Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning
On Sunday, Los Angeles Times added the name Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to a very long list of wealthy hypocrites who scream “socialism” all the way to the bank.
Bachmann, like most members of the Plutocrat (aka Republican) Party, rails against what she describes as “entitlements” (Social Security, Medicare and just about any other program designed to promote the general welfare of the American people – in her case even going so far as to label the 9/11 Responders bill as a “new entitlement program”). Yet, as the Times revealed, Bachmann not only voted against ending such “corporate entitlements” as subsidies for the oil and gas industry, but personally benefited from some $260,000 in federal taxpayer subsidies paid to her family farm and another $30,000 state subsidy to her husband’s counseling clinic, part of which included monies from the federal government.
While Bachmann denied directly benefiting from either subsidy — she went so far as to say “my husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm” — her financial disclosure form reveals that she received income from the farm during the same period the farm received federal subsidies. Her claim that the clinic’s public subsidies went to train its employees rather than her pocketbook provides a typical form of plutocratic denial that fails to acknowledge that the use of public funds to educate private sector employees eliminates the need for private employers to expend their own funds for training.
But the Bachmanns are but bit players in the great American corporate welfare scheme…
Farm subsidies as corporate welfare
When originally proposed in 1933, the idea of paying farmers federal subsidies to destroy or refrain from harvesting crops was intended to stabilize prices and prevent family farmers from going under during the Great Depression.
As revealed by Jim Hightower, the former TX Agricultural Commissioner, in Thieves in High Places, at present the farm subsidy program “delivers zero money to 69% of America’s real farmers, awarding some of the biggest payments to such corporate giants as DuPont and Chevron.”
Hightower furnished the classic example of the corporate perversion of the FDR program that was intended to save the family farm: government subsidies paid out to Charles Schwab, the NY stockbroker, whose $4.7 billion fortune places him 67th on the list of wealthiest Americans.
Schwab, according to Hightower, is the proud owner of Casa de Patos, 1,500 acres of CA wetlands. Schwab has no intent to harvest the rice he grows on Casa de Patos. He needs it to attract ducks so that he, his friends and selected clients can go on duck hunts. But that doesn’t stop the greedy billionaire from accepting a $500,000 annual federal subsidy not to harvest the rice.
Hightower laments:”Sadly, it’s legal, and it’s a fine upstanding example of what George [W. Bush] and his base call ‘entrepreneurship.'”
Sadly, it is the same program that, as MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell notes (video below), Bachmann took advantage of, even as she rails against “entitlements.”
The ‘jobs’ scam
As Greg LeRoy underscored in The Great American Jobs Scam, the $30,000 subsidy received by the Bachmann’s clinic is but the tip of the iceberg of a $50 billion/year corporate swindle in which large corporations entice local, state and regional governments into competing with one another for the “privilege” of private sector jobs. New “jobs” are not “created.” They are simply moved from one region of the country to another — at least until the jobs are shipped to an Asian sweatshop where employees slave away for $2/day.
Routinely, according to LeRoy, corporations receive $100,000 in taxpayer-funded subsidies for each private sector job that is then located within a state or region. But, LeRoy points to one example in which former FL Gov. Jeb Bush (R) combined $369 million in federal monies intended to address his state’s budget shortfall with a $667 million Palm Beach County subsidy to “create” 575 Scripps Research Institute jobs. That works out to $1.9 million in public monies for each “private” job “created” at Scripps.
Greatest corporate welfare: Military-industrial complex/U.S. foreign policy
While a treatise could be written on the subject, for the purpose of this article, suffice to state that even LeRoy’s annual estimate of $50 billion in corporate jobs scam subsidies, coupled with farm, oil and gas subsidies, pales in comparison to the trillions in corporate welfare squandered on the military-industrial complex, perpetual war and the maintenance of the global system of U.S. military bases designed to support and continue the hegemony of the corporate global Empire.
As Hightower astutely observed in Thieves in High Places:
Something to keep in mind as Michele Bachmann and the other representatives of the billionaire class rail against every program that is designed to protect the health, safety, and economic well being of the vast majority of Americans who make up the working class.
Lawrence O’Donnell addresses Michele Bachmann’s hypocrisy in this segment of MSNBC’s The Last Word…
Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).
Watch the video at this addy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
Morons like Bush and Palin and Bachman are why there is endless war and an attack on the homeland goes unpunished .
Awesome piece, Ernest. It’s too bad that the people who really need to read this probably won’t, or will discount it if they do.
Michele toned down her shrillity on CBS with Scheiffer last Sunday, morphing into a sweet nothing to appear less extreme. Just another empty headed ideologist, could even be Coulter’s cousin, perhaps. But definitely not qualified to be president.
Rep. Bachmann should go back to her family and constituents, who are left hanging while she feeds her ego with another quixotic tour of GOP patriotism. What a piece of work, a real media “pro”.
I know this sounds like a harsh assessment but her demeanor on CBS Sunday show means danger because if she has conquered her emotions and reactions in an antagonistic interview with old Bob she could deceive many who would mistake her for a reasonable person. Big mistake.
Watching her brush off Schieffer’s questions so deftly reminded me of some folks I knew who could be smooth talkers when they were on a combo of ritalin and ativan, or some other pharmakos. Mother’s little helpers, perhaps.
The facts about Scripps are true. Jeb Bush pulled off a grand deal for Palm Beach County taxpayers. They were counting on satellite companies relocating to the area that would be 10 times the 575 employees. All the big and little pharma companies, all the genetic and DNA research organizations, would all set up a presence in Palm Beach County to hook up with Scripps for joint research projects. They sold this pipe dream to Florida but it was actually only a bogue bowl of swag.
The original site for Scripps was an orange grove in the middle of nowhere that was purchased for an exorbitant sum. The political, environmental and economic cost of building/expanding roads and providing water, power and communications infrastructure in this remote and environmentally sensitive area adjacent to a wetlands for municipal water ultimately killed it, along with the shady details of the high dollar land deals that were engineered to take advantage of the windfall. The whole affair stunk to high heaven, all pre-decided for the benefit of a chosen few.
Thank you, Mr. Cardinal, for sharing detailed information about the Scripps fiasco that would not be generally known to those who do not reside in FL.
Much appreciated.
It is horrible how so many taxpayer-funded resources are paid off to looting welfare recipients such as Michele Bachman. I’ve generated a QR code to this article for the convenience of folks who use mobile devices: http://qrgenerator.biz/view.php?id=5
Thanks, Adam.
I have a smart phone (iPhone 3G), though must admit, I don’t know how those QR code’s are supposed to work. Got primer?
Bachmann is a piece of work. Not only was she a recipient of government largess for her agricultural holdings, her husband’s “we cure the gay†mental health facility received a shade under $140,000 from the filthy socialist program. Talk about “welfare queensâ€.
Ah, Michelle Kibbutzman (R-Tel Aviv)
Hypocrisy knows no bounds.