Well, DUH!*

First, I would like to qualify this post by saying that, like John McCain, I don't know a whole lot about economics. Now that those of you who know me have recovered from the shock of me comparing myself to John McCain, I will qualify that statement by saying that I do understand a little about the subject. I think.

That said, I would like to present my thoughts on Bush's "innovative" plan to deal with rising food prices, specifically as they impact the efforts of the U.S. to fight poverty in other, less fortunate nations. This plan, which he presented to the U.N. last September, has been in the news again recently because food prices are continuing to rise dramatically. The basic gist of it is that the U.S. will continue to spend billions on delivering food aid to poor countries, but not by growing the food here and shipping it to where it is needed - often halfway around the world. Not only does this require increasingly scarce fossil fuels to get the food there, but it also contributes to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming, which is an issue that is becoming harder and harder to ignore, even for right-wing politicians in the ever-warmer pocket of Big Oil. These efforts are will-intentioned, and certainly needed, but the execution of them is just plain stupid. It's like giving sewer water to a person dying of thirst. It might slake the person's thirst in the short term, but chances are it'll cause more problems down the road.

Now Bush wants to use the money to buy food (let's say rice) that's already being produced in those poor countries. The farmers who grow it will be paid for their crops (hopefully a fair price, but I'm not holding my breath) instead of having them rendered worthless by free, American-grown rice brought in on big, fuel guzzling ships. I saw a clip on CNN from a speech he gave in which he called this idea "innovative." But isn't this what the U.N. has been doing for years? The same U.N. that you outright ignore on pretty much every other foreign policy?

Under the current model of American aid, we send rice that we've grown into a place that already grows plenty of rice on its own. But with all that free rice coming in, there's no one to buy the rice that the farmers grow domestically. So the farmers can't provide for their families, but they can feed them American rice. Which they'll depend on as long as it keeps wrecking the economy and preventing the farmers from making a living by doing what they do - growing crops. So all that well-intentioned rice does currently is create a vicious cycle that keeps the poor countries poor.

For all my sarcasm and bitterness regarding the current U.S. method of delivering food aid, I'm glad our brainless president finally presented a better solution for the problem, even though it certainly wasn't his. (I'm sure it wasn't even his idea that we think about revamping how we deliver food aid, but that's beside the point.) I'll try to refrain from saying things like "Well, DUH" to the television when I hear him actually present more sensible ways of doing things. Which is what I yelled at it this morning. After all, it's kind of like watching the slowest kid in the special ed class, who also happens to be a bully, finally understand that two plus two really does equal four. You can't help but be a little proud of him, even if he did wreck your country (and everyone else's he could get his hands on).

*So, apparently, when I originally wrote this post, I hadn't checked the headlines for the New York Times that day. There had been a big article about the big rice shortage in Australia because of a six month drought and how it's contributed to the overall shortage of rice around the world. Yet I keep seeing articles about how there isn't a real shortage of rice in the U.S.

Once again, the rest of the world gets shortchanged. But maybe now, unlike previously, the U.S. would be justified in sending huge quantities of rice over to poorer Asian countries. But now that it's maybe the right thing to do, it probably won't happen.