Four Charts That Will Tell You All You Need To Know About "The War On Poverty"

Here's a chart that I've probably posted a dozen times.  It shows how poverty was dying nicely, all on its own, until LBJ declared war on it. 
Then poverty started feeling better, was taken off life support, and is now doing quite well. 

 

Here's another chart showing the amount spent by Federal anti-poverty agencies per poor household in 2011.  It comes to more than $61,000 per poverty-level household.  These numbers were bitterly contested when first released by The Weekly Standard, but they are what they are. 

 

Here are two more charts showing the wealthiest counties in the USA  Check out the counties around Washington D.C. 
This is where the 1% lives. 

By name....

From The Atlantic Monthly, hardly a Tea-Party periodical....

To be clear, this isn't telling you that the richest people in America live one commute from D.C.  In fact, parts of Connecticut, New York, and California are much, much richer than the richest parts of the Greater DC Area. Instead, it's telling you that these counties, of varying sizes, have the highest median income, because there is a striking concentration of high-earning (if not quite vertiginously rich) households around the district.

On the Virginia side, Falls Church City (#1 richest county in the country) is enveloped by Arlington (#7) and east rim of Fairfax County (#5), which borders Loudoun (#2) on its west side. From Loudoun, you pass south through Prince William (#13) to Stafford (#9).

In Maryland, encircling Washington, you have, clockwise from the noon position, Montgomery (#12), Howard (#4),  Anne Arundel (#24), Calvert (#23), St. Mary's (#29), ​and Charles (#18). All of these counties border each other, forming a kind of reverse-C (or Hebrew Fe) around the District.

A staggering amount of the money we send to Washington D.C. stays there.   (We send it there because all truly civilized societies provide welfare, safety nets, free educations, free transportation, and free internet wireless, or so they tell us....)

So.... Is the system working? 

If you're paying, I'll have top sirloin

This brilliant Russ Roberts essay, copied from here, explains why costs don't go down once government is involved in an industry - Education, Healthcare, Defense, Infrastructure, or anything else. 

Because if you're paying, and I don't know you, and I'm not likely to ever meet you, I'm having top sirloin.  And a loaded baked potato with two appetizers.  And let's bring out that pint of Crown Royal to chase it with, shall we?  Here's Mr. Roberts:

As Congress prepares to try to cut spending, I am reminded of an evening last fall at the St. Louis Repertory Theater, our local company. Before the curtain rose, the company's director appeared and encouraged us to vote against a ballot proposition to limit state taxes. He feared it would lead to reduced funding for the company.
I turned to the woman sitting next to me and asked her if she felt guilty knowing that her ticket was subsidized by some farmer in the "boot-heel" of Missouri. No, she answered, he's probably getting something, too. She seemed to be implying that somehow, it all evened out.

I left her alone, but I wanted to say, no it doesn't even out. If it "evened out" for everybody, then government spending would really be depressing: all that money shuffled around, all those people working at the IRS, all those marginal tax rates discouraging work effort just to get everybody to get the same deal.

Here in St. Louis we recently completed Metrolink, a light rail system. It cost $380 million to build. We locals contributed zero out of pocket. It was paid for by the rest of the country. Shouldn't we feel guilty making people in Kentucky, Mississippi and Maine pay for our trips to the hockey arena downtown? No, say the beneficiaries. After all, we paid for BART in San Francisco and MARTA in Atlanta and all the other extraordinarily expensive, underutilized public transportation systems whose benefits fall far short of their costs. It's only fair we get our turn at the trough.

This destructive justification reminds me of a very strange restaurant.

When you eat there, you usually spend about $6—you have a sandwich, some fries and a drink. Of course you'd also enjoy dessert and a second drink, but that costs an additional $4. The extra food isn't worth $4 to you, so you stick with the $6 meal.

Sometimes, you go to the same restaurant with three friends. The four of you are in the habit of splitting the check evenly. You realize after a while that the $4 drink and dessert will end up costing you only $1, because the total tab is split four ways. Should you order the drink and dessert? If you're a nice person, you might want to spare your friends from having to subsidize your extravagance. Then it dawns on you that they may be ordering extras financed out of your pocket. But they're your friends. They wouldn't do that to you and you wouldn't do that to them. And if anyone tries it among the group, social pressure will keep things under control.

But now suppose the tab is split not at each table but across the 100 diners that evening across all the tables. Now adding the $4 drink and dessert costs only 4¢. Splurging is easy to justify now. In fact you won't just add a drink and dessert; you'll upgrade to the steak and add a bottle of wine. Suppose you and everyone else each orders $40 worth of food. The tab for the entire restaurant will be $4000. Divided by the 100 diners, your bill comes to $40. Here is the irony. Like my neighbor at the theater, you'll get your "fair share." The stranger at the restaurant a few tables over pays for your meal, but you also help subsidize his. It all "evens out."

But this outcome is a disaster. When you dine alone, you spend $6. The extra $34 of steak and other treats are not worth it. But in competition with the others, you've chosen a meal far out of your price range whose enjoyment falls far short of its cost.

Self-restraint goes unrewarded. If you go back to ordering your $6 meal in hopes of saving money, your tab will be close to $40 anyway unless the other 99 diners cut back also. The good citizen feels like a chump.

And so we read of the freshman Congressman who comes to Congress eager to cut pork out of the budget but in trouble back home because local projects will also come under the knife. Instead of being proud to lead the way, he is forced to fight for those projects to make sure his district gets its "fair share."

Matters get much worse when there are gluttons and drunkards at the restaurant mixing with dieters and teetotalers. The average tab might be $40, but some are eating $80 worth of food while others are stuck with a salad and an iced tea.

Those with modest appetites would like to flee the smorgasbord, but suppose it's the only restaurant in town and you are forced to eat there every night. Resentment and anger come naturally. And being the only restaurant in town, you can imagine the quality of the service.

Such a restaurant can be a happy place if the light eaters enjoy watching the gluttony of those who eat and drink with gusto. Many government programs generate a comparable wide range of support. But many do not. How many Americans other than farmers benefit from the farm subsidy programs? How many Americans other than train riders derive benefit from the Amtrak subsidy?

People who are overeating at the expense of others should be ashamed. That shame will return when others are forced to cut back too. This requires deep cuts and an end to the government smorgasbord where the few benefit at the expense of the many.

TANSTAAFL.  There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.  And thanks for paying!! 

Congressman Stephen Fincher (R-Sugar Tit)

Back in 2010, an Agriculture Subsidies Welfare Queen named Stephen Fincher ran for Congress and won.

Here's a campaign pic of the smiling Fincher family, content in the knowledge that no one will ever legislate that they be Drug Tested prior to receiving their corporate welfare check.  CPS will never show up at their home to ensure that the parents of these kids aren't blowing the money (that you sent them) on crack.   You donated to the Fincher family on April 15, tax day, whether you wanted to or not. 

Here's some of the rant I posted about his campaign a couple of years ago:

Stephen Fincher, a Republican candidate for congress in Tennessee's 8th district, favors small-government, lower taxes, and he has an appropriate disdain for Obamacare.

Good for him.
He's also a gospel singer.
He's a succesful cotton farmer.

And in one eleven-year period, from 1995 - to 2006, Fincher and his wife received 2.5 million dollars in crop subsidies from government you.

Now, just for the sheer joy of it, imagine if the Democrats dared to nominate a traditional welfare queen for Congress. Someone who sits around the house all day, collecting welfare and producing little babies who will reliably vote for Democrats. Do you think there might be an uproar?

So what is there about this form of welfare that bathes Stephen Fincher in such down-home, cottony goodness?

When our government subsidizes a particular crop, it confuses the price signals. In a truly free market, if too much cotton was produced, the price would drop. Fewer people would grow cotton. The price would then reflect what people were willing to pay for it, and what farmers would willingly be paid to grow it.

If not enough cotton was on the market, the price would rise. More and more people would grow cotton until the price dropped again.

Are Obama and Pelosi and Reid paying too many people to grow cotton? We'll never know.

But are you having to pay too much for cotton T-shirts, shirts, socks and sheets because of farm subsidies and prohibitive tariffs on cotton imports? Hell yes.

The rant continues for a few more paragraphs, explaining how Brazil was going to retaliate with tariffs on our exported cotton because of Uncle Sam giving handouts to Welfare Queens like Fincher.  We compromised by buying most of the Brazilian Cotton crop.  I swear to God, that's how we solved the problem. 
I hope you'll read the whole thing. 
Go here for it. 
I grinned several times, having forgotten most of the thing.   

Congressman Fincher is back in the news, this time because he wants to cut food stamps while maintaining his own place at the public trough. 
Hell, I'm all for feeding people, but we could easily make a lot of progress on lowering the price of food by ending the Fincher Subsidy, and then ending all the quotas, tariffs, and limitations related to what Mr. Obama allows to come through the bars of our national cage.  The Institute for International Economics estimates the annual cost of U.S. foreign protectionism at $6,027 per household.   

I think that $6,000.00 per family would make up for a lot of food stamps, don't you?  But then Mr. Fincher's farm has to be protected.  Here's what was in today's Huffington Post:

Fincher has said his farm would have shut down without the subsidies, which he argued protect American farmers from more heavily subsidized foreign competition. "We would be all for not having government in our business," Fincher told the Washington Post in 2010, "but we need a fair system."

The federal government's complex system of farm subsidies is supposed to shield farmers from some of the uncertainties inherent to the industry, but critics like the Environmental Working Group say the safety net unfairly benefits the biggest farms at the expense of smaller ones.

You think that farming has "some uncertainties inherent to the industry"???  Try building fruitstands.  Open a restaurant.  Start a used bookstore.  Open a clothing store.  Go into the carwash business.  Drive a semi-truck.  Those businesses open and struggle and crash and burn every day.
There's risk everywhere. 
But the risk in farming is just more....wholesome, right? 

And that's how Welfare Queens like Congressman Stephen Fincher (R-Sugar Tit) wind up getting $70,000 a year from the government  from you. 

I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend, and that everyone pause for a few minutes to think of those who fought and died to support Stephen Fincher in the style to which he has grown accustomed. 

Too harsh.  Have a GREAT Memorial Day weekend!!!  Be safe!!  

Please, please, please somebody make Barack Obama stay at home

Remember that William H. Macy movie called "The Cooler"? 

Macy plays a degenerate gambler whose luck is so bad that Alec Baldwin, playing a casino owner, actually pays him to sit down next to other gamblers who are on winning streaks.  Macy's mere presence at the table is enough to chase good luck away.   

If Barack Obama ever walks into a casino when I'm playing blackjack, I'm gone. 

First, Obama appeared at solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, praising them and their products for leading the way into the new, green, wholesome, stimulus-funded, just freakin' awesome future.  Solyndra went bankrupt. 

Then came LightSquared.  Obama himself was an early investory in the company.  Now there are nasty allegations that folks at the White House encouraged an Air Force general to change his sworn testimony about the company's finances.  LightSquared isn't bankrupt yet, but it is getting ugly.  If you need the White House to destroy your competitors, you're probably about two laps away from the drain. 

I won't bore you with all the failed "stimulus" boondoggles.  Let's get to the latest financial misadventure of this deluded little man who just happens to have access to your money to your great-grandchildren's credit cards. 

And that would be the Chevy Volt.  The taxpayer subsidy on each of these little go-carts is already set at $10,000.00 each.  We've already had to save G.M. from bankruptcy. 

Here's an enthusiastic video of "The Cooler" at the G.M. Hamtramck plant making a victory lap around a Chevy Golf Cart that needs a new $9,000.00 battery every five years.  (And the old battery is hell to get rid of in an environmentally responsible way.  I'm not a greenie, but I do care about taking care of the earth, avoiding negative externalities, etc.)  A Fresh Coat Of Whitening to Michelle Malkin for the link to this video, BTW. 



Flash forward two years.  Here's the Detroit Freep:

General Motors has told 1,300 employees at its Detroit Hamtramck that they will be temporarily laid off for five weeks as the company halts production of the Chevrolet Volt and its European counterpart, the Opel Ampera.


“Even with sales up in February over January, we are still seeking to align our production with demand,” said GM spokesman Chris Lee.

"Aligning our production with demand".  What a glorious statement.  That was the problem faced by the last buggy-whip manufacturer.  The makers of New Coke also had to deal with aligning production with demand.  Ditto for the producers of Milli Vanilli's last CD.  Kodak recently failed to align production with demand.  When you fail to align production with demand, you go broke.  That's what generally happens when politicians try to "produce" with stolen money.  They have no freakin' clue what consumers "demand".  One thing they don't demand is the Chevy Volt. 

Lee said employees were told Thursday that production would put on hold from March 19 to April 23.


The Chevrolet Volt, an extended-range electric car, is both a political lightning rod and a symbol of the company’s technological capability.


Chevrolet sold 1,023 Volts in the U.S. in February and has sold 1,626 so far this year.


In 2011, Chevrolet sold 7,671 Volts, but fell short of its initial goal of 10,000.


GM had planned to expand production of its Volt plug-in hybrid to 60,000 this year, with 45,000 earmarked for the U.S.

At 1,626 for the year, they're on pace to sell about 9,500.  IF people aren't scared away by the exploding batteries.  Did you know that the batteries explode?  Here's what it looks like when you leave a Volt in your garage unattended for a week:

 
Last fall, the GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spent several weeks trying to explain why two Volts whose batteries were punctured caught on fire after sitting around for at least a week.


NHTSA determined that the range-extended electric Volt is as safe as any gasoline-powered vehicle on the road.


GM said on Jan. 5 that it would improve the structure and battery-coolant system of the Volt sedan to protect it better against fires after crashes.


The incident also was the subject of a congressional hearing in January that included testimony from GM CEO Dan Akerson.


“We did not design the Volt to become a political punching bag and that’s what it’s become,” Akerson told Congress on Jan. 25.

Sorry dude.  The only reason your product exists is politics. 
Now you've been visited by "The Cooler". 
You're doors are going to close. 
Man, I used to love my Chevy pickup.  This is a shame. 

The picture of the Chevy Volt fire came from here.  The cartoon of all the Chevy Volt subsidies came from here.  The propaganda below came from the White House website. 

Any time you see an electric car, remember what powers it

A Green Energy Update

From The Washington Examiner:

Solar panel company Solyndra, which went bankrupt after getting a half-billion subsidy from the U.S. government, is largely owned by Obama fundraiser George Kaiser, who has visited the White House 16 times.

And the Feds are raiding the homes of Solyndra's top execs as we speak.  Do you think some of your half-billion might have wound up in the wrong pockets? 

Al Gore acolyte Cathy Zoi was Obama's assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy while her husband was an executive at a company that received direct subsidies from the Obama administration and profited from the Cash-for-Caulkers bill Zoi's division implemented. Zoi has since left DOE to run a clean-tech hedge fund owned in large part by Democratic mega-donor George Soros.

A group of Democratic operatives have formed an investment company called U.S. Renewable Energy Group, or US-REG, which seems to exist for the sake of buying green-tech companies, and then helping them get subsidies. In at least one case, US-REG appeared to be a U.S. beard for a Chinese company seeking U.S. dollars to make wind turbines in China.

The Department of Energy's inspector general has repeatedly found that a loan program created by the 2005 energy bill and expanded by Obama's stimulus falls short on transparency and accountability.

The company with the biggest investments in green energy is General Electric, whose CEO is a top Obama advisor.

And last year, G.E. paid absolutely no taxes.  As The Aggie would say, "Good people to know, that Barack Obama." 

Treasury Department chief of staff Mark Patterson was a Goldman Sachs lobbyist advocating susbidies for cellulosic ethanol while Goldman was buying up a cellulosic ethanol company. Patterson never received a waiver from the administration's restrictions on former lobbyists, but the adminstration has never explained how a Goldman lobbyist could work at Treasury without working on issues affecting tax law, finance, banking, or Goldman.

Sometimes I have to sit back and admire The Ethanol Trifecta, as I've heard it called.  The government has subsidized it, mandated it, and now, protected it from foreign competition.  One day, I swear I'm going to start a "green" dachshund manure company and see if I can get some of the same loot. 

A Soperton, Ga., ethanol plant -- founded by major Democratic donor Vinod Khosla -- sucked up more than $162 in federal and state subsidies before shutting down without ever producing a drop of ethanol.

But with the same net benefit to the world as if he had done so.  You've got to love it. 

Michele Bachmann - Corporate Welfare Queen

From the L.A. Times:

Reporting from Washington— Rep. Michele Bachmann has been propelled into the 2012 presidential contest in part by her insistent calls to reduce federal spending, a pitch in tune with the big-government antipathy gripping many conservatives.


But the Minnesota Republican and her family have benefited personally from government aid, an examination of her record and finances shows. A counseling clinic run by her husband has received nearly $30,000 from the state of Minnesota in the last five years, money that in part came from the federal government. A family farm in Wisconsin, in which the congresswoman is a partner, received nearly $260,000 in federal farm subsidies.

And she has sought to keep federal money flowing to her constituents. After publicly criticizing the Obama administration's stimulus program, Bachmann requested stimulus funds to support projects in her district. Although she has been a fierce critic of earmarks — calling them "part of the root problem with Washington's spending addiction" — the congresswoman nonetheless argued recently that transportation projects should not be considered congressional pork.

Next time you get one of those chain emails about the black lady with 8 kids in the supermarket paying for steaks and lobster with her food stamps, remember Michele Bachmann.  Send this link back to all the recipients.  Here are some details:
 
Yet despite her broadsides against "socialized medicine," Bachmann's husband, Marcus, applied for public funds for his counseling clinic, Bachmann & Associates. Since 2006, he has received nearly $30,000, according to Minnesota state records. The bulk of the money — $24,041 — came in the form of grants from the state Department of Human Services to train staff how to deal with clients suffering from chemical dependency and mental illness. That program was financed in part by the federal government.


Michele Bachmann lists the Lake Elmo, Minn.-based clinic — which aims to provide "quality Christian counseling in a sensitive, loving environment," according to its website — as one of her assets on her financial disclosure forms.

Another of Bachmann's assets — a family farm owned by her late father-in-law, Paul Bachmann — received nearly $260,000 in federal money between 1995 and 2008, largely from corn and dairy subsidies, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data compiled by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization that scrutinizes such subsidies. Paul Bachmann died in May 2009, but the congresswoman retains a partnership in the farm.

Bachmann said in December that the subsidies went to her in-laws and she never received "one penny" from the farm, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. However, in financial disclosure forms, she reported receiving between $32,503 and $105,000 in income from the farm, at minimum, between 2006 and 2009.

Publicly, Bachmann has objected strongly to federal farm payments.

When she voted against the 2008 farm bill, a $307-billion package that would govern federal agriculture policy for five years, Bachmann declared that it was "loaded with unbelievably outrageous pork and subsidies for agricultural business and ethanol growers." She was one of two nays cast by Minnesota's eight-member delegation.

Well, good for her on that one.  If the government is going to throw your money at Michele Bachmann, she'd be a fool not to take it. 
But isn't it sorta sickening to see how much of your money the government gives to just one millionaire?  And then to realize this particular millionaire is just one recipient among several million others who get a big payout from Uncle Sam? 

*******************

The pic of the Welfare Queen came from here.  The Corporatism poster came from here.  Looks like Dan McCall's fine work, but I'm not sure. 

What if the Evil Oil Companies got the same tax breaks as the Wholesome Green Companies?

West Texas is slowly being covered with windmills. 
They're built to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and our own reliance on evil, polluting, non-green, greedy corporations. 

You may have heard that the evil, polluting, non-green, greedy oil companies get a massive subsidy from our government.  This is because our government would give a subsidy to prevent alien invasions from the planet Nekthor in exchange for campaign contributions. 

All that aside, what if the oil companies got a subsidy similar to that received by the windmill producers?  (Windmills, ironically, are now called an "industry of the future".)  Here's The Foundry:

With the current debate over ending oil producers’ subsidies the question arises as to what subsidies do the producers actually get. It is a surprisingly complicated question. Wind producers also get subsidies that take complex forms—investment tax credits, production tax credits, mandates, property tax exemptions, etc. But the major federal subsidy for wind producers is the option to take a 30 percent investment tax credit or to receive a 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour production tax credit.


“2.2 cents” doesn’t seem like much, but, depending on the time of year, it falls somewhere between 25 percent and 100 percent of the wholesale price of electricity. Forty percent if frequently used as the average.

So, what would an oil-production subsidy look like if it were the same magnitude?

Deepwater drilling rigs can cost over $400,000 per day. With other costs, a rough per-well figure would be $100,000,000 per well. If an oil company could get the same 30 percent investment tax credit as wind producers, the government would write the company a $30,000,000 check for each well completed. For the lower cost, shallow-water wells, the government would write a check closer to $3,000,000 for every well drilled.

If on the other hand, the oil company opted for a production tax credit (and it was set at 40 percent of the 2010 average price of about $75 per barrel) then the government would write the oil company a check for $30 for each barrel produced (onshore as well as offshore).

If a subsidy like that was the deal oil companies had, then cut away. But the $4 billion per year that oil’s detractors keep repeating works out to $0.60 per barrel, and upon closer examination they do not even qualify as oil-industry subsidies.

Heritage’s Nick Loris and Curtis Dubay have sorted it all out. Of course, there are subsidies for the oil and gas industry, but they come from the Department of Energy, not from unfair tax benefits, and they work out to about a nickel per barrel. So, leave it to Washington to misidentify and exaggerate the problem.

Yeah, you can paint a windmill green, but you can't make it as efficient as oil. 

 

Can someone please fly down to Cancun and tell the U.N. Climate Change conference that it's over ??

From Christopher Booker of The Telegraph (UK):

Cancun climate conference: the warmists' last Mexican wave



If, last week, frozen behind a snowdrift, you heard a faint hysterical squeaking, it might well have been the sound of those 20,000 delegates holed up behind a wall of armed security guards in the sun-drenched Mexican holiday resort of Cancun, telling each other that the world is more threatened by runaway global warming than ever. Between their tequilas and lavish meals paid for by the world’s taxpayers, they heard how, by 2060, global temperatures will have risen by 4 degrees Celsius; how the Maldives and Tuvalu are sinking below the waves faster than ever; how the survival of salmon is threatened by CO2-induced acidification of the oceans; how the UN must ban incandescent light bulbs throughout the world.


“Scientists”, we were told, are calling for everyone to be issued with a “carbon ration card”, to halt all Western economic growth for 20 years.

Meanwhile, Dr Rajendra Pachauri was telling us that we must spend hundreds of billions on covering the world’s oceans with iron filings, on building giant mirrors out in space and on painting all the world’s roofs white to keep out the heat from the sun.

The entire article is worth reading.  Enjoy at your leisure.  Someone really should fly down to Cancun and let them know that it's over.
Next, we have Mike Kelly, writing for the Sunday Sun about what the weather will bring next:

Throughout the 20th century the sun was unusually active, peaking in the 1950s and the late 1980s. Recently sunspot activity has all but disappeared.


Gavin said: “It is the sun’s energy which keeps the earth warm and the amount of energy the earth receives isn’t always the same. I’ve looked at the evidence for global warming and while I understand and agree with a lot of it, there has been a lot missed out. A major factor is the activity of the sun.”

There is also solar wind – streams of particles from the sun – which are at their weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun’s magnetic axis is tilted at an unusual degree. This is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on earth and force what for many is unthinkable – a reappraisal of the science behind global warming.

It was thought that carbon dioxide emissions rather than the sun was the bigger effect on climate change. Now a major re-think is taking place.

The upshot is that Gavin is not alone in predicting we face another 30 frozen years, each getting progressively colder than the last.

Hit the link up top to read the whole thing.  The important part?  It's not whether it will get warmer or cooler, but how various government-funded leeches and parasites can make money from it. 
Next, Mr. Joseph Weber of The Washington Times has a report on the reluctance of new lawmakers to spend any more money on windmills. 

The Obama administration lavished billions of stimulus dollars on wind-power producers and other renewable-energy interests, but the whirl of the turbines may slow dramatically as budget-cutting Republicans take their seats in the next Congress.

The climate — at least on Capitol Hill — has changed dramatically for the wind-power industry, which is dealing with President Obama's stalled green-energy agenda as well as the loss of old friends in Washington and the nation's statehouses and the rise to power of "tea party"-backed Republicans who are skeptical of government supports for the industry.

"The incoming Republican majority in the House of Representatives will almost certainly present obstacles toward the wind industry's agenda on Capitol Hill," the trade publication North American Windpower recently reported, including an end to direct cash grants from Mr. Obama's stimulus package and more delays in formulating the long-awaited federal standard for the use of renewable-energy sources by the nation's utilities.
The Republican ascendancy likely will curtail the Obama administration's financial support for wind farms and other renewable-energy interests, which have received more than $7 billion in stimulus money since 2009.
The midterm elections dealt a "shellacking" to Mr. Obama's agenda and changed the political and lobbying calculus for industries and corporate interests across the landscape.

Note the words that I chose to highlight in dark black.  That's what this whole sordid Chicken Little incident has been about. 
Hope you can stay warm, everybody !! 

Al Gore takes off the mask. Or puts it back on again. It's hard to keep track.

Go here to read about the latest pronouncements of Saint Albert, The Goracle Of Music City, Tennessee. 
He didn't blow a lot of money to save the planet or the polar bears. 
He did it to get elected.  Saint Albert is now admitting that his support for ethanol was a mistake.   

Here's Ed Morrisey, in the article linked above:

Why, then, did Gore spend most of the last two decades pushing for ethanol subsidies? It wasn’t because he was trying to help humanity:


Well, here's The Goracle:
“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

Well, everyone who isn't trying to get into his Prius with a recycling bin shoved up his ass already knew that.  Can we have our incandescent bulbs back now? 

I'm just glad that he's finally admitting it. 
How long until he admits that the rest of his ClimatePanic is a scam to buy votes and to help subsidize Green stuff ? 

Joe Biden said this.

I don't know how I missed this, but Joe Biden, using his own lips, teeth, tongue and throat, under his own free will, made the following statement a few weeks ago:

“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said. “In the middle of the Civil War you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States. … No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”

You can go here to experience a joyous rebuttal from The Cato Institute:

Early American railroads were built almost entirely with private funds. These railroads provided such superior transportation that by 1850 they had put most toll roads and canals out of business. Individual states still competed with one another for business—and may have offered various favors to the railroads serving those states…. For the most part, however, no federal and few state subsidies went to railroads in the eastern United States.

But what about other areas?

Whenever politicians interfered in the railroad business, however, corruption and inefficiency inevitably occurred.....There was no money to be made from operating a railroad through a desolate wasteland, yet the federal government rewarded railroad contractors with big subsidies: a thirty-year loan at below market interest rates; twenty sections (12,800 acres) of government-owned land for every mile of track; and an additional subsidy of $48,000 for every mile of track laid in mountainous regions.

Thomas Durant, Oakes Ames, and other officers of the Union Pacific Railroad, which went a thousand miles west from Council Bluffs, Iowa, started the Credit Mobilier company in 1867 and retained it to do the construction. Credit Mobilier distributed to shareholders profits estimated at between $7 million and $23 million, depleting the Union Pacific’s resources. In an effort to stop congressional investigations, the officers bribed Speaker of the House James G. Blaine and other congressmen with Credit Mobilier stock. Seldom modest about their thievery, congressmen voted themselves a 50 percent pay raise. The Union Pacific Railroad fell deep into debt, without enough revenue from passengers or shippers, and went bankrupt in 1893.

Here's a Cato transportation timeline entry on all you need to know about the Credit Mobilier scandal:

1872:  The New York Sun exposes the Credit Mobilier scandal, perhaps the largest business subsidy scandal of the 19th century.8 Credit Mobilier is a construction company financially controlled by the leaders of the Union Pacific Railroad that makes huge profits at taxpayer expense. Congressman Oakes Ames (R-MA), who is an agent of Credit Mobilier and part-owner, distributes shares of the firm's stock to members of Congress at a discounted value. In return, those members treat Credit Mobilier favorably in a variety of ways, such as by voting to appropriate funds for the firm. The scandal illustrates the corruption that usually results when the government intervenes in the economy and subsidizes businesses.

If that's not enough, George Will opens a great column with Biden's quote.  In this case, its about our next transportation-subsidy-scandal-waiting-to-happen....The Chevy Volt. 
You might think that you've never purchased a Chevy Volt.  But you have.  Yes, you have. 

The federal government, although waist-deep in red ink, offers another bribe: Any purchaser can get a tax credit of up to 50 percent of the cost (up to $2,000) of an extra-powerful (240-volt) charger. California, although so strapped it recently issued IOUs to vendors, offers a $5,000 cash rebate for which Volt buyers are not eligible but purchasers of Nissan's electric Leaf are. Go figure.

In April, in a television commercial and a Wall Street Journal column headlined "The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full," GM's then-CEO Ed Whitacre said "we have repaid our government loan, in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule." Rubbish.

GM, which has received almost $50 billion in government subventions, repaid a $6.7 billion loan using other federal funds, a TARP-funded escrow account. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) called this a "TARP money shuffle." A commentator compared it to "paying off your Visa credit card with your MasterCard."

Meretricious accounting and deceptive marketing are inevitable when government and its misnamed "private sector" accomplices foist state capitalism on an appalled country. But those who thought the ethanol debacle defined outer limits of government foolishness pertaining to automobiles were, alas, mistaken.

And finally, Reason magazine jumps on the dogpile with this:

What was the "government vision and government incentive" that produced the assembly line?Motion-picturefilm?  Airconditioning? The electric guitar?

How about the personalcomputer? The mobile phone? Non-violentresistance?  Aspirin?

Though Biden is generally not to be taken seriously, the government-centrism of his comments are an accurate reflection of his boss, and part of the reason why next Tuesday is going to be an awkward day
of work at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

As it turns out, last Tuesday was an awkward day of work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Unfortunately, Democrats were replaced by Republicans.  Republicans who favor many of the same economic interventions but for different industries. 
Bummer. 

Oh well.  Joe Biden really did make that statement.  No eggs were thrown and no one laughed because it went largely unreported and unanalyzed in The Mainstream Media. 
Go here to read about The Mainstream Media's quest for a journalism subsidy. 

Joe Biden - A Real Man Of Genius

Hurricane Earl is about to SAVE AND CREATE SOME JOBS ! ! ! (Thank you for your continued support)

Hurricane Earl is headed toward The Carolina coast. 
Let's all hope that everyone is ok, and that property damage is minimal. 

A brief digression....  My family used to own a little shotgun house/shack/cabin on Beulah lake near the Mississippi river.  For the benefit of the Brits, Aussies, and occasional Canadians who frequent these pages, this is a shotgun house:

They're called shotgun shacks because you can fire a shotgun into the front door, and the pellets will go through all three rooms and all doorways of the house without hitting anything.  You can look in the front door and see out the back door. 

We couldn't get insurance on our shotgun shack.  Guess why.  Go ahead, take a few seconds and guess. 
No one in his right mind would have insured our lakeside cabin because it was built inside the Mississippi river levee. 
It flooded every three or four years. 
Every time water got into the cabin, my father and I would go in with a high pressure hose, wash out the mud and snakes, put down some new linoleum, nail up some new wall paneling, and declare the house "repaired".

That was then, this is now.

Hurricanes have a tendency to hit the east coast, doing a spectacular amount of damage every few years.  But that doesn't stop people from building mega-beach houses in the middle of hurricane alley.

Here's Donald Trump's beach house, courtesy of a site called NoBeachHouseBailouts.org  (Yeah, another bailout effort is underway.)

 I bet you could fire a shotgun in the front door, and hit at least 3 reality show contestants. 

Here's a photo one of Beyonce's family homes in Galveston.  Right there in the path of Hurricane Ike. 

Here's the Business Insider, reporting on what you did for Beyonce shortly after Hurricane Ike. 

Unlike say, Nic Cage or Lindsay Lohan, Beyonce Knowles is living the life. She and her husband Jay-Z are worth a reported $265 million and she's still the hottest singer on radio.
But did you know Beyonce's father Matthew Knowles owns a block of property in Galveston, Texas that was devastated by Hurricane Ike?

And did you know that FEMA is going to pay Beyonce and her father a cool $425,000 to reimburse them for close to the original value of the house? Yep, it's true, according to an excellent report from Mother Jones.

The house is one of 68 that will receive a FEMA-sponsored buyout according to KHOU.

Hell, I'd be willing to go in with a high-pressure hose and clear out the mud and snakes for much less than $425,000.00  

Here's the Frum Forum, on an effort to require you to subsidize the insurance of people who want to build McShacks in Hurricane Alley....

For the past several years, Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS) has been on a mission to add wind damage coverage to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is already swimming in red ink.

His legislation, called the “Multiple Peril Insurance Act,” was slated to be voted on by the House of Representatives twice in the weeks before Congress left town for its August recess. The Democrats’ Daily Whipline announcing the floor schedule urged a yes vote on Taylor’s bill, but luckily for taxpayers, both times the leadership decided to pull the bill for lack of support.

Taylor and the Democrat leadership are concerned that it is hard for folks living in storm-prone coastal areas to get reasonably-priced wind insurance from private insurance companies.

Well, there is a very well understood reason for this. It is called RISK. Homes built in hurricane country are at high risk of exposure to wind damage.

.....A recent Houston Chronicle story revealed that between 1977 and 1995, NFIP paid out $806,591 for repeated storm damage to a suburban Houston home that was valued at $114,480.

Hurricane Earl is probably going to do a lot of damage to the Beach Houses along the Carolina coast. 
It will do much less damage to the less spectacular homes built further inland.
The beach is a foolish place for a McShotgun Mansion.
The people who built homes further inland are probably responsible for 100% of their own insurance. 

Guess who is about to get a huge FEMA payday?

Check out the aftermath, paying particular attention to who is going to pay for rebuilding. 

The Trumps and Beyonces of the Carolinas appreciate your continued support.

Shirley Sherrod, the NAACP, and racism within The Tea Party The NAACP

Here's the Tea Party's first counter-offensive against its recent critics.  (You remember the Tea Party?  The organization with all the racists in its ranks?)


From Ed Driscoll:

The Agriculture Department announced Monday, shortly after FoxNews.com published its initial report on the video, that Sherrod had resigned.



“There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a written statement. “We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.

Andrew Breitbart is going to post one of these counter-offensives every day this week. 
Welcome to Barack Obama's new post-racial America. 
The Tea Party is kinda goofy, but the charges of racism are nothing more than a ploy to intimidate fence-sitters and keep them from participating.  The NAACP really should've gotten the beam out of it's own eye before picking at the specks within the Tea Party. 

In the words of one commenter: “The difference between the tea party and the NAACP is if you are looking for racists at the tea party you look at the fringe and if you are looking for racists at the NAACP, you look to the stage.”

Don't get me wrong....I think Shirley Sherrod did the right thing by intentionally denying the tax money for the white farmer.  I wish all tax money could be denied to white farmers.  And black ones.

************
From Wednesday afternoon:

Go here for an update.  It seems that the video doesn't tell the entire story. 

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

The real British Petroleum scandal

From the Powerline blog:

Corn is great food, but lousy energy. Energy derived from corn--ethanol--cannot compete in the marketplace with more efficient sources of energy, like petroleum, unless its producers get money from the government (i.e. you) to artificially lower the price of their product. This is what is known as "green energy."

It amounts to having a bonfire with your money. Well, no, not exactly a bonfire, since, while there is undeniably a net inefficiency and thus a destruction of wealth, your money doesn't go up in smoke. Rather, your tax dollars are transferred to a combination of Midwestern farmers and politically connected ethanol plant developers. Like other government subsidy programs, it's great if you get to cash the checks, but bad if you are a taxpayer or an energy buyer.

Ok, roll that around in your head for a minute, and then check this out - from Kevin Williamson of The Corner:

BP's oil-spill cleanup bill, so far: $3.2 billion

Money BP is setting aside for the total bill: $20 billion
Annual cost of U.S. ethanol subsidies: $5 billion
Ethanol subsidies going to BP this year: $600 million

Conclusions: Every four years, U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing the energy firms by an amount equal to the maximum that BP expects to spend on the cleanup. BP specifically will collect an equivalent amount every 33 years. This year's BP ethanol subsidy by itself will offset about 20 percent of what BP has spent on the cleanup so far.

And that's just one subsidy program.
Tell me again why this "green economy" stuff is not a scam.

The banks paid back their TARP money, and the nation remains scandalized by that bailout. What are the chances the energy industry is going to pay back a penny of the billions we're pouring on them through green energy subsidies?

Let's subsidize Brazilians. Just to keep it fair.

We started subsidizing cotton farming sometime back in the 1930's. 
By "we", I mean you, me, everyone who pays taxes, and everyone who pays about twice what they should have to pay for t-shirts, sheets, etc. 

Here's the way the system works:  Wealthy individuals claim that they aren't making enough money by growing cotton.  They threaten to withold support for various politicians.  The politicians counter by giving them your money. 

What's really cool about the system is that since 1995, 78% of the 10.66 billion dollars in US subsidies for cotton went to only 10% of the cotton farmers.  Want to guess where these 10% fit on the income spectrum?

This has become a problem for the much-maligned World Trade Organization, the group with the thankless job of preventing these insane traditions from erupting into trade wars.  (Here's what they try to prevent: We subsidize cotton and put tariffs in place to keep out evil, foreign cotton.  African countries want access to our cotton market, but can't compete because of our government giveaway.  Africa retaliates by putting a tariff in place against American automobiles or steel, or whatever.  Next thing you know, it's 1930 all over again.) 

We now have a situation with Brazil.  Brazil wants to buy a lot of our stuff and we want to buy a lot of Brazilian stuff.  The WTO is trying to work it out.  (In an ideal world, of course, anyone restricting you from purchasing whatever from whoever would be told to go have carnal relations with himself....) 

But Brazilian cotton farmers claim that our system is unfair to them.  We apparently give more to our Agri-Business Welfare Queens than Brazil does. 

So what is the Obama administration doing to correct this problem? 

To make it fair, just, and equitable, they are now subsidizing the Brazilian cotton farmers. 
I repeat:  In order to continue shoveling money to wealthy farmers in the U.S., we are now shoveling money to farmers in Brazil. 

Here's Congressman Jeff Flake on the policy:
“This proposal takes our federal farm subsidy policy from the impractical to the absurd....only in Washington could this pass for logic.”

Even Congressman Barney Frank was able to lift his nose from the trough long enough to make this comment:
“The sensible thing for us to do with the WTO finding – which, unfortunately for American cotton farmers, is clearly correct – would be to reform our own inefficient system of spending millions of dollars a year to subsidize cotton farmers, many of whom are quite wealthy.  Instead, the Obama administration apparently feels compelled to preserve our right to subsidize American cotton farmers by extending that subsidy to Brazilian cotton farmers. People looking for an illustration of the meaning of the phrase, ‘from bad to worse,’ need look no further.”

Why even bother posting this stuff?  It goes on all day, every day.
Well, 3rd-graders can understand that it's a silly policy. 
9th-graders can understand how this hurts the poorest Americans more than any other group.  (Except for, maybe, African cotton farmers.  Go here for details.) 
Hell, even Barney Frank has figured it out.  If people aren't making enough money by growing cotton, it means that too many people are growing cotton.  The same thing once happened to buggy-whip manufacturers, blacksmiths, minstrels, and chimney sweeps.   

And yet we want to trust this D.C. den of thieves with healthcare, manufacturing, shipping, finances, and 40% of our incomes.  So many of us are now involved in the giveaways, the get-backs, and the wealth transfers that it's hard to tell who is paying who - all in the hopes that we'll be in the group that gets back more than they've paid in.  

The cartoon came from here. 

Stephen Fincher - Welfare Queen For Congress

Stephen Fincher, a Republican candidate for congress in Tennessee's 8th district, favors small-government, lower taxes, and he has an appropriate disdain for Obamacare. 
Good for him.
He's also a gospel singer. 
He's a succesful cotton farmer. 

And in one eleven-year period, from 1995 - to 2006, Fincher and his wife received 2.5 million dollars in crop subsidies from government you. 

Now, just for the sheer joy of it, imagine if the Democrats dared to nominate a traditional welfare queen for Congress.  Someone who sits around the house all day, collecting welfare and producing little babies who will reliably vote for Democrats.  Do you think there might be an uproar? 

So what is there about this form of welfare that bathes Stephen Fincher in such down-home, cottony goodness? 
When our government subsidizes a particular crop, it confuses the price signals.  In a truly free market, if too much cotton was produced, the price would drop.  Fewer people would grow cotton.  The price would then reflect what people were willing to pay for it, and what farmers would willingly be paid to grow it. 
If not enough cotton was on the market, the price would rise.  More and more people would grow cotton until the price dropped again. 
Are Obama and Pelosi and Reid paying too many people to grow cotton?  We'll never know. 
But are you having to pay too much for cotton T-shirts, shirts, socks and sheets because of farm subsidies and prohibitive tariffs on cotton imports?  Hell yes. 

And what do other countries do, when they learn that we're giving Stephen Fincher $2.6 million dollars to grow cotton?  They retaliate against American imports into Brazil.  Then Obama and Pelosi and Reid have to do even more silly things to make it ok with Brazil. 

So here's the deal: to avoid retailiation by Brazil on U.S. exports of all kinds of things that have nothing to do with cotton, U.S. taxpayers -- that's you -- will send the Brazilian cotton industry $147 million a year in aid.

It apparently has not occurred to the Obama administration (remember all the indignant campaign talk about Washington lobbyists?) or Congress to simply end the subsidies.

So we  ( you ) will continue to subsidize U.S. cotton farmers AND now we'll also be subsidizing Brazilian cotton farmers.

What would happen next in an ideal world?  Well, if the Brazilians were smart, they would totally open up their market to U.S. cotton, along with every other product that we subsidize.  Because if U.S. voters really are dumb enough to produce cotton at a high price and then sell it at a low cost to Brazilians.....well, we deserve to be ripped off even more, don't we? 

Here's Fincher trying to justify his welfare queen status:

“People are quick to say with their mouth full, ‘Well, the American farmer is on the dole,’ ” Fincher said. “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.”

No, no, no.  We are still paying then 10 bucks, but we're paying it to Washington, which takes a cut off the top before passing the 10 bucks to their constituents.   (Instead of merely paying a lower price to Kroger's or Albertson's or Publix or A&P.)  
I've read various economists stating that if we were to end all subsidies, quotas and tariffs, it would save the typical household somewhere between $4,000 to $10,000. 

Here's another Fincher supporter:

(David) Nance, of the Gibson County Patriots, said, "I don't see the agricultural subsidy thing as an issue at all," adding: "If it were an issue, then we would never elect a farmer to Congress at all. Because basically, most farmers get agriculture subsidies. If they didn't, they'd be broke, and we'd be buying our food from China."

David, David, David.    They wouldn't all be broke.  Some might have to start doing something else.  There would be fewer agri-millionaires. 
Here's a cool map of all the farmers in Manhattan who collect $250,000 per year in farm subsidies.  Go here for an explanation.  Big dots represent the $250,000 per year Long Island farmers.  The little dots represent those farmers that you are paying less.  Their commutes from Manhattan to their John Deere tractors upstate must be long indeed. 

Seriously, these Manhattanites need a farm subsidy about like Pope Benedict needs a farm subsidy. 

Our food would be cheaper if Obama, Pelosi, and Reid would simply allow us to purchase food from whoever had the best price.  It doesn't matter if good comes from the other side of I-35, the other side of Tarrant County, the other side of the Red River, the other side of the Rio Grande, or the other side of the Pacific.
Who really believes that the lines of latitude and longitude of the farm matter? 
How much more in taxes would you be willing to pay to keep Mr. and Mrs. Fincher in the style to which they've grown accustomed?   
But some of you, every time you eat a cotton sandwich, or enjoy a cotton and pasta casserole, you feel safer knowing that your food was grown here.  And you delight in knowing that you paid more than you had to. 

The National Cotton Council:  Protecting America's food supply.

The Work-Free Drugplace

From StopTheDrugWar.Org.....

The Missouri House Thursday passed a bill that would require welfare recipients to undergo drug testing upon "reasonable suspicion" they used drugs. But the Senate version of that bill, SB 607, is under sustained attack by Senate Democrats, who are filibustering it this week.

Under the bills, all work-eligible adults who received cash payments through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program would be drug tested if a caseworker has "reasonable suspicion" they are using drugs. Those who test positive would become temporarily ineligible for cash assistance, but their children could continue to receive benefits through a third party.
TANF is a federal program designed to help poverty-stricken parents provide for their children. In Missouri, more than 112,000 people get cash assistance through the program. The average family on the program gets $292 a month.
A legislative staff fiscal analysis of the Senate bill put the annual cost to the state at more than $5 million next year, and more than $6 million in coming years. Those figures represent the cost of drug testing an estimated 90,000 TANF recipients or new applicants each year and the cost of providing additional drug treatment services to deal with those who test positive.

This is one of those ridiculous sideshows that allows one of our ruling factions to show that they care about your money being wasted, while forcing the other faction to defend giving money to crackheads. 

What would happen if we broadened this proposal to cover other welfare recipients who don't fit the stereotype so well? 

Patricia Woertz, Chairman, CEO and President of Archer Daniels Midland Company, is an ethanol subsidy queen of the worst possible sort.  She has made a ton of money on the public teat.   I want Ms. Woertz (and the rest of her family) to go in for a supervised piss test before she receives another dime of taxpayer money.  She has three kids, and I'm worried about their exposure to this type of behavior. 

At my company, if a driver is involved in any accident that causes damage to people or property, they have to go in for a urinalysis.  Chris Dodd, please report for your drug screen.  We are still trying to find someone willing to test Barney Frank. 

Under the phenomenally corrupt deals within the pending healthcare monstrosity, Nebraskans will receive something called "The Cornhusker Kickback".  Mary Landrieu orchestrated something called "The Louisiana Purchase" for her Louisiana constituents.  Florida gets something mockingly named "Gatoraid".  The residents of these states need to get a test tube, get in line, and give us at least three ounces.  (Note to my Cajun friends in Louisiana: Nobody is impressed if you can supply 16 ounces.  Nobody.  Don't bother.)  This should take a while, but the results will be in the mail before the November elections, which is all that matters in any of this. 

Are you a farmer?  Are you one of the ten percent of all farmers who collected 74 percent of all subsidies amounting to $130.6 billion dollars over a 12 year period?   Get your wholesome, welfare-queen-condemning, salt-of-the-earth rear ends in line to fill up a piss cup.  (Warning: Don't bother substituting livestock urine.  It's been done before, and we know what you're up to.) 

Al Gore is trying valiantly to force you to use products and technologies developed by his partners at the venture capital firm of Kleiner-Perkins.  Well, Al, you're not going to get a cent until you can prove that you're not on crack.  Plus, there are a lot of us who are just curious. 

Seriously, why stop at the "traditional" welfare recipient?  Let's test military contractors.  Let's have every recipient of the Porkulus kickbacks go in for a urinalysis.  Want an NEA grant?  Prove that you haven't smoked weed, and good luck to you.  Are you a UAW employee, and did Obama save your job with taxpayer money?  Get in line. 

Just think....if the Missouri Republicans and I get our way, we'll soon be doing nothing but test each other. 

Welcome to the Work-Free Drugplace. 

The poster came from here. 

John Cougar Mellencamp for Senate ! On the anti-corporate ticket !

Here's Reason magazine's "Hit and Run" section, on a movement to have Seymour Indiana's favorite son John Cougar Mellencamp run for the U.S. senate. 

Don't get me wrong about what follows.  I love me some Mellencamp, especially the later stuff.  His Life, Death, Love and Freedom is in the CD changer of the Blackened Whitedmobile at this very moment. 

But Here's a statement from a Mellencamp supporter:
Mellencamp for Senator from Indiana! He's heartland rocker who tackles corporate power on behalf of family farmers/fighting foreclosures.

Corporate power?  Are the Mellencamps of Seymour, Indiana, oppressed by corporate power?  Here's Matt Welch, of Reason: 

According to the good folks at the Environmental Working Group, who maintain an eminently searchable database of farm subsidies, there were 34 recipients with the last name of "Mellencamp" between 1995-2003. Of those, a full 22 come from the Hoosier State, including 12 in the small town of ... Seymour! Here's a list of Seymour's subsidized Mellencamps:

$383,673.00 James A. and Michael Mellencamp
$249,590.95 George Mellencamp
$157,219.56 David K. Mellencamp
$152,639.65 Mark Mellencamp
$152,424.00 Gary W. Mellencamp
$110,052.72 Mary Mellencamp
$46,172.47 Elsie Mellencamp
$30,527.87 Matthew Grover Mellencamp
$10,929.31 Frederick J. Mellencamp
$2,582.14 Jerry Ross Mellencamp
$1,015.00 Victor H. Mellencamp
$420.00 Andrew Mellencamp

Compare those corn subsidies (1.14 million dollars) to those received by your family.  

The Mellencamps have met the corporate power ! !  And it is them ! ! 

One other thing.... As Mellencamp has grown older, the obsession with "corporate power" has popped up more and more in his interviews, especially during his support of the John Edwards campaign.   
Well, here's a video of Mellencamp shilling for the biggest corporate power of them all - The U.S. Government's Automobile Division, formerly known as Chevrolet. 



The lesson from all this?  There's a much bigger power out there than corporations, and that's the U.S. government.  John Cougar Mellencamp And Company ®  have done very well by their association with it. 

Oh, but ain't that America, kickbacks for me,
Ain't that America, something to see baby
Ain't that America, Big Subsidy,
Little green payoffs for you and me....



Mellencamp is a great performer, a brilliant songwriter, and a crappy crusader.  Physician, heal thyself.

Some presidential quotations

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself" - FDR

"I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell." - Harry Truman

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you're a thousand miles from the corn field" - Dwight D. Eisenhower

"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not blah, blah blah blah blah...." - John F. Kennedy

"I am not a crook" - Richard Nixon

"Our long national nightmare is over" - Gerald Ford

"I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming." - Jimmy Carter

"Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them." - Ronald Reagan

"Read my lips - No new taxes" - George H.W. Bush

"I tried marijuana once. I did not inhale." - Bill Clinton

"I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." - George W. Bush

Ok are you ready? Swallow your coffee. Put down your Coke.

"To help address this, we need to stand up to the special interests, bring Republicans and Democrats together, and pass the Farm Bill immediately." - Barack Obama, on the granddaddy of all special interest legislation

From here, via here, via here, because I started here.