Posted on 12/11/2007 5:35:44 PM PST by shrinkermd
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.
The Environmental Working Group has a map of New York City making the rounds on the Internet that shows 562 dots, each representing a Manhattan resident who gets a USDA farm payment. Who knew that growing cotton, corn and soybeans was such a thriving industry near Central Park? We don't know the incomes of these people, but it's a fair guess they're not homeless.
What we have here is a real-life version of the 1960s TV show "Green Acres," but in reverse. In the fictional series, Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor play a fancy couple who flee Manhattan to live down on the farm among the pigs and goats, while she pines for the glitter of Times Square. In the 2007 version, they flee the farm for Manhattan and get a subsidy check at their Park Avenue penthouse. What a deal.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Perhaps a difference between a mailing address and a physical address. IE. Owns a farm run by others lives in Manhattan ?
Growing something in their basements, something needing a lot of artificial light and a clandestine existence?
bmflr
.
.
.
Why the smart money is on Duncan Hunter
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1926032/posts
Lets see....Letterman resides in CT., has office, corp headquarters and works in NYC and has a ranch in Montana. Doesn’t seen to difficult to understand.
Exactly. I know someone who’s in that category. Manhattan agribusiness banker, still owns farmland in Nebraska where he’s originally from, definitely not living in any “Park Avenue penthouse”. Probably could make a lot more money if he sold the farmland to a developer and invested the proceeds in something else, but he doesn’t want to. I’m sure the subsidy helps him continue to feel that way.
Manhattan......Kansas....?
He gets paid not to grow corn on his ranch.
The best reason that these subsidies should be terminated.
Stopping the farm subsidies and you will be paying $9.00 for a burger. The Government pays the farmers to keep the cost of food down.
I got a whole yard to not grow anything in. Where’s my check? Do I get exta if I also not grow stuff in some of my neighbors’ yards? Because I could start not doing that right away. In fact, now that I think of it, I started not doing that a long time ago so they probably owe me already, huh?
Yeah right... I suppose you are also the exclusive realtor for the Brooklyn Bridge too?
I know that I am 100% right. $9.00 burgers coming soon!
I can't speak to the other names, but Ted Turner is the largest landowner in several Kansas and Montana counties.
I can attest that the Kansas properties are under cultivation or serving as grazing land.
Ted might be a liberal kook. But he is also undeniably a farmer.
The editorial staff of the WSJ should know better.
The dairy industry is subsidized through the Dairy Price Support Program (DPSP), which cost taxpayers an average of $500 million per year from fiscal 1999 to fiscal 2004 for the purchase of surplus dairy products.
This is tax money being used to make sure that your food is expensive.
You’ve got it all bass-ackwards — the subsidy keeps the price artificially high. Removing the subsidy would actually lower the price. The fact that we don’t pay $9 for a burger is a testament to the markets, not Uncle Sugar. These folks are the new welfare queens.
Indeed, always boggles my mind how many people defend farm subsidies on a supposedly Conservative forum.
Shockingly, markets work. If subsidies vanished, the price of food wouldn't rise any higher per person than the % of taxes per person going to farm subsidies. And you'd save money because you'd eliminate much of the gigantic Dept. of Agriculture Bureacracy (I can't remember or find the number but the ratio of Ag Dept. employees to actual farmers is some insanely low number..like one for 8 or something.)
PJ O'Rourke has a great chapter on farm subsidies in "Parliament of Whores" - basically a slice of the Warsaw Pact in America.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.