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The new farm bill is an economic disaster
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/26/farm-bill-economic-disaster
The latest US farm bill smells and looks bad.
The US Congress, its approval rating still near all-time lows, is reinforcing its own record of stupefyingly short-sighted lawmaking with what may be the most harmful piece of economic legislation in America in years: the $1tn 2013 farm bill.
It should be called the 2012 farm bill – or, officially, the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012 – because the habitually sluggish group of lawmakers in Washington were too busy in 2012 to pass it. Campaigning for office and ginning up the fake fiscal cliff crisis occupied a lot of time, so lawmakers passed an extension of the $650bn 2008 farm bill for another year. That set an expiration date of September 30 this year. The delayed timing, however, is the least of the problems with it.
As members of Congress have negotiated over various amendments and riders to the bill, they've set an impressively consistent trend: they mix good ideas and bad ideas and combine them to create the absolutely worst possible policies. Elements of the farm bill, as it stands, will cut food stamps to the poor and the previously incarcerated, thus increasing poverty and possibly crime; add to the growing obesity crisis by encouraging chemical sugar substitutes; push genetically modified food at the expense of public health with the so-called "Monsanto Protection Act"; and support factory farming at the expense of sustainable food production with abusive crop subsidies.
That's quite a lot of damage to wreak with a single law, but this Congress certainly seems up to the challenge
13 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
someone with a criminal record to be able to eat, I mean it's in 3d Assholes chapter 2-6; Those that do time for no matter how small a crime shall be made to suffer forever.
