Farmers vs the Poor

Farmers vs The Poor: Union County, Indiana

Farmers - from Union County, Indiana Top Recipients 2009 || EWG Farm Subsidy Database

"Recipients of Total USDA Subsidies from farms in Union County, Indiana totaled $2,849,000 in in 2009."

The Poor from Pladium Item Article 2010

Assistance varied from nothing spent in Harmony Township last year on poor relief to $3,130 spent in Brownsville Township. Union Township, which includes West College Corner, was the second lowest, spending $444 in 2010, according to townships' annual financial reports.

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Indiana Farmland Values Robust

State farmland values robust | Palladium-Item

Farmland values are rising? Imagine that. I'd guess that having a government welfare program that pays farmers/landowners for every acre of farmland they own has something to do with it.

Here's a link to the top Farmer Welfare recipients in Wayne county in 2009 and from 1995-2009

Wayne County Farm Subsidies 2009

Wayne County Farm Subsidies Total 1995 to 2009

I'm not completely against farm subsidies, they have their place though I think we do over do it. Mostly though, I don't like the hypocritical aspect of the farmers. I believe the dominant Indiana farmer belief is that of a Tea-Bagger, free-market, Fox News watcher, that the government is too big, should cut taxes to the bone and stop paying for all those dead-beats who won't work. Yet the farmer class, one of the weathiest, most powerfull in the area, receives millions to keep them afloat (820 Farms got $6.7 million in Wayne county in 2009). If they can't run the farm like a business and survive, they should be in another line of work. or,... at least stop bitching about about the government and turn Fox news off.

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Farm Land Prices

Farm Notes | pal-item.com | Palladium-Item

On Monday, a panel of Purdue University experts will discuss during a free webinar what factors are behind the steady rise in farmland values.

Could it be that owning farm land is a quick ticket to a government subsidized income? As I said in an earlier post, you get what you pay for. Government farm subsidies increase the demand for farm land which drives up the price. End the subsidies and the price will fall.

Here's what the government pays farmers in this area.

Union County, Indiana Top recipient got almost $58,000 in 2009

Wayne County, Indiana Top recipient got over $70,000 in 2009

You can see info for your area here: EWG Farm Subsidy Database

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Indiana Farmers

Indiana farmers expected to enjoy near record income

... unusually high grain prices should push Indiana's total 2010 farm income to just above $3 billion. That will be near 2008's record high of $3.2 billion. ...

Well good, maybe they can give back some of that farm subsidy cash they take from the tax payers. Of course they may need that cash to help organize those tea-party, smaller government events.

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NAFTA vs Mexico

NAFTA was bad for the Mexican people too? You'd have never know that if you listened only to the US Media.

Free trade, fenced people

Many recent migrants had been farmers prior to NAFTA, when heavily subsidised US agricultural products flooded the Mexican market, destroying their livelihoods.

By 2004, ten years after the agreement was signed, 1.3 million farm jobs had disappeared in Mexico, according to a study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"Operation Gate Keeper [an earlier phase of border militarisation] was launched in 1994 when NAFTA went into effect and I don’t think that was coincidental," Boyce said.

"If you look at the impacts of NAFTA on the majority of people, especially on the demographics who are crossing the border, the arguments for NAFTA have been demonstrably unfounded."

Perhaps, the most lucrative legacy of NAFTA has been the expansion of the drug trade. And the drug gangs are following the basic premises of free trade style capitalism to their logical conclusion: buy low, sell high, make profit, and eliminate your competitors.

US drones prowl Mexico bicentennial

Michele Bachmann On the Dole

So the crazy-eyed, anti-government, religious-crusader Michelle Bachmann is on the government dole. Her husband is taking government money for performing his "christian" counseling while she's taken almost a quarter-million in farm subsidies.

On the dole #1

On the dole #2

On the dole #3

She sounds like most of the tea-baggers i've met, against government for other people but think government for themselves is OK.

Farm Welfare #2

here's the EWG.org listing for Union County, Indiana.

EWG Farm Subsidy Database - Union County Indiana

Over the 1995 to 2006 period, the farmers in one of the smallest counties in Indiana have received a total of over 41 million dollars in US government handed-out, farmer welfare.

Number two on the list, at over 1 million dollars in the period, is a farm partnership that includes an Indiana state congressman,... a republican.

Farmer Welfare

Michele Backmann: Welfare Queen - Truthdig

Typical of the most anti-government Americans today, they're anti-government unless it's a program that feeds their pocketbook.

We really do need to cut back on welfare programs for farmers. I'm surrounded by Fox news watching farmers, that complain about Obama socialism, welfare queens, and socialized medicine while they collect nice farm subsidies and pay less property tax than they should on their mostly inherited land.