AP: California's rice, cotton groups aim to fight Bush subsidy cuts

Bakersfield Californian ^ | 2/9/05 | Jim Wasserman - AP

[Mr. Lucky]

It's one of those penumbras, like the right to dismember your unborn children.

[RKV]

I don't disagree with you and I grew up in a town in Fresno County where I could walk to cotton fields (and did to hunt pheasant). Long and short of it, Bernie Sisk (DemocRAT of Fresno [deceased] and 20 year chairman of the House Ag Committee) cut a deal with several of his wealthy donors. He got to go on record as creating the Central Valley Project to help family farmers in the western San Joaquin Valley develop large acreages of what would otherwise be near desert (good for a winter crop of barley and that is about all). For his wealthy donors (who included the Harris family [of Harris Ranch Beef] he weaseled a way around the 640 acre water limits. I know this because my family's lawyer helped craft many of the contracts which allowed the wealthy owners of the area to get around the "carefully written" reclamation law.

And yes you are exactly correct that the subsidies are wrong. The guys who get them are still VERY well connected and the fight to get rid of them will not be easy. I think it best to kill them all at once so that their ability to bribe their way out of the termination is reduced. If we bring them down easy they are just as likely to return and/or increase.

[Muleteam1]

>>The market is telling these farmers that their way of life is no longer profitable, so they should find something else to do -- just like people who made buggywhips, or 8-track tapes, or ...<<

The market also has been telling AmTrac, the Post Office, public schools, museums, libraries, NASA, etc, that the people who work in these institutions should find something else to do but Americans keep them going with subsidies. Every American business is subsidized in some fashion either directly or indirectly, e.g., tax benefits or laws to protect them. For me, I would rather subsidize a cotton farm than the auto industry, but that's just me.

Muleteam1

[calcowgirl]

>>While critics point to the subsidies paid to huge corporate farms, such as $6.6 million received by the J.G. Boswell Co., of Kings County, between 1995 and 2003...

I notice the $4 million to the Jones family didn't make the cut.

[Teplukin]

America has a very strong agriculture industry, partially because of enlightened gov't policy. By abandoning price supports, we are doing the will of liberals, as cheap Chinest Communist imports destroy American jobs.

So the question is this: Do you want your money supporting American businessmen or Red Communists? I don't know about you boys, but I am not anxious for the USA to become a servile economic colony of China.