Posted by
on Tuesday, June 12, 2007 9:29:35 PM
Today the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released their latest
and greatest version of the (in)famous farm subsidy database. The
database can be accessed through their MULCH blog.
The
new database also utilizes Google Maps to map recipients of farm
program payments. Whether you live in a rural or urban area, you are
guaranteed to be surprised by the number and size of recipients that live in your area.
For
the first time ever, the database incorporates additional data provided
by the USDA that more accurately tracks farm program payments to
individual beneficiaries. Prior to this, individual recipients could hide behind multiple "pass-throughs" -- partnerships and corporations set up to exploit farm program loopholes and blow right by existing payment limits.
Ever since EWG released the first version of their database, big
commodity groups have been claiming that EWG somehow "distorts" the
data for its own purposes.
Right. Ignore those comments, and look at the data for what it is: yet
another illustration of the urgent need for payment limits in farm
programs. Of course, the first question everyone asks is: Who gets the
most money from farm programs? Who's The King?
As revealed in the new data, the current answer to that question is one Maurice Wilder, resident of Florida. Mr. Wilder received a total of $3,217,158 in farm program payments from 2003-2005.
Who is Maurice Wilder, you may ask?
Well,
Maurice Wilder just happened to be profiled in my local Omaha
World-Herald this past weekend. While he isn't busy farming farm
programs for oodles of cash, he's pumping oodles of Nebraska's precious
groundwater. Or, to be precise,
somebody else is pumping it for him:
A man who owns 125 Nebraska irrigation wells has never
drilled a single one. Maurice Wilder, 66, of Clearwater, Fla.,
primarily develops retirement communities, recreational vehicle parks
and office buildings in Florida and Texas. And he's never lived here.
As noted above, The King of Farm Programs doesn't confine himself to farming, either. Check out the following data on our little buddy:
* Total holdings nationwide estimated at $500 million in 2005.
* Owns 10 office buildings in the Tampa Bay, Fla., area with more than 1 million square feet of space.
* Has 4,500 mobile home lots and 12,500 recreational vehicle lots in Florida and Texas.
* Commercial and residential land holdings.
*
Owns 200,000 acres of farmland and ranch land in eight states. That's
roughly 312 square miles, or nearly the size of Douglas County.
Wow. Can somebody please tell me what The King has done to deserve $3.2 million from the US Treasury?
This all goes right to the heart of farm program ideology, which I wrote in a previous post.
If you believe farm programs should exist to help family farmers, The
King and his millions are an outrage -- an offensive example of
wasteful farm program spending.
But as it is, farm programs support every single unit of agricultural
production, and there is no real limit on the number of units you can
college payments on. Consequently, the nation's largest farms pull down
multi-million dollar subsidy checks, despite the claims of politicians
and the media that payment limits do exist. (By the way, The King gets
most of his money from commodity certificates, which were explicitly
set up to evade payment limits).
To be sure, there will be a big ruffle-duffle over the data, with case
studies and finger pointing and rhetoric all around. And when you hear
organizations whine about how The King is an aberration, a lone example
of farm programs gone bad, don't believe it. All you need to remember
is that what The King is doing is perfectly legal, because our elected representatives have made it that way.
Check out the EWG database and get yourself all riled up. Then contact the nearest elected representative and tell them you support limiting farm program payments. This year's Dorgan-Grassley bill is a great place to start.