Where’s the beef?
Most of the time I love my #LittleFarmLife. I wake up in the morning to song birds and the snuggle of dogs and cats and, occasionally, the bawling of the cows who I’ve named “What’s For Dinner.”
I get out of bed, slide into slippers, slip into a robe, grab a cup of coffee and head straight to my desk. I wake up reading the news, sorting through emails and figuring out what I have to get done that day.
And no one talks to me before 10 a.m. It’s just safer for all concerned that way. I am not a morning person.
So, this past Wednesday when I looked up from my monitor to see my beloved passing by my office window I just waved. He waved back. I didn’t much pay attention to the fact that the hand he raised in salutation was holding half a flake of alfalfa. Whatever.
Didn’t even think anything of it until about 15 minutes or so later when I looked up to see What’s For Dinner trotting their bovine butts up the driveway and behind the house.
Well, I thought as I scrambled for my tall rubber barn boots, no wonder Michael was carrying alfalfa. By the time I got in my boots, grabbed a cattle stick
(aka an old broom handle), tucked my cell phone in my pocket and was out the door What’s For Dinner were nowhere to be seen.
Honestly, I thought, as I followed the tracks through the mud and brush my boots gooshing in the wet earth and my robe snagging on manzanita, how do animals that large just vanish?
While I was doing a fairly good imitation of Daniel Boone minus the signature cap, my beloved was on the phone with the California Highway Patrol reporting the breakout and requesting they issue a BOLO.
By the time I traversed the entire levee with nary a sign of the Hamburger On The Hoof I realized we were going to need reinforcements so I called friends. “The cows are out,” I said. “We’re on our way,” Stefani and Doug said. God bless people who don’t ask a lot of questions and just get moving.
Michael got in his truck and headed north on our road and I got in my truck and headed south. Doug and Stefani arrived and stationed themselves at the most likely egress the Troupe Of Tri-Tip would take toward the highway.
I pulled the truck into the drive of our newest and closet neighbors and banged on their front door. I’m surprised they actually opened the door to me — a woman with wild hair filled with twigs and leaves, dressed in a muddy pink and torn bathrobe and black rubber boots carrying a broom handle babbling about loose cows.
They must have thought I was deranged but they gave me permission to come on their property to look for the Pack Of Pot Roast, who, as it turned out, weren’t there.
I moved on to the next neighbor’s place which has a large locked gate across the drive. While I couldn’t access their property via the drive there were plenty of ways the Prime Rib Ramblers could so, I had no choice but to climb the gate.
There I was, a woman well on the backside of middle age, in a tattered pink robe now hiked up to the waist straddling the locked gate which, once I was perched precariously on top was not as sturdy as it had originally looked when I decided to climb it.
And then I heard it. The low soft familiar Bawling of Brisket.
I dropped none too gracefully to the ground inside the gate managing to hang on to both the broom handle and bucket of grain and headed Davey Crockett-like into the bush. It’s really hard to be stealthy in a bathrobe and barn boots but I did my best and came to a small clearing where the Rumps of Roast were milling about.
I shook the grain bucket and dumped some on the ground to entice the Clutch Of Chuck to stay put while I called for reinforcements.
It took a bit for my beloved, Doug and Stefani to locate me because, as Doug pointed out, “Gurl you’re so dang short we can’t see you in the bushes,” and it wasn’t like I could holler or send up a flair without risking a Stampede Of Steak.
We got the Group Of Ground Round surrounded and began moving them cross country toward home. It took a while but when all was said and done What’s For Dinner were successfully returned to their pasture and no animals, property or humans were injured.
As we shut and latched the gate after them, Stefani turned to me and said, “Well?”
“Well, I guess we can now market them as freerange, grass-fed beef.”
WASHINGTON >> Democrats edged a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package to the brink of House passage early Saturday, even as party leaders sought to assure agitated progressives that they’d revive their derailed drive to boost the minimum wage.
A virtual party- line House vote was expected on the sweeping measure, which embodies President Joe Biden’s plan to flush cash to individuals, businesses, states and cities battered by COVID-19. Passage would send the measure to the Senate, where Democrats may try resuscitating their minimum wage push and fights could erupt over state aid and other issues.
Democrats said that the still-faltering economy and the half-million American lives lost demanded quick, decisive action and that GOP lawmakers were out of step with a public that polling shows largely views the bill favorably.
“I am a happy camper tonight,” Rep. Maxine Waters, D- Calif., said Friday. “This is what America needs. Republicans, you ought to be a part of this. But if you’re not, we’re going without you.”
GOP largely opposed
Republicans said the bill was too expensive, spent money too slowly to quickly reopen schools, was laden with gifts to Democratic constituencies like labor unions and funneled funds to struggling pension systems and other projects irrelevant to battling the pandemic.
“Before we ask future generations to float us another $2 trillion to pay off these liberal promises, let’s at least have the integrity to admit that this really isn’t about COVID,” said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark.
That divide is making the fight a showdown over which party voters will reward for heaping more federal spending to combat the coronavirus and revive the economy atop the $4 trillion approved last year.
The battle is also emerging as an early test of
Biden’s ability to hold together his party’s fragile congressional majorities — just 10 votes in the House and an evenly divided 5050 Senate.
At the same time, Democrats were trying to figure out how to respond to their jarring setback Thursday in the Senate.
That chamber’s nonpartisan parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, said Senate rules require that a federal minimum wage increase would have to be dropped from the COVID-19 bill, leaving the proposal on life support. The measure would gradually lift that minimum to $15 hourly by 2025, doubling the current $7.25 floor in effect since 2009.
Fight for wage hike
Hoping to revive the effort in some form, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is considering adding a provision to the Senate version of the COVID-19 relief bill that would penalize large companies that don’t pay workers at least $15 an hour, said a senior Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.
That was in line with ideas floated Thursday night by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a chief sponsor of the $15 plan, and Senate Finance Committee
Chair Ron Wyden, D- Ore., to boost taxes on corporations that don’t hit certain minimum wage targets.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also weighed in, promising that Democrats would continue fighting for a minimum wage increase and saying that Congress would “absolutely” approve a final version of the bill even if it lacked progressives’ treasured goal.
“If it doesn’t prevail because of Senate rules, we will persist,” said Pelosi, DCalif. “But we will not stop until we very soon pass the $15 minimum wage.”
But though Democratic leaders were eager to signal to rank- and-file progressives and liberal voters that they would not yield on that fight, the idea of prodding companies to boost pay with threatened tax increases might not win enough Democratic support to succeed.
Progressives were demanding that the Senate press ahead anyway on the minimum wage increase, even if it meant changing that chamber’s rules and eliminating the filibuster, a tactic that requires 60 votes for a bill to move forward.
“We’re going to have to reform the filibuster because we have to be able to deliver,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., a progressive leader.
Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio
Cortez, D-N.Y., another high- profile progressive, also said Senate rules must be changed, telling reporters that when Democrats meet with their constituents, “We can’t tell them that this didn’t get done because of an unelected parliamentarian.”
Traditionalist senators of both parties have opposed eliminating filibusters because they protect parties’ interests when they are in the Senate minority. Biden said weeks ago that he didn’t expect the minimum wage increase to survive the Senate’s rules.
The House COVID-19 bill includes the minimum wage increase, so the real battle over its fate will occur when the Senate debates its version over the next two weeks.
Other items
The overall relief bill would provide $1,400 payments to individuals, extend emergency unemployment benefits through August and increase tax credits for children and federal subsidies for health insurance.
It also provides billions for schools and colleges, state and local governments, COVID-19 vaccines and testing, renters, food producers and struggling industries like airlines, restaurants, bars and concert venues.