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McGovern Liberals

The front page of today's New York Times carries an appropriately skeptical dispatch on ethanol, referring to "persistent doubts about its economic and environmental benefits" and quoting an expert who describes it as "a program to help farmers at the expense of another sector of the economy." The article even refers to Archer Daniels Midland Company as "a major campaign contributor to both parties" -- an improvement over the June 12 New York Times ethanol report, which, as Smartertimes noted at the time (http://www.smartertimes.com/archive/2001/06/010612.html), identified ADM only as "a major Republican contributor."

Alas, the New York Times's welcome skepticism about subsidy-seeking farmers doesn't carry over into the fawning "Public Lives" profile in today's paper of George McGovern. The Times reports that Mr. McGovern "lobbies for his favorite cause, cutting world hunger." And that he is "asking Congress to send more surplus food overseas in global school-lunch programs." The article mentions that the legislation has the support of Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, and that it is named after Mr. McGovern and former Senator Bob Dole.

There's not even a hint of recognition in the Public Lives profile that what Mr. McGovern, Mr. Dole and Mr. Daschle are up to here is not so much about "cutting world hunger" but about helping farmers -- in the memorable phrase of the ethanol article -- at the expense of another sector of the economy. Mr. McGovern and Mr. Daschle are both from the farm state of South Dakota, and Mr. Dole is from Kansas.

Mr. McGovern, in particular, is just not credible on the hunger-reduction issue. If he was such an implacable foe of hunger, why did he spend his political career advocating a soft line against the Soviet Union, which was one of the foremost creators of famine in human history? And why has he been such a fierce critic of Israel? In 1993, the Middle East Policy Council, an anti-Israel outfit of which Mr. McGovern was president, called on the U.S Government "not only to withhold planned disbursements of loan guarantees to Israel but also to reduce or suspend its regular military and economic assistance and to impose trade sanctions," as Michael Curtis pointed out in the June 1998 issue of Middle East Quarterly. With its dry-farming techniques and kibbutz-developed irrigation technology, Israel has done far more to fight hunger than Mr. McGovern could ever hope to accomplish.

The Times leaves unchallenged this notion of sending "more surplus food overseas." The reason the food is "surplus" is that the American government is paying farmers to produce more of it than there is a market demand for. And while shipping it overseas may help in crisis relief, the money may well be better spent in the long term by teaching the people of hungry countries about new techniques in sustainable agriculture so that they can grow their own food. Or the money could be spent on overthrowing the unfree regimes that are contributing to the starvation of their own people, the way the Soviet Union did back when Mr. McGovern was undermining America's efforts to confront it.

Uncompetitive

The lead, front-page news story in today's (July 22nd) New York Times is a dispatch from the G-8 summit at Genoa, Italy. "Mr. Bush has countered the protesters by insisting that ever freer trade is the answer to the problems facing developing nations, though never once here has he explored the side effects on countries unable to compete with the richest nations," the Times reports. This sentence contains so many wrongheaded assumptions that it's hard to know where to start. Perhaps the most glaring is the phrase "unable to compete." Talk about your soft bigotry of low expectations. No country is inherently "unable to compete." Some may be saddled with oppressive governments and may lack natural resources, but it's overly pessimistic to write them off as "unable to compete." The juxtaposition with "the richest nations" makes it sound like the "unable to compete" nations the Times is talking about are the poor nations. But in fact, labor costs tend to be lower in these poor nations than they are in rich nations. So free trade means those poor nations will probably benefit as jobs move there from rich nations. The rich nations benefit, too, as their consumers can pay lower prices for goods made with lower labor costs. If anything, the "side effects" of free trade may be worse in those "richest nations," where there are some job losses as work moves overseas. Finally, how does the Times know that Mr. Bush has "never once" explored this question? Isn't it possible he did so privately and the newspaper just hasn't heard about it?

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Last modified: May 05, 2006