What Levin Does

There is a joke about the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Levin's employer.  It is something like, a man is taking a tour of USDA and sees an employee crying and he asks what happened to him, and the tour guide said, "oh, his farmer died."  Get it?  There is one USDA employee for every farmer = bloated government bureaucracies.

I have been around enough to see some, you know, government waste.  BUT then there are times like this month when you see why the government and tax payers spend a lot of money to to have diplomats in other countries.

Kazakhstan banned US cattle imports.  That's right, we send live cattle to Kazakhstan.  Levin worked what seemed to me endlessly on it. Okay, I was very tired of it and the extra hours and phone calls at home about it.  It was frustrating work too.  BUT in March Levin took a trip down to Kazakhstan and while there, diplomacy worked and they worked out the issue and the ban was lifted!  Levin and the US Ambassador to Kazakhstan got to go around at a trade show that was conveniently taking place that week and tell people that the ban was lifted.  He made some people quite happy and helped American farmers be able to start sending cattle to Kazakhstan again.  It is millions of dollars of trade restored.  I'm so proud!