Jeb Bush’s remark that he’s “not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues” tells us a lot about his and his party’s slavish, low-fact pandering to the noisy right and the widespread GOP war on women.
Just as telling of Bush/GOP values is his “Iowa Farm Team,” a group of farmers and Big Ag lobby endorsers Bush just announced. Rural politics and agriculture blogger Don Carr notes that darn near every one of those endorsers of Jeb Bush’s Republican fiscal conservatism (wait, Bush fiscally conservative? really?) has enjoyed a feast at the farm subsidy table:
It’s hard — dang near impossible — to be part of Iowa’s production agriculture system without having relied on taxpayer funded farm subsidy programs authorized in the federal farm bill. A point easily made by feeding the names from Jeb Bush’s farm team into the Environmental Working Group’s farm subsidy database that pulls in raw data from the US Department of Agriculture. All payments are from 1995-2012. Here’s what the database spits out about his farm team’s subsidies, both either direct or subsidies paid to farms they have ownership stakes in:
- Cal Rozenboom – $172, 905
- Varel Bailey – $499, 038
- Thomas Dorr – $392, 633
- Karol King – $1, 367, 891
- Keith Hora – $1,025, 375
- Doug Gronau – $674, 768
- Keith Heffernan – $83, 510
- Tom Barret – $514,087
- Jim and Jacque Andrew – $1,066, 789
- Thurman Gaskill – $314, 822 and $310, 047
- Glenn Keppy – $518, 715
- Jim and Nancy Pellett – $830, 261
- Harry and Myron Stine – $622, 628
- Doran Zumbach – $839, 675
[Don Carr, “Jeb Bush’s Iowa Farm Team Harvested Millions in Ag Subsidies,” Republic of Awesome, 2015.08.06]
Fiscal conservatism feels so easy when Uncle Sam foots your bills.
Carr notes that the venerable EWG farm subsidy database can’t track ag welfare payments past 2012 because the latest Farm Bill shifted those welfare payments from traditional subsidies to federal crop insurance, and Congress made sure insurance payments are kept secret. But it’s still government handouts intruding on the free market, something one wouldn’t expect Republicans who are true to their platform to support.
Related: We all know about the millions of dollars in farm subsidies anti-welfare warrior Rep. Kristi Noem and her family collected, as well as her husband Bryon’s lucrative suckling at the crop insurance teat. Her challenger, Democrat Paula Hawks of Hartford, appears never to have taken farm subsidies. Hawks’s father, Hugh Hagel of Flandreau, took $132,563 in crop subsidies from 1995 to 2012, 57% of that in conservation subsidies.
A couple of Jeb’s former business partners are or were in prison and one remains a fugitive. Definitely some shady dealings in the past.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/jeb-bush-dogged-by-decades-of-questions-about-business-deals/2015/06/28/0138223c-edb7-11e4-8abc-d6aa3bad79dd_story.html
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-05-31/news/0105310246_1_bigger-farms-senate-agriculture-committee-neil-harl
Thom Dorr wasn’t well received as nominee under dumbass dubya.
Harry Stine is iowa’s richest person with wealth in excess of 4 billion bucks snd the owner of Stine Seed Co. He also holds patents on crop genetics and is the one to blame for developing corn that can thrive in 12 or 15 inch rows.
The days of the independent, sturdy, yeoman farmer disappeared into the mists of farm welfare.
I deeply resent my taxes supporting Noem’s dependent lifestyle.
AMAZING THAT ROOSEVELT FARM BILL WAS FOR THE LITTLE GUY WITH 160 ACRES, LETS GET BACK TO THAT AND ONLY PAY FOR A QUARTER;
Deb-please make sure that Paula Hawks is completely up to speed on this issue, in your opinion, and if you like her; and is it a winner issue in SD or are there too many other repubs so beholden as her family is?
Thank you
Leslie, I’m not sure what you are asking. Please clarify. Thanks.
i don’t know farms, subsidies, and how much the broader public blindly pays upkeep for the noem’s lifestyle, but if it can be a substantial issue for Ms. Hawkes to win on, let’s make sure she has the knowledge and support to take kristie down
Leslie, any candidate making such an effort can get substantial knowledge and support just by reading this blog. Heck, I don’t mind if candidate Hawks reads my Noem articles verbatim from the stump (with a brief citation of the source, of course, to avoid charges of plagiarism). Dakota Free Press is the South Dakota Democrat’s brief book.