With genuine sincerity and seemingly no understanding of the hypocrisy, thus is ushered in a new Farm Bill with ever more largess to benefit the Las Vegas ranchers.
Steel, lumber, agricultural produce, reckon there might just be a pattern here? Free trade is something others are free to do maybe?
A further decade of international markets being corrupted by US export enhancement programs dumping the excess.
The isolationist with a semi-permeable membrane.
Equitable? Fuck you.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Bush is a frickin idiot. What a stinking waste of a Republican presidency.
Aren’t they all?
Sam
NAFTA was designed to permit US farm subsidies, so Shrub is correct. Damn socialist Americans.
I spent a couple of minutes looking at this bill this morning. I had a vision of our President, nude except for a blue jacket and red bow-tie, yet strangely lacking genitalia, getting up early to sign the bill, and saying,
“Ebidibididibididib, that’s all, folks!”
This is pork-barrel politics at its finest. Somewhere out there in farm country is the one senatorial candidate needed to sway all of Congress back into the Republican camp. So the President just tried to buy 'em all.
I promise I’ll do the one thing I can do to try to reverse this, come November, which is to vote. But you better hope someone gets the bright idea to run a Warner Brothers marathon on election day out there in South Dakota, 'cause things are looking a little close.
You’re a braver men than me, wooly. But then you knew that didn’t you?
Or are you counting on merkin incomprehension?
Nah, just brave.
Rebdoss
GWB: “This Bill is consistent with our commitment to free trade”
How true, how true.
So ridiculous farm subsidies are the domain of the Republicans now? Seems to every four, five years an Omnibus Farm bill makes it’s way through the legislature. And you can be sure there’s congress critters from both sides of the aisle voting their approval of these foolish things.
Or perhaps you are merely decrying the pesident’s (faulty, in my opinion, too) linking of farm subsidies to “free trade.” If that’s the true case, statements such as “With genuine sincerity and seemingly no understanding of the hypocrisy, thus is ushered in a new Farm Bill with ever more largess to benefit the Las Vegas ranchers,” do nothing to bolster your argument and would be best left on the keyboard.
Just for giggles, here’s a link to the transcript of Bush’s speech at the signing of this bill - http://www.usda.gov/news/releases/2002/05/farmbill2002.htm
Of course, even Ben Franklin, in 1769, got caught in a rare moment of idiocy when speaking about farmers and farming. “There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbours. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.”
And farm policy has been a downhill trip ever since.
I’m reminded of what P.J. O’Rourke said about the farm omnibus bill in his book Parliament of Whores:
“Take it out behind the barn, and kill it with an axe.”
He wrote that over ten years ago. I think it would still apply today.
I’m a Republican, and I voted for Bush, Jr. in the last election. I’m profoundly disappointed in his hypocrisy regarding free trade policies.
Being from one of the naff “Cairns Group” countries that rages against the dying of the light whilst getting kicked in the goolies on trade by US administrations of either persuasion, this is an apolitical vent.
GWB just happens to be the Big Cheese signing this piece of paper into law and making a pretty good impression that he believes in this.
This is a big ticket item on this side of the Pacific. It directly threatens AUD30billion [USD16bil] in our annual trade income. The GWB speech was broadcast verbatium on this mornings news bulletins. (thanks for the link) It certainly make me giggle, didn’t do much to dull the pain though. It’s lucky we’re an ally.
My apologies, I thought this was in the Pit?
I thought that GWB’s remarks were part of the hype for the May 16th release of Attack of the Clones.
The Evil “Count Dooku”, from the novelization:
I hope that this line makes it into the films – Creepy Christopher Lee speaking these lines will make my day, particularly since Bush Sr. & Mulroney’s legacy of NAFTA has resulted in a >300% increase in my gas-bill. I already hear a suggestion of John Williams’ Emperor’s March whenever I see television footage of Bush Jr.
From Bush’s speech:
Hey, my livelihood depends on things I can’t control. Why is there no bicycle messenger bill giving us our own security net, and cheap loans, and billions of dollars in aid and all that?
Sure. Any bets as to when the farm lobby starts claiming the need for supplemental support?
Actually, the speech made the bill sound like a good thing. It’s not, of course, but Bush really kind of didn’t dwell on that part.
I’m still trying to get my head around his rationale for 30% tariffs on steel imports. From that steel speech:
“We’re a free trading nation,” he said announcing the tariffs 
, “and in order to remain a free-trading nation we must enforce the law.”
And then from today’s speech:
“Americans cannot eat all that America’s farmers and ranchers produce. And therefore, it makes sense to sell more food abroad. Today, 25 percent of U.S. farm income is generated by exports, which means that access to foreign markets is crucial to the livelihood of our farmers and ranchers.”
Tariffs on imports but access to foreign markets, encouraging inefficiency, encouraging overproduction and now, with this move, the US taxpayer pays more for their food but makes it cheaper for those buying it overseas.
It seems a curious way to run an economy.
Damn, you beat me to it!
Ironically, the farming community in the Great White Socialist North gets no such special treatment. In fact, the prairie farmers in Canada have been crying foul since the dawn of time about the shabby treatment they have received from Ottawa. The All-Powerful Wheat Board, which sets grain prices at whatever price Ontario sees fit, is a prime example, as it claims to give all farmers access to “fair market value” for their product, but makes it illegal for farmers to seek out a better price on the open market.
The fact that our government lacks a Triple-E senate certainly weighs into this equation. If Ottawa had to worry about 30% of the senate coming from the farmers in the west and 30% coming from the starving fishing communities in the east, I’m quite sure we’d see concessions that would put us on better footing relative to our largest trade partner, a partner that spends a piss-pile of money keeping it’s farmers a step or three ahead of everyone else.
Boo to Bush for making a mockery of NAFTA. And double boo to Clown Prince Crétien for not doing anything about it.
Devil’s advocate here:
Currently, Americans are paying the lowest percentage of their income for food of any society in the history of the world. Call U.S. farm policy bad if you choose, but it’s apparently better than anything else anybody else has come up with, ever .
How is that figured? Including the tens of billions of dollars that we spend on these farm bills every year? Or just cosidering the supermarket price?
Dread Pirate Jimbo: Well, coming from a Canadian farming family, I can tell you that they get subsidies a-plenty.
The U.S. farm bill is a disaster. You won’t find a political figure outside of the government that will support it. Everyone on the left and right condemned it.
However… I have to think that ANY president would have signed this. And of course, Tom Daschle AND Tom Delay were for it in a big way. This is an election year, with a lot of swing states in the farm belt. A bill like this was inevitable.
Still, I wish Bush would have had the spine to stand up to it. Especially since he has a 70%+ approval rating.
If Bush keeps this up, Clinton is going to go down as a more conservative president. Clinton actually signed the farm bill that was supposed to curb subsidies. Clinton actually worked for Free trade. Domestic government spending under Clinton grew much slower than it’s growing under Bush.
I feel like we need to apologize to the rest of the world for calling ourselves a free trade advocate and then doing this, plus the steel fiasco. 
Yes, the above statement includes adding that portion of taxes that equates to farm subsidies.
“Tens of billions of dollars per year”: Almost, but you missed a little. 190 billion over ten years comes out to 19 billion per year, just short of being able to call it “tens of billions.”
Also, remember that there are many things funded through the “Farm Bill” that have little to do with farmers. Funding for the Food Stamp program, WIC, school lunches, and other Federal nutritional programs is authorized through the Farm Bill. This is done so that the politicians with non- farm constituencies don’t have to answer questions about “All that welfare.” They can point and blame the farmers for getting the money, since the funding is hidden within the Farm Bill.
Significant portions of the Farm Bill outlays have to do with conservation. Typically, this money is delivered to farmers by paying 50% of the cost of carrying out conservation practices that they would not do without financial assistance. These practices are not linked to increasing a farm’s production, so the financial benefits to the farmer are practically nil. Clean water, and reduced soil erosion that muddies streams and rivers, should considered to be for the good of the population as a whole.
“…largesse to benefit the Las Vegas ranchers” There are no payments issued due to production of cattle or horses. In times of a declared drought, there may be some disaster assistance available to ranchers.
What the U.S. has is not really a farm subsidy program, it is a consumer subsidy program. The policy of controlled over-production guarantees that farmers will have to sell their crops at or below the cost of production. Then the Government steps in and doles out just enough money to keep the farmers from saying “To hell with it” and quitting.
If U.S. farming was allowed to float, enough independent operators would quit that the major corporations could control and set prices. Food prices at the retail level would quadruple or worse. Then indeed would the aroused populace rise and seek to “Throw the rascally politicians out.”
Thus “Farm Subsidies”.
For cites, check your local newspaper on the current bill, or go to “www.usda.gov” and peruse to your heart’s content.
