Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2016 A Subsidy as Shameful as They Come By James Bovard The U.S. has paid for a million pounds of peanuts it can’t use. Solution: Dump them on Haiti—causing a disaster for its farmers. The Obama administration’s plan to dump a million pounds of surplus peanuts into Haiti at no […]
Tag Archives | farm subsidy
FFF: Supreme Demolition for the Raisin Racket
From the Future of Freedom Foundation – Supreme Demolition for the Raisin Racket by James Bovard The December 2013 Future of Freedom contained my article “A Supreme Rebuff for USDA’s Ruinous Raisin Regime.” The legal case surrounding that controversy kept percolating in the courts for another 18 months. The Obama administration won a big victory […]
Mises Institute: The Illusion of Reform
Mises Institute “The Austrian” Newsletter, Issue #1, 2015 The Absurdity of “Reform” in DC by James Bovard In the 1930s, peasants who were starving because of the Soviet regime’s brutal farm collectivization policy lamented, “If only Stalin knew!” Nowadays, American social scientists look at floundering federal programs and lament: “If only Congress knew!” And […]
FFF: Americans’ Fading Love of Freedom
Future of Freedom Foundation, October 2014 issue of Future of Freedom AMERICANS’ FADING LOVE OF FREEDOM by James Bovard Tea Party protesters, some Republicans, and many libertarians perceive the federal government as a vast engine of oppression. But are anti-Obama activists mistaken in presuming that most Americans still care about freedom? A Gallup poll released […]
Supreme Court Takes Raisin Robbery Property Rights Case
The Supreme Court accepted today a case in which California farmers challenge USDA’s right to confiscate their raisins. The Court’s decision is a defeat for the Justice Department, which argued that the Supremes should let stand a bizarre Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that would have nullified a swath of the Fifth Amendment. I tub-thumped […]
Wash. Times: Obama’s Raisin Robbery
Washington Times, January 11, 2015 Obama’s raisin robbery The Supreme Court could end federal confiscation of farmers’ crops By James Bovard The Obama administration is once again championing Uncle Sam’s sacred right to seize farmers’ harvests. After being trounced on procedural grounds at the Supreme Court in 2013, the Justice Department wants the Supremes to […]
FFF: FDR Farm Folly Lessons for ObamaCare
– From the Future of Freedom Foundation FDR Farm Folly Lessons for ObamaCare by James Bovard As the Obama administration wreaks further havoc on health care, many people expect the politicians to recognize their follies and relent. However, history indicates that rulers will continue seizing new power regardless of how much wreckage results. The farm […]