I’ve got nothing against farmers growing food and selling it to willing buyers. But something occurred to me as I read the paper today. A bank in Hampton gave a thousand dollars to Healthy Harvest of North Iowa in “support of a sustainable regional food system.” Am I all alone in seeing some irony in a marketing organization needing a grant to promote sustainability?

I’ve had several people look at me with a straight face and say, “I like Bernie.” This always accompanies the unspoken question, “where will it all come from?”

It has this to do with the grant mentioned above: Banks lend money at a higher interest rate than they pay on savings. That sustains them. It is profit earned by performing the service of matching savers with borrowers. Savers earn less interest and borrowers pay higher interest because the bank gives money away to politically correct organizations, for appearance’s sake.