Project Logic Ga

When President Obama was selecting his cabinet, Georgia had a golden opportunity to have my southwest Georgia congressman as Secretary Agriculture. We are talking ag, the most important industry in our state, and everyone slept on the chance. Everyone except me because I was jumping up and down with my fingers crossed. Oh, I forgot. I have no juice and no one listens to me (juice, an important southern ag product.)

Last night, the leader of the free world gave his blueprint for our efforts in Afghanistan and our attempts to stabilizing that dangerous region and he mentioned agriculture.  I told you so; I told you so.  Ag is vital to our new soft power approach around the world—we still can blow some things up with fire power from the peach state.  We are talking giving a man a fish and teaching him to fish, or better, giving him a seed and bring his family into the legal farming global economy.  Poppy, heroin and cocaine are cash crops in that region and the money funds terrorist operations.  So the U.S. Agriculture Secretary helps sow the seeds of love, beat swords into plows or whatever.  Ag research universities in Athens, Fort Valley, Tuskegee, Tifton and Greensboro could design crop varieties and farm equipment that could indirectly help bring our troops home and create new markets for our agri-business interests.

My father left the farm in Gordon, Georgia, to study ag in Greensboro at North Carolina A&T.  His beloved A&T was the school where 911 terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed studied mechanical engineering.  KSM is the same age as Sarah Palin and me so if I went to my father’s alma mater we would have been in the class of 1986 together.  I could have vibed that something was up with dude and we could have avoided the trouble he later masterminded with one good behind-kicking behind the dorm.  Before people trip on A&T because KSM went there, they should know that Jesse Jackson, Sr. and Jesse Jackson, Jr. are graduates as well as Astronaut Ronald McNair, who died the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.

Before you trip on who went to college where, you should watch the movie Santa Fe Trail.  The film reminds us that Robert E. Lee commanded the troops who captured John Brown and that Lee was superintendent at West Point when cadets included JEB Stuart, George Pickett, James Longstreet, Philip Sheridan and George Armstrong Custer.  So, Ronald Reagan played Custer in the movie and I don’t think any of the West Point men portrayed in the film could have imagined a Black Commander in Chief speaking at the Point.

How many member of Obama’s cabinet were governors?  Being governor is bigger than being a U.S. House member if you are not in leadership or a committee chair.  If our state has the opportunity to have a Georgian as ag secretary in the future, Democrats and Republicans must jump quickly.  I should also mention the renewable energy provisions and initiatives in the Farm Bill; efforts that reduce our involvement in the Middle East by developing fuel and power in America.  Ag Sec is one important job because the way to global peace might start with a piece of bread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WNrvCKQVW0

Santa Fe Trail