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? 

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!!  

Bill Maher on the sudden increase in disability payments

Poverty has won the War On Poverty

Libertarians are often caricatured as uncaring bastards who would throw their grandmothers out on the street if Granny ever stops harvesting her percentage of the wheat crop.  But it really is possible to be in favor of Granny's continued existence in her old age, while opposing John Boehner and Barack Obama being her means of support.

Libertarians generally oppose wealth redistribution by force, therefore we dislike Uncle Sam’s welfare schemes.

Statists claim it’s because we’re greedy. (We are greedy. You are greedy.  We all want more than we have. Lots more. Unlike the Statists, though, we want you to have more also, so you'll spend it on what we produce. We know that your success doesn’t require our failure.) But greed isn’t the reason we oppose mandatory government welfare programs.

Here’s the real reason, folks: Government welfare isn’t an effective method for fighting poverty.  In fact, it looks like welfare is keeping poverty alive. 

Check out the chart, from Economist Daniel Mitchell’s International Liberty website.  LBJ’s War On Poverty was the equivalent of spreading top-notch fertilizer on a weed patch. Poverty was dying until Washington D.C. got involved in killing it.  Incredible, isn't it? 

Folks, poverty was disappearing !!  Dropping like VHS sales!!!  But when anti-poverty programs appeared, poverty stabilized between 11-15%.   How much would you give to learn what woulda happened if the War On Poverty had never been declared????  Think of the fifteen trillion or so that they've spent on anti-poverty programs.  Do you think that might have been better spent by producers rather than D.C. looters? 

People are poor because they can't be productive.  (Or in a few cases, won't be productive.)  Yeah, some prosper because of lotteries, and a few eventually claw their way out and prosper because of handouts. But most of the poor get stuck, generation after generation after generation, sitting by the mailbox waiting on the goodies from Uncle Sugar.

When Washington demonizes success (especially from the entrepreneurial side as opposed to the sports/arts/entertainment side) and demands an ever-increasing cut of the profits from any business or individual, the productive members of society are left with less and less to spend on other things, like employees. George Soros, Warren Buffett, and dotcom jillionaires might be political numbskulls, but their instincts on how to spend money are far superior to John Boehner’s and Barack Obama’s. Let ‘em keep more of their money and the jobs will follow.

If we were to cut the U.S. tax burden in half, poverty in the U.S. would die. There would be a sprinkling of unemployed disabled people who could easily be provided for by using pre-LBJ methods. In that era, we had thousands and thousands of civic, fraternal, and church benevolence funds in place that we’ve almost forgotten how to administer.

We could easily end poverty.

But we’re too compassionate to even consider doing so. 

Note to self:  Create another chart showing how Islamic Extremists were dying off until our government got involved in trying to kill them. 

Government Cheese

"They'll turn us into beggars, cause they're easier to please...."



Give a man a free house and he'll bust out the windows
Put his family on food stamps, now he's a big spender
no food on the table and the bills ain't paid
'Cause he spent it on cigarettes and P.G.A.
They'll turn us all into beggars 'cause they're easier to please
They're feeding our people that Government Cheese

Give a man a free lunch and he'll figure out a way
To steal more than he can eat 'cause he doesn't have to pay
Give a woman free kids and you'll find them in the dirt
Learning how to carry on the family line of work
It's the man in the White House, the man under the steeple
Passing out drugs to the American people
I don't believe in anything, nothing is free
They're feeding our people the Government Cheese

Decline and fall, fall down baby
Decline and fall, said fall way down now
Decline and fall, fall down little mama
Decline and fall, decline and fall
Give a man a free ticket on a dead end ride
And he'll climb in the back even though nobody's driving
Too ******* lazy to crawl out of the wreck
And he'll rot there while he waits for the welfare check
Going to hell in a handbag, can't you see
I ain't gonna eat no Government Cheese

Hit this link before criticizing a single sentiment in this song.  Lord have mercy, what a mess. 

Hurricane Sandy And The Ethanol Trifecta

Ethanol producers already benefit from The Statist Trifecta....

1) They've bribed the government into making their product mandatory.
2) They get massive subsidies.  Massive. 
3) Ethanol produced in other nations is hit with a massive tariff.  This alone is enough to prove that the entire program is horsecrap.  If ethanol were about Saving The Planet, we wouldn't care where it was produced.  But this boondoggle is about funneling tax money to donors. 

I've had a mental countdown going for a while, ever since Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast U.S., just waiting on something like this to appear. 

Go here. 

It's been centuries since we sacrificed virgins to the Corn God.  It's been a long, long time since the Mayans pulled a beating heart out of a sacrificial victim every morning, just to ensure that the sun came up.  I haven't heard anyone pray for rain since I left Drew Baptist Church in Drew, Mississippi.  Very few of us believe that gay marriage or outlawing public prayer in public schools causes hurricanes or earthquakes. 

But buying soybeans and corn from politically connected millionaire farmers to prevent hurricanes?  Yeah, that should work. 

Pat Roberts of Kansas and the 2012 Farm Bill

For reasons that I don't quite understand, the infamous Farm Bill comes up for renewal every five years. 

It's one of the few scandalous giveaways that has to be reworked and reapproved. 


Here's Townhall.com:

Every vote in Congress can be viewed as an opportunity to either increase liberty or increase government. Right now, the Senate appears poised to choose the latter as they prepare to vote on the 2012 Farm Bill.

The 1,000-page bill that Senators Debbie Stabenow and Pat Roberts are pushing through the Senate is chock full of massive spending, new entitlements, and new regulations. With corporate welfare and generous subsidies thrown in for good measure, the bill reflects everything wrong with out-of-control government. No wonder Congress is sporting a 17 percent approval rating these days.

The farm bill is another in a long line of government boondoggles that simply builds on the big expenditures of a previous bill. The CBO estimates that the 2012 farm bill will up spending to $969 billion over the next ten years. Locking in at those levels in the midst of a debt crisis and credit downgrade is beyond fiscally irresponsible. Overall, the Senate farm bill punts on the opportunity to contribute to deficit reduction and shows a startling lack of political courage.

Ok, let's pause for a moment.  Farming is risky.  Erratic.  Unpredictable.  But, on the other hand, so is long-haul trucking.  So is running a lawn service or a coffee bar or an upholstery shop. 
Upholsterers aren't organized into a lobby, though.  Sucks to be them, doesn't it???

The 2012 farm bill’s most noticeable “reform” is the elimination of direct payments to farmers. In its place is a new entitlement program most commonly referred to as “shallow loss,” a new federal crop insurance program. It’s meant to serve as an income safety net that will automatically trigger payments to farmers when their crop yields fall below 90% of their average levels over the past five years. However, the past five years have seen a spike in crop yields, meaning that shallow loss is locking in rates that are due to fall. It’s unnecessary corporate welfare, despite what the farm lobby claims. According to the American Enterprise Institute:

“The current average debt-to-asset ratio in the farm sector is less than 9 percent and has been declining steadily over the past decade. Moreover, farms fail at a rate of less than one in two hundred a year, and, from a financial perspective, farms are better placed than almost any sector of the economy to handle year-to-year variations in revenues and costs by themselves. Yet, effectively, farmers want a tax payer-funded guarantee that their revenues will never fall below about 90 percent of their recent levels.

I'll throw in some more about "shallow loss" programs in a moment.  If you can't stand the suspense, go to the end of this post, and prepare to be depressed about the gullibility of the American public. 

The addition of a farm entitlement program is one of countless examples of the federal government encouraging dependence at the expense of liberty. Additionally, telling farmers that they can keep their revenues and have the taxpayers absorb their losses invites risky behavior on their end. Apparently too-big-to-fail has yet to go out of style.

Here's a quote on the Farm Bill from the New York Holy Times.  Any time you hear a politician or a "journalist" claim that people on both sides should reach across the aisle to get things done and break the gridlock?  You should hide your wallet, lock up your daughters and bury the family silver in the backyard.  You're about to get screwed.  Here are Democrat Debbie Stabenow and Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas:

“This bill represents significant reform,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan and chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “It cuts subsidies, it cuts the deficit and it creates jobs.”


Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and the ranking member on the committee, called the legislation the best bill possible. “It shows what can happen if we break the logjam of partisanship and work together to get something done,” Mr. Roberts said.

 Debbie, you ignorant slut.
You claim that this theft "creates jobs".  But what is the cost of taking the money from taxpayer A and giving it to farmer B?  Has it occurred to you that taxpayer A might have wanted to create some jobs of his own, you Statist looter?  
And Pat, a lot of us were depending on that logjam that you just managed to "break".  We want it back.  We want you to be tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.
In addition to wanting to give money to farmers, Pat Roberts also wants to lower the tax burden on Kansas taxpayers.  Gag me with a dirty diaper.  Anyone voting for this old fraud should have his taxes doubled. 


God almighty, I'm in a bad mood this morning. 

Here's the skinny on the "shallow loss" farming program.  The older programs guaranteed an income.  This new one guarantees a profit.  Well done, Pat and Debbie.  Well done. 

Shallow-loss programs are costly: Depending on structure and crop prices, these programs could cost the taxpayer as much as or more than the direct payments program they would replace, averaging as much as $8 to $14 billion a year over the next five years.

 

• Shallow-loss programs amount to a new entitlement: Payments would be automatically triggered by revenue shortfalls and would be linked to average revenues over the past five years. So, when prices and yields increase, payment triggers will also increase, creating a new, partially disguised entitlement program that locks farmers into near-record incomes at the taxpayer’s expense.

• Shallow-loss programs based on farm-level yields create incentives for the wasteful use of economic resources by buying down deductibles associated with federal crop insurance: Farmers would reap the benefits of record crop yields and prices. However, because a high percentage of revenues are guaranteed, farmers may adopt more risky farming techniques.

• The Congressional Budget Office’s cost estimates for shallow-loss programs assume that recent historically high prices will be sustained: If corn, wheat, soybean, rice, and cotton prices return to the average levels observed between 1996 and 2011, however, program costs will balloon. A county-based program would cost taxpayers between $8.4 and $13.98 billion, depending on the rate of reimbursement. The Stabenow-Roberts shallow-loss proposal would likely cost taxpayers between $5 billion and $7 billion, depending on the mix of farm-based and county-based programs.

• Shallow-loss programs will perpetuate the federal farm program tradition of giving the majority of subsidies to farms that do not need them in the first place: Shallow-loss subsidies, like direct payments and crop insurance subsidies, would be tied to the amount of land that households farm. Consequently, the largest and wealthiest farmers enjoy built-in buffers in the form of substantial equity in their farm operations (debt-to-asset ratios average less than 9 percent in the entire American agricultural sector). These individuals would receive the lion’s share of shallow-loss subsidy payments.

Here's how it ought to work.
If corn prices aren't high enough for farmers to make a profit, that means there are too many people growing corn.
The farmers affected need to grow something else. Or become upholsterers.

Governmental Irony

Since 4 people have forwarded this to me already, I'm going to post it.

Which variety of wasteful spending creates the most jobs?

Our government employees are now arguing over which type of wasteful spending creates the most jobs - Military waste, or Domestic waste. 

From ThinkProgress:

Facing deep spending cuts, the Department of Defense, including Secretary Leon Panetta, and military-industrial trade associations have complained that tightening the U.S. security budget will cause greater unemployment. And even while toeing the (dubious) conservative line that government spending cannot create jobs, right wingers like Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) insist that military spending must stay high to keep unemployment from increasing.


But a new study (PDF) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) highlighted by economist Dean Baker shows that, contra the conservative talking point, non-military spending can create more jobs than money going to defense programs. (Blah blah blah blah blah....Hit the link at the top to read the whole thing.)  Among them, military spending was the lowest, creating fewer jobs per billion dollars spent than even consumer-oriented tax cuts.


Here’s a chart from the study showing how many jobs each area produced from a billion dollars in spending:

Great God Almighty, where to begin, where to begin....

Let's start with the motivations of entrepreneurs in the real world.  Think of the people you know who have started their own businesses.  I've never heard someone describe the experience by saying "Well, you know, I had this overwhelming urge to work 80 hour weeks, with no guarantee of a reward, so that I could hire a lot of people."
But letting entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses are the only way to grow the economy, and that's the only way out of the current swamp where we find ourselves.  Uncle Sam's remedies are politcally-oriented, not economically-oriented.  The Obamamedia have done such an outstanding job of parroting Barry's "jobs created or saved" bullshit, no Congressman will ever again stand in front of a microphone and boast of lowering taxes on businesses so they can grow and make a lot of money (and incidentally, maybe hire people). 

On to the next point....  Do domestic spending boondoggles create more jobs than military boondoggles?  That's an interesting question, one that I hope will be fully answered in the next life. 
In the meantime, debating such gibberish is contributing to the problem. 
It doesn't matter if we're going to the Middle East to blow up brown children, or preserving the Department of Education to destroy our own children.  If we're doing either of these to create jobs in the U.S., we're screwing up.  It would destroy fewer resources and minds if we paid the soldiers and education bureaucrats to stay home.  Long-term welfare, according to a lot of experts, is harmful.  But it's not as harmful as maintaining bad programs to "create jobs", right? 

Third, nowhere in this idiotic article does the author acknowledge that the money from this crap comes from someplace else: taxes, loans, or Bernanke's printing press. 
Taxes are a necessary evil, even at the lowest rates.  At worst, they stifle growth. 
Taking out loans to be paid by unborn fetuses?  Let's go ahead and call that bad. 
Bernanke's printing presses should be carefully disassembled, and the component parts distributed to the bottoms of lakes and oceans all over the world. 

I hope that I never wake up in the morning and read something like this again. 

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. 

How to overwhelm Uncle Sam's entitlement system

I've said numerous times that I favor the "Open Borders" concept to immigration.  If you want in the door, come on over.  It would be the best possible way to overwhelm Uncle Sam's entitlement system. 

And how can we get all those folks in here, past all the border guards, the Tortilla Curtain, and the coast guard? 

Go 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.