when real reform of farm programs would have a chance.  But don’t count on it. 

I used to love the online edition of Encyclopedia Britannica when I was in undergraduate school. I studied comparative religion and intellectual history, and the trusty old Britannica gave me run downs and overviews that got me into the subject matter quicker. The science journal Nature published a study where the accuracy of these two encyclopedic giants where ranked as pretty even when it came to the number of inaccuracies, to the chagrin of subscription based Encyclopedia Britannica.

I write quite a bit about politicized science issues, such as global warming and stem cells and plant biotechnology. And I can tell you that I never turn to Wikipedia on any of these issues. If it is an issue in the political arena, Wikipedia is not your friend. EVER! One of the columnists at the Financial Post has discovered this, because he actually spends some time editing articles on Wikipedia.

The columnist updated some incorrect information about one of the scientists who has involved himself in the global warming debate, but found out that his edits where immediately removed over and over again. The same person always did the removal.

Someone called Tabletop was undoing my edits, and, following what I suppose is Wikietiquette, also explained why. “Note that Peiser has retracted this critique and admits that he was wrong!” Tabletop said.

I undid Tabletop’s undoing of my edits, thinking I had an unassailable response: “Tabletop’s changes claim to represent Peiser’s views. I have checked with Peiser and he disputes Tabletop’s version.”

Tabletop undid my undid, claiming I could not speak for Peiser.

Why can Tabletop speak for Peiser but not I, who have his permission?, I thought. I redid Tabletop’s undid and protested: “Tabletop is distorting Peiser. She does not speak for him. Peiser has approved my description of events concerning him.”

Tabletop parried: “We have a reliable source to this. What Peiser has said to *you* is irrelevant.”

The columnist, whose name is Lawrence Solomon, ran into another mischaracterization of the views of a scientist that is active in the global warming debate. This time, politically correct Wikipedia entries where removing serious accounts of this person’s scientific track record and insinuating that he believes in Martians. Solomon has obviously given up contributing to Wikipedia by now, so he recounts the man’s science credentials in the Financial Post column instead of wasting his time on work that will be tossed out by less accurate writers with an angle.

By now, his columns and his edits have actually riled up some of the zealots that use Wikipedia as a political propaganda tool. Solomon posts another column where he shares the advice he has gotten from experienced Wikipedians, they all tell him not to write under his real name. This is counter intuitive for someone who writes for a living:

But how odd a thought that a writer would want anonymity. Or maybe not so odd. In the real world, those who want anonymity are either ashamed of their conduct — say, poison pen writers– or fear for their safety — say, writers inside China criticizing their government. In the world of Wicked Pedia, the same two reasons rule.

The world of online socializing can get ugly fast, because people feel anonymous behind their computers in their own homes. Anyone who has spent time on the Paleolithic bulletin board systems and UseNet can tell the tale that it always was so, and always will be so. Wikipedia is no different.

Solomon is not the only person who has run into pranksters and zealots with too much time on their hands on Wikipedia. Participants in the public debate have been declared dead, implied as participants in assignations and other criminal activities, and it is a problem that Wikipedia recognizes as a major obstacle to the quality of the Wikipedia brand. However, since Jimmy Wales proclaimed that he would operate with “stable” and audited entries in 2005, little has changed. We still have these issues.

I will continue to use Wikipedia for technical stuff, such as double checking the definitions of enzymes and ribosomes. I will also continue the rule that my professors at the Missouri School of Journalism drilled into my head, always verify the information from one source with another source. In the meantime know that Wikipedia is not a reliable source for information about political issues, or people that are involved in public debate about political issues.

My buddy Richard North, author and former food safety inspector blogged about the EU ban on US poultry imports recently, when EU promised to deliver a “progress report” on their efforts to lift the import ban.

According to North, the EU banned US poultry imports because US poultry farmers wash the poultry in a disinfectant to eliminate pathogens such as e. coli and such. This is not allowed in the EU, so they stopped importing poultry from the US. EU’s version of the FDA has said this practice is not only safe, but desirable. EU bureaucrats however, know how angry EU poultry farmers will be if the ban is lifted, so they are dragging their feet, just like they do in every other case of import bans on agricultural products.

North says if it comes down to the safety of EU consumers and the coddling of EU food producers, EU will choose coddling any day. Gods forbid that the benevolent government should protect the consumers they repeatedly claim they protect!

-And the answer to the question in the headline? I don’t know, cause the EU has yet to lift an import ban of importance…