It’s not welfare if I get it. I deserve it. Unlike Those People.
Rice farmers in the Mississippi delta are feeling the effects of the disastrous trade policies.
At a recent Mississippi Farm Bureau meeting, producers even discussed asking the federal government to pay them to destroy stored rice, echoing surplus programs from the 1980s farm crisis, the New York Times reports. At his farm, Westerfield asked, “What am I supposed to do with 2.2 million pounds of rice?”
I can’t quite remember which party was in power during the 1980s farm crisis.
Carter and Reagan.
aka The Sweeney !
No, just Reagan, who started as POTUS in 1980.
Carter was the end of the 70’s. He is traditionally blamed for high inflation, Three Mile Island, and the Iran Hostage Crisis.
Reagan was the farm crisis, air traffic controller’s strike, and trickle-down economics.
Reagan took office in Jan 1981, so Carter would have been in office for anything in 1980.
Though, a lot of the issues with farms really got going in the late 70s, anyway, so the arbitrary 1980 cutoff didn’t affect the growing crisis that started under Carter’s watch. It did become progressively worse through Reagan’s first term, though.
Right, per the Wikipedia article, the 1980s farm crisis was caused by the high inflation of the 1970s (which can be blamed on Nixon meddling with the Fed at the beginning of the decade) which then led to high interest rates (up to 21.5%!) on loans; combined with high oil prices still lingering from the 1973 oil crisis; followed by the 1980 grain embargo on the Soviet Union by Carter in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, causing grain exports to drop by 20%. So dramatically increased costs for farmers combined with lower income due to the embargo resulted in a crisis.
Hard to pin this one on Reagan, though. The die was cast before he took office.
Reagan did his fair share, however. Read what an attorney who represented farmers had to say about the crisis. (Link)
Most of my clients were small and mid-sized farmers who had borrowed from the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), a lending agency of the US Department of Agriculture. In 1981, under the direction of Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, FmHA began an aggressive campaign of “reducing delinquencies” that was ostensibly aimed at reducing the federal deficit. In order to meet delinquency reduction goals (“quotas”) set in Washington, FmHA bureaucrats in small county seats throughout the country began to shut down and force out thousands of farmers who were behind on their loan payments. In 1978, Congress said farmers had the right to apply to FmHA for a deferral of payments if they were behind due to circumstances beyond their control, but FmHA simply ignored the deferral law.
My clients in North Dakota received notices that their loans had been “accelerated”—that the debt they thought they had decades to repay had to be paid in full in 15 or 30 days. They were told they had to pick one of two options: “voluntarily liquidate” or “be shut down.” If they didn’t quit “voluntarily,” FmHA used ruthless methods to starve them out. FmHA seized all of the farmers’ income from sales of crops and milk and emptied supervised bank accounts, leaving nothing for living expenses for the farmers or feed for their livestock.
I apologize for introducing this off-topic discussion. Hopefully the thread will get back on track.
I stand corrected. Thanks for the info.
I laughed 
And Iran Contra
You are right Contra came out in 1987 so he presided over that impossible to play video game without the Konami code!
It was a fun game though…
//i\\
Also—lest we forget—Bedtime for Bonzo.
I haven’t felt this bad since we saw that Ronald Reagan film!
Peggy/Tamba you were so close,
During production, Reagan was nearly suffocated by the chimpanzee when it pulled on his necktie. After Reagan broke free, the tie had to be cut by a crewmember in order to remove it.
The chimpanzee’s name was either Peggy or Tamba; conflicting names are provided in media accounts.
Bedtime for Bonzo - Wikipedia
I could beat it with the 3(?) standard lives (although that was after practicing with the extra cheat code ones). Spread gun for the win!
My security software alerted on that Rice News page.
Ammon Bundy (remember him?) thinks ICE has gone too far.
Bundy had a similar break with your typical MAGA a few years back when it came to immigration. His particular religious beliefs place an emphasis on helping the poor, downtrodden coming to your land seeking help.
Mine did as well.