Silly State Politics

I miss Molly Ivins' a lot.  Even though she wrote about the lunacies of Texas politics, this story from North Carolina would have been in her wheel house.

The state of North Carolina has something called the Local Food Advisory Council, whose innocuous mission statement is copied below.

 It is the purpose of the North Carolina Sustainable Local Food Advisory Council to contribute to building a local food economy, thereby benefiting North Carolina by creating jobs, stimulating statewide economic development, circulating money from local food sales within local communities, preserving open space, decreasing the use of fossil fuel and thus reducing carbon emissions, preserving and protecting the natural environment, increasing consumer access to fresh and nutritious foods, and providing greater food security for all North Carolinians.

Nothing very controversial, right?

Well, so you might think but, alas, conspiracy nuts are everywhere.  When a bill was introduced to extend the Food Advisory Council's mandate for an additional three years, some NC House Republicans had a problem with that word "sustainable."

Rep. Glen Bradley tried to amend the bill to remove the word from the panel's mission. He said the term "sustainable" is government doublespeak, intended to "lull the public into complacency."

Bradley warned his colleagues that "sustainability" is part of the UN's Agenda 21. 
"'Sustainability' is a term that was designated [by the UN] in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 that means 'social justice' more than 'sustainability,'" Bradley said on the House floor.

(Damn those "social justice" agendas. The same problem the pope has with the nuns.)

Sustainability "is the efforts of the UN to circumvent our constitution to have the government more and more in control of people," Pittman said. "It’s not about maintaining a resource. It’s about getting the people more under the control of the government."

The amendment was defeated 51-63, but the Republicans who joined with the Democrats to kill it are already being targeted in the next election by the conspiracy theorists.

Everytime someone says we need to end a federal program and substitute some sort of block grant to the states as a more cost-effective alternative, remember...this kind of local lunacy probably isn't that unusual.  Are these the people you want administering any program more serious than getting out of bed in the morning?