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USDA got DOGE'd

9,901 Views | 101 Replies | Last: 20 hrs ago by chickencoupe16
CenterHillAg
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That's definitely a possibility. There's also a possibility nobody feels like risking the political capital needed to restaff an agency most of the population will never come in contact with. If the end result is a lean organization made up of hardened and overworked individuals that will keep their head down and get the job done, I'm fine with that.
Bradley.Kohr.II
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We won't need to restart the agency. Industry already requires private inspections, most of the time.

Which should tell you how much the USDA inspections are trusted/some of that is because they require it from China/are Chinese owned.

Every inspected facility has minimum insurance requirements- there's no reason not to just have insurance companies set standards etc.

Likewise, industry is ahead of USDA on soil management, etc.

CanyonAg77
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Floating around Facebook with no location or attribution.

rather be fishing
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aggiedent said:


Then it absolutely would be worth it.

But never discount the possibility that what emerges in 5-6 years after the Republicans and Democrats play political ping pond with these agencies, ends up being even worse.
This is my concern. It all looks like it's playing out for Trump to expand exploration and mineral extraction on federal lands by removing anyone/thing that was established as a mechanism to prevent degradation of those lands and waters. The pushing through of 600 "emergency" projects without USACE permitting is an indicator he's going to do whatever he wants without a concern for the impacts.

txags92
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CanyonAg77 said:

Floating around Facebook with no location or attribution.


Going to guess Portland or somewhere near there.
CanyonAg77
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txags92 said:

CanyonAg77 said:

Floating around Facebook with no location or attribution.


Going to guess Portland or somewhere near there.

Google image search was no help, apparently it has been shared tons of times on Reddit.
rather be fishing
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I doubt there's snow on the ground in Portland.
rather be fishing
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CanyonAg77 said:

txags92 said:

CanyonAg77 said:

Floating around Facebook with no location or attribution.


Going to guess Portland or somewhere near there.

Google image search was no help, apparently it has been shared tons of times on Reddit.
A 2 minute search of Reddit says it's in Kalispell.
Mas89
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Your gal Kamala and your Montana Democrat senator both lost. Whatever Trump gets done in the next 4 years will be much better than 12 out of the previous 16 years of Obama and Obama 2.0.
Adjustments may be needed later but the changes are necessary Now.
ETA that I have dealt with determinations needed from the USACE in the past and have never dealt with more aggravating people in my life.
rather be fishing
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Mas89 said:

Your gal Kamala and your Montana Democrat senator both lost. Whatever Trump gets done in the next 4 years will be much better than 12 out of the previous 16 years of Obama and Obama 2.0.
Adjustments may be needed later but the changes are necessary Now.
If I was a betting man, I'd wager you we're in no better place in 12-16 years from now, but at this rate, we won't have a country by then.

But you keep shilling for the guy that just said Ukraine started the war with Russia.
Mas89
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We all know Hunter Biden and the military industrial complex started that war. Iraq 2.0
It never would have started with Trump as President. But obviously he will end it soon. He's negotiating its end now but some don't realize it.
bqce
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CanyonAg77 said:

Floating around Facebook with no location or attribution.


At least someone got a nice jacket out of it. I guess now that their jobs have been stolen, they can look for another job? Just a thought.
CanyonAg77
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Thanks for saving me from going to Reddit
TxAg20
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rather be fishing said:

Mas89 said:

Your gal Kamala and your Montana Democrat senator both lost. Whatever Trump gets done in the next 4 years will be much better than 12 out of the previous 16 years of Obama and Obama 2.0.
Adjustments may be needed later but the changes are necessary Now.
If I was a betting man, I'd wager you we're in no better place in 12-16 years from now, but at this rate, we won't have a country by then.

But you keep shilling for the guy that just said Ukraine started the war with Russia.

The national debt has more than tripled in the past 16 years. If it triples over the next 16 years, we will have $108 trillion of national debt. If GDP grows at 2% per year, we would have debt to GDP of 287%. For comparison, Venezuela sits around 240%.

I don't know that Trump's efforts to reduce gov't spending will be viewed as a success 16 years from now, but I know continuing the fiscal policy of the past 16 years will not work out well for our nation's economy.
amateur gene ecologist
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OnlyForNow said:

If some rats are spreading plague via fleas you kill all the rats and mic and squirrels.

A lot of them aren't carriers, but all gotta go for the good of everything else.

You could also spend a couple minutes looking for identifying traits of the carriers.

Or you could medicate some rat feed with a systemic insecticide to kill the fleas on the rats.

That's a really lazy analogy.

We're all agreeing the problem is SNAP, but instead of reforming SNAP, we're gonna fire all the new people.

That's like shooting your horse because the flea on a rat in the barn might be carrying the plague.
Bradley.Kohr.II
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It's a culture which must be broken. Right now, bureaucrats at all levels - federal, state, and local, view tax payers as a slave class, to be exploited to further their careers.

They've gone from talking about being "public servants" to "leaders," and neither the market nor the electorate ever put them in charge.
RAB87
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AllTheFishes said:

NFS and NPS survive on probationary hires. This is going to gut their new hires and dramatically reduce the number of people caring for our public lands.

I want to cut waste as much as the next person but no new hires coming in to replace an already aging employee pool is going to take a decade to recover from. I know that sounds extreme or over stated but It's the truth. Many of those hires took 3-5 years or more to get hired. Cutting that out for just one year, even if they fix it in the next budget is going to take a long time to repair.

What public lands? Less than 1% of Texas lands are public? And what care? Other than State Parks, the best thing about public lands is that people are not required to work on them. More waste? More fraud?
amateur gene ecologist
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RAB87 said:

AllTheFishes said:

NFS and NPS survive on probationary hires. This is going to gut their new hires and dramatically reduce the number of people caring for our public lands.

I want to cut waste as much as the next person but no new hires coming in to replace an already aging employee pool is going to take a decade to recover from. I know that sounds extreme or over stated but It's the truth. Many of those hires took 3-5 years or more to get hired. Cutting that out for just one year, even if they fix it in the next budget is going to take a long time to repair.

What public lands? Less than 1% of Texas lands are public? And what care? Other than State Parks, the best thing about public lands is that people are not required to work on them. More waste? More fraud?

The problem here is that there are 49 other states. Some of those states have significant national parks and forests. Some of those parks and forests are nice, and many Texags posters either go there on vacation or buy houses near the parks and forests because they are nice.

What keeps them nice is a person, usually more than one, managing that land. When it is not managed, you get a similar situation to what just happened in california: big fires that don't respect park boundaries, or other undesirable outcomes like building that are falling apart and bad roads, etc.

That person usually expects money in exchange for their time and effort managing that land.

Bradley.Kohr.II
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Yes, and people who learn the land are valuable - and you're right, they will be the first to get cut, while the worms try to save themselves - and also the first to be rehired when a system is rebuilt either by DC, or by non-profits/companies which bid for the job.

And, frankly, has the the parks department really done a good job as stewards?

I know the BLM is a horrific steward.
BSD
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Bradley.Kohr.II said:

Yes, and people who learn the land are valuable - and you're right, they will be the first to get cut, while the worms try to save themselves - and also the first to be rehired when a system is rebuilt either by DC, or by non-profits/companies which bid for the job.

And, frankly, has the the parks department really done a good job as stewards?

I know the BLM is a horrific steward.


I have no knowledge of the inner workings of public lands but I do travel to them a lot so one the one thing that I've heard is they are underfunded and understaffed (not necessarily underpaid, as they know it's not high paying jobs but do them because that is where they want to be). Whether all that is true or not, I don't know. That is what the workers say.
chickencoupe16
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Bradley.Kohr.II said:

We won't need to restart the agency. Industry already requires private inspections, most of the time.

Which should tell you how much the USDA inspections are trusted/some of that is because they require it from China/are Chinese owned.

Every inspected facility has minimum insurance requirements- there's no reason not to just have insurance companies set standards etc.

Likewise, industry is ahead of USDA on soil management, etc.


Having been in the poultry industry, USDA keeps processing plants honest. Need large eggs for your order but only have mediums being produced? Throw mediums in the carton and have no worries if USDA is not around!
BurnetAggie99
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USDA has a great Youth Loan program for Youths in FFA & 4-H to help kids get animals for their projects. I hope this program continues.
Yesterday
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You don't think the retailer or consumer would pick up on that? Complain? Leave reviews and shop elsewhere?

I feel the consumer would regulate that much better than the USDA.
mpl35
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amateur gene ecologist said:

RAB87 said:

AllTheFishes said:

NFS and NPS survive on probationary hires. This is going to gut their new hires and dramatically reduce the number of people caring for our public lands.

I want to cut waste as much as the next person but no new hires coming in to replace an already aging employee pool is going to take a decade to recover from. I know that sounds extreme or over stated but It's the truth. Many of those hires took 3-5 years or more to get hired. Cutting that out for just one year, even if they fix it in the next budget is going to take a long time to repair.

What public lands? Less than 1% of Texas lands are public? And what care? Other than State Parks, the best thing about public lands is that people are not required to work on them. More waste? More fraud?

The problem here is that there are 49 other states. Some of those states have significant national parks and forests. Some of those parks and forests are nice, and many Texags posters either go there on vacation or buy houses near the parks and forests because they are nice.

What keeps them nice is a person, usually more than one, managing that land. When it is not managed, you get a similar situation to what just happened in california: big fires that don't respect park boundaries, or other undesirable outcomes like building that are falling apart and bad roads, etc.

That person usually expects money in exchange for their time and effort managing that land.


And lets not forget what happens without people to run the public lands. JTNP had idiots driving all over it and destroying it. The Racetrack in DVNP had tire tracks left in it. Big Bend has people stealing cacti all over. You get people taking petrified rocks from Petrified Forest. All kinds of turds out there abusing the shared resources if you just cut the staff.
chickencoupe16
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Yesterday said:

You don't think the retailer or consumer would pick up on that? Complain? Leave reviews and shop elsewhere?

I feel the consumer would regulate that much better than the USDA.


No, I don't because it happens every day and isn't caught by USDA 100% of the time.
Yesterday
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chickencoupe16 said:

Yesterday said:

You don't think the retailer or consumer would pick up on that? Complain? Leave reviews and shop elsewhere?

I feel the consumer would regulate that much better than the USDA.


No, I don't because it happens every day and isn't caught by USDA 100% of the time.


If it's not caught by the USDA then what difference does it make and why should we keep paying them?
chickencoupe16
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Yesterday said:

chickencoupe16 said:

Yesterday said:

You don't think the retailer or consumer would pick up on that? Complain? Leave reviews and shop elsewhere?

I feel the consumer would regulate that much better than the USDA.


No, I don't because it happens every day and isn't caught by USDA 100% of the time.


If it's not caught by the USDA then what difference does it make and why should we keep paying them?


Isn't caught 100% of the time, I said. The only way to catch 100% would be to increase staffing. It's a game that producers play with the system. They don't want to push too hard too often and get on USDA's bad side but sometimes pushing is worth it even if USDA will catch some percentage.
TxAg20
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amateur gene ecologist said:

RAB87 said:

AllTheFishes said:

NFS and NPS survive on probationary hires. This is going to gut their new hires and dramatically reduce the number of people caring for our public lands.

I want to cut waste as much as the next person but no new hires coming in to replace an already aging employee pool is going to take a decade to recover from. I know that sounds extreme or over stated but It's the truth. Many of those hires took 3-5 years or more to get hired. Cutting that out for just one year, even if they fix it in the next budget is going to take a long time to repair.

What public lands? Less than 1% of Texas lands are public? And what care? Other than State Parks, the best thing about public lands is that people are not required to work on them. More waste? More fraud?

The problem here is that there are 49 other states. Some of those states have significant national parks and forests. Some of those parks and forests are nice, and many Texags posters either go there on vacation or buy houses near the parks and forests because they are nice.

What keeps them nice is a person, usually more than one, managing that land. When it is not managed, you get a similar situation to what just happened in california: big fires that don't respect park boundaries, or other undesirable outcomes like building that are falling apart and bad roads, etc.

That person usually expects money in exchange for their time and effort managing that land.



Nice national parks seem like a benefit, and privilege, of having a well run national government, which is something we haven't had since 2001. I'm a public land user in Colorado, and previous public land user in the Sam Houston National Forest. The SHNF administration has made it almost impossible for dirt bike riders to use that trail system. A trail system maintained by volunteers, not USFS funds. In fact, I would wager that the mountain bike trails I ride in Colorado are also mostly maintained by volunteers rather than federal employees, as well. Fire them all for all I care.

I also ride an excellent mountain bike trail system in and around Park City, Utah which is somehow one of the best trail systems in the country although it's free, not owned by the federal government, and maintained by volunteers.

Given our government's fiscal situation, we can't afford to run public lands the way it has been done in the past.
Bradley.Kohr.II
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We buy off weight - as do many large producers. (Yes, we buy in dozens but our usage is in pounds.)

If we don't get enough weight off a pallet, that farm is done.

Hasn't happened yet, and we check every pallet, so I'm not sure how common the fraud is.

In general, fraud in food has serious consequences, I think.
chickencoupe16
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Bradley.Kohr.II said:

We buy off weight - as do many large producers. (Yes, we buy in dozens but our usage is in pounds.)

If we don't get enough weight off a pallet, that farm is done.

Hasn't happened yet, and we check every pallet, so I'm not sure how common the fraud is.

In general, fraud in food has serious consequences, I think.


What size eggs do you buy?
Bradley.Kohr.II
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The cheapest per pound. It varies from medium to XL.

We do buy a minimum of 2 pallets at a time though.
chickencoupe16
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Bradley.Kohr.II said:

The cheapest per pound. It varies from medium to XL.

We do buy a minimum of 2 pallets at a time though.


I'd bet most are mediums because they tend to be the cheapest. And no one is cheating mediums because they're so easy to get.
 
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