Bribing growers

Let’s call it what it is.  The Trump administration is bribing growers in agricultural states rich in electoral college votes. 

Cotton farmers were paid 33 times as much in subsidies in 2019 as the income they lost in the trade war.  $28 billion went to aid farmers because of the trade wars, and you can be that the bulk of that money did not go to small family farms.  Jim Justice, the billionaire Republican Governor of West Virginia, collected $375,000 in trade relief payments.  I doubt if he needed our tax money.

Trump noted the rise in farm incomes in January.  “Under three years of my administration net farm income has already gone up nearly 50 percent and will now be rising even faster.”  That’s our money.

According to an article in the Times News last week two guys in a pickup truck yelled at a protestor in Palmerton, complaining that their hard earned money went to taxes to pay for welfare and SNAP payments to minorities.  

Yeah, but not the minorities they are thinking about.  It goes to CEOs, corporate farmers, the already rich who fatten at the public trough.  The corruption of this administration is truly amazing, and yet a third of the people blame hungry people and ignore the subsidies for the greedy gluttons at the top.

The statistics are from Sharon LaFraniere, “More Billions to Farms, This Time for Virus Aid,” New York Times (June 8, 2020), p. A1, A10.