Dear Friends,
It has been another tumultuous week. President Trump has continued to issue Executive Orders and his people are moving quickly. It seems all 2 million plus federal employees (but not the military, which has been unable to meet its recruitment goals) have been given a buy-out offer: resign and you can collect 8 months' pay. The federal payroll increased by 10% more employees during the Biden administration, while we just learned that very few were expected to actually come to the office to work.
Senator Ernst' staff found that only 6% of federal employees were in the office 5 days a week. Most were there 1 or 2 days a week, working from home the rest of the time. A friend's sister put her house on the market, under the impression she could continue to work from home–and was about to move from Washington to Florida. That will no longer be possible. It is strange to realize federal employees have been working from home for 5 years.
Here is the website where the Executive Orders are being posted.
Hearings for Mr. Kennedy took place on Wednesday and Thursday. They were remarkable for the shouting and nastiness on Wednesday, and for the demand that he take a "loyalty oath" and dissociate himself from "onesies" sold by Children's Health Defense, which are organic cotton clothes for newborns that contained printed slogans like "Unvaxxed, Unafraid." On Thursday things were quieter, but the demand for loyalty to the slogan that vaccines are safe and effective persisted.
What was truly remarkable was that no one talked about COVID or COVID vaccines, masks or lockdowns. No member of either party. It was as if all had tacitly agreed to memory-hole this very significant part of our recent history. No discussion of how human rights took a back seat to saving grandma. But then it turned out that the government's COVID response was actually killing way more people than were "saved" by the totalitarian "public health" measures.
And there was definitely no discussion of who gave those pandemic orders, and how it came to be that virtually all western countries denied their citizens' rights, identically, in lockstep. Because that would bring up the issue of who was really in charge. I guess it wasn't the Senators who had any say. Where did the pandemic orders originate? FEMA? Public health officials? The National Security Council? In the Netherlands, the health minister hinted that the government was obeying NATO obligations. Were we?
After all that, Mr. Kennedy was given nearly 200 pages of written questions he was required to answer for the Senators. You can read Mr. Kennedy's responses on the Finance Committee website here.
We are hopeful that he will get confirmed.
Door to Freedom believes that President Trump has opened up a once in a generation (or maybe once in a lifetime) chance to make the federal government smaller, simpler, nimbler and more responsive to the citizens.
We have an enormous array of laws, rules and regulations that are extraordinarily complex. No one can possibly understand all of them, even as regards a single agency. Mr. Trump wants to get rid of 10 regulations for every new regulation that is instituted. Everything is "on the table" and being examined for its value to the nation. Agencies may be shuttered.
Furthermore, everyone agrees that our farming industry is in dire straits. Prices for farm products are down, while the prices for inputs like fertilizer have skyrocketed. Farmers have been earning negative incomes for the past several years. Tens of thousands are forced to sell off and leave their farms each year. The average age of American farmers is now 58, and the field cannot keep our youth when they cannot make a living farming.
We at Door believe that now is the time to "go big" and create blue sky proposals for the Department of Agriculture and the Farm Bill. The 1400 page farm bill has a cornucopia of programs designed to help farmers, but they are complicated, waste lots of time on paperwork, and in the end have just not provided the life raft they were intended to offer. Maybe this is the year the massive set of programs can be simplified and real relief offered to our small, struggling farmers and ranchers.
To this end we are studying the farm bill and setting up meetings to discuss what can be done. We are gearing up to greatly expand our work. As we did with the WHO, we will explain to the public how the government regulates food production and processing. How the minutiae of the Farm Bill picks winners and losers–and how it lends itself to unhealthy school lunches. Where does the money go, and where must it go if we are to keep our farmers farming? Finally, we will make suggestions for incentivising organic and regenerative practices and improving soils.
We are expanding our contractors and hiring consultants to aid us in this endeavor, as we did with our initial work on the WHO. We need to become the experts on the current US government's farm/food programs, and how they could be improved.
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If you have knowledge you want to share, let me know.
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If you have skills to share, let me know.
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If you have been wondering about donating money, now is the time.
I did not ask for donations before Christmas, because I needed to see what the President was going to do before finalizing our program of work. I won't ask for money unless I can tell you how it will be spent. Now I can do that.
Time is of the essence. The Farm Bill is not Congress' immediate priority, as getting nominations approved is the first order of business and keeping the government funded is the second. However, the Farm Bill is normally voted on every 5 years, but 2025 is the 7th year since a Farm Bill was last approved. So it will have to be finished this year.
Our goal is to have clear, simple printed materials for Congress and the public by sometime in March, as well as a white paper discussing what is wrong with the present system of government regulations and subsidies for agriculture and food, and how to improve things, especially for small farmers and ranchers.
Mexico is the US' largest trading partner, and if the tariff of 25% that was just imposed remains on imported food, US farmers will be in a better position to compete with imports, at least for the near future. Our farmers will have a larger market for their products. Hopefully this will provide them a tailwind while federal policies are being reworked.
We plan to hold meetings with the appropriate parties in the Agriculture Department and the FDA once our recommendations have been finalized. Hopefully my long association with Mr. Kennedy will open doors. Plus, I know at least 20 Congressmembers from my work on the WHO, and some are on the agriculture committees.
Wish us luck! Work with us! If not now, when?
Meryl and the Door to Freedom team
