[DRB]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13622029/

Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country, he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old asphalt contractor who wanted to build a dream house for his wife of 40 years.

Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual "direct payments," because years ago the land was used to grow rice.

Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post.

The checks to Matthews and other landowners were intended 10 years ago as a first step toward eventually eliminating costly, decades-old farm subsidies. Instead, the payments have grown into an even larger subsidy that benefits millionaire landowners, foreign speculators and absentee landlords, as well as farmers.

The cash comes with so few restrictions that subdivision developers who buy farmland advertise that homeowners can collect farm subsidies on their new back yards.

Dear President Bush, Congress, et.al,
How 'bout y'all fix this before worrying about gay marriage or flag burning? If not I'm going to unleash my squirrel army on you.

Thanks for taking care of that.

Sincerely,
DRB
The King of Friday.

 

[ALEXIS_DH]

how interesting...

theoretically, you make uncle sam pay for your immigration.

at the door, a green card/citizenship costs 1 million bucks, or 500k if you invest in rural areas.
if you invest 500k in an economic-proof subsidized farm, then in about the time of your average mortagage, you get your money back plus whatever extra money you make out of selling the crops...

if you were a terrorist, you could make uncle sam finance its own attack.

 

[BurlyShirley]

This is the kind of **** that pisses me off. TN is REALLY bad about it, because tobacoo farmers get paid NOT to grow tobacco now, so they just dont do anything... Come on. There's all kinds of crap like this out there too.

 

[MudGrrl]

Does anyone get paid to not grow pot?

 

[valve bouncer]

No votes in pissing off the farm lobby, true in Australia, true in Japan and true in America too I'd bet.

 

[DRB]

No votes in pissing off the farm lobby, true in Australia, true in Japan and true in America too I'd bet.

Probably more true here than anywhere else. The freakin' corn lobby is like the Russian mafia.

 

[Westy]

There are also a lot of crop insurance scams. People will get paid for losing crops that never had a chance at making it to harvest, the cost to the farms for crop insurance = 0$.

 

[Random]

There are also a lot of crop insurance scams. People will get paid for losing crops that never had a chance at making it to harvest, the cost to the farms for crop insurance = 0$.

This stuff always pissed my grandpa off so much. People purposely plant extra when it wont have chance so they can say they planted so much seed and it would have yielded so many bushels but in reality they overplanted in poor conditions and nothing grew

 

[Nobody]

Does anyone get paid to not grow pot?

...Canadians...