Bumpkin Support Act

A brace of farm state Senators -- safely enscounced in a city with booze, running water, lap dances, and cable TV -- want to send federal money back home to specifically underwrite rural life. Matching funds, tax credits, and other goodies would shower upon anyone willing to commit to life in some God-forsaken hell hole which by rights should dry up and blow away.

Most offensive is the line that supporters of the act spout that rural life some how is the "founding lifestyle." Wrong. American colonists took a different path by striving to be something more than a raw material source for the British empire. East Coast trading posts would've never evolved into actual cities otherwise.

Besides, if billions and billions in farm subsidies each year cannot support the "founding lifestyle" maybe folks should find a new lifestyle.

Comments

[quaker120]

Reminds me of this classic Mencken essay:

http://www.bizbag.com/mencken/menkfarm.htm

[geophile]

This is eerily similar to the occasional rantings from some on the Left about preserving the culture of various indigenous peoples (while desperately trying to convince themselves and others of the social superiority of the Noble Savage).

[Anonymous]

Just what we in the "country" need. More urbanized "civilized" folk to help us understand how to live in a "civilized" society. I live in a rural area and have observed as the "civilized" folk from the city attempt to destroy the rural culture that I have come to dearly love. We true country folk have evolved a Libertarian mindset and prefer it that way. We don't need anymore Government help to preserve our way of life, thank you very much.

[Casey Tompkins]

I would suggest that Senator Brownback should be renamed Senator "Greenback".

It's a pity he didn't promote it as a five-year plan for Rural Improvement. 🙂

[Who]

God Bless MasterCardLand.

Incidentally, while many of our Founding Fathers lived on slave plantations or profited as merchants, most of the people who did the actual military work were poor farmers or craftsmen.

"American colonists took a different path by striving to be something more than a raw material source for the British empire. East Coast trading posts would've never evolved into actual cities otherwise."

What that has to do with farm subsidies is beyond my powers of imagination.

[Anonymous]

ethanol, corn syrup, farm subsidies [http://ewg.org/farm/] ugh! not to mention steel tariffs, good luck with the doha round zoellick 🙁

[Anonymous]

http://businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_15/b3828601.htm

"How war will reshape the economy. Short term: Higher government spending makes recession unlikely. Long term: Globalization and innovation may suffer in the aftermath, threatening he productivity boom."

[John Tabin]

If Twin Cities suburbanites want to subsidize their rural neighbors to preserve the character of their state, that seems fair enough; they can vote for politicians to pursue that policy.

Why all US taxpayers ought to chip in for this project is something of a mystery.

[Warren]

Flight from urban to suburban and rural areas is primarily a flight from taxes and regulation. The power establishment has countered with the 'Smart Growth' movement, coming to the Bureau of Land Management near you. Unable to subjugate the population at the local level, the establishment is taking the zoning tool of oppression state (and even nation) wide.

[wfr]

Why is it that we can put a man on the moon, but we can't keep one down on the farm?

Heh...

[bardp]

I had read that rural states already get more from the federal government than urbanized states already. I'll try and find the study and post the link here.

[Carlos]

As Sam Kinison used to say "Move to the food!"

[Gary Gunnels]

Actually I've found that farmers are more than willing to suck at the government tit. Its certainly true here of the dairy farmers in Vermont. Much woe and booing seen and heard here when the dairy compact collapsed, fro example, and much cheering over last year's farm bill.

[Jim]

I believe Sam was talking about the starving Ethiopians. From the late 1800's through about WWII it was pretty much 'move from the food' to the cities. From WWII on it's been 'move from the cities into suburbs built on what used to be food.' What this is really all about is another form of trade protectionism. Since modern farmers can produce enough food with less land, and foreign farmers can often produce it for less, we now subsidize the existence of farms that have more value now as living space for those of us that neither live in the country or the city. For those that truly live in the middle of nowhere, ending subsidies that allow them to live there will eventually force them to move to more populated areas and return more of that land to nature, which should make the greens happy and also those of us who like to visit nature but don't necessarily want to live in it.

[Gary Gunnels]

geophile,
There is nothing wrong with preserving indigenous cultures, if that's what the folks in those cultures want (and clearly, with the rise of indigenous rights movements and the like since WWII, that's what they do want, at least partly). So its not like the notion of indigenous rights is somehow the work of a left-wing cabal. In fact, I would suspect most leftists are wholly ignorant of the movement, and probably think of these people in the same paternalistic manner as did the missionaries who tried to coerce the indigenous population into Christianity in centuries past.

And there is much to criticize as far as far as the forced eradication, etc. schemes we've seen wrought by more "advanced" societies over the years. And I ain't just writing about Europeans here. The Chinese were quite adept at slaughtering and marginalizing the "indigenous" folks they came across in their push into what became southern China. Today still these minority populations in China are looked down upon and discriminated against - they are basically third class citizens in China, which is saying something. Of course the Americans have the "trail of tears," what would be called a form of ethnic cleansing today.

[Heyden Jenny Steinman]

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