Individual owners, or corporately-owned, too?

This looks like a sop to OWS:

But the lure of sending a message about the limits of federal benefits proved too strong....

I never hate government more than when it "sends a message".

Amy has probably linked this piece about Steve Jobs urging Obama to trim regulatory overkill and diminish the impacts of unionism on education. In Washington's imagination, this morphs into The Steve Jobs Act, which would "would give Americans a sense of direction about our economy."

But it seems likely that Americans already know where the economy's going... Especially in the Silicon Valley.

Don't feel to sad for them. I am quite certain that Congress will get them their subsidies through some other amendment. The only question is: will anyone discover where they've hidden it, before this monstrosity of a bill comes up for a vote?

If it were up to me, all bills would have a page limit, a proscribed page size, and a proscribed font size.

Then they couldn't cram all kinds of extra shit in there.

Whatever you can say about the Republican party, they did give the president the line item veto power. Thank the Supreme Court for ditching it.

Robert,

Ditching the line-item veto was necessary, and for the reason cited. Congress has 100% of the Constitutional responsibility for funding. The inability of the public to realize that isn't a reason to give the President more power.

You think the President makes better choices?

This president? The next one? It would let him take money away from projects authorized by Congress for his personal reasons.

@Radwaste: The problem is that Congress doesn't put separate issues into separate bills. They find some bill that "just has to pass", and cram all sorts of unrelated crap into it at the last minute. The line-item veto would let the president take these monstrosities apart again.

Also, consider this: we need less government. Any kind of veto helps, in the sense that it prevents some piece of legislation from taking effect. If something important gets vetoed, Congress can always override the veto.

Many of the small corporate farms are actually family farms writ large.

The way farmers are getting around the death tax is by incorporating. Say your great-great grandfather had bought 1000 acres in 1910 at $100 an acre. He then passed it on to his children and so on. Other land was bought and sold. Now we get to modern times and have the death tax which is a tax on assets not income. The farm is now 5000 acres and is now worth millions of dollars.

By forming a corporation with the children and spouses as members of the board, the fathers can pass the assets without the taxes.

So the corporation is a bunch of farming families. The corporation is making a million, but there are 10-15 individuals making up that million dollars. That is about 60-100K per family. I will grant that is upper middle class in many parts of the country, but still not a single person sitting on a million dollars.
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Another portion of this is how the farmers will plant junk crops. The weather forecasting has gotten to the point that they generally can tell months in advance that the weather in any given year will probably be like. (La Niña and El Niño, hurricanes, etc.)

The farmer has a have a 100 acre field they know should probably lay fallow this year, and they are at the end of the range for a crop like eggplant. So they plant it at the cost of $20 per acre. If they are wrong, and it grows well, they harvest it at $60 per acre. But if the weather sucks and the crop fails, the USDA pays the farmer off at $100 per acre, not the actual cost to plant it.
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Back to the main point -- whenever the government gets involved in the private sector it distorts the market.

I do agree the USDA, as it was originally created, was needed then. But they are no longer needed. I won't say dissolve the structure today or tomorrow, but sooner rather than later.

Part of the issue to dissolving the USDA is that they also run the Food Stamp program. Unfortunately we have welfare class that doesn't know how to function with out the subsidy.

Subsidies to farmers? They make a lot of sense.
Because the price of food is strongly influenced by marginal and risky farms. Unlike advice-giving.

No subsidies. Great. Prepare for rising food prices.

A large number of states have agriculture as one of their major industries. That's a lot of political clout, especially when you consider each state has two Senators, regardless of population.

A Federal government restricted to its enumerated powers couldn't give our money to any special interests. That provides no opportunity for bribes, I mean campaign contributions, so Washington is not interested.

Meanwhile, the easily led protest Wall Street.

Amy,

I quite agree -- as I commented above:

whenever the government gets involved in the private sector it distorts the market.

There should not be any government subsidies for any farmers. Or loggers, oil companies, colleges, electric companies, phone companies, or any other industry.

I'm not going to bother challenging you to read the U.S. Constitution. I know you have.

I would like to see the federal government do a review every law and agency with its Constitutionality; And Wickard v. Filburn was a flawed decision.

The federal government was meant to be small and limited. The 18 enumerated powers say and imply nothing about the USDA, EPA, Obamacare, Dept of Ed or Energy. None of them are even implied by Constitution. Every single one of those agencies interfere with the private market. Then there are other agencies I haven't even mentioned that cause the same interference.

Just look at the sweeping CPSC regulations on lead testing. How many small businesses were put asunder because of the ridiculous requirements?

What about raw milk? What about TSA? (I'm going to leave those an open ended question because I think this post is too long already.)

The point is that I'm always on the side of a small limited federal government. I want the states to be the big boy in my life. And then the states should be a small portion of my daily life.

As it stands now -- the states are forced into the low-flush toilets, the CFL's, the 21 drinking age and many other mandates by the federal government. That is to get the money, taken by force by the IRS, back into the state.

No subsidies. Great. Prepare for rising food prices. -- Posted by: Mere Mortal at October 22, 2011 7:37 AM

You need to know that the government is lying already. The Consumer Price Index was "redesigned" in August 2009 to ignore the price of food and fuel.

The price of food is already going up. It just isn't counted as inflation anymore.

The cost to go to the local fast food joint should be about $10 per person. Again do a google for "kangaroo burgers" That was the federal government playing favorites among the fast food industry.

No subsidies. Great. Prepare for rising food prices.
-- Posted by: Mere Mortal at October 22, 2011 7:37 AM

Yeah, less obese people, no more corn syrup, and no more hamburger for a dollar!!

Eh mere mortal, I eat organic: never heard of subsidy for that ever. So I already pay the real price of food. But I am fucking bored that all the fat-ass are eating junk food and cheap corn-made meat (or soda) on my tax dollar (corn is heavily subsidized).

If you don't want to pay the price for quality, don't be surprise it breaks, or it is toxic.

Hey Mere Mortal - They make a lot of sense.
Because the price of food is strongly influenced by marginal and risky farms.

I have got to call bullshit on your statement.

I don't mean to give Amy a hard time about this, but it's the attractive simplicity of this thinking that allows it to be condensed to into a playful blog post.

So an OWS'er has a marijuana daydream, and his loving Congressman wants to help him see it through:

OWS Stoner: Rich guys shouldn't get tax breaks! Aha! Nobody ever thought of that before!

Congressman: OK. Who's a rich guy?

OWS Stoner: Uh... I dunno. Somebody with a million dollars! Yeah

Congressman: Do you mean someone who has a million dollars, or someone who earns a million dollars?

OWS Stoner: Jeez, ah... Y'know, a million.

Congressman: OK, what if they own 7% of a $40 million alfalfa collective? What if they own 52% of a $1.2 rutabaga plantation? We've already got this kind of thing encoded into thousands of pages of tax law, and....

OWS Stoner: (Interrupting) Dude!.. Y'know, whatever.

Congressman: Alright, whatever. I think I know how to write this up... You're really going to like how this plays on the blogs. See you kids in November! Try to find a shower, m'kay?

Lefties and fools always want to believe that they're first ones to have thought of anything, including sex and taxes. Remember that song from '91? "Watching the world wake up from history." The guitar solo was silly, and that group was never heard from again.

The complexity of the tax code is not a happenstance thing: People like it this way.

I don't heart those people. I could change my mind if someone gave me a new 3 horse trailer - preferably a Featherlite.

This is one area where GWB really screwed up. Clinton in his two terms had made a good bit of progress in sunsetting various farm-subsidy programs. It took W about two years of pandering to farm interests to undo all of that.

As for food prices rising: I double-dog guarantee you that, if all farm subsidies were eliminated, food prices in general would go down. Because the government wouldn't be distorting the market. When I was a teenager, Tennessee used to have laws that set price floors for milk. It was illegal to sell milk for less than the floor prices. Every now and then one of the store chains would find a sharpie lawyer who would devise a loophole. Every time that happened, the price of milk dropped by more than half overnight, and kept on going down during the few weeks that it took the state legislature to pass a law closing the loophole.

@Dave B
>>I have got to call bullshit on your statement.

Call it however you'd like, but get some economic education first. I suggest you start with Adam Smith.

@Jim The price of food is already going up
I am well aware of that. Please, do not presume that buying local, organic and fair trade etc. means that it is not subsidized. Far from it. There are simply right ways to subsidize it and wrong ways.

"The line-item veto would let the president take these monstrosities apart again."

Repeat: the line-item veto would violate the Constitution, which states that Congress has 100% of funding responsibility.

You want something for your community, reasonable because you pay taxes. Congress authorizes it. The President vetoes it because, in his opinion, his power brokers don't benefit. Looks great now, right?

But read that part above out loud: Congress has 100% of the Constitutional duty of funding. End statement.

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By the way, you can't turn crops on and off or control the weather. There may be a case for subsidy in considering that.

Repeat: the line-item veto would violate the Constitution, which states that Congress has 100% of funding responsibility.

You want something for your community, reasonable because you pay taxes. Congress authorizes it. The President vetoes it because, in his opinion, his power brokers don't benefit. Looks great now, right?

As it stands now -- a 300+ plus page bills lands on the president's desk. He wants to object to funding the Nicaraguan Contras. That is one paragraph in the bill. How about objecting to a tax on kids arrows?

As it stand now the president has to veto the whole bill, and subsequently, shut down the whole government for an individual paragraph. Or the other option is to use signing statements.

If they did the line item that the president had to redact whole sections or paragraphs and the redacted sections were automatically a new bill in front of congress that had to be voted on that could still be vetoed unless it was veto proof.

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By the way, you can't turn crops on and off or control the weather. There may be a case for subsidy in considering that.

How much do you want to bet that there would be some insurance company(s) that would be willing to pay a farmer the planting cost of $20 per acre if they were getting $3 per acre regardless of pay out. Would the farmer plant risky crops if he got back the same amount he put in?

The USDA is paying out at the end-rate not the actual loss. If the farmer is getting back cost, not potential profit -- he would not plant risky crops.

My question: Why are we giving any farmers taxpayer-funded handouts?

They are the price we pay for ensuring there will always be plenty of food.

Jim, the Constitutional solution - and it is already here - is to require Congress to do its job. It is not the President's job to do funding, period.

Unfortunately, people in general are so ignorant that they do not even know this basic fact, much less take an interest in what their Congressman is doing.

Also -- just what IS a "risky" crop?

A risky crop is one that is not generally suited for your region.

Plant Requirements

Eggplants need warm soil and warm temperatures. Temperatures should remain above 68 degrees. Full sun is a must.

These heavy feeders should be planted in heavily composted soil with lots of manure, if available. Side dress frequently, especially when the plant begins to bloom.

Eggplant is fairly drought tolerant and should not be overwatered as it is susceptible to root rot. Mulching around the plant will help maintain even moisture. Watering may be increased when blooms appear.

www.gardenguides.com/355-growing-guide-eggplant.html

Try growing it in west Texas -- essentially a desert -- and what is the crop's chances? Same with other seasonal crops. But it is done.