In the United States, federally mandated ethanol subsidies, which prop up the price of corn in the Midwest, are the big dog in agricultural politics. Sonny Perdue is about to learn that the humble liter of milk has the same level of clout in Canada.
One week after President Donald Trump shook up a G-7 meeting and hurled insults at its Canadian host, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Georgia's former governor and current secretary of agriculture will pay a visit to Prince Edward Island and Lawrence MacAulay, the Canadian minister of agriculture. From Canadian Press:
MacAulay is hosting Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue at his family's farm to discuss Canada's system for controlling the price and supply of dairy, eggs and chicken.
The U.S. wants the system abolished, with President Donald Trump blasting Ottawa for charging a 270 per cent tariff on imported dairy products.
MacAulay says supply management has proven "an excellent system" for Canada and the government intends "to make sure that it remains strong."
Mr. MacAulay talked of the importance of meeting in an "amicable" setting, he said: "It's very important for agriculture ministers to meet in the barn."
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President Donald Trump was interviewed on "Fox & Friends" this morning. WSB Radio's Jamie Dupree focused on this:
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The small town of Plains, Ga., has had no practicing physician. And then its most famous resident, former President Jimmy Carter, made a phone call, according to Andy Miller of Georgia Health News.
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On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited Chapter 13 of the letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans to justify the Trump administration's new policy of separating parents who cross our southern border in search of asylum from the children they bring with them. The first two verses (NIV):
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
The passage has played a significant role in U.S. history. From the Washington Post:
"There are two dominant places in American history when Romans 13 is invoked," said John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. "One is during the American Revolution [when] it was invoked by loyalists, those who opposed the American Revolution."
The other, Fea said, "is in the 1840s and 1850s, when Romans 13 is invoked by defenders of the South or defenders of slavery to ward off abolitionists who believed that slavery is wrong. I mean, this is the same argument that Southern slaveholders and the advocates of a Southern way of life made."
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Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor, is in Chicago today for a Rainbow/Push luncheon hosted by Jacqueline Jackson. So says her husband, the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.
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The Voter Participation Center is about to blanket hundreds of thousands of Georgia homes with voter registration forms. The group said it will send 374,000 forms to minorities, young people and unmarried women in Georgia – what it calls the "rising American electorate."
The group said it has registered nearly 4 million people since 2004, including 174,000 in Georgia. This cycle is set to be the group’s most extensive effort yet. Some 7.2 million forms have been sent since September 2017.
Page Gardner, the group’s founder, said more than 1.5 million minorities, unmarried women and millennials aren’t registered in Georgia and that the group’s effort will help ensure “their voices heard in our democracy.”
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Tim Echols, a Republican member of the state Public Service Commission, hinted Thursday that he's eyeing a run for governor down the line, writing "all in good time" when asked on Twitter about his future plans. "Casey is ripe and ready. I am behind him this time."
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Count former President Bill Clinton among those who hope President Donald Trump's unusual bromance with North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un pans out. From a Marietta Daily Journal account of Clinton's book-selling appearance in Cobb County on Wednesday evening:
[W]hile it is important to be careful about saying how much better North Korea's 100,000 political prisoners are going to be, Clinton said everyone should want that country not to have nuclear material so they don't have the temptation to sell it to other bad actors that could use it in terrorist attacks.
"Would I hate to see us accept the police state that's North Korea forever? I would," Clinton said. "But would I do it if I were president and the South Koreans were willing to and the Japanese were willing to and the Chinese were willing to in return for you never having to worry about a nuclear bomb exploding even somewhere in the Pacific and missile technology and nuclear stuff going to somebody else? Yeah, I'd do that. That's be a good deal for us."
