Corn We Can Believe In

Barack Obama will announce former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack as his Secretary of Agriculture on Wednesday, said a senior Democratic official. Vilsack briefly ran for the Democratic nomination last year, before dropping out and endorsing Hillary Clinton. Vilsack is so dull and unremarkable he makes Tommy Thompson, another ex-governor from the midwest who ran a hopeless primary campaign, seem positively mesmerizing by comparison.
Vilsack is a supporter of ethanol and other farm subsidies, and has been heavily funded by Big Agriculture, including seed and pesticide giant Monsanto.


Some of the more idealistic Obama supporters had held out hope that he would select writer Michael Pollan, a critic of ethanol and industrial agriculture. Instead he has selected another establishment Democrat and Clintonite, who is widely believed to be a shill for Monsanto, a company considered to be pure evil by many on the left . This would seem to be a pretty big slap in the face to environmentalists and progressives, not to mention conservatives and libertarians disgusted by ethanol and other farm subsidies. It will be interesting to see if there is serious opposition to this pick from the left, or if they will fall in line as most antiwar Obama supporters did after he selected Hillary for Secretary of State. I will be hoping for the former, but I wouldn't count on it.