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Friday, Apr 9, Tea partiers don't really hate government spending -- they just want in
Sooner or later, everybody wants something from the government. Just ask the conservatives getting farm subsidies
By Gabriel Winant
It's remarkable how often you hear tea partiers making exemptions for their favorite kinds of government spending. For a movement that's supposed to be reinvigorating conservative purism, these folks sure are willing to compromise on first principles.

The classic example of this is how conservatives rushed to the defense of Medicare during the healthcare fight. Although the rhetoric from the right mainly focused on the threat of government meddling in healthcare, what it appeared to actually mean was that the government is doing a good kind of meddling now, and that we shouldn't change that to a bad kind of meddling in the future.

In that same vein, we've now got the spectacle of an aspiring tea party leader, Tennessee congressional candidate Stephen Fincher, who's actually been collecting $200,000 a year in farm subsidies from the federal government. He's not the only one, either. Indiana Republican state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, who's running for U.S. Senate and is another conservative purist favorite, hauled in $156,907.54 from 1997 to 2006.

Stutzman at least makes a half-gesture toward honesy, and says he thinks the agricultural subsidy program should gradually be phased out. But Fincher seems willing to stick up for the cash transfers he's gotten. "People are quick to say with their mouth full, 'Well, the American farmer is on the dole.' But a loaf of bread is two bucks when it could be 10 bucks. I know what it is with the government in my business. We would be all for not having government in our business, but we need a fair system."

polsongrizz wrote:Sounds like reverse Socialism to me, but how could that be in this great country?

At least those who recieve farm subsidies are actually giving something back to their communities - unlike most Democrat-voting welfare recipients who don't work and blow their welfare checks on crack and Colt 45.

JMU DJ wrote:

At least those who recieve farm subsidies are actually giving something back to their communities - unlike most Democrat-voting welfare recipients who don't work and blow their welfare checks on crack and Colt 45.

Classy comment about the article.

OSBF wrote:
Thank you Bob Dole, the architect of the modern farm subsidy, with the 1996 Farm Bill.

GannonFan wrote: I'd imagine a lot of people would want to get into the bread business if that happened.

OSBF wrote:DCP and CCP are the biggest coporate welfare system going. These payments were first established to assist the small family farm to remain profitable and in business. As with most other things, coporate greed took over. It didn't take the mega farms long to find the end-around.

The system was set up with payment limits, IE, maximum payments a producer could receive as an attempt to insure the program would actually benefit the small family farm. So, what did the big guys do? They set up their farming operations as coporations, with each member of the coporation being eligible to get a max share subsidy payment.

With the govt pumping millions of dollars into coporate farms, the subsidy program has served to do little more than put the small family farm at an even bigger disadvantage to the coporate farms.

The Environmental Working Group maintains a farm subsidy payment web site. It's a little tough to navigate, but once you get there you can select your state, and your county, and see who gets what for farm subsidies. You can see the list in order of who gets the most, or I think you can search a specific producer.

Thank you Bob Dole, the architect of the modern farm subsidy, with the 1996 Farm Bill.

AZGrizFan wrote:

OSBF wrote:DCP and CCP are the biggest coporate welfare system going. These payments were first established to assist the small family farm to remain profitable and in business. As with most other things, coporate greed took over. It didn't take the mega farms long to find the end-around.

The system was set up with payment limits, IE, maximum payments a producer could receive as an attempt to insure the program would actually benefit the small family farm. So, what did the big guys do? They set up their farming operations as coporations, with each member of the coporation being eligible to get a max share subsidy payment.

With the govt pumping millions of dollars into coporate farms, the subsidy program has served to do little more than put the small family farm at an even bigger disadvantage to the coporate farms.

The Environmental Working Group maintains a farm subsidy payment web site. It's a little tough to navigate, but once you get there you can select your state, and your county, and see who gets what for farm subsidies. You can see the list in order of who gets the most, or I think you can search a specific producer.

Thank you Bob Dole, the architect of the modern farm subsidy, with the 1996 Farm Bill.

And THESE are the folks you want running healthcare? They can't even get a FARM SUBSIDY bill that doesn't have massive loopholes and end-arounds?

Skjellyfetti wrote:Where's our official Tea Party representative and apologist, native?

OSBF wrote:
Thank you Bob Dole, the architect of the modern farm subsidy, with the 1996 Farm Bill.

OSBF wrote:But, alas, the repukes in congress thought it was a terrible thing to ask agricultural producers to actually be required to DO something to EARN their massive subsidy payments, other than to just HOLD THE DEED TO THE LAND WHILE THEY LIVE IN NYC.