{"id":4734,"date":"2014-02-15T14:43:51","date_gmt":"2014-02-15T14:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=4734"},"modified":"2014-02-15T14:43:51","modified_gmt":"2014-02-15T14:43:51","slug":"do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=4734","title":{"rendered":"Do as we say, not as we do"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>What a revoltin&#8217; development!<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that five men seeking to become Texas&#8217;s next agriculture commissioner all are highly critical of federal &#8220;intrusion&#8221; into state affairs, all the while taking money from those dreaded feds in the form of farm subsidies.<\/p>\n<p>Who knew?<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2014\/02\/14\/farm-subisides-go-anti-federal-govt-candidiates\/<\/p>\n<p>The Texas Tribune reports that the five Republican ag commissioner candidates received $1.3 million in payments from the feds during the past 20 years.<\/p>\n<p>Fascinating, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p>President Obama recently signed the new farm bill into law, which reduces aid for food stamp recipients by $8 billion. Two of the GOP candidates, Sid Miller and Eric Opiela, said the food stamps cuts didn&#8217;t go far enough, according to the Tribune.<\/p>\n<p>Miller told the Tribune that he favors &#8220;good legislation, not expedient legislation,&#8221; and that the farm bill fails the &#8220;good&#8221; standard. <\/p>\n<p>He and several other candidates said they would have voted against the farm bill. I wonder.<\/p>\n<p>A fellow with some farm and legislative experience of his own, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Charles Stenholm, sees it differently. &#8220;I&#8217;ve had this request made to me many times. Farmers say, &#8216;Charlie, just separate the farm portion from the food stamp portion.&#8217; I say, great, we&#8217;ll have no farm bill,&#8221; Stenholm told the Tribune.<\/p>\n<p>The salient point, though, is that these individuals seeking to run the Texas Department of Agriculture are talking a good game but are <em>playing<\/em> a different one. I am fully aware that politicians of all stripes do one thing and say another. Hypocrisy doesn&#8217;t adhere to a political monopoly.<\/p>\n<p>However, if you&#8217;re going to campaign on a pledge to keep the federal government out of the state&#8217;s business, shouldn&#8217;t you at least have the courage to reject the feds&#8217; money when they seek to fatten your own bank account?<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a revoltin&#8217; development! It turns out that five men seeking to become Texas&#8217;s next agriculture commissioner all are highly critical of federal &#8220;intrusion&#8221; into state affairs, all the while taking money from those dreaded feds in the form of farm subsidies. Who knew? http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2014\/02\/14\/farm-subisides-go-anti-federal-govt-candidiates\/ The Texas Tribune reports that the five Republican ag commissioner &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=4734\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Do as we say, not as we do<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1686,4582,4604],"class_list":["post-4734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-farm-bill","tag-texas-agriculture-commissioner","tag-texas-department-of-agriculture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}