What are you implying?
Posted on 12/16/2007 12:04:09 AM PST by BIGLOOK
Here's today's quiz: What do Scottie Pippen, David Letterman and Ted Turner have in common? Answer: None of them are farmers, but all three have received thousands of dollars in federal farm subsidies this decade.
We could add to that list of non-farmer farm-aid recipients David Rockefeller, Leonard Lauder of the cosmetics firm, Edgar Bronfman Sr. of the Seagram fortune, and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Our point is that you don't have to drive a tractor, plant seeds, or even live anywhere near rural America to qualify for Uncle Sam's farm largess. And you sure don't have to be poor.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Prominent Coloradans .....ping.
I'll post essentially what I posted last time this appeared on FR.
I expect better quality from the WSJ. Red Ted is heavily engaged in agriculture. He owns a ranch out west, and last time I looked, he still had several plantations scattered around the south.
Here’s a link to the previous posting and 68 comments.
Green Acres (562 Farm Subsidy Checks Go To Manhattan)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938173/posts
Posted by shrinkermd
On News/Activism 12/11/2007 7:35:44 PM CST · 68 replies
Wall Street Journal ^ | 11 December 2007 | Editorial Staff
Here’s today’s quiz: What do Scottie Pippen, David Letterman and Ted Turner have in common?
He “owns” and he “has”, but these are abstract considerations, and his “involvement” is surely on a similarly abstract plane. The purpose of these subsidies was, and is ( as far as any purpose may be advanced on principle ) to aid “struggling farmers”, not to provide financial opportunities to the super wealthy.
He needs government subsidies to operate them??
I didn’t know this was out before. Just got it off WSJO.
Oh.....and everyone above is right.
If you are a socialist, and the government offers you free money, are you going to think about 'need'?
That might be what the politicians tell the gullible, but the laws are carefully drawn to benefit the big contributors as well.
Well Ted does own the Braves’ “farm” system.
These very wealthy “gentleman farmers” always have the option of simply giving it back, you know. Or doing some Don Imus sort of thing like supporting a rural retreat for the “underpriviliged” kids, which would be a way of maximizing the return of the dollars that would be simply sprinkles on the icing, so to speak.
Most of these payments are for “CRP” land, that is intentionally held out of production, and is sort of a strategic reserve for farmland, meant to artificially reduce the total production of agricultural goods, either as feed grains or as pasture land. This practice is also used to reduce the pressure on “environmentally sensitive” land, subject to flooding or erosion. It is a means of ensuring the level of a “livable” rate of return for land ownership, and is really not that new of an idea, since it was originally instituted in the early days of the New Deal.
These farmland use restriction payments do absolutely nothing for farms below a certain minimum size.
A good website to check on how much money friends and relatives are collecting.
http://farm.ewg.org/farm/index.php?key=nosign
Let’s be fair and call them plantations. ;)
>>>>Red Ted is heavily engaged in agriculture.
Just how involved is he? Day to day? Does he interview the hands that do the work? Does he plan the crop? Does he plant the crop? Harvest? Just what does he do that engages him so? Being a landowner does not engage one in agriculture.
Remember that once you sign up for CREP and you start receiving farm subsidy benefits, you cannot do any farming on your land for the length of the contract (usually 10 to 15 years).
This really irritates me. Someone in my estranged family (now you know why) is on this list. He was able to give his wife $500,000.00 in a divorce settlement. We are giving him almost 150,000.
What are you implying?
Must be cold in Green Acres today.
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