To sum up my thoughts on U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's town hall meeting in Weaverville last night, which I report on here, here, here and here:
I can definitely say he struck a mostly conciliatory tone last night than what was reported out of his DC speech last week, although one gets the sense that a few of these issues like farm dust really got under his skin. As I told the RS' Bruce Ross on Facebook, I saw an irony in the three issues that he chose to complain about as evidence that rural areas are losing credibility, since it was the public outcry and political pressure from rural areas that led to those proposals' demise. And I haven't even mentioned the GIPSA rule, which was scaled back dramatically after they received 61,000 written comments. I don't imagine too many of those came from San Francisco or New York City.
One does get the impression that Vilsack perhaps suffers from a little bit of insulation. He at least feigned to not even have heard of the UN's Agenda 21, which has been a favorite conspiracy theory among tea party supporters for several years now. Not that all of their arguments necessarily have merit; in fact I think that's an area that maybe one can argue Vilsack is right about people in rural areas wasting time and political capital on issues that most average folks can't relate to. But you'd think if he spent much time outside of Washington he'd at least hear enough about it to debunk it.
My editors have their own take on the secretary's Washington speech. You can look for their editorial at CapitalPress.com on Thursday afternoon.
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