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September 25, 2008 3:41 PM
Apple Media! Good Day L.A., Rick Lozano, and Channel 11 Fox News visited the farm this morning with a nice crew. (Click the link for video of their coverage.) I'm so used to internet media, and cable up at my mom's place that I forget there are people who still get broadcast (over the airwaves) television. People dropped by all morning saying, "I saw you on the news." Federal Assistance I made several attempts to contact Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, but he seems tied up or something. I wanted him to know that we planted a watermelon patch this year, and even though our watermelons are sweeter than any you can buy at the store, we had so many we sold them at one dollar a piece. The obvious loss on this crop could have ripple effects on the economy and, in keeping with the current thinking about these things, I wanted to ask Secretary Paulson if he would consider bailing out my watermelon crop. It would require considerably less than $700 billion, and we wouldn't even have to set up a new federal agency. Well, as I said, he wouldn't return my call today, so I called Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking committee. Senator Dodd took more money from Fannie MAE than anyone else in Congress, and I imagine he wants a new issue to take everyone's mind off the sub prime debacle. If he had answered the phone I would have said, "Senator, you and Senator Obama and a lot of your colleagues wanted Fannie MAE to extend loans to a lot of people who might not be able to pay them back, and I was thinking that everyone likes a good sweet farm-grown melon, and, owing as I have already made these available to the public at below cost levels, after a fashion similar to your altruistic banking adventures, perhaps you could, er, earmark an agricultural subsidy to my farm, so as to assure a melon in every pot?" (I finally watched O Brother Where Art Thou last night--start to finish.) Well, Senator Dodd did not take my call either, so I did not have the opportunity to propose this altruistic venture, that, truth be told, might have been instrumental, in some small way, in propping up the demand for melons and preventing a run on melon patches around the country. I now have calls into Senator John McCain and Barack Obama, and this time I am not going to make light of the situation. Selling watermelons at this price probably means a loss, in hard money, of $702.33. We have a very small melon patch, but before things get completely out of hand, I am going to DEMAND that either Obama or McCain promise the American people that Riley's Farm receive an unconditional grant of $3.8 million. It all sounds perfectly logical to me, given the state of current thinking on these matters.
And Now For Another Look at the Current Financial Crisis.
More of the Farm Journal -- September 24, 2008
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