Oct 22 2008
Senator Government: What spreading the wealth around means for rural Americans
During the last debate, Senator McCain slipped up and called Senator Obama “Senator Government.” He was right.
The grand socialist experiment of “spreading the wealth around” that Senator Obama suggests will benefit all of America has already been tried. It failed miserably. You see, the failed agriculture policies of urban elitists have been in place for decades in the dairy industry. The consequences have been disastrous for both the rural community and consumers.
The price support program was started in 1949 to help keep America’s dairy farmers competitive in the post-WWII Era. To ensure that dairy farmers get a minimum price for their products, the government buys the excess and then either gives it away or turns around and sells it for a loss on the open market. Either way, the taxpayers experience a net loss and even worse, the practice allows marginal farmers to stay in business at the expense of taxpayers. Even worse, the practice fostered the practice now known as confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), or factory farms. This is a prime example of how spreading the wealth around contributed to poor agriculture practices, environmental degradation and the collapse of the rural economy.
The Dairy Price Support program spreads the wealth around to all conventional farmers, even the bad ones. A farmer down the road from me is a perfect illustration of how damaging these price supports are to everyone in the rural community and to American taxpayers. His farm is filthy. He has a giant pit behind his barn were he puts his dead cows, and he losses a lot of them because of his poor farming practices. He pumps them full of antibiotics so he doesn’t have to clean his barn. He never lets his cows go outside, so they lie in their own excrement all day long. His milk is contaminated with feces. It’s so bad the USDA has threatened to shut him down numerous times, but never has. (It has to be beyond repugnant for the government to shut a dairy producer down.) This farmer gets paid the same price for his foul milk as another farmer who runs a spotless operation. Not fair you say? Well, spreading the wealth around isn’t fair. It rewards laziness and punishes success.
So, Senator Government is wrong, dead wrong, about spreading the wealth around. Not only is it anti-American, it’s a death wish for our economy. Just drive out the country to see this failed Marxist plan in action.
Oh, and one last thing, when you buy non-organic milk, you are drinking milk that came from a government-supported CAFO. You’re not helping family farmers; you’re supporting the mistreatment of animals and drinking milk that is contaminated with feces, antibiotics and growth hormones. Every glass of non-organic milk you drink supports a Marxist practice and encourages environmental degradation.
