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Yesterday we explored the inner workings of the latest farm subsidy bill being cooked up in Washington. The bill continues the ugly tradition of using taxpayer wealth to serve the political needs of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. This perversion of what was supposed to be a temporary government program during the Great Depressions has morphed into a corrupt, take form the poor and give to the rich government redistribution of wealth.
As we reviewed yesterday, struggling farmers are no longer the primary beneficiaries of the government's farm subsidies. Most of the money goes to giant farming companies whose revenue streams are in the billions of dollars annually.
Individual millionaires in America who just happen to own what the government considers farm land get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and in some cases, millions of dollars, to not farm. These rich Americans getting farm subsides include rock and rollers Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi, former Presidents like Jimmy Carter, media magnates like Ted Turner, and thousands of people who live in NYC, hardly prime farm country.
Today we will consider the reasons why these egregious examples of enhancing the rich continue to take place. Consider Archer Daniels Midland. According to the Open Secrets website that tracks campaign contributions, in 2012 Archer Daniels Midland-related campaign contributors forked over $864,374 to political campaigns and politicians. This ranked them 472 of 21,023 companies which contributed campaign funds, which put them in the top 2-3% of all political donors.
They also spent over $1.4 million in government lobbying expenses in 2012, which ranked them 350 of 4,374, which put them in the top 8% of lobbying entities. Is there any surprise then that they are a major recipient of taxpayer farm subsidy wealth when they funnel this kind of money to the Washington political class for the benefit of their bottom line?
Springsteen, Turner, and Bon Jovi have been major supporters of the Democratic politicians in Washington over the years. The Rockefeller family has historically been involved in politics on the Republican side. You scratch my back with subsidies, I will scratch you back with political campaign funding, and together we can both screw the American taxpayer.
Disgraceful and pathetic. Which gets us back to our original set-up: Should the Federal government continue to support a very small number of wealthy American companies, wealthy American celebrities, and wealthy American farmers with billions and billions of taxpayer dollars every year or should the money be repurposed to serve a much wider array of American citizen interests such as debt control, tax relief, job retraining, or disease prevention and cure research?
To me, that answer is simple and has two parts. First, farm subsidies, while they may have had a purpose seven decades ago in the midst of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, they have no role today for the vast amount of the American farm industry since most of the American farm industry is no longer small American farms. This is a political fundraising front, nothing more.
If society thinks it is a good idea to support family farms, than that is what the program should be about. But it should be for active farmers, not celebrity farmers, it should be for non-millionaire farmers, and it should not be for farming entities that have tens of billions of revenue dollars flowing to it annually.
Second, given that seven decades worth of American politicians have not had the gumption, integrity, and intelligence to stop this rip off of the American taxpayer, the need for term limits is even more obvious. We must find a away to eliminate the perpetual incumbent reelection cycle that needs the farm subsidy program to help fund and finance the perpetual reelection campaign. Term limits would go a long way to ending this needless waste of taxpayer money.
You can join this term limit effort at:
www.howmuchworsecoudlitget.com
Because really, today we are already unnecessarily giving our taxpayer money to larger corporations, rich musicians, rich farmers, wealthy New Yorkers, bankers, and doctors, how much worse could it get if we had term limits for all Washington politicians?
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
Before we talk about the latest example of how the Federal government and Washington political class take from the poor and middle class and give to their wealthy political connections and supporters, let’s review a few background realities:
- The national debt is fast approaching $17 TRILLION, or over a $50,000 debt burden for every man, woman, and child in the country. Given the debt situation, no tax dollars should be wasted in any form whatsoever.
- There are over 20 million Americans who are either unemployed or under employed in the country. Given this horrid employment situation, any tax dollars that could retrain Americans for work would be a societal benefit.
- While the average household income for all American households has dropped considerably SINCE THE RECESSION ENDED, the household income of the wealthier households in this country has risen over the past several years.
- Major diseases such as cancers and aging diseases in our aging population still take a horrific toll on our citizens. Any tax dollars that could stem the medical and personal suffering costs of these Americans would be both humane and pay dividends down the road from decreased national health care costs.
I put forth these realities in the context of the Federal government’s farm bill. The August 16, 2013 issue of The Week magazine put forth a scathing and fact filled review of the farm bill and farm subsidies and how waste, stupidity, and political cronyism are all at work with this bill.
As you read through the following facts, as laid out in The Week’s weekly Briefing column, think about whether the farm bill’s funding is better spent making the wealthy wealthier or if that taxpayer wealth should be repurposed back into the wallets of poor and middle class families to increase their shrinking household income, used to relieve our overbearing national debt burden, retrain Americans for employment, or be diverted into medical research for the pressing diseases of our time. I will tell you ahead of time, based on The Week’s research, any of these efforts would certainly be more worthwhile than what the Washington political class is doing with our money today relative to the farming industry.
The following facts, realities, and disgraces is what the article, along with other data from cited and related sources, found out to be true:
1) In the past 10 years, the Federal government has given the farm industry $168 billion of taxpayer wealth, used to theoretically protect farmers from the fates of weather, price, and economic conditions.
2) Thus, the average American family annually gives farmers and farming companies/conglomerates about $1500 over that time frame.
3) But this money does not typically go to small, family farms. 75% of the $168 billion payout went to just the biggest 10% of farm-related companies such as Riceland Foods, Inc., Pilgrims Pride, Inc., and Archer Daniels Midland, all hardly quaint, small family farms.
4) As a background fact, in 2012, Archer Daniels Midland’s financial statements show a gross operating revenue of about $89 BILLION and a profit of over $3.4 BILLION. Makes one wonder why every American taxpayer needs to pay taxes to subsidize payments to a mega-profitable company like this.
5) But it is not just big companies that receive taxpayer farm support. The Week article points out that Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, former President Jimmy Carter, and media mogul Ted Turner also get paid handsomely for the “farm property” they own.
6) Some quick research from the Celebrity Net Worth website estimates that Springsteen is personally worth $200 million, Bon Jovi is worth about $125 million, Carter is worth about $5 million, and Turner is worth about $2 billion. Which raises the same question that we posed relative to companies like Archer Daniels Midland: why are these fabulously rich people getting taxpayer money under the farm subsidy program?
7) Over the past ten years, farm subsidies have been paid out to over 1,500 residents of Manhattan in New York City. 374 of these payouts have gone to people living in the wealthy and posh Upper East Side of Manhattan, hardly a poverty area or a farming mecca. A sample of those in NYC who have gotten taxpayer farm money include:
- Mark F. Rockefeller (yes, of those Rockefellers) was paid $342,634 NOT to farm his land in Idaho.
- A managing director of Wells Fargo bank.
- A neurologist.
“Payments are going to people in Manhattan who have simply invested in farmland and are about as far away from farmland as you can imagine. That should really make people wonder what on earth has happened to the farm program,” Craig Cox of the Environment Working Group.
8) All farmers have seen double digit growth in the value of their farmland in each of the past three years despite droughts and high temperatures.
9) The average annual household income of farmers is about 60% higher than the average household income of all American families.
10) “The typical American farmer has literally millions of dollars of wealth,” according to Dan Sumer, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Davis. You cannot make that statement for the vast majority of American households who actually pay the farm subsidies.
11) The farm subsidy bill actually pays some farmers NOT to grow crops into order to keep crop prices high, i.e. you reduce supply and prices go up. Thus, the American consumer not only pays for farmers not to grow crops but they then get whacked again with higher prices at the supermarket.
12) As with many Federal government programs, the farm subsidy fiasco was meant to be a temporary short term fix to the problems facing farmers during the Great Depression. Over 70 years later, what was supposed to be temporary is now pretty permanent.
What a disgrace. Higher prices for consumers, more wealth for the wealthy. If any program was ripe for getting terminated in these times of high taxes and higher national debt, it would be the entire farm subsidy infrastructure.
So why hasn’t it been killed for the good of the country? As The Week correctly points out, the only reason it exists is politics. Many of the farmers and farming conglomerates that receive taxpayer wealth are in states that lean Republican. Historically, the food stamp and food assistance Federal programs were hidden in the farm bills of the past, a key aspect for Democrats.
Thus, the farm bill ensures that major constituents of both parties get wealthy at our expense while incumbent Washington politicians get continual funding for their perpetual reelection campaigns. Everybody wins except the poor and middle class taxpayers in this country who fund this circuit of corruption. We will explore this corruption more fully tomorrow and why it persists.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
We have been pretty hard on Obama Care over the past month or so. It has failed in so many ways, financially, operationally, logically, etc. It deserves the mantle of worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Federal government. To prove our point, let us refer you to the initial posts in two series of posts we did to cover the many, many failures of Obama Care, one series in August and one series in September:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/september-2013-obama-care-update-part-1.html
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html
But a recent article in the Independent Journal Review reminded us that while Obama Care is the worst piece of legislation ever, the Federal government also has a quite impressive (in a negative way) history of 13 failed other major pieces of legislation. All of these failures cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars without ever coming close to resolving the problems that led to the enacting of new laws. In many cases, the enacting of legislation to remedy a problem actually made the problem worse.
The first 14 failed pieces of legislation are from the original Independent Journal Review’s analysis and research. We have added a few of our own to this ignoble list that they did not cover or got to depressed to go on after doing the first 14. We covered the first nine failures yesterday. Today, we will review the second nine failures and provide a way to insure that these failures are eventually reversed and major issues are finally resolved
10) Banning DDT: The malaria-killing chemical (which saved 500 million lives in Africa) was banned in 1970 because it was believed to kill birds. Since then, subsequent research has shown that DDT, when used properly and prudently, can be a very effective, environment friendly pesticide that could have saved millions of lives. However, the United states and other Western nations refuse to admit they were wrong and the carnage goes on unabated.
11) The War on Terror: Started under President Bush, we have spent uncountable trillions of dollars attempting to secure our borders and defeat terrorism. We have invaded and disrupted other countries, resulting in a massive loss of wealth, deaths and maiming injuries to our armed forces, and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.
We have shredded the Fourth Amendment with a Presidential administration and Federal security apparatus that collects and stores just about every bit of electronic communications we make. In addition to spying on ourselves, we have been shown to do extensive spying on other countries, both friend and foe, damaging our international reputation and relations.
The Federal government’s budget for anti-terror activities has skyrocketed but we are not much safer from terrorist attacks than we were years ago, e.g. the successful Boston Marathon bombing, the successful Fort Hood mass shooting, the unsuccessful underwear bomber (only because of a faulty detonator), the unsuccessful Times Square bomber (again, only because of a faulty detonator), and the successful terror attack at Benghazi.
12) The Assault Weapons Ban: Since the ban expired in 2006, the number of deaths from guns (assault weapons or not) has declined precipitously. Enough said.
13) Social Security: When it was started in 1935, Social Security was a tax of only one percent of income. Now it is over six percent and climbing. In the next 75 years, as America ages, Social Security will go broke. This is another government program that is quickly approaching financial insolvency with no remedial plans in sight from the dysfunctional Washington political class.
14) Obama Care: When he proposed the Affordable Care Act, President Obama assured Americans the plan would cost less than $1 trillion. The latest projection is the program will cost three times that:
Besides these dismal financial projections, check out the other myriad of problems with Obama Care as referenced to the two links above.
Pretty pathetic track record over the decades of failed Federal government programs. Programs that create permanent organized crime cartels and gangs. Programs that do not come close to hitting their original budget projections. Programs that make existing problems worse.
But I think that the Independent Journal Review research, while excellent, left out a few other major disasters:
15) Head Start: Two extensive, major research studies that have been developed and published by the Obama administration have found that nearly fifty years after the Head Start program was started, kids that go through the program are no smarter, wiser, or better off than kids that do not go through the program. In fact, one of the studies found that some kids in some areas are worse off because of Heat Start.
It appears that for almost fifty years we were not helping our kids get a “head start,” we were just using Federal taxpayer dollars to run a massive, nation wide baby sitting service.
16) National Energy Strategy: About forty years after the oil shocks of the 1970s, we are no closer to having a coherent, doable, and intelligent national energy strategy that minimizes the cost of energy while maximizing the protection of the environment.
Gasoline prices are about double what they were just four years ago or so. We still import a lot of our oil for out energy needs, making us vulnerable to international political events. The Department of Energy costs us tens of billions of dollars every year without any noticeable societal benefit in return or any noteworthy breakthroughs in energy research.
17) Budget Management: The Federal government debt is fast approaching a mind boggling $17 TRILLION. This puts a debt burden on every American, adult and child, of about $54,000 per person. Thus, a family of four would have to pay out over $200,000 just to cover their share of the national debt. Pathetic financial management skills.
18) Foreign Affairs: Ramsey Clark once said, “The biggest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.” He was quite possibly right. We have helped overthrow legitimate governments (e.g. Iran in the early 1950s), we have probably been involved in more wars and military actions than any other government on earth (e,g,, Korean War, Vietnam, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq/twice, Afghanistan), we use drones to launch missiles into many countries (e.g. Yemen, Pakistan) to kill terrorists but often end up killing civilians, we have supported oppressive tyrants because they pretend to be friendly to our needs and our wealth (e.g. the Shah in Iran, Mubarak in Egypt), we failed to anticipate the “Arab Spring” until it was well underway, and we have and continue to station armed forces all over the globe.
All to get us to the dangerous and volatile position we find ourselves in today relative to the rest of the world.
These disasters have happened regardless of what branch of the political class sat in the White House or controlled Congress. These are eighteen failures of the Washington political class, not just one or two Presidents or a handful of Senators. This is systemic risk and failure throughout the entire system.
We proposed many solutions to these problems in our book, “Love My Country, Loathe Our Government.” From campaign finance reform to Congressional district gerrymandering reform to a brand new, fresh look at many of our major problems (lost war on drugs, high health care costs, failing public education etc.). However, the most important step of all, if we are to breakthrough to real solutions to real problems, is to install term limits on all Washington politicians.
While many of these failures and failed programs have happened over decades, a large number of people currently in Congress were in office over that timeframe and were responsible for all 18 failures. They need to be removed from office so that we can get the old, ineffective ways of doing things replaced with new people with new ideas.
You can help make that transformation possible by joining our cause for term limits at:
www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
Because really. Given the 18 major failures/disasters listed above, how much worse could it get if we started over with new people in Washington?
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
We have been pretty hard on Obama Care over the past week or so. It has failed in so many ways, financially, operationally, logically, etc. It deserves the mantle of worst piece of legislation ever enacted by the Federal government. To prove our point, let us refer you to the initial posts in two series of posts we did to cover the many, many failures of Obama Care, one series in August and one series in September:
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/september-2013-obama-care-update-part-1.html
http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/08/part-1-august-2013-obama-care-update.html
But a recent article in the Independent Journal Review reminded us that while Obama Care is the worst piece of legislation ever, the Federal government also has a quite impressive (in a negative way) history of 13 failed other major pieces of legislation. All of these failures cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars without ever coming close to resolving the problems that led to the enacting of new laws. In many cases, the enacting of legislation to remedy a problem actually made the problem worse.
The first 14 failed pieces of legislation are from the original Independent Journal Review’s analysis and research. We have added a few of our own to this ignoble list that they did not cover or got to depressed to go on after doing the first 14.
1) Prohibition: For 14 years, the United States was officially “dry.” Problem was, it wasn’t. The black market flourished, as did crime, the Mafia and rampant violence. Enacted in 1919, it was finally repealed in 1933. But not before many people needlessly died, much taxpayer wealth was wasted, a permanent organized crime underworld was established, and many government entities and police departments were corrupted by bootlegger wealth. And we ended up right back where we started in 1919.
2) No Child Left Behind: Under President George W. Bush’s education program, Federal spending for schools more than doubled …and student test scores didn’t budge. We still lag behind much of the industrialized world. In most standardized international student tests, we usually rank some where between 20th and 30th in education effectiveness despite spending far more per student than any other country in the world.
It didn’t used to be that way though, before the Feds poured all the money, regulations, and rules into local schools, we were at the top of the list as far as educating our kids. For this miserable performance, we still pay out tens of billions of dollars every year to a useless Federal Department of Education.
3) Medicare: When Medicare began in 1965, it was estimated that it would cost $9 billion per year by 1990. However, by 1990 the annual cost was $67 billion. Missed that forecast by just a bit, say being off by more than a factor of seven!
In 2013 the annual cost of Medicare is $390 billion. And are we that much healthier than we were 50 years ago despite paying more than 40 times what we paid as a nation in 1965? On an inflation adjusted basis, the GDP of the country in 2012 was less than four times the size of the GDP in 1965. 40 fold rise in Medicare costs vs. a less than four fold rise in the size of the economy. Something has gone terribly wrong.
Needless to say, this program is quickly approaching financial insolvency with no remedial plans in sight from the dysfunctional Washington political class.
4) Medicaid: Same deal and disgrace as Medicare. It was estimated to cost $100 million, now it costs $211 billion or more than two thousands times as much. Needless to say, this program is quickly approaching financial insolvency with no remedial plans in sight from the dysfunctional Washington political class.
5) Immigration reform: The number of illegal aliens entering this country has more than tripled since Reagan was President. Whether we should increase or decrease the flow of immigration, it’s clear the Federal government has no idea what its doing when it comes to securing our borders. Israel has secured its borders, making frequent terrorists attacks within their borders a thing of the past. It can be done, it just cannot be done by the Washington political class.
6) The War on Drugs: Since Nixon, we have spent over $1 trillion and incarcerated millions of Americans over relatively minor drug charges. This is one of the most spectacular failures of our government.
And just like the establishment of a permanent domestic organized crime underworld during Prohibition, our failed war on drugs has created massive, violent, well financed, and efficient drug cartels in Mexico and beyond, cartels that threaten legitimate governments and corrupt police, judges, and government officials worldwide.
7) Farm subsidies: Paying farmers not to grow crops? And many times we are not even paying real farmers. The August 16, 2013 issue of The Week magazine pointed out that in the past, millionaires like Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Ted Turner, Jimmy Carter, a number of Rockefellers, and other millionaire non-farmers were able to collect taxpayer wealth because of how farm subsidies work in this country. Insanity.
8) Ethanol: Over the last 30 years, the Federal government has given out almost $45 billion in taxpayer wealth to support the ethanol industry. The original purpose was to save the environment by having cars and trucks use ethanol in their vehicle gas tanks as a surrogate for oil. Problem? It’s inefficient, more polluting in several other ways, and raises the price of corn and makes food more inaccessible for the world’s hungry. Genius.
9) “Green Jobs:” When he was elected, President Obama launched an all-out campaign to kick start the Green Economy. I think at last count the administration had handed out nearly $40 billion to dozens of “green companies,” many of which were owned by people who had made substantial financial donations to Obama’s election campaigns.
End result of this cronyism? $40 billion or so given out with virtually no societal benefit in return and a sorry trail of bankrupt or near bankrupt companies such as Solyndra, Spectra, Evergreen, A123, and probably dozens of others.
This is the first half of the 18 worst failures of the Washington political class. Pretty depressing, wouldn't you say? The bad news is that we will cover the other half of the 18 biggest failures tomorrow. The good news is that we provide a potential solution to finally turn failure into success in time for our kids and our grandkids.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
