Free Republic

Urban 'farmers' reap benefits of subsidies Even though he lives in a city that has 17,857 people per square mile and actually drives a truck for a living, Donald Jacobs, 65, of Paterson, is a farmer, according to the federal government.Because he is a farmer, Jacobs receives a subsidy each year from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the crops he hires someone to plant on 13 acres he owns in Salem County.President Bush's 2006 budget takes aim at farm subsidies, proposing to cut all crop and dairy payments by 5 percent and limit the total per-farmer payout to $260,000....

TOLEDO, Ohio - Some farmers from battleground election states who campaigned and voted for President Bush (news - web sites) say they are not happy about proposed cuts in federal farm subsidies and other agriculture programs. "We wouldn't call it a double-cross or anything like that, but I don't think this is going to sit real well," said Harold Bateson, whose family's grain farm covers 2,300 acres in northwest Ohio near Bowling Green. The president has proposed an across-the-board cut of 5 percent for all farm payments and a reduction in the cap on individual subsidies to $250,000. The cuts...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - California's cotton and rice farmers, who receive more than $500 million a year in federal farm subsidies, are preparing for a fight over President Bush's proposed subsidy cuts. The president proposed a $587 million budget cut in farm subsidies nationwide. That would most affect the state's farmers of cotton and rice, which have a combined acreage of about 1.2 million acres throughout California. Bush proposed a 5 percent reduction in support payments, a new $250,000 ceiling on payments to individual farmers and an end to loopholes that allow some farmers to claim multiple owners of their farm...

Times Square. The Empire State Building. Grand Central Terminal. Ah, the sights, the smells, the peaceful sounds of farm country. Farm country? When politicians start handing out subsidies, you never can tell. Hundreds of federally subsidized farmers live in New York City. Among them is Mike Sonnenfeldt. He lives in the same building as Steven Spielberg and Steve Martin, and he gets cotton subsidies. I asked him whether he grows any cotton. "I have no idea," he said. "I bought a piece of property that got traded for a piece of property. ... I'm not sure exactly even why I...

Imagine government activism during the 11th Century in Europe. This would involve the Sheriff of Nottingham riding out with his men and trying to hang Robin Hood so that he could steal from the poor and give to his drinking buddies, the rich. The truly conservative believe that the essential nature of government activism hasn't changed a whole lot since back when things were rotten and Mel Brooks would have been pincushioned with arrows for having any part of Robin Hood: Men In Tights. No segment of America's overbloated and sometimes highly uncivil government service gives the conservative view of...

The Bush administration is set to take on one of the great scandals of American governance: a system of farm subsidies so perverse that it should get whatever the equivalent of an NC-17 rating is for a federal program. Decent people everywhere should want to avert their eyes. In seeking to cut and reform the subsidies, President Bush will provoke a fight every bit as fierce, in its own way, as that over Social Security, prompting opposition from the forces of greed and political cowardice. Farm subsidies as we know them grew up around the Great Depression, when they didn't...

Taxpayers funding Washington's $20,000-per-household budget have long known they are not getting their money's worth. Farm subsidies are among the most wasteful uses of taxpayer dollars. The budget-busting $180 billion farm bill enacted before the 2002 elections not only encourages the crop overproduction that depresses crop prices and farm incomes, but also undermines trade and encourages other nations to refuse American exports. Perhaps worst of all, farm subsidies are not distributed to the small, struggling family farmers whom lawmakers typically mention when defending these policies. Rather, most farm subsidies are distributed to large farms, agribusinesses, politicians, and celebrity "hobby farmers."...