Agriculture Is Cheap When You Have Serfs to do the Work
Tom Nelson has a pretty funny set of articles on the White House vegetable garden. Michelle Obama told a group of kids it only cost $180. Tom links a variety of videos and articles showing:
- Five NPS workers digging in the garden, with a tractor, tiller, and hand tools.
- A job posting for a college grad for the position of "White House Farmer."
- A job description of an assistant White House chef who currently overseas the garden.
Farming is cheap if the serfs (ie US citizens) provide all the labor and equipment for free.
Maddog:
This is undoubtedly the most expensive garden in the country. The disconnect the Obamas have between belief cost and actual cost is demoralizing. How can positive policy decisions come from people with such fantastic beliefs?
October 30, 2009, 3:00 pmJohn Moore:
A friend was touting neighborhood gardens as a good economic thing.
Of course, he forget to include the cost of labor.
October 30, 2009, 9:06 pmMichael:
Everyone is over looking the cost of heavy metal posioning. Al Gore got the Clintons to dump DC sewage on the white house lawn as fertilizer. The first Obama's garden came up toxic. If the Obama's want to continue the FDR idea of food gardening, they are going to have to replace a lot of the soil at the white house.
October 31, 2009, 12:43 amMichael:
John Moore,
If you study John Adams' letters, one of the things he hated about the white house was that it was built by slaves.
Now I'm going to make a snide remark. Obama's family owned slaves. His wife's family were salves. Maybe Obama has some white guilt.
October 31, 2009, 12:49 amJim Collins:
What you have to remember here is that even though the facts may be wrong, the message is right. Where have we heard that before?
October 31, 2009, 6:42 amSteve W from Ford:
Gore fertilizes with sewage sludge in the name of environmental good.
Belatedly discover WH soil now contaminated with heavy metals- not good.
Obama plants garden to demonstrate how concerned they are with ecological good.
Discovers heavy metal in veggies, must discard most-not good.
I wish I could write fiction this good.
No one would believe- not good!
Jeesh!
October 31, 2009, 11:10 amA_Nonny_Mouse:
And governing by giving everything to everyone for free seems cheap as long as the entire electorate and their children and grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren can be forced to fund it....
"What a Revoltin' Development this is!!" -Chester A. Riley
(and I'm just about ready for the "revolt" part.)
October 31, 2009, 12:27 pmAllen:
Maybe if BO wasn't so busy playing golf, he'd have time to till that supposedly important garden of his.
October 31, 2009, 5:44 pmPeter:
So are the Obamas doing sharecropping? If not are they paying prevailing wage like the rest of us business owners have to do on federal contracts?
November 1, 2009, 8:22 pm