Part 13 was published January 14, 2024, and can be found here.

Some activities in the last sixty years:

BOB HILL

Back in the 1970s and 80s at about the same time that I was head of the Ag Marketing Task Force, I was speaking to farm groups about the problems I saw in the commodities trade with how grain and livestock pricing was determined. I voiced my concerns to then Colorado Governor Lamm, and he asked the Attorney General's office to look into it. Bob Hill, First Assistant Attorney General, was asked to do the study.

 Sometime later when Bob Hill handed me his report, he made the following comment that I painfully remember. He said, "Yes, I can show that the way commodity prices are set is detrimental to the economy of the State of Colorado. However, the commodities trade is so huge that it trades more dollars in a day than the New York stock exchange does in a week or more. That industry can literally buy and sell the US Congress with pocket change." They do, and always will. Congress had an opportunity to fix the problem in approximately 1932 when it removed the speculative short sale from stocks. This is where I can sell my neighbor's grain without his permission, or him even knowing it. It's called the "speculative short position" on the commodities market, where you can sell livestock or grain that you do not even own and have no intention of owning. Congress removed the speculative short position from stocks at this time as it was determined to be the cause of the deep crash of 1929. Congress failed to remove the speculative short position from farmers crops and livestock. Therefore, true supply and demand, where a finite supply is offered to a finite demand, is as phony as a three-dollar bill.

The commodities industry has lobbied ever since 1932 to return the short position, as it makes a wilder poker game. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission has allowed it to return in a limited fashion to stocks.

The 2021 "Game Stop" fiasco cost the losers huge sums of money, and put some companies out of business. The Game Stop event dramatically demonstrates what farmers have been up against for more than a century.

Congress has ponied up billions of dollars in agriculture subsidies in the last 80 years to keep farmers barely in business, when the cure could have been so simple. This tells us who owns Congress. It appears that we can elect a very honest individual, but when they cross the DC beltway, a force field erases everything they knew and they become corrupt.

BANKING

In the early 1970s, my sister, Jenean, her husband, Dave Schuler, mom, dad, Sherell, and I owned the largest piece of First National Bank in Tribune, Kansas. After serving on the board for a while, I decided it was not my cup of tea.

I lost enough sleep worrying about our farm, and did not want to be troubled by 20 more. We sold the bank stock to help facilitate the purchase of the farm where Lane and Tammy Stum now live.

PAUL KARI - FRIEND AND AUTHOR OF "THE STRENGTH TO ENDURE"

In 1974, when the Middle East cut off our oil, there were rationing and lines at the fuel pumps. Even our banker, who at that time was in Kansas and wanted to take his family on a trip to the mountains, called and asked if we had any gasoline on the farm that he could borrow. At that time, Paul Kari stopped at Kurt Yost's filling station in Towner and asked if anybody had the capability of equipping his pickup to burn LPG (propane) because it was not being rationed. Kurt, knowing that even my 1957 Imperial had a propane tank in the trunk, sent him out to our place. (In Paul's book he wrote that he met me at an auction but no, that is not where we met) Anyway, we did have the equipment available to install a propane tank and carburation on his pickup.

PASCAL

Pascal was a super genius in the 1630s. He is not only famous for Pascal's Wager, but he developed the first working calculator ever produced in the history of man. It could add, subtract, divide, and carry a total. The abacus can do a lot of that. I actually saw an abacus in use in Russia by an old babushka (grandma) who kept tabs of who picked up supplies from the village storage house. Blaise Pascal is one of six of the most intelligent men in human history. Because all six believed in a creator, it puzzles me that today's agnostics and atheists can't see that perhaps they are wrong. That is the connection that l make with Pascal.

Next: Don’t Give Up On Someone