Mike Callicrate

Rancher's Advocate. People's Advocate. Animal's Advocate.

[Dan Osborn @osbornforne]

Jim Knopik has farmed this land for 76 years and watched the whole system change around him. The lobbyists wrote the rules. The monopolies pocketed the subsidies. And family farmers got the bill. That's what we're fighting to change.

[Farm Action @FarmActionUS]

“They treat Iowa land like it’s a commodity instead of our inheritance.”

“They treat us like numbers, not neighbors.”

Republican nominee for governor, Zach Lahn, says investors are buying up Iowa farmland and pricing the next generation of farmers out of the market.

“Our young people are leaving faster than 46 other states because they don’t see enough opportunity here.”

“Wall Street hedge funds and foreign interests are buying and selling our land.”

“Driving up costs so our kids are priced out of the market.”

@ZachLahn

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Both leaving AI companies unregulated and making the government a co-partner are dangerous ideas that allow for rampant theft of our property.

The best approach is a moderate one - break up the concentration, open source the models, and force AI firms to stop stealing from copyright holders.

[Rep. Joe Neguse @RepJoeNeguse]

Back in D.C., and on the agenda this week for House Republicans?

Massive cuts to programs that assist our farmers, ranchers, and communities in rural America — all while spending millions on President Trump’s vanity projects.

[Furkan Gözükara @FurkanGozukara]

🚨 BOMBSHELL! Senator Bernie Sanders exposes the massive AI scam. He confirms big tech oligarchs literally stole humanity's collective knowledge, art, and research to build models without permission.

The elite class is executing the greatest wealth theft in human history!

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

California voted 63 percent to ban this. Massachusetts voted 78 percent. The industry sued and lost at the Supreme Court.

So they slipped a provision into the House farm bill to void both votes and block every future state from trying. One lobbying campaign undoing two supermajority referendums.

The largest beneficiary is Smithfield - owned by a Chinese company. Congress is being asked to override American voters to protect a Chinese corporation's factory farming practices.

84 percent of Americans called this unacceptable in polling. The Senate gets to decide if that number means anything.

[David Seligman @daveyseligman]

Folks like Kathy have been drowning in medical debt for far too long, its time you have an AG who fights for YOU and not for wealthy interests.

[Ks/Ok Farmer ©️🌽🐑🌾 @swksfarmer]

That fenced off area is STILL the norm thanks to land grants and boomers

[Mike Callicrate @MikeCallicrate]

Iowa isn't the only place with undrinkable water. Nitrate levels are above the safe drinking level in many places above the Ogallala Aquifer. A January test at St. Francis Kansas showed showed 8.5 ppm. Other tests across the region are higher, up to 50 ppm.

This is great reporting.

https://t.co/Vowvpqjhai

[Farm Action @FarmActionUS]

Idaho farmers are sounding the alarm.

Agricultural input costs are skyrocketing.

And as they’re forced to spend more, their wealth is flowing out-of-state.

“16-40% of [Idaho] farm spending is occurring outside of the state.”

Why?

Economist Timothy Nadreau just broke down why rising input costs is causing money to flow out of Idaho:

“We don’t have refineries in Idaho, so as diesel prices go up, that’s money that’s leaking out of the state.”

“Certain types of fertilizers we’re gonna have to import.”

“The more that we have to import in order to produce our agricultural products, and the more those prices increase, the more money leaks out of our state.”

“It’s not circulating and promoting the economy locally.”

“The processing segment leaks a lot of money out of our economy.”

“Some industries… up to 70% of their expenditures are occurring out of state.”

“But almost always, somewhere around 30-70% is leaking out from our processing segment.”

“And that’s because our supply chains within the state are not deep enough.”

“So we rely on inputs from other states to generate those supply lines.”

“The amount of money that actually stays in the economy, circulates and generates tax revenue for the state… is reduced… when the money is leaking out rather than staying local and circulating.”

@KTVB @hunterkfunk

[UNWON | Keely Covello @americaunwon]

An environmental lawyer and former vegetarian turned cattle rancher explains the problem with “absolutist” environmentalism.

Read Nicolette Niman’s book “Defending Beef.” She’s running to unseat Jared Huffman, one of the most extreme environmental activists in Congress.

[Mike Callicrate @MikeCallicrate]

"Still, there was abject poverty, hunger, and homelessness, because the wealth had not been distributed to meet even the basic human needs of all."

Why Do Economies Need Real Intelligence? https://t.co/aSENK3x416

[Socially Responsible Agriculture Project (SRAP) @SRAProject]

These are real people living with real consequences.

Factory farms don’t just impact animals—they impact neighbors, families, schools, local economies, roads, clean water, public health, and the very fabric of rural communities.

Read why we care: https://t.co/rRJmyhnxkV

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

The attempt to bully anyone who likes Graham Platner is kind of hilarious. We don't care. These aren't scandals.

Invading Iraq was a scandal.

Foreclosing on tens of millions of people was a scandal.

Attacking Iran was a scandal.

Have fun clutching pearls!

[Boston Smalls @smalls2672]

This needs to be played everywhere 24/7

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Chevron is lobbying for more environmental regulations on gasoline in California, even as liberal groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists argue for rolling back restrictions. Why? Because regulations offers market power.

The Groups strike again!

https://t.co/Utdsscad3F

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Here's what the pork industry doesn't want you to know about the way it sneaked a provision into the 2026 farm bill that would nullify ballot measures that improve animal welfare, while helping Chinese companies torture American pigs. The issue is personal to me, because we once raised pigs on our family farm, and I saw that these are not commodities but animals rather like dogs: smart with very distinct personalities. A naughty boy who punishes a single animal may be punished, but an adult who presides over the systematic abuse of hundreds of thousands of pigs as a business model is hailed as a visionary CEO -- and voters get that, and that's why they have backed laws that improve animal wellbeing. This is, remarkably, an issue that unites many liberals and conservatives alike; @TomiLahren, @Cernovich and @IngrahamAngle are among those who have been outspoken on this issue. I hope R and D members of Congress alike will stand firm, for the stakes are immense, with four pigs slaughtered around the clock on average all year. Here's a gift link to my piece: https://t.co/NWQbJK6JTc I welcome your comments.

[Basel Musharbash @musharbash_b]

I'm reading a 1938 commencment address given by Solicitor General Robert Jackson at Randolph-Macon College, and its advice to college graduates is incredibly on point for our times. Here's the relevant passage:

"[T]o perform even a minimum of service to its people," he said, a Government "must take steps to repress avarice, to strike down privately built up schemes of economic exploitation or oppression, to uproot privilege and to assure social justice and economic opportunity to the masses.

"Whenever such necessities suggest a need for repair of our governmental structure, [however,] we find even men of good will—apart from their interests—dividing in policy[.]

"There will be one group of extremists who will say the house isn’t worth fixing, that it better be burned, or at least torn down to the foundations.

"Then there will be an equally extreme group who insist that not even the leaky roof should be repaired. When it isn’t raining, they will say, 'You can see that it really isn’t leaking.' When it rains they will say, 'You can’t do it economically in such bad weather' and that the only thing needed is more 'confidence' in the old roof and less 'attitude of hostility' to it.

"In between, however, stand the great majority of the American people saying, 'We will bear with moderate imperfections, but we are capable of ordering our own affairs in our own time, and our institutions must advance with the times.'

"The true usefulness to our society of the educated man is not in resisting all change but in anticipating and controlling conditions which will compel change[,] and in guiding the change itself into channels consistent with our American institutions and traditions. He knows that, if events get out of hand, they will ride roughshod over the most humane of theories — and that is what has happened abroad.

"There is an accumulated wisdom of the past which teaches an educated man that excessive economic and social pressures will produce explosions just as certainly as will excessive steam pressures, and that the same forces that furnish motive power to run our democratic institutions, if uncontrolled and overdone, may well shatter them.

"Do you [graduates] think that today in our American life[,] social and economic pressures upon large portions of our population are approaching the unbearable point? You who are looking out at the world in quest of a chance to make a living in it can answer that question as well as I. If the more fortunate 11% of our youth who have college opportunities find their hopes low and their ambitions frustrated, what must the pressure be on the others—especially on the disadvantaged 11% of youth at the low end of opportunity’s scale? And, if you find that these pressures are reaching danger points—that, then, is a challenge to the educated man of today."