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Sir Walter Scott once stated, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
A free market is a market where price is determined by unregulated supply and demand... A controlled market, where supply, demand, and price are set by a government is un-American. United States Farm subsidies administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)totaled $164.7 billion from 1995-2005. That's $5,490 for every American family of four! The Chicago Tribune reported, "One of the dirty secrets of federal farm subsidies isn't such a secret any longer. Just 4 percent of the nation's farmers receive two thirds of federal farm dollars. "You don't have to be down on the farm to collect either. During that same time, 1,398 residents of Chicago pulled in $16.5 million in USDA subsidies. For the confirmed urban dweller, inheriting that patch of dirt in the sticks never looked so good." Texas farm subsidies stats according to the Environmental Working Groups database:
WSMV-TV reported: "A Channel Four I-Team investigation has discovered that a government program originally intended to help struggling farmers is sending millions of federal tax dollars to some of Middle Tennessee's most prominent citizens, some of whom don't live on the farm and don't grow any crops. And it's perfectly legal. The zip code 37205, for example, encompasses much of the Belle Meade area in Nashville. It's one of the state's wealthiest zip codes. The I-Team found the U.S. Department of Agriculture mailed 3.25 million dollars in farm subsidies to people living in that zip code over the last six years. Belle Meade has no farms." And these reports were in 2002! Recipients in this zipcode received $5,597,536 from 1995-2005! The 2007 Farm Bill in Congress would spend at least $286 billion over five years, costing a family of four $6,240. How's that for P-O-R-K? H.R. 2419 has passed the House and it is being debated in the Senate right now! Time is of the essence. President Bush has threatened to veto whichever bill reaches his desk, and there is no doubt that he should veto any farm subsidy bill! Click here to tell the entire Senate, vote NO on the Farm Bill Extension Act of 2007 (H.R. 2419) or any farm subsidy bill by sending your ActiFax Blasts (that's 101 faxes for $25) to the entire Senate with BONUS fax to President Bush. Corporate welfare is un-American and needs to stop. A depression era program has run its course and it's high time to end it once and for all! Housekeeping note: Free Listing of all Congressmen and Senators here. Tune in every Friday at 10AM EDT/9AM Central as we discuss this weeks Power Letter. The Farm Bill Extension Act of 2007 - Extends and revises agricultural and related programs respecting: (1) commodities; (2) sugar; (3) dairy; (4) conservation; (5) exports and trade assistance; (6) food stamps and nutrition; (7) agricultural credit; (8) rural development; (9) rural electrification; (10) agricultural research; (11) forestry; (12) energy; (13) specialty crops; and (14) livestock. Ain't nothing like living off of others! They say everythings bigger in Texas and Texas is the top state recipient of farm subsidies! Top programs in Texas, 1995-2005:
According to reports, Last summer, Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), along with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and a bipartisan group of other representatives, introduced an amendment to the House farm bill that would have helped curb excessive subsidy programs. Kind pointed out in an interview on the front page of this section, "Change is always difficult in Washington. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is change the status quo." "Pretty much everywhere you look, farm subsidies are being increased," Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist and adjunct scholar at a conservative think tank. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney responded in last weeks YouTube debate saying that farm subsidies were necessary "to make sure our farmers are able to stay on the farm and raise the crops that we need to have a secure source of food." And former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani essentially echoed his rival. H.R. 2419 has passed the House and is being debated in the Senate right now! Time is of the essence. H.R. 2419 has passed the House and it is being debated in the Senate right now! Time is of the essence. President Bush has threatened to veto whichever bill reaches his desk, and there is no doubt that he should veto any farm subsidy bill! Click here to tell the entire Senate, vote NO on the Farm Bill Extension Act of 2007 (H.R. 2419) or any farm subsidy bill by sending your ActiFax Blasts (that's 101 faxes for $25) to the entire Senate with BONUS fax to President Bush. Corporate welfare is un-American and needs to stop. A depression era program has run its course and it's high time to end it once and for all! Markets and ... Market makers! The Orlando Sentinel recently reports that only about a third of U.S. farmers are subsidized; the rest are sustained by the free market instead of the government. The Free Market. What a concept. How many factory workers are subsidized by the Federal Government? How many CPA's are subsidized? Salesmen? Farm markets, say those in favor of price supports, are volatile, leaving farmers at the mercy of forces they can't anticipate or control. Without massive subsidies, they say, the family farmer might vanish. "A temporary solution to deal with an emergency." That's how aid to farmers was described when it was introduced during the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt. One of the most common defenses for federal farm subsidies is that without them, the family farm would go under. What did farmers do up until the 1930's? Over the last 70+ years, the number of farms has dwindled from 6.7 million to 2.1 million. Isn't subsidies supposed to keep folks in the market? Do other occupations get subsidized?
(editor: If you know of programs that subsidize these occupations, please let us know.) H.R. 2419 has passed the House and it is being debated in the Senate right now! Time is of the essence. President Bush has threatened to veto whichever bill reaches his desk, and there is no doubt that he should veto any farm subsidy bill! Click here to tell the entire Senate, vote NO on the Farm Bill Extension Act of 2007 (H.R. 2419) or any farm subsidy bill by sending your ActiFax Blasts (that's 101 faxes for $25) to the entire Senate with BONUS fax to President Bush. Corporate welfare is un-American and needs to stop. A depression era program has run its course and it's high time to end it once and for all! Handouts actually end up hurting everyone Wealth redistribution un-American! Could farm subsidies actually contribute to the demise of family farms? How are subsidies paid out today? Wealth redistribution un-American! The taxes levied by American families are being redistributed to farms with an annual income of over $200,000 and an average net worth of over $2,000,000. In fact, just 10 percent of subsidy recipients collect 73 percent of the loot, about $91,000 per farm and the top 5 percent receive more than half of all subsidies. As Duane Lester reported: Large farms are using subsidies to buy up farmland from family farms and are turning them into tenant farms. This consolidation isn’t necessarily bad. As already detailed, a commercial farm produces a product for less. But why should taxpayers be paying for it? His conclusion: If farm subsidies are really about keeping the family farm afloat, then lawmakers could cut a check to every full-time farmer equal to 185 percent of the federal poverty level, or a yearly income of $38,203 for just over $4 billion dollars. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel aid to farmers means:
Well, more than 50 billionaires, including businessman Ted Turner, banker David Rockefeller Sr., hotel mogul William Barron Hilton and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. As well as other folks you'll never see driving a combine or tractor, including David Letterman and Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller. The little guy gets squashed! According to the Environmental Working Group:
A Government Accountability Office report found that $1.1 billion flowed over seven years to the estates or companies of farmers who had died, including more than 32,000 people who had been dead more than seven years. H.R. 2419 has passed the House and it is being debated in the Senate right now! Time is of the essence. President Bush has threatened to veto whichever bill reaches his desk, and there is no doubt that he should veto any farm subsidy bill! Click here to tell the entire Senate, vote NO on the Farm Bill Extension Act of 2007 (H.R. 2419) or any farm subsidy bill by sending your ActiFax Blasts (that's 101 faxes for $25) to the entire Senate with BONUS fax to President Bush. Corporate welfare is un-American and needs to stop. A depression era program has run its course and it's high time to end it once and for all! We forget our history... repeating same mistakes as forefathers One excellent report states: The turmoil of the Great Depression is gone, relegated to the history books, but one of its socialist legacies continues today. Fourteen different pieces of legislation have been enacted since FDR’s time that not only continued, but expanded farm programs. That was supposed to end in 1996 with the "Freedom to Farm Act." President Hoover started the Federal Farm Board via the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929. The Farm Board failed to recognize the unintended consequences of their program. Instead, in December of 1932, they issued a special report to Congress recommending legislation to “provide an effective system for regulating acreage or quantities sold, or both.” This plan would be approved on May 12, 1933. It would be part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). The AAA was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case United States v. Butler et al. (297 U.S. 1, January 6, 1936) because it taxed one group to pay another. Wealth redistribution at its finest! Some things never change. Congress then achieved part of the original Act's goals with the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936 until the enactment of a second AAA (P.L. 75-430) on February 16, 1938. This second AAA was funded from general taxation, and therefore acceptable to the Supreme Court. In the two years of the AAA’s existence it distributed some $700 million to farmers to restrict production and destroy their crops, in an attempt to make food (and textiles) dearer for consumers. In President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address, Roosevelt spoke of redressing "the overbalance of population in our industrial centers” by an of unspecified “redistribution” of the population to the countryside. This would somehow make farmers out of the unemployed. At the same time, though, there would be efforts "to raise the values of agricultural products." Roosevelt referred to the need for "national planning". [2] Alger Hiss began his government career with the AAA. Charles Kramer worked the AAA consumer council. Leonora Fuller, an associate of Hiss from 1933 to 1935 stated that Hiss, Lee Pressman, Gardner Jackson, Frank Shea and others interpreted the Agricultural Adjustment Act not in the spirit of the law but in manner which would suit their own beliefs and private purposes. Hiss and the others brought into the government employees of their choosing who they intended to fall in line with their social and economic agenda. Fuller stated it was the definite purpose of this group to change the form of government of the United States, regardless of its democratic and constitutional underpinnings, and to use the instrumentality of the offices of the Department of Agriculture to further their purpose. Mr. Hiss' communist beliefs are A-L-I-V-E and well in 2007 as the government spends around $2 billion a year for fields to remain empty: Such fields cover about 5 million acres of North and South Dakota. Nationwide, there are 34 million acres in the conservation reserve, an area equal to about 7 percent of U.S. land that’s planted in crops. That’s an area bigger than the state of New York. That was in 2005. The Heritage Foundation puts the number of acres left empty at around 40 million now. That’s equal to all the farms in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. Removing farmland from production was one of Franklin Roosevelt’s first priorities. It seems it may be being done now in the name of conservation. We say end it now in 2007! Communism isn't good for America! H.R. 2419 has passed the House and it is being debated in the Senate right now! Time is of the essence. President Bush has threatened to veto whichever bill reaches his desk, and there is no doubt that he should veto any farm subsidy bill! Click here to tell the entire Senate, vote NO on the Farm Bill Extension Act of 2007 (H.R. 2419) or any farm subsidy bill by sending your ActiFax Blasts (that's 101 faxes for $25) to the entire Senate with BONUS fax to President Bush. Corporate welfare is un-American and needs to stop. A depression era program has run its course and it's high time to end it once and for all!
Bryan Malatesta Exec. Director LaptopAmerica.net ps: Housekeeping note: Free Listing of all Congressmen and Senators here. Tune in every Friday at 10AM EDT/9AM Central as we discuss this weeks Power Letter.
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