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Tuesday, June 26, 2012

But of course THEIR government subsidy is deserved, unlike all those "undeserving" recipients, right?
Posted by Jill | 6:17 AM
It seems that when Willard Rmoney appeared on Face the Nation last Sunday to rail against government spending, he did so against a backdrop of a farm that gets a nice fat chunk of federal farm subsidies. What makes this interesting is that the owners of the farm see no inconsistency between their own raking in of six figures of federal cash and their insistence that the government needs to "cut spending":
Jeff and Karen Zuck, who own the 160-acre, 117-head dairy farm that was Romney’s chosen backdrop for the rare non-Fox interview, have collected $195,631 in federal subsidies since 1995. The $44,549 in grants they got in 2009, Barack Obama’s first year in office, was almost twice their previous high in 2002, and was a consequence of the heightened subsidies the Obama administration rushed to deliver as milk prices plummeted in the recession. Only 20 farms in subsidy-rich Lebanon County, Penn., received more federal aid than the Zucks in 2009, and only 30 exceeded the Zuck subsidy over the prior decade and a half. But the farm didn’t even appear on the top 50 list in George W. Bush’s final year in office, when they received a measly $1,177 in subsidies, less than three percent of what Obama gave them the next year. Regardless, Karen Zuck told The Daily Beast that she and her husband back Romney. “I haven’t liked Obama since before he was president,” said Zuck, who had a hard time pinpointing exactly what she likes about Romney, other than her belief that he’s “going to do more” about “keeping regulations down.” Acknowledging that 2009 and 2010 were their “darkest years,” Zuck admitted that “maybe we did get something from it,” a reference to the Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Program (DELAP) that Obama jump-started in 2009 ($10,243 for the Zucks), and the Milk Income Loss Contract Payment Program that Obama infused with new funding ($34,944 for the Zucks). “We get enough,” said Zuck. “But we’d rather not,” she added, insisting that she’d prefer to let milk prices rise on their own.
Yeah, right. Because these are just principled conservatives who are willing to sacrifice that nice fat check in the name of "cutting spending", right? Isn't that funny, then, that they went right ahead and cashed the checks.

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4 Comments:
Anonymous The Wifely Person said...
The problem is that if you remove the price supports and let milk et al rise on its own, soon the staples would be out of the reach of a whole lotta people. That's not to say farm subsidies aren't abused; they are.

I would suggest that people like the Zucks who publicly bite the hand that feeds them be waived out of the program since they disagree with it and believe its has no merit. Taking the money under those circumstances is unethical and probably immoral.

Oh, wait. They ARE unethical and immoral. In the words of the late, great Emily Litella, "Never mind."
6/26/12, 7:49 AM  
Blogger The New York Crank said...
Right. And wait 'till also those red state Romney voters discover that their Medicare and Social Security benefits are government spending that Romney intends to cut.

Crankily yours,
The New York Crank
6/26/12, 1:33 PM  
Blogger Grung_e_Gene said...
This has been the aim of the Rich for decades.

What they've done is poison the minds of millions of Americans. "Government is the problem..." and the Rich then simply stepped in and started stealing tax payer money.

They learned in the S&L Bailout and then with the Trillions in TARP that no amount of gambling would keep them from the public tit.

They learned crying war would open the spigot of bid-free government contracts and the poor and oppressed would help them open the spigot.

They learned while stealing TRillions through DoD Contracts that they could get states to issue them special tax empemptions to funnel their stolen welfare into off-shore bank accounts.

And they learned all they needed to do was shout Socialism and Death panels to get Americans to vote away their birthrights and consign themselves to wage slavery.
6/26/12, 2:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
So the Zucks have had more government support under Obama, haven't liked Obama since before he was President, and can't really say what they like about Romney. Whenever I read something like that, I'm always seeing a subtext of race. "Don't like the black guy, like the white guy, don't know why, really." Maybe that's not fair, but that's what I think.
6/26/12, 11:09 PM  
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