Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer The Sun-Sentinel

November 5, 2011
Douglas C. Lyons – Senior Editorial Writer
The Sun-Sentinel

RE: At last! A teachable moment. The line – Could it be a penumbra? – between the price of bacon and the war on terror is made more clear in your thoughtful article in today’s Sun-Sentinel.

Mr. Lyons,

As a practicing modern American Liberal, ink stained wretch division, and thus a permanent resident in the fuzzy world of cognitive dissonance, your thoughts on the possibility of pulled pork sandwiches going walkabout are helpful.

Some thoughts from a curmudgeonly observer, one who has signed both sides of a pay check:

#1 – Rising prices are bad when they hit your pocketbook. Since you work for a bankrupt company you most assuredly want some prices to rise. Your home, your 401K, your stash of pre-1964 American coins are but a few examples. Sorry. You don’t get to pick and choose which prices. No amount of really earnest true believers singing “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” will cause the law of rational self-interest to be repealed.

#2 – It is entirely irrelevant whether the money was borrowed from the Chinese or confiscated from the 1936 trust created when Senator Lard Kennedy was born or from the swag bag of George Soros. Since 2009 about $2,000,000,000,000 – that’s two trillion dollars – has been force fed into a system that couldn’t handle it.

Markets make no distinctions as to intentions. Markets are comprised of millions of people who observe data and make decisions. As such it is beyond the control of modern American Liberals. That is one of the causes of their group madness. If they can’t control it they want to kill it.

#3 – Independent data, readily accessible in the world of search engines, reveal some inconvenient truths. Commodities are the first canary in the coal mine. When governments debase their currency because they are too cowardly to cut back on the goodies commodity prices rise in inverse proportion to the cheapening of printed money. When you toss in a Homerically stupid head up your ass idea – Let’s make gasoline from corn - the law of unintended consequences takes over.

In this country the overwhelming majority of corn was raised to feed hogs. Farmers were subsidized to grow corn, not for feed, but as a gasoline substitute. When a raiser of hogs asked a grower of corn for the old price the farmer laughed. Thus, when the price ran, Dougie in Florida had to pay more for his BLT. There was to be one more disastrous unintended consequence that I will get to later.

For people who believe that making rich people poorer will make poor people richer, for people who believe that raising the minimum wage is a good thing for poor people, for people who believe that Wal-Mart’s low prices exploit their low income customers, for people who believe that correlation is causation will be hard pressed to make the connection.

#4 – “Nowadays the price of bacon is enough to make my blood sizzle.”

Here’s a plan.

Stop eating it.

Read carefully.

I’ll type slowly.

When the price of a commodity spikes upward two things happen. The marginal user stops using it and the upward price attracts new supplies to the marketplace. There are some exceptions to this.

Thoroughbred yearlings and 150 point perfect diamonds enjoyed decades of rising prices until the run ended in the ‘80s. The price of gasoline in this country is undisturbed by reality. Both parties have taxed it and regulated it as if it were toxic. The failure of both Parties to allow the exploitation of existing energy sources guarantees but one thing: higher prices. [I used the words toxic and exploitation intentionally]

In an age where new rights are daily discovered have we found a heretofore unknown one? Does Dougie have a right to cheap pork products? Several years ago the owners of Coral Ridge Country Club were told that they had to continue to subsidize a smaller course on their property. It was a public course on private property. The main users were senior citizens. Their ad hoc committee earned the nickname “Golf for Geezers”. I guess there is no fool like an old fool. Unless of course if a “senior editorial writer” feels that the rest of the world should subsidize his meat choices. Fools, old, young, or middle aged seem to be in the ascendancy.

#5 – There is a more sinister answer to your quandary.

3 years ago President B.O. said that “we would extend our hand if you will unclench your fist”. So there is no confusion about the identity of “you” 19 0f “them” attacked this country on 9/11/01 and killed 3,000 people.

The President’s wife, a woman whose backside was why Spandex was invented, wants us to eat more wholesome food. There is no truth to the rumor that she wants to replace cocaine with granola. What better way to reach out to the Muslim world than to “outlaw” pork by making it prohibitively expensive? Then she has some feral morons dress up as Guy Fawkes – Does anyone else remember what happened to him? - and run around Wall Street with signs that say “Jew Bastard Bankers are Killers”. Just like the Tea Party, right? If she is successful it will be easier for you to get Bald Eagle soup or Whooping Crane salad than a plate of ribs. By the way, I prefer the St. Louis style to the slightly foo-foo baby backs.

#6 – You mention the death by starvation of “someone every 3.6 seconds”. I mentioned the unexplained consequences of this country subsidizing ethanol. Despite corn dogs, corn bread, or Corn Flakes corn is not a grain staple in this country. It is in the rest of the world. If you can be as precise as to a death every 3.6 seconds perhaps you could get a number of those who died because they could no longer afford corn.

Perhaps you could tell me why we pay farmers not to raise crops .Perhaps you could tell me why, when Zimbabwe was called Rhodesia, it fed all of Southern Africa. Today its fertile lands are as sterile as Carthage when Scipio got through with it. A crow would starve flying over it. Perhaps you could tell me why Cuba, a country so fertile that sugar used to grow on unused runways, still has, despite the earnest efforts of Los Hermanos Castro for 50 years, the same 3 problems. They are called breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Russia did not export a single bushel of wheat from 1919 until 1993.

I think there may be a pattern here. Do you?

#7 – Have you ever been to Arthur Bryant’s?







KEVIN SMITH
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET