“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” -Grover Norquist

A friend teaches 600 children art. One teacher, 600 children. Art. Her job will be cut at the end of the school year.
The November elections brought forward a tax levy to continue funding music, art and physical education classes in a well-to-do area outside of Columbus, Ohio. The levy was denied by voters.

“Here’s how the argument runs: to starve the beast, you must not only deny funds to the government; you must make voters hate the government. There’s a danger that working-class families might see government as their friend: because their incomes are low, they don’t pay much in taxes, while they benefit from public spending. So in starving the beast, you must take care not to cut taxes on these ‘lucky duckies.’ (Yes, that’s what The Wall Street Journal called them in a famous editorial.) In fact, if possible, you must raise taxes on working-class Americans in order, as The Journal said, to get their ‘blood boiling with tax rage.'”
—Paul Krugman, “The Tax-Cut Con,” The New York Times, September 14, 2003

The land is vast, but taxes surely make it expensive. What is the answer?
There are thousands of cows placed on a small plot of land. Food is dumped into troughs, and manure is scooped away. It’s extremely efficient.
The smell is somewhat nostalgic if you have grown up on a farm, but this is not your grandfather’s family farm. These CAFO’s are jarring in their depiction of what is truly for dinner.
Is efficiency what we desire in our animal related agriculture? This is the kind of question we must ask if we are truly to be a sustainable nation.