Jamison Foser says ...

8 Words of Wisdom for Week Ending 3/20/2009 #4

Honeybees are pretty important. See, humans need food. Without it, we die. And bees not only produce honey, they pollinate all kinds of crops -- onions, cashews, celery, strawberries, beets, broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, apples ... you get the picture. Honeybees play an important role in our food supply, and our economy. And honeybees have been disappearing at an alarming rate in recent years, for reasons that are not fully known.

Here's how the state of Pennsylvania described the problem last May:

Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff today said the commonwealth will increase funding to continue research on the potentially devastating "Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder."

"Honey bees are critical to Pennsylvania agriculture and to our state's economy," said Wolff. "Pollination from the honey bees determines fruit set and increases fruit quality at an estimated value of $80 million. We can't afford to be lax in dealing with this problem."

According to a study by two Cornell University professors, honeybee pollination accounted for $14.6 billion worth of crops annually between 1996 and 1998.

Honeybee research doesn't sound so funny now, does it?

Now, you can't expect most Americans to know this. Most Americans don't give much thought to bees beyond hoping they don't get stung by one. And that's fine: The life cycle and migratory patterns of bees, and their resultant effects on avocado and cucumber growth, are fairly obscure subjects. We can't, and shouldn't, expect the typical American to know about or act upon these things. After all, there are a lot of obscure but important things that, as a nation, we need to know about and act upon. We can't know about and act upon them all individually; it's literally impossible.

That's another of the reasons we have a government: to know about and act upon the things we cannot know about and act upon individually. It's one of the reasons we watch television and read newspapers, too: They have the resources that we lack to learn about important but obscure things, and the ability to educate us. (This is where some defenders -- and critics -- of the news media will remind me that the media's job isn't to educate the public, much as I might wish it was; their job is to make money. To that I say: How's that working out? Maybe it's time to try a more serious approach.)

Source - Media Matters

No comment other than to ask you to read the entire article at the link provided above. It does a terrific job articulating the role the people need the government to play, and an even better job of indicting the media for playing around while the conservatives do stupid things. Great stuff.

I Believe in Government

8 Thoughts About My Political Philosophy #2

I'm a liberal who doesn't believe in big government though I'm not opposed to big government.

I do not believe in small government though I'm a liberal who isn't opposed to small government.
I believe that government is the perfect size when it is serving the needs of the people with as little waste as possible.

I believe that the people would be better served by the government providing health insurance than large corporations devoted only to the bottom line.

I believe that the people would be better served by the government allowing the Army to grow and support itself rather than trusting large corporations looking to increase their profit margins with the task.

I believe that the people are best served by the government aggressively regulating large corporations rather than relying on the corporations to police themselves.

I believe that the people are best served when the government protects the right of workers to organize than when the government allows corporations to run over labor.

I believe that the people are better served by Social Security, than they would be by government sponsored private savings accounts that would be little more than gifts to Wall Street.

I believe in the power of government to protect the people from physical harm from our enemies, from discrimination in the workplace, from corporate greed, and from polluters.

I believe that government can work when it is run by people who want it to work, rather than by ideologues who get elected to prove it cannot.

I believe in the power and possibility of government.