Trying to keep an eye on the predations of the political class these days is almost like watching the three card monte scam going down on the corner. While we’re watching the cards slide around the table you have to be alert for the pickpockets working the crowd.

So I guess it was with very little surprise that I noticed in yesterday’s Washington Times that The One and his band of flying monkeys have another goodie in store for us — higher food prices in pursuit of cooling Gaia off. According to the Times,

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has ordered his staff to revise a computerized forecasting model that showed that climate legislation supported by President Obama would make planting trees more lucrative than producing food.

The story goes on to say that up to 59 million acres of crop land will be turned into Christmas tree farms or something, in pursuit of the hoax of global warming. Using the estimate of the Watersheds Messenger article The Truth About Land Use in the United States estimate of 349 million acres in crops, this would amount to cutting production by about 16%.

The hoax within the hoax here is

The model projects that reduced farm production will cause food prices to rise by 4.5 percent by 2050 compared with a scenario in which no legislation is passed, the department found.

I’m sure that’s right on target; after all, we know government estimates are always pinpoint accurate. A fascinating thing here, in a way, is how all this pinpoint forecasting disagrees with itself. Watching gubmint operate is like watching a snake eat its tail. In trying to hunt down the farmland acreage numbers I stumbled over a great USDA report, U.S. Agricultural Sector Aggregate Indicators: Farm Income, U.S. Trade Value, Food Prices, and Food Expenditures 2009-2018 that you and I paid for. You’ll be happy to know that nirvana is just around the corner. If you give a gander to that report, you’ll see a bunch of mutually contradictory graphs showing farm income, support payments and so on. You’ll be happy to know, though, that the 8% welfare component of farm income will drop to a mere 3% and that food price inflation will drop like a stone, too, while we’re all eating away from home more. All thanks to The One, I’m sure.

All this yummy government cheese got me thinking once again that The New Soviet Man is just around the corner. Cooler, thanks to saving Gaia, relaxing in groves of verdant trees in fields once scared by foul agribusiness, eating take out tofu. Uh, not so fast.

Among the gems I stumbled over the last few days is a series “Perspectives Of A Russian Immigrant” at Investor’s Business Daily. In part 3 the author reminds us “Government control of agriculture led to constant shortages of food in one of the largest and most resource-rich lands in the world.”

It’s OK– I’m too fat anyway.