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Paging the new Secretary of Agriculture

You may (or may not) have seen this story. Briefly, the Obama secretary of Agriculture, Thomas Vilsack, issued a letter in July of 2015 against all "harassment" based upon, inter alia, sexual orientation and gender identity, including "disrespectful" speech on these matters. Pursuant to this letter, USDA officials in Michigan have threatened to shut down a farm (by refusing to inspect the beef) if the owners put an article in the break room that opposes homosexual "marriage"--an article, by the way, which no employee was obligated to read and which appeared alongside articles supporting homosexual "marriage."

Let me emphasize: What Vilsack wrote, that gave inspectors this power, was just a letter. It was a diktat. It followed no special process. It was a pure exercise of bureaucratic power by the then-secretary. This empowered USDA meat inspectors (!) to inspect and micromanage the contents of articles in break rooms at meat facilities all over the U.S., including family farms run by Christians.

And let me also emphasize: Since this was a letter issued by one man, a simple diktat, a simple exercise of power by one bureaucrat, it would be very easy for a different man in that same position to rescind the letter. A perfectly easy thing. We now have a new Secretary of Agriculture. His name is Sonny Perdue (former Georgia Governor). He was appointed by new President Trump. He could just issue a new letter rescinding the old letter, and he could instruct his meat inspectors that they are not ideology inspectors.

He hasn't done so. Why not? Who knows? I don't know. Laziness, I suspect. When it comes to religious liberty, the current administration is long on empty gestures and woefully short on effective action, even when the effective action is very direct and easy.

Yet Maggie Gallagher, astonishingly, holds Congress responsible for investigating the abuse of the USDA's powers. So eager is she to absolve the executive branch, the Trump administration, of any responsibility to do anything whatsoever, that she goes out of her way to say that they don't have to!

What can we do to stop this shut down on free speech?

President Trump’s executive order won’t help. The GOP Congress needs to pass some version of the First Amendment Defense Act. It should give private people like Don Vander Boon the right to sue when regulations are misused to punish gay marriage dissenters.

Unlike many conservatives, I’m not upset at President Trump. During the campaign, he avoided the conflict between gay marriage dissenters and the LGBT community. He pivoted to the Johnson Amendment whenever the subject came up.

This is baloney. This is Gallagher trying to take the heat off the administration to do something incredibly easy, a stroke of the pen, by putting on Congress the onus to do something much, much harder--namely, passing a new law creating a cause of action for people like the Vander Boons. This is ridiculous. Sonny Perdue could solve the Vander Boons' problems tomorrow. But he's a Trump official, and those who "aren't upset at President Trump" have decided that their new line is to be upset at Congress all the time. Nothing is the administration's fault; everything is Congress's fault. Convenient, but false.

This problem was caused by the Obama administration, and everyone knows it. The letter was by Vilsack, issued by his own authority. These are Obama-era rules, issued and enforced by the Obama administration. We have a new administration now that can just simply rescind those rules. Yes, it really is that easy.

But that would mean doing something more than using nuns for photo ops. That would mean doing something boring. And that would mean requiring those appointees to all those bureaucratic slots (whom we were all told to think about the importance of during the election) to get off their duffs and start changing back some of the harm done during the previous administration.

It really shouldn't be a big deal. It could even be played for good publicity for the administration. The fact that it is apparently just too much to ask tells us that some of us were right when we predicted that the relationship of the Trump administration to good policy would be random, arbitrary, and uninformed.

Comments (24)

One possible explanation for why the letter hasn't been rescinded is that the Trump administration is inclined to leave in place policies that are good for business; and PC tyranny is good for business because it drives liquidity:

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2007/11/pc_tyranny_sticking_it_to_the.html

Whether the premise (that this PC policy is good for business) is true or not (as you know from our past discussions, I'm inclined to disagree), I think that rationale gives *way* too much credit to the Trump administration for thoughtfulness and care. For one thing, I doubt he's even realized that this issue is on the horizon. Apparently it doesn't serve the ends of his advisers to bring it to his attention. For another, he's actually pretty much in favor of the "LGBT" agenda, just ideologically and not for any complex reason. Any pretense to the contrary has been phony. His daughter is a complete lefty on these sorts of issues just because, and she is a strong influence with him.

But overall, I think it's laziness. He can't be bothered to find out about and do the little things that will actually make a difference, though he'll sign vacuous executive orders that don't. What's really sad is when people allow themselves to be duped by it or made props for it.

I find somewhat more mysterious the failure of Sonny Perdue to act on his own, but I haven't looked into his own policy preferences. Most mysterious of all is the failure of Tom Spicer (I discussed this in a linked discussion) to set the ball in motion to rescind the HHS contraception mandate. He has the authority to do so and strongly opposed it while he was in Congress.

Trump is basically Bill Clinton with a speech impediment.

As for the PC Tyranny - business liquidity connection, I do think it is true; but more important than that in this context is whether policy makers think (or implicitly assume) that it is true (not that they would phrase it the way I do).

Someone like Ivanka is (IMO) an ideologue on social issues for its own sake. Those who are committed to the ideology, including many (all?) policy makers, may have convinced themselves ex post facto of some sort of "good for business" slogan concerning "diversity," but if so, it was, IMO, as a justification for something they embraced in a more purely ideological fashion already.

I admit to being disappointed in someone like Price, though. Surely he doesn't need to wait for Trump's word to start work on getting rid of the HHS contraception mandate. One of the whole oddities of these largely independent bureaus is that they are one-man law-making machines that can act on their own. A POTUS appoints someone, and then the someone lets rip with what he wants to do.

If ten companies with ten divisions each all have the same culture across all divisions, it is much easier - and therefore less expensive -- to move people and product lines and technologies/capabilities around within this market in response to environmental pressures, opportunities, emergent synergies, etc.

If that culture is shallow hedonistic PC or something like it, as opposed to (say) traditional Christianity, then this operating liquidity won't be opposed by the substance of that culture itself. If all business environments are PC then there is much less friction in making certain kinds of management choices.

It is true that people often believe what they want to believe based on their own prior commitments. Sauce for the goose though, and all that.

Agreed about Ivanka. Though when it comes to that I'm not sure the apple fell far from the tree.

Agreed about Ivanka. Though when it comes to that I'm not sure the apple fell far from the tree.

Yes and no. They share the same underlying worldview, of course. (If "worldview" isn't too high-falutin' a term.) But he is so completely bored by the nuts and bolts of policy-making that he can scarcely be bothered to come up with definite policy goals and discipline himself to do what has to be done to bring them about. She doesn't have those limitations. This makes her a very effective and dangerous adviser for him, since he knows that they (overall) think alike.

I doubt that either of them has given any thought one way or another to the USDA's current policies. If they did, they'd be perfectly happy to leave things the way they are. And count on Maggie Gallagher & co. to find a way to blame it on Congress. A win-win for Trump.

Thomas Vilsack, issued a letter in July of 2015 against all "harassment" based upon, inter alia, sexual orientation and gender identity, including "disrespectful" speech on these matters. Pursuant to this letter, USDA officials in Michigan have threatened to shut down a farm (by refusing to inspect the beef) if the owners put an article in the break room that opposes homosexual "marriage"--an article, by the way, which no employee was obligated to read and which appeared alongside articles supporting homosexual "marriage."

Let me emphasize: What Vilsack wrote, that gave inspectors this power, was just a letter. It was a diktat. It followed no special process. It was a pure exercise of bureaucratic power by the then-secretary.

At least possibly, it was an exercise not of act of _authority_ in any sense, but an act of raw muscle, but it has effect SOLELY because USDA officials choose to give it effect. There is probably nothing the administrators can fall back on as justification if their actions are disputed in the right venue, (many agencies have an appeals process, in other cases you have to take it to court). But since it is a hassle to officially dispute administrators' actions (or inaction), they tend to win by default. We shouldn't have to take action against this sort of nonsense, but of course this is part of the vigilance necessary for preserving due order in any society: you have to take actions that shouldn't be necessary but are, both for your own good and for the common good.

But since it is a hassle to officially dispute administrators' actions (or inaction), they tend to win by default. We shouldn't have to take action against this sort of nonsense, but of course this is part of the vigilance necessary for preserving due order in any society: you have to take actions that shouldn't be necessary but are, both for your own good and for the common good.

That's part of what so greatly annoys me about Gallagher's recommendation for "what we can do." She wants Congress to pass *another* law, sounds like somewhat similar to the RFRA, that would give a "cause of action" to people like these meat farmers. They then of course would have to *file* such an action and then be at the mercy of the courts to try to apply and interpret the law, etc., and we all know what a great success the RFRA has been in that respect./sarc

Not to mention the fact that any such law will almost certainly stall in Congress.

To my mind it's the height of irresponsibility on her part to write as if this doubly onerous and probably fruitless process, a very slow and expensive process, is the only way to fix this problem, when it could be reversed literally by a stroke of the pen of the current Secretary of Agriculture. There is something extremely wilful in her making *that* the recommendation--an absolute determination to demand nothing of the administration, however simple and effective. Not just to demand nothing of Trump himself but even of the bureaucrats he has put into place! And to recommend instead yet *another* law that probably won't pass, followed by yet *more* litigation that might or might not be successful. Why? Just to avoid having to criticize, even indirectly, a President she probably endorsed for office? It's infuriating.

Ms. Gallagher was not a supporter of Trump during the campaign. She came around after he won.

Here's an excerpt of something she wrote in May 2016, after it became clear Trump was going to be the Republican nominee.

"Donald Trump’s supporters tell me that he fights political correctness and they assume he will fight this [this, meaning, the Left's fight to eliminate Christianity from public view], too. But he has signaled pretty strongly his unwillingness to fight anything the Left deems 'anti-gay.' Trump learned, in the days when he threw Carrie Prejean under the bus, the power of this movement to hurt his core business interests. He’s just not going to take that fight on. He said as much when he was asked by APP, the Heritage Foundation, and the Family Research Council in January whether he would prioritize passing the First Amendment Defense Act in his first 100 days of office. He said, basically, no, he would leave it up to Congress. Watch him say he’s for traditional marriage and then change the subject. He’s clear and honest about the fact that this is not a hill he’s willing to die on."

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/435373/donald-trump-conservative-voters

How to explain Gallagher? Probably a mix of ignorance, satisfaction with the conservative movement status quo, weariness and a desire to be seen as a good soldier for Team Red, meaning the Republican Party. This isn't anything new. We've come to expect this from conservative organs like National Review.

Thanks, Lydia, for keeping us honest.

How to explain Gallagher? Probably a mix of ignorance, satisfaction with the conservative movement status quo, weariness and a desire to be seen as a good soldier for Team Red, meaning the Republican Party. This isn't anything new. We've come to expect this from conservative organs like National Review.

Thanks for the info. I can't get my head around that. To me it doesn't look like being a good soldier for Team Red to be constantly carping at Congress for not taking on what is a simple job for the executive branch. Isn't that sort of tearing down Team Red in Congress?

Given what you're saying, my better guess *now* is that she's trying to show that she's Ms. Savvy: "See, I knew all along Trump wasn't interested in advancing conservative interests. I'm so knowledgeable and world-weary. I'm telling you how to get to our goal and what We need to do."

But this is still silly. One scarcely has to be a committed social conservative to tell the USDA to back off on this. One could just think it's pretty ridiculous for meat inspectors to be inspecting the contents of break room reading material! One could see that as outside their purview, as an overreach. Or, cynically, Trump could want to look good to social conservatives by curbing this egregious abuse of power. He could also look good to libertarians or anyone with a minimal interest in limited federal government. It's such an incredibly minimal thing to ask for the Secretary to rescind Vilsack's letter and to tell meat inspectors to stop doing this. So now you have to be a gung-ho anti-homosexual activist just to stop such ludicrous, totalitarian goings on by federal meat inspectors? Give me a break.

Tribalism is a powerful motive in politics. Always has been, but it's particularly resurgent today. That's an aspect of the "Team Red" loyal soldiering stuff.

If ten companies with ten divisions each all have the same culture across all divisions, it is much easier - and therefore less expensive -- to move people and product lines and technologies/capabilities around within this market in response to environmental pressures, opportunities, emergent synergies, etc.

This may be sometimes true, but the drawback on business efficiency (to say nothing of more important matters) is that sexual dysfunction, far from being confined to the home life, even at the business spreads tension, worry, exhaustion, despair, anxiety -- in a word, workplace drama. Colleagues, managers and direct-reports all, on occasion, get caught up in it.

Take divorce, for instance: any experienced middle manager in corporate America has observed a divorce (temporarily, at least) transform a star employee into a bum, a genial man into a bitter blighter, a pleasant woman into a harpy. No doubt many single or happily married employees nurse a deep rancor for all the times they've disrupted their schedule to cover for a guy who only has weekends to see his children, and therefore always needs weekends off. How many firms have suffered in terms of comradery, social trust, loyalty, candor, etc., due to their employees getting caught up in fashionable sexual sins, is uncountable. And that's not even getting into the inquisitorial mindset that hunts and harasses any public dissent from complete acceptance of the most fashionable of sexual sins.

It's a minor point, but if an enterprising and intrepid scholar were to develop some data on this, my guess is that sexual dysfunction and its attendant Sovietization of the workplace would, on balance, prove to be a major drag on business efficiency. Much as Robert Putnam and a few other brave liberals have shown that diversity is powerfully destructive of social trust, so, I think, could it be shown that the late sexual revolution is destructive of profits and economic efficiencies.

It wouldn't surprise me either, given that the unified two-parent traditional family has been shown to be an enormously productive social unit. The economics of having (at most) one parent work away from home and the other work primarily at raising the kids is difficult to measure correctly, (how do you measure properly the benefit of there being 2 more people in the world than there would have been had Mom had to work 9 to 5?), but even the parts that are easier to measure (fewer costs of mental illness and therapy, more productively prepared children, etc) seem to indicate that it is not easy to prove having that mothers working outside the home is, finally, economically beneficial overall.

There may be a problem here:

1. "This ban on Don’s speech appears to have been grounded on the USDA’s “Anti-Harassment Policy Statement” issued in July 2015, which prohibits written or oral communications that USDA officials consider “disrespectful” or “insult[ing]” on the basis of sexual orientation."

I would venture that "appears" is doing a lot of work here. The USDA letter reads like a standard HR document relating to employment conditions internal to the USDA. I would urge you all to read the letter.

2. There are two actions on the USDA complaint site relating to a violation of humane slaughter practices by WMB.

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/de6887ab-620b-4edb-abbe-7fd88c8a4c4a/M1816-NOIE-081616.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/de6887ab-620b-4edb-abbe-7fd88c8a4c4a/M1816-NOIE-081616.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

3. There is absolutely no evidence presented that the alleged conversation between the USDA folks and WMB ever took place.

There is absolutely no evidence presented that the alleged conversation between the USDA folks and WMB ever took place.

"Zero evidence" means VDB is probably just lying through his teeth, I take it, Al?


In 2015, Dr. Ryan Lundquist, the USDA’s inspector in charge, saw the offending article. He removed it and reported it to USDA Frontline Supervisor Robert Becker. The two men then called Vander Boon on the carpet. Behind closed doors, and without witnesses, they told Vander Boon three times he had to remove that article or else. What was that else? They would withdraw all USDA meat inspectors. That would, in effect, shut down his business. Think about the vast web of health, safety, environmental, investment, banking and tax regulations that surround us. They’re supposed to exist to further some public good, not to harass dissenters for the current sexual orthodoxy.'
Becker pointed to the new anti-harassment policies. Karnail S. Mudahar confirmed to Vander Boon that the meat inspectors’ new anti-gay marriage morality policing was pursuant to policy.

So all these three named people, Ryan Lundquist, Robert Becker, and Karnail S. Mudahar, are being slandered out the wazoo? *Nothing* of this kind took place? Mudahar didn't confirm that this was pursuant to the policy? Nope, nope, nope, no evidence. Nothing to see here, folks. VanderBoon totally made up the incident out of whole cloth? Makes sense to me. I guess he was feeling bored and wanted to be in the news.

Al, believe it or not, testimony is evidence. I suppose that you think the farmer is as likely to be a liar as not. I don't. His testimony is evidence. I note, too, that the USDA hasn't even said that this is all a lie and that these named people are being slandered and never said or did any of this.

I guess according to Al, Trump's guys could write a letter, on the authority of the USDA, forbidding jihad, shariah, and public promotion of the same; and then they could fill the hills with alt-right goons to shut down mosques, based on the clear and sacred principles of the latest USDA Anti-Harassment Policy Statement.

Why, it turns out that, over in the UK, there is a rather shocking scandal concerning the "humane slaughter practices" of halal slaughterhouses. Perhaps Al could take his precious fussiness over letters and HR documents, his oh-so-helpful links to complaints and violations -- take all this nonsense with him and bother some Muslim websites, rather than adding to the grand total of human asininity on earth here at our little blog.

Gallagher also discussed one of the alleged humane slaughter complaints at some length. It appears frivolous on the face of it. And it happened *after* the alleged events in 2015. Hence one has to consider the possibility of drummed-up charges due to the "offensive" pamphlet back in 2015. If anything, this is an abuse of power and further offense against the farmer, not evidence that the farmer made up the whole story about the pamphlet.

Oh, by the way: According to the timeline here

http://www.adfmedia.org/files/WestMichiganBeefLetter.pdf

VanderBoon apparently made a formal complaint about the 2015 incident *well before* the alleged incident concerning slaughter practices. About a year before, in fact. So he really would have been making up the entire incident for no good reason whatsoever, _prior_ to the USDA claim that he had some sort of violation. Which makes no sense. The timeline is well explained as retaliation against him. It is not explained at all as his trying to draw attention away from his violations, since those alleged "violations" didn't take place until about a year after he had made his complaint about this use of Vilsack's letter to police his break room literature.

By the way, I would not hold out hope for the enterprise and resourcefulness of Mr. Perdue. A likable and well-meaning gentleman, in Georgia as Governor he generally conducted himself with complacency toward the social conservatives of this state or any other. His successor has vetoed or otherwise quashed various liberty bills and quailed at the first sighting of wealthy capitalists who had come tidings that growth for the state depends on appeasing the Inquisitors.

Quailing at the sight of wealthy capitalists has put us in a bad way lately.

Still, I think it is well within the authority of Perdue to issue a statement simply affirming the First Amendment; and renouncing, on the part of anyone in his Department, any notion of entering into a dispute with a farmer over the literature he puts on his tables.

Still, I think it is well within the authority of Perdue to issue a statement simply affirming the First Amendment; and renouncing, on the part of anyone in his Department, any notion of entering into a dispute with a farmer over the literature he puts on his tables.

It obviously is since the Vilsack letter was in Vilsack's power to begin with.

But I see what you mean as well about Perdue: At this point, if the agency did launch complaints about slaughter in order to persecute VanderBoon as retaliation, it would take more to root out the rot concerning that particular case than just stating that no further such cases will arise. Still, it would be a move in the right direction. As it stands, every farmer in the country has to live with the presumption that USDA meat inspectors are also ideology inspectors.

Gallagher also points out the extreme legal weirdness of the injunction in the letter to USDA agents to "take immediate and appropriate corrective action." Pace Al, that is *not* standard civil rights boilerplate. In fact, it contravenes the usual requirement for a harassment complaint, etc. It's entirely explanatory of the action that VanderBoon says was taken.

"VanderBoon apparently made a formal complaint about the 2015 incident *well before* the alleged incident concerning slaughter practices. About a year before, in fact."

I read this as all happening in August of 2015 and see nothing referring to 2014. I don't see a date for the alleged conversation and all i see for the placement of the offending article is sometime in August 2015. Have you found references for the exact dates for these conversations? All we know for sure is that WMB was cited verbally for the humane slaughter violation on August 15, 2015 and in writing on August 16, 2015. Presumably the complaint that Vander Boon filed would have those dates - why isn't there a link? Too many holes in this. It is entirely reasonable to think that someone is retaliating against someone but no evidence as to who did what when beyond the dates on the USDA letter. Why isn't the ADF letter more specific on dates?

Al: While I do not have a precise date in August of 2015, the explicit statement in repeated documents is that the conversation with the USDA inspectors about the break room document took place in August, 2015. See here, for example:

http://www.adfmedia.org/files/WestMichiganBeefLetter.pdf

That same letter indicates that, as of February 15, 2017, 18 months had passed since VanderBoon made his formal complaint, which strongly implies that he made the complaint immediately after the incident. Moreover, this post from ADF

http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/10169

states expressly that the farmer received two letters of acknowledgement from the USDA of his complaint in September, 2015.

Now, you state


All we know for sure is that WMB was cited verbally for the humane slaughter violation on August 15, 2015 and in writing on August 16, 2015.

You do not "know for sure" that he was cited verbally in August 2015 any more than I "know for sure" that the verbal exchange in August 2015 took place about the break room literature.

What, to use your terminology, we "know for sure" is that the farmer filed a formal complaint about the alleged conversation approximately or fully a *year before* the USDA decided to put anything in writing citing him for the alleged humane slaughter violation. In other words, he put his allegations out there in writing in the form of a formal complaint when he had nothing to gain by making up such a story out of nothing. They came back a year later, a year later, after his complaint, with a written citation making a big deal about a trivial incident in which it looks like nobody did anything wrong.

Moreover, the letter by Vilsack authorizes "immediate corrective action," which fits extremely well with what VanderBoon claims the agents did.

You don't have a leg to stand on. You're just darkening counsel and wasting time, as so often.

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