Farm Women United (FWU), a grassroots association of farm women concerned with public farm and food policy, announced that a lengthy letter, addressing the severe and worsening economic emergency that is devastating dairy farmers, farm suppliers and rural communities across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was faxed and mailed to Governor Tom Wolf, in Harrisburg.

FWU is pressing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to support the effort recommended by Progressive Agriculture Organization to force Congress to implement an intervention with a $20-per hundredweight (cwt.) Emergency Floor Price to be placed under milk used for manufacturing to stop the ongoing, accelerating and unprecedented total collapse of the state's dairy farming communities due to what amounts to blatant anti-dairy-farmer federal policies. The Emergency Floor price would stay in place for the period of time that it takes to call special federal hearings to investigate the real reasons for these criminally low milk prices and to draft permanent solutions that are beneficial to Pennsylvania's dairy farmers and rural businesses.

FWU asserts that to ensure stable local farms, healthy agricultural communities, and a wholesome local food supply in the Commonwealth's own backyard, it is Pennsylvania's responsibility to step up and speak out against the federalism inherent in current dairy policy coming out of Washington, DC, that is assaulting and directly harming an integral part of our state's local rural economy.

“No longer should Pennsylvania dairy farmers be the victims of the failed federal dairy policies that have plunged us into the present, dire crisis that threatens virtually every dairy farmer in the Commonwealth. I encourage Governor Wolf to acknowledge the huge, negative impact low federal milk prices are having on our state's entire dairy farming infrastructure. Pennsylvania's local rural economy lost $2.5 billion in 2016 alone because of the flawed federal minimum milk pricing formula. Losses like these are devastating our state. To correct this inequity, Pennsylvania dairy farmers need the state to stand with us against a federal government that refuses to allow farmers a way to cover what it costs us to produce milk on our farms. Our own federal government is denying us what all other American businesses count on to succeed: a way to cover what it costs us to produce our milk” stated Barb Troester, FWU Board Member and dairy farmer from Union County, PA.

Pennsylvania's dairy farmers are desperate for relief from the low milk prices that have created de-facto, sweat-shop working conditions on the state's dairy farms, so a timely response has been requested from Governor Wolf to support the $20/cwt. Emergency Floor Price initiative in order to give dairy farmers hope that Pennsylvania will not sit on the sidelines of this humanitarian disaster and allow one more day to pass without lending the full support of the Commonwealth to bring a just resolution to this crisis.

Farm Women United welcomes support and involvement from farm women (and men) across the United States, in all commodities. For more information, or to join FWU, please check our website www.farmwomenunited.org and look for us on Facebook.

Sincerely,
Tina Carlin, Executive Director
Farm Women United
Laceyville, PA

In the wake of the latest school massacre, the nation cried out through mass sit-ins, demonstrations, and marches; through candle-light vigils, mock die-ins, and political pleas; but most poignantly, through the voices of those who survived the slaughter. Mr. President, do something!

Five steps come to mind for the president's do-something list.

1) The infamous AK-15. The gun of choice at the Stoneman Douglas High School was the AK-15 lookalike assault rifle.

Actual assault rifles are fully automatic. They can fire at a machine-gun rate of 8 rounds per second as opposed to the semi-automatic rate of 1 or 2 bullets per second.

The AK-15, like all other legally available rifles and pistols, is semi-automatic. Any other rifle with a similar caliber would have had the same deadly effect as an AR-15.

The problem with the AR-15 is its appearance, not its function.

Laws should be passed that make assault-styled rifles have a less menacing appearance. If it looks bad, it is bad, and that includes its name. A less threatening look and a chummier nickname like Outdoor Buddy or Home Companion would make us feel better, but do nothing else.

2) Bump stocks. Bump stocks are devices that replace a rifle's standard stock with an attachment that uses the gun's recoil to "bump" back and forth causing it to shoot rapidly. This add-on enables a semi-automatic rifle to shoot almost as fast as a fully automatic weapon.

A bump stock was used in the Las Vegas massacre in which 59 people were killed. It was not used in the commission of any other crime. Bump stocks are difficult to handle and cannot be aimed, only pointed. Hitting a house at 500 yards would be a lucky shot.

So unless, like the Las Vegas gunman, a shooter is on the 32nd-floor spray shooting down a line of sight 1,100 feet distant---that's almost four football fields away---at a stadium-sized area packed with 22,000 music fans, bump stocks are useless, except for making political hay.

3) Age limit for firearm purchase. Nikolas Cruz was 18 when he purchased his AR-15 and 19 at the time of his rampage. That's too young---or is age an irrelevant issue?

Some are calling for the legal age of purchase to be upped to the twenties. However, if you want a free, fully automatic Army M4 assault weapon---not a let's make-believe knock-off---plus training in how to use it, and a government paid passage to Afghanistan to use against its citizens who pose an existential threat to the United States, then 17 is just fine.

Or perhaps we might raise the age limit and make-believe it will make a difference.

4) Gun laws. St. Louis, Missouri, can be our model. It has the toughest gun laws in the nation. Nevertheless, on a per capita basis, it is the murder capital of the US. But that's not a reflection on the city's gun laws. These laws have only the appearance of failure because criminals obstinately refuse to obey the law.

Uncooperative criminals pose the same problem with gun-free zones. All of the school shootings have taken place in gun-free zones. Let's keep those areas gun free and have a government-sponsored media campaign to encourage criminals to please stop breaking the law; then gun laws would work.

5) Psychotropic drugs. A background check for firearm sale should include the past or present use of mind-altering psychiatric drugs. These drugs, 174 at last count, have been involved in every one of the school homicides. That's right, all of them. But, regrettably, it is the only one on the president's do-something list that will not be considered or---Heaven forbid!---even mentioned.

We're not talking coach change here.

Americans spend $315 billion a year on pharmaceuticals. Of that, $60 billion is pumped into TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines via ad dollars.

That $60 billion for ads pulls in $80 billion in sales of psychotropic chemicals for bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, ADHA and tranquilizers to name a few.

But here's what is scary: 80 million to 100 million in the US are under the influence of these psych drugs. It's not the 8 million AR-15's in circulation that pose a threat; it's the psych drugs that play havoc with the brain.

To interfere in the legal drug market would disrupt the entire US economy, as well as the nation's mindset. So that's the one option---the only meaningful one---that will be scratched off the president's do-something list.

Sincerely,
Bob Scroggins
New Milford, PA
scroggins@epix.net