Journalist Mark Tapscott helps spread the word about the boondoggles perpetrated by the Department of Agriculture. But his work is being thwarted by the Super Friends of Government Transparency, the Democratic Congress.
The Ag Department manages Congress’s wretched, anti-productive policy of paying farmers to grow fewer crops. It also applies these New-Deal-era policies in the silliest manner possible — for example, by giving former basketball star Scottie Pippen $130,000 over five years not to grow crops.
Other Dust-Bowl-afflicted tillers of the field rescued with taxpayer-funded largesse include Sam Donaldson, Ted Turner, Larry Flynt and Ben Bradlee. The ridiculous payouts were exposed thanks to the efforts of a nonprofit outfit called Environmental Working Group (EWG), which posted an Agriculture Department database on its website. It obtained the data from reluctant officials by dint of the Freedom of Information Act.
Back in 2002, Tapscott reported that then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle had tried but failed to exempt such embarrassing spending details from freedom-of-information laws. Because he failed, the EWG could keep updating its database. But in 2008, the Democrats finally let the Department of Agriculture off the hook. Complying with information requests about its crazy subsidies is now “optional.”
So Aggie officials don’t bother.
Tapscott presses the obvious point: Wasn’t the new Democratic majority slated to embody the “most honest and transparent” Congress ever?
Perhaps their new slogan will be Ignorance is Strength?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Ignorance Is Strength (for Boodle Mongers)”
Over 50 years ago, my brother sent a letter to the Dept. of Agriculture, saying, if they would pay our grandfather & uncle NOT to plant potatoes on their ‘farm”, they would not. The “farm” was a vacant lot that they owned, to park a truck, my aunt and uncle’s cars, and for their kids and cousins to play. It was probably less then 1/4 acre.– IT WAS IN BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, and not in a rural area, where there farms. the USDA sent someone to the property, then determined it did not qualify, for some strange reason. Nothing surprises me.
And whiel talking about New Deal Era programs- the Rural Electrification Agency- which last I heard is still in business- although there is some 99.6% or so electrification in this country.
I have it on “good” authority that “too much information is confusing”
Dirk, you are correct- and — for Mr. Jacob – I believe that “Ignorance is Strength” is the motto of one of the Islamic rebel groups in Nigeria- the group that wants people to stay uneducated and illiterate, and goes on killing rampages frequently
When government takes from Peter to give to Paul, the government can usually count on Paul’s support. But neither the government nor Paul want this to be known — it shows they are both legal criminals in collusion. It’s an unfortunate fact that government has become the means by which small groups live off of others and backed, not by criminal theft, but by government force. Government force is a greater danger. Just consider how many people governments have killed as compared to criminals.