There was an excellent Q&A broadcast on C-Span the other day featuring Adam Andrzejewski, the founder of the watchdog site, Openthebooks.com. Click this link for access to the video.
And if you're interested in wasteful farm subsidies click Federal Transfer Report, Farm Subsidies & The Big Dogs for a summary of the downloadable PDF report. Here's part of the summary:
Within Washington, D.C. northern Virginia and Maryland ZIP codes, 2,801 entities received a federal government farm subsidy payment with an aggregated total of $18.478 million. Review our interactive “Washington, D.C. & Beltway Farm Subsidy Heat Map.”
Federal farm subsidy program dollars are flowing into the “urban areas”- where there are no farms. Farm subsidy lobbyists, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture executives, the very well connected, wealthy heirs, and even U.S. Senators are receiving farm subsidy checks.
And something we've known for a long time, most of the subsidies go to big agribusiness, not family farmers:
In fact, small family farms are not receiving much money. Our analysis shows that billions of the FY2008-11 subsidies flowed to just 1.4% of recipients- those receiving at least $250,000! News outlets have repeatedly reported that just 10% of recipients received 74% of the subsidies.
In fact, the farm subsidy is so pervasive and lucrative that many of the top Washington, D.C. farm subsidy recipients are farm subsidy lobbyists, lawyers and executives at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Even elected representatives in the House and Senate are receiving their piece of the federal pie.
Read the whole thing to get more of a flavor of what voters are up against. Furthermore, as we've noted in a prior post, in order to cut back on an entitlement we need the backing of public opinion, a willing president, and a cooperative legislature. Currently we have none of those in regard to farm subsidy handouts.
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2:55 PM 9/11/2017
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