“The other side knows a million ways to kill a bill at every step along the way … we’ve only have three ways to get it passed, fight like hell, pile enough people against the door and scream like mad” – Dave Murphy, FoodDemocracyNow.org
Vilsack will possibly go down as the worst Ag Secretary
Dave Murphey is entitled to his opinion, which is based on his new found interest in food and agriculture issues. While Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack has not been as aggressive on several issues we care deeply about, he has not been aggressively pursing policies to knowlingly and willfully designed to put family farmers ane ranchers out of busiiness. All things considered, I rank Vilsack near the top of the heap in the last 60 years. Secretaries Ezra Taft Benson, Clifford Hardin, Earl Butz, John Block, Richard Lyng, Clayton Yeutter, Edward Madigan, Ann Veneman, Mike Johanns, and Ed Schafer were far worse in that they actively pursued policies to put family farmers and ranchers out of business. It is one thing to not help as much as you could have. It is another to do actively pursue policies that do harm.