New Light Shed on Farm Subsidy Payments

[Judi Lynn]

Source: AP

Jun 11, 2:19 PM EDT

New Light Shed on Farm Subsidy Payments

By SAM HANANEL and MARY CLARE JALONICK
Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- From Texas billionaires to Washington lobbyists, it's no secret that wealthy people can get federal farm subsidies.

But now, for the first time, new Agriculture Department data makes it easier to see exactly who benefits from the nation's generous farm subsidy program.

Instead of having to sift through a complex web of corporations, partnerships and other business entities, the USDA has assigned a specific dollar amount to the individuals behind the businesses.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said the new data could affect farm bill negotiations this year as lawmakers consider reducing direct payments to farmers.

"It's going to be harder than ever before to defend the status quo," he said. "I think the defenders of big payments, their position is going to be severely weakened."



Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FARM_SUBSIDIES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-06-11-14-19-25

[KoKo]

1. kick!

[LeighAnn]

2. Here's there current database

http://www.ewg.org/farm/

Put in your zip code! Every wealthy person I know is on that list.

On edit: Not a one of them are farmers!

[Mnemosyne]

4. Excellent link Leigh, thanks! Lots of rich

folks in my zip too. :grr:

And they complain about anyone receiving welfare! :grr:

[BrotherBuzz]

9. Wow, I feel like a voyeur. All of the recipients in my area are farmers but.....

they are also all republicans. Go figure

[wageslave71]

10. GOP Rep. on the list

Vale, NC; GOP leader in the State House, Joe Kiser, has been the recipient of $263,000. He makes the good money on crop insurance. You just have to half-ass plant a crop, don't waste money on fertilizer and such. Don't waste time keeping weeds under control. Better yet, submit bills for purchasing seed, fertilizer, and lime from the non-existent farm supply business that you claim to own. Don't have enough land? Just lease more, like Joe does.

Kiser is the Sunday school teacher that opposed a state lottery, claiming he didn't believe in gambling. Turns out he didn't have a problem accepting money from the casino folks in Cherokee, NC who were opposed to a state lottery. He took money from an energy PAC and voted against the Clean Air Act. The list goes on and on.

Farm subsidies are just one way the rich get richer at the expense of the rest of us. And the whole time they're pointing fingers at minorities, people too lazy to work, welfare queens, etc.

[wageslave71]

11. Another GOP politician

from Lincoln Co., NC. Carrol Mitchem - County Commissioner, just got defeated by another Repub in the '06 primary. There's Pendleton & Pendleton, Republican attorneys (Pendleton, Pendleton, and Deaton law firm, Lincolnton, NC) and the sorriest bastards in the county. There's Pendleton's cousin, another attorney, Clarence Leatherman. He's been dead for about five years now.

[tinymontgomery]

20. Nice to see other Lincolnton

people here. The old boy network is being beat out by the denver gop goons that have moved into the east side of the county.

[ArbustoBuster]

14. Argh!

I live in a small city. There are zero farms in my zip code. ZERO. And yet there are ten people who have received subsidies here, including one who's received $150,000 within the last year!

Thank you for this link.

[nitestar41]

17. I only recognize one last name...

:mad:

... but I don't know many people up here yet.

Maybe he's not one of the main problems in this small town I live in, but his last name is one hard to forget. Most of this small towns Gas Stations, 7 stations (2 are Stewarts) are owned and operated by that family, in town gas is $3.27 a gallon, but drive about 10 minutes out and you hit $3.16 a gallon. Yes they at the very least used to farm but now they control nearly every aspect in this small town. There are some in local politics and some with just plain loud mouths. Either way in somehow they are all related anyway.

:mad:

[tonkatoy57]

3. That's really interesting

There are more people and trusts receiving farm subsidies in the richest zip code is St. Louis, MO where I live now, than in the zip code of the rural farming community in North Carolina where I grew up.

Damn, it make so happy I tear up a little bit thinking about what a great country this is.

Where else can a urban banker make more money for not growing corn on his hobby farm than a rural farmer can make growing corn on his?

[elvisbear]

5. Thanks for the link. Very interesting.

:kick:

[cascadiance]

6. It's worse than that. It contributes to globalization, outsourcing, and immigration problems!

When we subsidize the big ag companies producing corn products such as HFCS-laced soft drinks that we export to South American countries below cost (aka DUMPING like Japanese used to do us with computer chips), this has done the following in many of those countries:

1) Make it hard for local farmers in all of those countries (Mexico, Bolivia, etc.) to compete when these imports are shipped to those countries below cost. They have to sell off their local corn farms or sugar beet/cane farms due to falling demand for their product when NAFTA allows these artificially low-priced imports to come in unchallenged.

2) When some countries DO try to charge tariffs to help their farmers to compete, like Mexico charging tariffs on soft drink imports that didn't use sugar cane for their sugar (and instead used something like high fructose corn syrup that our soft drink manufacturers use here), these multinational companies petitioned the WTO to stop those tariffs, even though they were benefiting unfairly from the subsidies that the U.S. was given, which ALSO should have been considered as a part of those judgements, but wasn't since the multi-nationals have a lot of control over the WTO.

3) Farmers are forced to sell of their farms to those country elites (who are rewarded with cheap land for cow towing to the U.S., the World Bank, and the IMF) in this fashion, or to multinational companies, who build "Maquilas" (plants there that use outsourced labor) to build stuff on the cheap. These maquilas can staff themselves cheaply with these same farmers that are desperate for work after having sold off their farms.

4) Once these same multinationals find that they can get even cheaper labor else-where, they close down these maquilas and suddenly all of those that switched to working for the maquilas are without jobs. Where do you think they go? Yeah, you guessed it. They want to get cheap jobs up HERE and come over the border and contribute to our immigration problem too! That was what Dennis Kucinich was trying to say the other day.

One big VICIOUS cycle that just benefits the wealthy and works against the poor there AND here! And WE pay for it through our taxpayer dollars with these farm subsidy dollars. Time for that to STOP! It's good to see that our congress critters are finally starting to add this all up!

[Gin]

8. how does one get on the subsidy bandwagon?

I wants some too!

[Ilsa]

7. Welfare for people who probably decry anyone else who feeds

at the public trough.

I saw a name or two of someone I know is Rethuglican, near the top of the list.

[Wiley50]

12. Ha! Ha! Ha! My first cousin and hubby took over $35000 1995-2005

Although he was raised on a dairy farm
They've been in real estate the last 20 years or so

and as a matter of a fact
they were only able to get into real estate
due to winning a settlement
that had something to do with the farm
(I can't remember) enviormental stuff
because they would never be able to farm again on that property

They took over $35000 in corporate welfare
and they look down at me
because I laid carpet for 30 years
and now my back is trashed
and have to live on $623/mo SSi

Fuckin
Repukes!

[1932]

13. Free trade, eh? The US demands the rest of the world takes down trade barriers,

except the US puts up trade barriers in the one area in which the rest of the world can compete -- agriculture. And now it turns out that all those subsidies were benefitting the wealthy and powerful.

[roguevalley]

15. Sam Donaldson, the 'journalist' got a subsidy because he kept a

couple of sheep on his mansion lawn.

[nitestar41]

16. Farm Subsidies For the Rich

Source: Star Tribune

By Alan Bjerga, Bloomberg News

Last update: June 11, 2007 – 9:28 PM

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, technology executive James Sorenson and Texas oil investor Lee Bass, all billionaires, are among the names found in a new database of U.S. agriculture subsidy recipients.

The database was compiled by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group to encourage Congress to pass income-based "means tests" for farm-aid recipients, said Ken Cook, the group's president. It's being released as congressional committees draft a new multibillion-dollar farm bill.

<snip>

The payments themselves pale compared with their recipients' wealth: Allen, whose net worth of $18 billion makes him the fifth-richest person in the United States, according to this year's Forbes magazine list of billionaires, received an estimated $30,687 from 2003 to 2005, according to Cook's group, which compiled the data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

<snip>

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns proposed Jan. 31 that no one whose adjusted gross income for tax purposes is more than $200,000 a year should be eligible for government farm subsidies. Fewer than 3 percent of all U.S. taxpayers have incomes at that level, he said.

Last month, Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced legislation that would cap individual farm payments at $250,000.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.startribune.com/535/story/1239860.html

---

I saw this on the Today show this morning and went looking for an article on this.

It's not right that the rich are getting richer on something that is "supposed" to help poor farmers stay afloat.

[spinbaby]

18. Great link, thanks

I don't recognize any of the names in my county, but notice that there's a farm in Scenery Hill, Pennslyvania that's collected about $53,000 in disaster relief over the last ten years. To my knowledge, there's never been a disaster in Scenery Hill and it's certainly not an annual event.

[progressoid]

19. Damn welfare moms.

[madmom]

21. WOW!!!! 1634 in my county,boy am I in the wrong business