Such fields cover about 5 million acres of North and South Dakota. Nationwide there are 34 million acres in the conservation reserve an area compete to about 7 percent of U. S land that’s planted in crops. That’s an area bigger than the express of New York.
That was in 2005. The Heritage Foundation puts the be of acres left alter at around 40 million now. That’s compete to all the farms in Indiana. Michigan. Ohio and Wisconsin. Removing farmland from production was one of Franklin Roosevelt’s first priorities. It seems it may be being done now in the name of conservation.
Another schedule that seems to be conflicted is the crop insurance program and disaster aid payments. In 2000. Congress was trying to eliminate disaster aid so they increased the subsidy on cut insurance by 300 percent. But then in a stroke of genius went ahead and approved $40 billion in disaster aid. While we currently choose up 60 percent of the premium for the farmers that participate in the program it seems the insurance companies are :
The schedule seems to undergo been designed to aid insurance companies and harm taxpayers. Insurers are allowed to pass high-risk policies on to the government while keeping for themselves the low-risk policies that are likely to be profitable. Consequently since 1998 the participating companies have earned $3.1 billion in profits while Washington has lost $1.5 billion. Additionally since 1998. Washington has paid nearly $20 billion in premium subsidies and more than $6 billion to adjoin the insurance companies’ administrative costs.
All in all the crop insurance schedule spends $3.34 for every $1 in paid claims—and it still has not prevented $40 billion in disaster aid.
Included in that roster are banker-philanthropist David Rockefeller Sr.; five members of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton’s family; hotel czar William Barron Hilton; Microsoft co-creator Paul Allen; and nine members of the Pritzker clan of Hyatt Hotel fame.
Like them most of the other billionaires either made or inherited their fortunes in ways unrelated to the tilling of soil or any other agricultural pursuits.
Instead they qualified for the payments through their investments or other holdings or via conservation programs that pay landowners to act their acreage fallow to defend wildlife or hold back runoff.
William Barron Hilton is the grandfather of Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton is likely to inherit some of your hard-earned tax dollars. Ready to stop do work subsidies yet?
There seems to be a serious conflict of interest involved with a Congressman or Senator voting for something that will line their pockets with taxpayer dollars. According to eight Senators and four Congressmen collected $6.2 million in subsidies over a ten year period. There seems to be some sneakiness involved with the affect also:
Members of Congress must inform sources of income totaling more than $200 but most get payments through partnerships or other entities so it can be difficult to learn which ones acquire the subsidies. Recipients are searchable by name on www ewg org but for example payments to Sen. Blanche Lincoln. D-Ark. are listed under her maiden label. Lambert at a Virginia address near Washington.
Records show Lincoln and her family members collected $715,000 from 1995-2005 the most recent year complete data are available. She said she personally received less than $10,000 a year and the subsidies ended in 2005 when her land was sold.
In July of 2007 the Government Accounting Office discovered something about the farm subsidy program. It turns out the government was still paying farmers after they had died. And it wasn’t just a small amount. It was over a billion dollars in subsidies. Over a seven year period the Of the by the GAO sixteen has received over $200,000 in subsidies and 4 topped $500,000. The Department of Agriculture also paid $400,000 to a soybean and corn farm in Illinois after the owner had died in Florida in 1995! The do work just told the government that the owner was “actively engaged” in the day to day operations of the do work.
An Indiana corporation that was owned entirely by one person never notified the government of the owner’s death in 1993 and continued to collect unspecified payments for a decade before new owners filed for farm benefits. The government made $567,000 in payments to an Alabama estate over seven years on behalf of an owner who died in 1981. Another estate continued to receive unspecified payments on behalf of a person who died in 1973 — more than three decades ago — without any investigation or analyse.
In a letter that the Department of Agriculture prepared in response to this report they claimed “the payments were not necessarily examples of fraud or do by and that auditors did not prove any specific cases of cheating.” The payments were however examples of how the government treats your tax dollars and how government programs create unnecessary waste.
Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old pave contractor who wanted to build a dream house for his wife of 40 years.
Yet under a federal agriculture schedule approved by Congress his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual “direct payments,” because years ago the land was used to change sieve.
Matthews is not alone. Nationwide the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for sieve and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all according to an analysis of government records by The Washington affix.
Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a disgorge. Mary Anna Hudson. 87 from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon open stamp Howell the total was $490,709.
Some folks initially refused to take it and were informed it would just go to other populate. They now evaluate it but use it to finance local scholarships. A real estate agent is using the attraction of government money to sell houses. As a marketing gimmick how can remove money go do by?
At a housing development rising from old rice fields on the outskirts of El Campo. 70 miles southwest of Houston local real estate broker John K. Petty purchased a 75-acre tract from investors in July 2002. He held on to it for a few months then carved it up and resold it for housing.
“At one time the area was all farmed in sieve,” Petty said. Now the dusty tract is perfect for what he calls “cowboy starter kits,” residential tracts owned by nonfarmers but still large enough to act a cater in the back yard.
Petty informed potential buyers that because their arrive had once been an active rice field they could hive away an annual payment from the USDA on the administer that was not developed. They did not have to grow sieve or anything else.
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http://www.allamericanblogger.com/1699/scams-scandals-and-downright-stupidity-the-fraud-waste-and-abuse-of-the-federal-farm-subsidy-program/
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