Vote for Joe

I just read a rather detailed article on “African agriculture” in National Geographic magazine. It noted that it was on the rise and that Africa, itself, while having a lot of fallow land and plenty of water for irrigation, nonetheless still has the “…largest ‘yield gap’ of anywhere on earth.” The article also noted that the World Bank, other donor countries, and corporations are stepping up to increase this ‘yield.’ Problem is, the article (by Joel K. Bourne, Jr.) explains that big farming is colliding, in many parts of Africa, with small farming. Corporate farming concerns are, for instance, buying up big swaths of land in, say, Mozambique — with the government doing little to protect small farmer land rights in this. As the big farms take over, they then continue to increase exponentially (as has happened in America). What’s more, big farming practices include things like using massive amounts of toxic, artificial pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers… that, in the long run, damage the soil, the environment, and, well, consumers (cancer risks, and such). In the article, a partial argument is made to help current small farmers there be as sustainable as possible by helping them in various ways. For instance, “African Century Agriculture” provides small farmers with more seed and mechanical devises to weed. It also provides “extension agents” to teach these small farmers about “conservation agriculture,” the latest in seed treatments, and such. They currently work with some 900 farmers. Note: Our administration’s policy would be too increase, ‘exponentially,’ aid to organizations like African Century Agriculture to help buoy the small farmers of Africa. Given Africa is the “hungriest continent” in the world (scores of people starve to death every day there), our priority — devoid of myopic, selfish “American interests” — would be to, well, do what’s morally right to help people with constant “food insecurity” issues. And our agricultural platform stance, in part, outlines projects that we’ve researched across America to mobilize a lot more help for these people. This is, really, how we can: Make America Great Again — in God’s eyes. [Our Foreign Policy addresses some of all this as well.] Note 2: The article also noted that the “specter of climate change threatens to hammer Africa’s [crop] yields.” So our administration’s policy would be to also work on, ‘exponentially’ again, curbing climate change.

It will be a ‘Plimpton presidency,’ as it has been a ‘Plimpton candidacy.’ George Plimpton was a “participatory sports journalist.” That is, he would actually play whatever sport he was writing about to better understand it in portraying it. For instance, before writing the book Paper Lion, he participated in part of training camp with the Detroit Lions and even ran three plays at quarterback during an exhibition game. I, as an example, tout organic farming in our platform. So myself, and our family, worked for extended periods on several organic farms over the years. This was not some “farm photo-op deal.” We worked long, sweaty hours for weeks, sometimes months on end, bailing hay, cutting wood, working with animals… For more on our agricultural platform in general… Note: I told the Country Today newspaper in Wisconsin that another part of our agricultural platform revolves around lobbying for big corporate mega-farms to be classified as “monopolies,” and broken up. Our country would do best to go back to small family farms, which was once the backbone of the country, and should be again.

I just read some of the cover article in this magazine. The relatively new field of “astrobiology” has scientists spending all kinds of time and money setting up experiments in places like a frozen arctic lakes, tropical caves, and such, in order to simulate conditions on, say, parts of Mars, Europa, and so on, in a quest to discover life forms, like, for instance, earth’s microbes and other possible microscopic life “out there.” Uh… I just interviewed a philosophy professor at Ohio Northern University who teaches a class on Environmental Ethics. He talked about people developing what he referred to as “virtue ethics.” That is, their actions are determined, not at random, but rather through where their moral compass points to. Okay… If I know that some one billion people on this planet don’t have access to clean drinking water, and I’m part of a field spending millions, maybe billions, of dollars, and all kinds of precious time and valuable expertise, on looking for extra-terrestrial microbes, what might that say about where my moral compass is pointing? Just askin’.

Yesterday Trump, with great fanfare, spoke from the Pentagon about withdrawing troops from Syria, ramping up even more our missile defense, and he talked, once again, about the need for a iron clad border wall. Yesterday I, with a whole lot less fanfare (in fact I was the only one there), visited a Military Memorial in small Spencerville, Ohio, in the early evening. The Memorial, among a good number of things, includes a marble stone listing every armed conflict the U.S. has had over the years where American service people have lost their lives. Anything from, say, WWII where 293,121 lost their lives to as small as the “Bay of Pigs” (1961) where four American service people lost their lives. As president, the gravity of going to war, any war, would weigh heavily on me. I believe in the “Just War” principles where, among other principles, you have to exhaust every avenue of peaceful diplomacy before committing to war. This would include, in my book, being as proactive as possible about preemptively “building peace” around the world at every turn. And there is so much more we could do in these areas, starting with our proposal for a U.S. Department of Peace. Note: “Bluster and Bombs” is not a sustainable, geo-political long-term answer.

We, many of us, are “trashing” the planet. I wrote this article a few weeks back. Ada’s Village Administrator pointed out that China is taking approximately 40% less recycling from the U.S. these days because it’s trying to get its own pollution problems under control. I mention further on in the article, that when we were on a research trip out east a number of years ago, we learned that New Jersey’s landfills were all but full, and garbage trucks there have clear cylinders on the outside that the trash is initially funneled through before going into the body of the truck. If recyclables are observed in the garbage, some municipalities levy fines now — of up to $250. For a look at our position on the environment…