Rich families cashed in on over half the bailout money set aside
for farmers hurt by Trump’s trade policies.
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| Source: the Hightower Lowdown |
But he’s been “loving” them to death, with policies that are causing farm prices to tumble, miring our ag economy in the ditch and creating a rising tsunami of farm bankruptcies.
Then
came Trump’s doofus of an ag secretary, Sonny Perdue, who publicly insulted
farmers by branding them “whiners” for daring to complain about
policies causing them to lose income and their farms.
So,
as an “I love you” make-up gesture, Trump has been sending big bouquets
of money to some of his beloved farmers. Our money. Lots of it
— $28 billion so far in what he cynically (and comically) calls a “Market
Facilitation Program,” otherwise known as a taxpayer bailout.
But
Trump Love turns out to be highly selective, with more than half of the government
payments going to the biggest farm owners.
The Agriculture Department initially announced a $125,000 limit on the amount any one farm could get, but every Trump deal seems to have a gimmick in it to give a special break to the slickest operators.
The
slickum in this deal is that assorted members of a family are allowed to claim
that they’re owners of the same farm and thus get bailout bucks — even if they
do no actual farming and live in New York City!
One
Missouri farm family, for example, got $2.8 million worth of subsidy love from Trump, and more than 80 families topped half-a-million in
payments.
Meanwhile,
the great majority of farmers have gotten zilch from Donald the Dealmaker — and
80 percent of eligible grain farmers (the smaller producers most endangered by
his bad policies) have received less than $5,000.
So
Trump’s “market facilitation” is squeezing the many who are most in need, while
helping a few of the largest get even bigger.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator,
writer, and public speaker. Distributed by OtherWords.org.