Just saw on the news, farmer upset about how much it costs to plant fields

This doesn't bode well for the economy.

I could be cynical. I could spout off some just due anti-capitalism comments; farmers have been mistreated by the system for years...

But that would be typical of me.

Yet alone the drought summer which ruined a lot of crops. (A month ago, newscaster weatherpeople were cajoling the sheeple viewers about "Will there be rain for your lawns tomorrow?" while totally ignoring the crop issue. I threw a rant at the time mentioning the discrepancy, that knowing about the state of crops might be a tad more important than a frigging yellowing lawn! Maybe the newscasters had read it? In all honesty, I stopped watching the propag... newscasts... from that point to just about a week ago when I heard the story that MN police are now going after speeders travelling in clusters (so it's no longer safe to "stay with the flow of traffic", meanwhile if you go the speed limit you'll get hated and ran over by everybody else!)

Ugh. Hurry up 2004. I'll find solace in the belief that getting rid of Shrubbypants* might improve the state of the world...

You have no idea how difficult it has become. I do think that the gov wants all farms to be owned and managed by large corporations. It is outrageous how small, family farmers are treated.

Makes sense. Repukes and especially neo-cons want everything to be privatized with no regulation or control to maintain fairness or equity.

Repukes love big corporations and corporate rule. They claim to care about small businesses, but that's a pile of steaming cack. Their actions prove that instantly.

Farmers deserve more respect than doctors or anybody else. Without the family farmers who've spent generations feeding everybody, we'd be, well, dead.

Corporate america goes too far at times. This is definitely one of those times. Most of the time it's all of the time anyway.

this could be the beginning of something big!

here in my part of northern il. we have gotten any rain in weeks and if it rains it doesn`t get the ground wet under the cars...

I live in a city in the middle of some of the region's best arable land. That means there are lots of farmers around. Let me tell you, farmers are some of the *complainingest* people you'll ever care to run across. If it doesn't rain, they bitch about that. If it rains, they bitch that it's raining too much. If seed prices are high, they bitch about how much it costs to plant crops. If seed prices are low, they bitch about how little return they get from growing crops. Basically, I figure you just can't please them, so, unless there's something really catastrophic going on (like major flooding or a severe dry spell), I just ignore them. While it's true that factory farming is taking over a lot of agriculture, and that's bad, you should also know to take farmers' complaints with as large a grain of salt as you feel is necessary. (The farmer's daughter reading over my shoulder agrees with me!)

A better economic indicator is to look at how many employed/unemployed truckers there are...