Cory Heidelberger has brought up the issue of plutocracy, and I believe that is an issue we need to understand and more fully discuss. Tony Dean has a post covering Brad Redlin’s, director of the Izaak Walton League's agricultural programs, analysis that provides information on the recent passage of the Farm Bill that I did not catch earlier:
"Unfortunately, this Farm Bill dramatically worsens the already very problematic system of crop production subsidies. The senate’s bill specifically reverses existing safeguards by removing any limit whatsoever on the amount of taxpayer dollars giant farming operations may receive from the primary crop production subsidy. Further, the bill removes a previous stipulation that prohibited recipients with annual incomes greater than $2.5 million from receiving unlimited tax dollars.
I agree that the Farm Bill benefits the already big operators to the detriment of the little guy. Truly an example of plutocracy.
And I found this in today’s Argus Leader coverage of yesterday’s South Dakota Corn Growers Association annual meeting:
Five million acres was planted in the state in 2007, with 560 million bushels harvested for an average of 125 bushels an acre, said Bill Chase of Wolsey, SDCGA vice-president.
"That is phenomenal; that is huge," speaker Mark Pearson said of the record harvest.
Pearson, the host of the public television show "Market to Market," told the 500 people gathered for a morning session that the recently passed national energy bill is more important to corn growers than the farm bill.Darrin Ihnen of Hurley agreed.
"For years, we've been trying to get our price out of the marketplace instead of out of the farm bill and government programs," said Ihnen, a director with the National Corn Growers Association.
"The energy bill has given us that opportunity because it's created such a huge demand for our goods and services."
First off, Ihnen has not thought it through enough to realize that Energy programs is still "government programs". And the Energy programs have as much to do about making both big government and big corporate business interests bigger by using taxpayers’ money to fund public/private partnerships. Of course Ihnen is a "director" of the "National" Corn Growers Association. Whose interests is he looking our for? Family farmers?
And most don’t understand that the 125 per acre yield are done by using expensive chemicals produced by Big Chemical corporations. It cost of lot to put a crop in now a days, and that represents higher barriers of entry which makes it difficult for a person to start up a farming operation. And high barriers of entry hurts competition and is a problem for a "free market enterprise" mode of economics.
And I think the environmentalists such as Tony Dean would admit to the problem of throwing large amounts of chemicals on the land. And I think the long-term impact of that needs to be discussed. It may in fact be a factor in the rising costs of our healthcare, which many are saying the government needs to step in and take care of. But making big bigger is what I see as creating the problems that too many think needs to be fixed by making big bigger.
That is why I join Cory Heidelberger’s concern regarding plutocracy. But, I think the Democrats need to take a look at their agenda that makes governemtn bigger too. It is not just about "Big Corporations" and capitalism. It has more to do with the marriage of BIg Government and BIg Business (I think in the past I called it the marriage of big government Democrats and Country Club Republicans...ala MAINstream Coalition). And we as individuals need to take repsonsibility for ourselves and not look to the government as the solution. in the long run, that is self defeating.
