'King Corn' A DVD Worth Watching

“America wants and demands cheap food.”

That statement, made by the operator of a large cattle ranch in Colorado, appears to be all too true as one watches and learns about the origins of much of our food in the fascinating documentary, King Corn (Mosaic Films).

By Andrew W. Griffin, Editor, Red Dirt Report

And yes, a lot of that “cheap food” that is the result of farm subsidies and commercial farming practices, is consumed by most folks in America. Much of it, notes this 2007 documentary, contains corn, usually in the form of high fructose corn syrup.

Two mild-mannered college-aged guys from the East Coast, Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney, decided to conduct a film experiment. Cheney and Ellis chose to move to Greene, Iowa, a small farming community where both, interestingly enough, had ancestral links.

While there, they got permission from a farmer to grow one acre of corn on his land, their “field of dreams,” so to speak. It’s Iowa, after all. Their goal? To plant it, tend to it and hopefully get an idea of where it ends up down the chain.

That process, including a number of interviews with farmers, doctors, scientists, ranchers and corn industry spokespeople, are all featured.

Oh, and the corn, the real star of this film? Well, Cheney and Ellis use genetically-modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers and powerful herbicides to grow their crop.

Now, King Corn is not an expose or hit piece. There’s actually a very methodical Midwestern feel to the film that is different from the Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock style of documentary filmmaking. It’s almost quiet, too quiet at times, with it’s acoustic folk music soundtrack and the nonobtrusive personalities of Cheney and Ellis, who look a little out of place at times.

But it is interesting to hear how in the 1970’s during the Nixon administration, there was a big push to expand agricultural production in the country. This led to bigger and bigger farming operations that pushed out the smaller farmers and changed the way food was grown in America. From the obese, grain-fed cattle, to the corn syrup that has replaced sugar cane as sweetener of choice.

Talking to a farmer near harvest time, the guys hear it straight, like only a farmer could, “We aren’t growing quality. We’re growing crap. Poorest quality crap the world’s ever seen.”

The farmer then says he doesn’t care what is done with his corn crop, he just cares about selling it.

And much of it goes to make that high-fructose corn syrup, which the guys actually make in their own apartment kitchen at one point.

In fact, it’s when Cheney and Ellis go to New York, where a lot of corn-laden products end up, that they meet a guy who comes from a family devastated by diabetes, the young man showing a photo of himself looking morbidly obese, a result of a steady diet of corn syrup-laden soda pop.

And then there is the interview with Earl Butz, Nixon’s agriculture secretary, who played a major role in shaping food policy. Butz, an Indiana native who was a controversial figure in his time, had no apologies for his policies. A man who lived through the Depression and knew a time when food took a big chunk out of an average family’s budget.

And what is impressive is that Ellis and Cheney and writer Aaron Woolf and their crew show that corn really impacts our lives in ways that we might never think about, from fast food to farming to our long-term health.

This is not your grandfather’s farm. This is an industrial operation and the acre planted by Cheney and Ellis are pretty much a speck in a sea of corn kernels heading to the grain elevator, bursting at the seams.

King Corn is a highly recommended documentary and educational tool. Repeated viewings may even be in order.

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Conservative Leadership Seminars Offered

From The Red Dirt Report ~ Less than 10 days after Election Day, the local branch of American Majority, a political training institute which trains people to get into conservative leadership positions, is holding a free training seminar in Tulsa on Friday and in Oklahoma City on Saturday.

Read more at http://www.reddirtreport.com/news.php?id=8322.

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Red Dirt Report: ACORN Skipped Out On OKC Office Rent, Left Angry Landlord, Littered Office

Story & Photo By Andrew W. Griffin/Red Dirt Report

OKLAHOMA CITY – On the second floor of an old building in South Oklahoma City's “Little Mexico” neighborhood, there is a room that until recently, housed a branch of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), a low-income advocacy organization known for left-wing activism, rabble-rousing and – shockingly – voter registration fraud.

Left hurriedly and in a shambles, the small office, coated in a layer of plaster dust, still housed computers, documents, registration forms, I-9 employment info and boxes with an IRS return address and others with a return address for an ACORN office in New Orleans.

The person working at this office, Adam Carter, had reportedly skipped town in June, according to the landlord. and in August, an ACORN representative from Tulsa came down and took more items, leaving behind what was found by Red Dirt Report.

ACORN never fulfilled it’s year lease for the property and never paid a dime in rent. The landlord told Red Dirt Report that the ACORN workers seemed to attract trouble and that there was something not quite right about what they were doing. The landlord also said that the aforementioned Tulsa ACORN worker, named “Brittany,” said ACORN didn't have any money to pay for the rent and that Carter had depleted the South Oklahoma City ACORN account.

A call to the main Oklahoma City ACORN office at 2525 Northwest Expressway revealed that the number had been disconnected. A call to the ACORN office in Tulsa, at 531 E. 36th Street North went unanswered.

Granted, these are bad times for ACORN and calls from the media may have resulted in a siege mentality for the group. Nevertheless, ACORN is active in Oklahoma and while touting itself as non-partisan and accepting federal funds, seems to want to advance the goals of “The Party” (aka Democrats) according to evidence left in the abandoned office.

If you haven’t heard of ACORN before, chances are in the past couple of weeks you can’t escape reference to the group. A little history. ACORN began in Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1970’s as a welfare-rights group working with low-income folks. But over the years, ACORN grew beyond the boundaries of the Natural State and in the process expanded the number of core issues it would address.

But in those intervening years there have been countless examples of fraud, rabble-rousing and even nepotism and embezzlement on the part of the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke. Then there is the growing scandal related to voter fraud connected to ACORN voter registration drives. With everyone from Mickey Mouse to Jimmy John’s (a restaurant) to the players on the Dallas Cowboys (in Nevada?!?) getting registered across the country, a growing number of states are looking into ACORN and the false voter registration forms. In Ohio alone, 200,000 voter registration forms appear to be fraudulent.

In the past decade, ACORN started ACORN Votes, ACORN’s national political action committee. Not surprisingly, earlier this year they endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president. Obama, as it turns out, represented ACORN on legal issues in 1995. Obama also worked on voter-registration drives in Illinois with Project Vote, an ACORN-allied organization that helped ACORN register over 1 million people to vote. The Obama campaign also gave over $800,000 to an ACORN subsidiary to help augment grassroots efforts in several battleground states.

As noted in a piece by Deroy Murdock at National Review Online, in his November 2007 ACORN address, Obama said: “I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.”

Then, there is the online news site, World Net Daily, which has reported this week that Obama has not been entirely truthful about his links to the activist organization. As new reports show, he helped train ACORN activists.

Why isn’t Obama being entirely truthful about his connection?

Additionally, an MSNBC investigation showed that court documents show ACORN has a troubled history.

According to a source close to the Oklahoma County Election Board, last Friday night, 30 minutes before midnight, Democrat activists brought in a stack of voter registration forms. It was noted, by this source known only to Red Dirt Report, that the activists were going to Oklahoma City area homeless shelters and signing up homeless folks with plans to take them to the polls on election day.

And on Thursday, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Moore) said in a press release that a serious investigation into ACORN is warranted, saying, “Furthermore, those responsible for the fraudulent registrations must be thoroughly investigated, and if found guilty, punished to the full extent of the law.”

Red Dirt Report was allowed exclusive entry into the abandoned South Oklahoma City ACORN office which had been trashed and ransacked. Interestingly, flyers left behind called for people in the low-income neighborhood to come to a meeting to talk about the need for more streetlights in crime-ridden neighborhoods. Was this merely a way to get people worked up about an issue so they would come in and then in turn register as a Democrat? Some evidence appears to point to that.

In fact, the evidence discovered in the abandoned office on South Robinson revealed maps of Oklahoma City broken down in House districts. Districts where a Republican won, but just barely, were highlighted. Papers related to the 2006 election results for Oklahoma were also noted.

Red Dirt Report contacted ACORN regional offices in Little Rock and New Orleans seeking comment on ACORN activities in Oklahoma and ACORN activist Adam Carter. However, those calls were not returned.

It should be noted that a source close to Red Dirt Report has it on good authority that a more serious investigation into ACORN may take place.

In Oklahoma’s First Congressional District, in the Tulsa area, Democrat congressional candidate Georgianna Oliver, running against incumbent Republican John Sullivan, was endorsed by ACORN in a letter that was posted at Oliver’s campaign website. Writes North Tulsa (ACORN) Chapter Chairperson Patricia Walker, “Our members are excited to support you and believe that you are committed to representing our issues in this most-important race.”

The blog Living On Tulsa Time found the ACORN endorsement, on ACORN letterhead, which has since been scrubbed from the campaign site OliverForUSCongress.com. Why wouldn’t Oliver want to note that endorsement?

We may never know. A call to the Oliver campaign office in Tulsa was not returned. Neither was a call to the Sullivan campaign, seeking comment on Oliver accepting the endorsement.

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