Dakota Beacon

I could be writing about a sensational story like the story of Tony Bobulinski, revealing the filth that has been festering in the world of Hunter and Joe Biden, but then you have all seen a lot of that and I could add little but my own reaction of disgust.  There is another bigger-picture kind of story I thought might be worth sharing with you, and the real story is a tangent on the reported story.  I’ll explain.

The trigger story is of the mayor of Linden, New Jersey.  New Jersey isn’t a bastion of Republican partisanship, so that sort of sets the stage.  That city’s mayor is Derek Armstead, a Democrat.  So there is the scene - some warehouse in Linden, New Jersey.  

During the height of the pandemic, many problems cropped up in terms of transport and getting food to market.  Farmers were at the end of their tether, not knowing how long they could hang on and not destroy their crops and livestock due to issues with trying to get anything to market.  At the same time, during a time of a national health crisis, people were not able to get fresh food.  Meat packing plants were closing and other issues arose - trucking, distribution in general, dogged the entire agricultural sector.  And people could not buy what they needed.  

The president, or someone in his administration, began to get creative.  This is not normal in government, but maybe it came from someone who didn’t come from government.  Maybe it even came from the president himself.  I don’t know.  But the Trump administration managed to put together a system to acquire the produce and convey it to the American families who were in need.  They called it “Farmers to Families”.  It solved some huge problems in the agricultural sector and some equally urgent problems for families in crisis.  The food was sent around the country and distributed - or was supposed to be distributed - locally.  Seemed reasonable enough.  If you can get the foodstuffs as far as the city’s mayor he ought to be able to get it to those in need in his city.  It seems a small matter.  

The boxes containing the food also contained a letter from the Office of the President.  It was not campaign literature.  It was rather an explanation of the source of the food - American farmers - and that it was a cooperative program for getting food to the people.  It also included some advice from the CDC regarding some simple rules, if you will, to help avoid contracting COVID-19.  It was signed “Donald Trump”.  The name was about the only connection with a political campaign.  

Well, the mayor of Linden, Mr. Armstead, rubbed his hands together like a hungry fly and opened the boxes of foodstuffs meant for the people.  Who knows how much of it got past him.  I’m just sayin’.  But being the Democrat activist he is, he took it upon himself to remove the letter from each box of fresh food, delaying its delivery to its intended recipient, and replaced it with a letter of his own, giving the impression that he - Derek Armstead, Mayor of Linden - was providing this much-needed relief for people in his city.  Nowhere did he mention the USDA program which had been developed to solve these problems of farmers and consumers, nowhere did he mention the president, nowhere did he acknowledge the source of the food.  No.  All he said was what a great guy he was and he got you all this food.  All by himself.  What a guy.  

So presumably at least some of the food got past Checkpoint Armstead, albeit with a mysterious claim giving credit to Armstead.  It also omitted all of the COVID advice from the CDC which had been thoughtfully included in the letter.  

So that is the story of Derek Armstead and his porch-pirate approach to handling COVID crises.  But a more important story is that of the program itself - the one he stole for his own purposes.  

In 1931, then-president Herbert Hoover decided to act in the matter of falling farm prices.  The Great Depression defined his presidency, and it was an accurate definition.  The stock market crashed in 1929, and - without going into the complex and fascinating story that began there, it is well understood that the economic depression that ensued - worldwide, like the current pandemic - brought disaster to millions and millions of innocent, hard-working Americans.  John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath sets the picture for us.  Hoover’s reaction to the fall in prices for farm goods was to attempt to create an artificial shortage so as to drive those prices back up.  A more stupid idea would be difficult to come up with.  Immense amounts of vegetables, fruits and grain crops were destroyed and livestock slaughtered while Americans were hungry and dying elsewhere in the country.  It did the farmers no good, of course.  It is never a good plan to destroy things.  No one benefited from this rotten and completely unimaginative “plan”.  Hoover spent his entire life in one or another aspect of government.  He loved big government and big plans and big programs.  His only reaction was an unimaginative, knee-jerk idea - just create a shortage.  The strange irony is that Hoover became known for his successful efforts to help relieve starvation in Europe in the aftermath of the devstation of World War I.  While he was a hero in that challenge, he was an utter, irredeemable failure in relieving the crusis in his own country.

Compare this with the plan instituted by the Trump administration.  People had food they could not get to market.  Other people needed food they could not get.  Why not be a broker, then?  Find a way to arrange shipment of this valuable commodity to the market desperate to buy it.  Win-win.  Maybe not everything in real estate negotiation works in government but that which relies on common sense does work.  . The first rule is:  leave something on the table for the other guy.  Make it a good deal for him as well as for you.  Don’t take everything; don’t rob him.  If you find a fair compromise you both won.   This is the first and most important rule in real estate.  

I thought the story I opened with here illustrated two approaches.  In one, a greedy, unimaginative parasite opened someone else’s mail, in effect.  He broke his compact with the people and he acted maliciously with regard to his duty - small as it was in the scope of this effort - to get this food to the people.  Who knows if he got it all to the people.  I think we might all suspect not, but in any case, he tainted the program by misrepresenting the whole thing and trying to steal credit for it.  The other aspect is learning how one president met the challenge of an economic crisis in 1931 with creating want and another met the challenge of a global pandemic and attendant consequences to the economy by creating solutions and prosperity.  Maybe that is why the Trump rallies are so phenomenal.  

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