Congress continues to debate the farm bill. This article claims the farm bill will be "good for Dakotas," in this case good meaning "lots of money."
The chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, wanted to make major reforms, including cuts to direct payments to farmers. But after lengthy negotiations with Conrad and other senators on the agriculture panel, the legislation is shaping up much like the House bill and current law.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., agreed that the legislation is headed in a direction that will be good for the Dakotas. Thune also sits on the agriculture panel. (snip)
The legislation, according to Conrad, is expected to include:
- $5 billion for agricultural disaster aid approved earlier this month by the Senate Finance Committee;
- An optional program that would allow farmers to collect payments when crop revenue is low compared to a statewide average;
- House language that would require country-of-origin labeling for meats and other foods;
- More than $4 billion for conservation programs that protect farmland.
Sen. Thune is also bucking for an increase in ethanol use:
Thune said it's important for the ethanol industry to increase the percentage of ethanol in gasoline.
"I raised this with the president a few weeks ago in a meeting that we've got to get beyond E-10," Thune said of the 10 percent ethanol blend.
The industry has been hit by rising corn prices and tumbling ethanol prices as a result of ethanol overproduction and limited capacity to blend the product with gasoline. The price of ethanol has slid by 30 percent in recent months.
Just in time for the release of the Federal Halloween Candy, Reason magazine reports that there are some zombie farmers getting subsidy checks:
A report by the Government Accountability Office says USDA paid $1.1 billion in subsidies to 172,801 dead people between 1999 through 2005. Forty percent of that money went to people who had been for at least three years, the report found.
Nineteen percent went to individuals who had been dead for at least seven years.
In a case involving an Illinois farm, USDA made $400,000 in payments from 1999 through 2005 in the name of someone who died in 1995, the report said.
Prof. Blanchard and I once debated whether the undead have to pay the estate tax, aka, the death tax. I believe we concluded that vampires do not but zombies do. Vampires, depending on your vampire theory, are not actually dead (well they were, but they aren't; it gets confusing). Zombies, meanwhile, are clearly simply corpses that are animate (how they are animated is also a subject of some dispute, but perhaps Prof. Blanchard can educate us from the History of the Zombie Wars). Apparently, though, the zombies also collect benefits from federal programs, so they've got that going for them.
Perhaps it is time for this bit of zombie wisdom from Bob Hope:
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