WHAT IS FOOD SECURITY, REALLY?

The definition of food security has previously been shaped by largely local factors and concerns, like providing locally sourced healthy meals for school lunches. Or addressing what has come to be called “food deserts,” describing an area where there is a grocery store shortage, limiting access to nutritious foods.”

But today, the entire conversation around food security is being shaped by forces far distant from our neighborhoods or even counties. And not just conversation, but actual policy.

“It is time to rethink how we grow, share and consume our food,” says one global authority. And who exactly will do that rethinking? The same self-appointed body that

said it in the first place—the  World Economic Forum, pushing their Great Reset under the guise of sustainability.

They cite water issues and global warming, of course, implying the foregone conclusion that global oversight and governance of food security is only achievable through a “sustainable agricultural system that ensures an affordable food supply for all”  by addressing greenhouse gas emissions, water use and water waste.

“As people become more affluent they drift towards a diet richer in processed foods, meat and dairy.” And so they lament our healthy, nutrient dense diets, and promote the eating of insects and lab grown synth-meats. This is, apparently, what food “equity” looks like.

Take a gander at this “Transformation Map” from the WEF website: https://intelligence.weforum.org/topics/a1G0X0000057My4UAE?tab=publications charting the territory for the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDG’s, and encompassing a mind bending array of topics from “youth perspectives”  to gender inequality, and drawn from so-called “expert and machine curated knowledge.”

Recognize that policy is now being crafted, at least in part, by AI, and good old central planning sold to us as “efficient business models” and “public-private partnerships”—in plainspeak, Communism and fascism, but with an updated technocratic flavor. It just sounds so much more modern and efficient.

So let’s see how that’s working out for some countries around the world.

Let’s start with Sri Lanka which, under the leadership of its President, decided in April 2021 to become the world’s first all-organic country. This was hailed as a great experiment in green policy making and, it turns out, a collusion with the IMF. It appears SDG’s (remember those?) were the IMF’s playbook for juicing the Sri Lankan economy and avowedly spending millions on a transformation to a new kind of capitalism. The WEF lauded the efforts as “impressive.”

The Sri Lankan government imposed a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and in short order the country went from self-sufficient to having to import staples like rice. The bottom fell out of tea, rubber, and coconut. “I cannot recall any time in the past when we had to struggle so much to get a decent harvest,” said a Sri Lankan farmer whose yields fell by a staggering 60%. Food prices skyrocketed, just as fuel prices rose. The only thing that flourished was social unrest.

After giving the nod to the government’s massive money printing, when it all went bust and the starving people took to the streets and threw the bastards out, the IMF dusted off its hands and walked away, as if to say, “our work here is done.” Now what is left of the government is giving its workers extra days off to “stay home and grow food.”

This was a beta test for the food policy of The Great Reset: green energy, SDG’s, inflation, collapse, starvation, all leading to the consolidation of power in the hands of those who engineered the whole thing. Classic problem-reaction-solution, or what I call the totalitarian dialectic.

Let’s look elsewhere. The Netherlands is the world’s second largest exporter of food, a massive achievement for a country a little larger than Maryland. To say that these Dutch farmers are expert in their fields (sorry, couldn’t resist) is an understatement. They are industrious, efficient and massively productive.

Unfortunately, their Prime Minister is a WEF running dog lackey. Even though the Netherlands has doubled its yields in recent decades while using the same amount of fertilizer, the government is enforcing EU edicts to reduce the use of nitrogen as a fertilizer and cull livestock herds. It is using these edicts as a battering ram for the “radical green fantasies and dodgy science” of a small group of lefties, many of whom, according to the NY Post, are vegetarians!

The fact that a 2019 article on the WEF website lauded the Dutch farmers (“Farmers in the Netherlands are growing more food using less resources” ) and now is throwing them under their own tractors belies the real motivation for the SDG’s. It isn’t about food production efficiencies at all. It’s about controlling the food supply by enforcing an engineered ideology.

The farmers say the government is angling to put them out of business and take their farms. How did that work out in South Africa, folks?

It should be coming clear to everyone: “Who controls the food supply controls the people.” Though it was globalist par excellence Henry Kissinger who said that, it might just as well have been Mao Tse Tung.

Real food security is an issue of sovereignty for the people of Texas, one that will not be solved at the federal level. It is governments’ collusion with globalists that is threatening our food supplies worldwide, and it is at the state level that we can take steps to remediate this threat.

As we watch world governments and self proclaimed world leaders convene at venues like Davos in Switzerland or the G20 in Bali, we must painfully concede that these are not working meetings among colleagues, but public relations opportunities for elites, and that their meeting agendas are not for the purposes of holding discussions or debating ideas, but for rolling out foregone conclusions. The white papers, the intelligence reports, the off-books financial arrangements, etc. have long since been inked in their ‘honor among thieves’ modus operandi.

Now it’s all about the spin. The appearance of a process. At these gatherings, we the paupers are introduced as if in real time to what has actually long since been decided, and even implemented.

This presentation of policy with the threadbare veneer of inclusive process is the very definition of railroading. But what a long time indeed it has taken me to realize that this is more or less true of every political gathering and has been happening from the halls of legislatures to the rooms of school boards since time immemorial but with increasing alacrity and ham fisted-ness as the political ‘rule of law’ in our beloved Republic breaks down.

In a corollary to Stalin’s pith instruction that he who counts the votes determines the election’s outcome, we can infer the maxim that he who makes the policy sets the agenda for its presentation. The process is actually reverse engineered from the desired outcome.

And so it is that I began to think about the upcoming session of the Texas Legislature in more concrete and urgent terms. Granted, it is almost 6 months away, but we would be naive to think that the same jockeying for position, back room deals, and less than savory party machinations that inform the G20 are not already well underway in Austin, along with the customary preparations for  committee meetings and the budgetary process.

And those jockeys and lobbyists have just gotten a massive injection of steroids. It has come to light that Texas has a fundamental, even existential conundrum to consider: what to do with the “astonishing” haul of surplus cash that Texas has amassed as a result of its exponential economic growth.

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, the vital takeaway that Texas economics work. We are favorable to energy, small business, innovation, and not so much to regulation. Guess what? We were right! And good for us. But after we congratulate ourselves (which we should certainly do), the soul searching begins. It’s as if we’d been wage slaves all our lives and suddenly won the lottery. The burning question would now be, “what do we really want?”

For that is the precise position we find ourselves in now, and the answers we arrive at will only be as good as the quality of our introspection. We need that process of looking inward at our collective values as Texans before we are ready to put forth legislative answers to the big question: What the hell do we do with billions of excess taxpayer cash?

To back into this with a little context, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar presented an economic update to state lawmakers at a meeting of the Texas House Appropriations Committee last week. According to his report, the Texas economy has been exceptionally strong since November of last year. Hegar said, “We will be releasing a revised report on Thursday. … But I am going to warn you … stay seated in your seat when you read it. It is astonishing growth.”

I can see exactly how he was trying to manage the expectations of those legislators who believe that taxpayer dollars are their private slush funds. According to Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, “some lawmakers at Tuesday’s meeting already revealed their intentions to spend the money on pet projects.”

So this is where I think Texas Fights Outloud encourages us to get out ahead of the narrative. We want to shape this discussion, craft it and guide it, rather than be forced into a reactionary position. The surplus belongs to us. That much is clear and irrefutable. Following that assumption, it is up to us to determine what we would like to do with it, and this leads to what I call the ‘soul searching’ process we must engage immediately.

Texans for Fiscal Responsibility President Tim Hardin says the decision should be simple: give it back to Texans by eliminating property taxes. Texans are now paying the sixth-highest property tax bills in the United States, and those bills have increased by 181 percent in the last 20 years. There’s something to that, particularly considering that property taxes fund woke public education that is an anathema to many tax payers.

But there are far larger questions at play. What do we envision for our State in the next 10 to 20 years? What resources will we need to implement that vision? Knowing that we have an enviable surplus as we head into an inevitable recession or even depression, what would be the most wise course of action to protect our economy and the economic well being of Texans? What role does border security play in this scenario? Or the burgeoning secession movement?

Look, nobody in Austin wants to ask these questions. Their bread and butter is business as usual. I understand that, and that is precisely why I will not ask them to set such a far reaching agenda. Instead, I will ask we the people of Texas to do it. We will not allow the politicians to set the terms of policy then reverse engineer its presentation to us under the guise of legislative process.

No. We will determine the course of legislative action to pursue as a result of our deliberations. For it is our character as Texans that determines that course. I personally believe property tax relief has a very real place in our deliberations, but it is not the only responsible conclusion at which to arrive. There are many deeper questions that engage us at the very lifeblood of what it means to be a Texan, for it is this lifeblood, make no mistake, that generated this “astonishing” surplus in the first place.

This week we ask our audience, those who want to fight outloud, to search their souls and their values. What would we do, as Texans, if we won the lottery. Because the truth is, we just did.

Texas: The Invasion’s Front Line

“SECURE THE BORDER AND PROTECT TEXANS”

As the Supreme Court disallows Trump’s “Remain In Mexico” strategy that had helped stem the tide of illegal immigration on our southern border, we will no longer have that policy in place to dissuade illegals from coming into Mexico to attempt entry into the U.S.

Now we are at the point of having to square off, toe to toe, not only with the masses of illegals overwhelming the border, but the cartels who are both the engine and the muscle behind them, and to whom Mexican law enforcement has already capitulated. In other words, now the invasion will play out exclusively on our soil. And Texas is the front line.

Did you know that:

            U.S. Border Patrol reported more than 3 million encounters during 2021, far                                               greater than the population of the entire Austin metro area?

            This number included human traffickers, jihadists and criminals on the terror watchlist?

            Monthly border crossings exceed 200,000 illegals?

            145,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended by Border Patrol in just 2021?

            1 in 3 women are sexually assaulted on their way to the U.S. border?

            Enough fentanyl has entered this country to kill every American five times over?

The issue is heating up as sheriffs, mayors and judges from border counties held a press conference outlining the impacts of the mass border incursions on their small communities. Time and again during the presser they intentionally used the word “invasion,” invoking Texans’ right to defend against it, and citing clauses from the U.S. and Texas Constitutions to support their position.

While praising Abbott for the financial largess he has lavished on the border issue, all acknowledged that it is not enough. It is up to the Governor himself to declare an invasion, giving the State of Texas the right not only to arrest, and detain, but deport illegals. These powers are granted by the U.S. Constitution under Article I, Section 10.

Abbott’s executive order stops short of such measures. While he authorizes the Texas National Guard and DPS to detain illegals, they will only be returned to the border. Many, including Ken Cuccinelli and Russ Vought of the Center for Renewing America are critical of Abbott’s new order:

“The Governor does not appear to formally declare an invasion nor direct the National Guard and Department of Public Safety to remove illegals across the border directly to Mexico. That is critical. Otherwise this is still catch and release.”

The Center for Renewing America has also made Texcentric suggestions about handling the crisis internally: we could refuse state funds for localities that attempt to make themselves “sanctuary cities,” implement E-verify, and stop subsidizing illegals with taxpayer dollars, curtailing access to State Financial Aid, in state tuition, public hospital care, education, and housing. Ken Paxton estimates that Texans pay upwards of $900 million per year to provide these benefits.

The Texas GOP is urging our elected officials to take the heat for this out of control crisis, crafting a priority statement for the upcoming legislative session. “Secure the Border and Protect Texans” states:

“Texas shall immediately deny all taxpayer funded services and subsidies to illegal aliens. We call upon the Governor to assert his duty under Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the US Constitution to declare an invasion on our Texas border and do everything in his power to protect Texans from this invasion. The legislature shall direct the Governor to enter into an Interstate Compact with one or more states for Border Security.”

Texans can solve this crisis with the tools at our disposal. We have the know how. Now we need to mobilize the political will to make it happen.