in GOP states, food stamps are to be available to gun owners only - unless your skin color is a little too dark for comfort.

when the Farm Bill comes up for renewal next year. They must find more $$$ to give to the 1%.

welfare for puke-voting rich farmers, aka crop subsidies.

ol' sonny was installed to ensure that usda helps out only certain sectors.

Back to the future, indeed.

Sustainable Cowboys or Welfare Ranchers of the American West?

Five hundred million dollars[1]. That’s what 21,000[2] ranchers who graze their livestock on America’s iconic western rangelands are estimated to have cost US taxpayers in 2014 — and every year for the past decade. This averages out to an annual taxpayer subsidy of $23,809 per rancher — approximately a quarter of a million dollars each since 2005. So why does this small subset, representing just 2.7% of US livestock producers, protest the “welfare rancher” label?

The public lands grazing program is welfare.

That $23,809 — and it’s a lowball figure — is a form of public assistance similar to other welfare programs. The only difference is, it doesn’t arrive as a check in the mail. It instead represents a loss covered by taxpayers: the very large difference between what public lands ranchers pay in fees to the US government and what public lands grazing costs taxpayers every year. But it’s still a subsidy, as a newly updated economic analysis, Costs and Consequences: The Real Price of Livestock Grazing on America’s Public Lands, makes clear. And the recipients aren’t low income; a large number are millionaires and some are billionaires and multi-billion dollar corporations on Forbes various “rich lists”. Cattle barons, if you will.

[link:http://dailypitchfork.org/?p=631|