Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.
....But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006.
The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system....
Go here for a USA Today listing of legislators benefiting from farm subsidies. The list includes Senator Charles Grassley (R-Ethanol), whose outfit has taken home more than $800,000.00
End it, Don't mend it.
Fight the power.
Pic of subsidies growing in a field came from here. Go here for a Shameful True Confession moment relating to farm subsidies in my family.
2 comments:
Sometimes, I'm OK with earmarks going to a district of a Congressperson that voted against it. This is different altogether. This is ugly. Pre-Michele Bachman makeover ugly. Fugly, even. And you can stop repenting for the sins of your father already!!!
Sadly, I've discovered some rent-seeking behavior in my own family. My parents are officially on the naughty list.
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