Emma Berry

Archive for the ‘Government Handouts’ Category

I recently wrote a post titled “As a Nation We are Obsessed with the Notion of being Invaded”

It is no accident, that the American public tends to stay focused on irrelevant and in many cases downright silly topics like flag pins and patriotism or invasions of the yellow hoards or the Muslims.  It is because as long as the majority of Americans, goaded by corporate-paid Side-show Bobs like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, are running around shouting about politicians who don’t wear flag pins or Mosques being built in the land of religious freedom, we won’t be focusing on what the upper 2% are doing to us and our nation– which is robbing us blind–not only of our money, but also of our privacy and our freedoms.

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We need to start focusing on the truth.   And yes, we do need to take back our nation, but it is not from “Obama Socialists” who have stolen it.  It is from Republicans and Corporate Centrist Democrats who have sold out our nation to Wall Street in return for enriching their own personal stock portfolios.

We can begin by demanding that our elected officials in Congress recover the  $18.5 billion that we pay out in farm subsidies every year to Wall Street Corporations like  Archer Daniel Midland, Cargill and rich gentleman farmers like Rockefeller who live in New York City and probably haven’t seen a farm in years.

It is obscene that our tax dollars should be used to subsidize corporate agribusinesses.  We already subsidize them with the prices we pay at the grocery story for their fake food.

Yes, keep $1billion dollars of that taxpayer money to help small American farmers and to encourage more like them.  Large Wall street agribusinesses have increased, not decreased food security world wide.

Instead of helping them we should be blocking them from the damage they are doing–not only to our nation but to the world.

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At least for a few years we could use that remaining $18 billion that we are currently giving away to the rich to create jobs and help fund solutions for domestic issues such as immigration.

Then after 5 or so years that $18 billion could be cut in half and returned to the taxpayers in the form of a tax break.

WE NEED SENSIBLE SOLUTIONS FOR THE PEOPLE–NOT MORE HANDOUTS FOR THE RICH.

The billions that we add each year to the coffers for their Wall Street investors as consumers  by purchasing their food products apparently is not enough because ordinary Americans also must make extortion payments in the form of  farm subsidies to these crooks to the tune of several million dollars every year.  Yes, ADM is part of our annual $19 billion taxpayer give-away that we call “farm subsidies” of which only $350 million actually to to small American farmers who still live on the land they farm.

That’s right.  Archer Daniel Midland, a Wall Street agribusiness, highly profitable and listed on Wall Street has been subsidized, like Monsanto,  by the American taxpayers to the tune of several million dollars a years since it began.

WHY?  WHY SHOULD ORDINARY AMERICANS BE FORCED TO SPEND OUR TAX MONEY FOR THESE RICH CROOKS?  ADM’S last trade was at $30.23 a share on August 20, 2010 and they need help from ordinary Americans?  Give me a flipping break!  There are a lot of Americans out there who would be grateful to have even $30.23 today.  It is absolutely disgusting to me that elected officials that we send to Congress give ADM even a penny, much less millions of dollars each year.

AND YES ARCHER DANIEL MIDLAND (ADM) ARE CROOKS.

ADM is a conglomerate based in Decatur Illinois.  ADM operates more than 270 plants worldwide, where cereal grains and oil seeds  are processed into products used in food, beverage, nutraceutical, industrial and animal feed  markets worldwide.

IS ARCHER DANIEL MIDLAND A GOOD CITIZEN?  Not by my standards!

Archer Daniels Midland has been the subject of several major federal lawsuits related to air pollution. In 2001 the company agreed to pay a $1.46 million fine for violating federal and Illinois clean-air regulations at its Decatur feed plant and to spend $1.6 million to reduce air pollution there.

In 1993, ADM was the subject of a lysine price fixing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department.  Senior ADM executives were indicted on criminal charges for engaging in price-fixing within the international lysine  market. Three of ADM’s top officials, including vice chairman Michael Andreas were eventually sentenced to federal prison in 1999. Moreover, in 1997, the company was fined $100 million, the largest antitrust fine in U.S. history at the time.

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SO YOU TELL ME, MR. VILSAK, Secretary of Agriculture,  AND MS. BLANCHE LINCOLN,  Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, JUST WHY IS IT NECESSARY FOR THE TAX DOLLARS OF ORDINARY AMERICANS TO BE SPENT TO SUBSIDIZE WALL STREET CROOKS LIKE ADM?

ADM’S revenue for 2009 was in excess of $69 billion.

WHY THE H  SHOULD ONE CENT OF THE TAX PAYERS MONEY BE SPEND ON THEM?   IT IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING SHORT OF OBSCENE TO CONTEMPLATE!

“You never get something for nothing in the world of biophysics, and what you give up in the bargain is nutritional value. Most of what we’ve done in agricultural improvements, for the most part, have actually degraded our food from a nutritional standpoint.” —Ricardo Salvador, Iowa State University

ANSWER:  THE MAJORITY OF THE ELECTED OFFICIALS IN CONGRESS and that includes almost all Republicans and a few corporate centrist Democrats!

Many of the people who manage this annual fleecing of the American public fly somewhat under the radar and are rarely drug into the light.  To be sure it is the majority of ALL our elected officials  and Wall Street corporations;  however,  Tom Vilsak and Blanche Lincoln and a few Republicans play leading roles.

Currently, thanks in large part to the efforts of these two corporate shills with the assistance of a Congress that has over 263 multimillionaires, who themselves are heavily invested in Wall Street agribusinesses, $19 billion dollars of our taxpayer dollars are forked over to large Wall Street Agribusiness crooks like Archer Daniel Midland every year. And yes Archer Daniel Midland are crooks and they have a record to prove it.

$19 billion dollars!  Of which only $350 million goes to American farmers who still live on the small plots of  land that they farm.  That’s right folks, over $18.5 billion of this give-away is reserved for the rich.  If this $18.5 billion were to be applied to solving our immigration and job creation issues, the MAJORITY of the American people would benefit instead of merely the top 2% of the richest in our nation.  AND NEED I REMIND ANYONE–THIS IS THE MONEY OF THE MAJORITY–NOT THE RICH– TO BEGIN WITH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Let’s take a look at the two government officials closest to the purse strings of this taxpayer giveaway:

Tom Vilsak, current Secretary of Agriculture and Blanche Lincoln, who currently chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee.

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Tom Vilsak as Secretary of Agriculture–you would have to go to the ends of the earth to find a more insulting choice for this position than Tom Vilsak.  Vilsak is a total corporate shill for Monsanto.Either Obama is ignorant of what/who Vilsak represents, or he agrees with his aims—either scenario should be unacceptable to the elected officials in Congress who will be voting to approve this man. Vilsak makes agricultural decisions based on political and economic criteria–not those based in science. He has no scientific background. The fact that a decision was made to not grow genetically engineered corn for pharmaceutical purposes in states such as Iowa caused Vilsak to go off on a tangent and claim that this scientifically based decision was “a dangerous precedent.” [Dangerous for whom? The people or multinational corporations?]

In addition to supporting genetically engineered corn for pharmaceutical purposes in states such as Iowa, Vilsak is also is no friend to the Organic Consumers Association. In November of 2008 they outlined in a report several good reasons as to why Vilsak is a poor choice. As Iowa state governor he originated the seed preemption bill in 2005, effectively blocking local communities from regulating where genetically engineered crops would be grown. According to sources such as WIKI, Vilsak has a reputation for being a schill for agribusiness biotech giants like Monsanto. Vilsak has flown around the country in the Monsanto jet.

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Blanche Lincoln

Family farms and middle class jobs are disappearing, thanks to Washington politicians like Blanche Lincoln. If you think that all Democrats are on the side of the “little” guy, you better think again. While it is true that Democrats throw larger crumbs to the little guy than the Republicans, that by no means can you say that many of the Democrats in Washington today represent ordinary Americans.

• She has voted for every bad trade deal and shipped jobs overseas
• She uses her seat to help Wall Street corporations get billions in farm subsidies  ($18.5 billion every year)
• Over the past few years in Arkansas, two thousand family farms were lost while Blanche Lincoln helped her own family rake in $715,000 in subsidies paid for by taxpayers.
• Instead of helping hard working families keep their homes in Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln voted to protect big Wall Street banks.

Dan Froomkin from the Huffington Post reported today that Vice President Biden challenged a gathering of Wall Street friendly Democrats in making sure that this economic recovery, unlike the last one, actually benefits the middle class.

I like Vice President Biden and believe this  man who chose a daily commute to his home in Delaware for the 36 years that he served as a U.S. Senator is much more in touch with mainstream America that most of our elected officials in DC because he never left it.

Most of our elected officials in DC, would not be able to navigate down Main Street if we gave them a map of the place, nor would they even want to because the interests they represent are in Washington and on Wall Street, not the communities who elected them.  That is a fact, and if you don’t believe me, look at their voting records.

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It really would not be that difficult for our elected officials to put an end to government handouts to Wall Street and the top 5% of the wealthiest in the nation.

Here are two very simple suggestions to start them off in the right direction.  These are suggestions that I will pursue if I am elected.

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GET IN THEIR FACES AND CHALLENGE THEIR CLICHES.

STANDARD POLITICAL CLICHE:  “I stand for small businesses.”

OH Yeah? The next time you hear this cliche coming out of the mouth of your representative, ask them this:  “If you stand for small businesses, then why haven’t you worked to change the standard for defining small businesses that the federal government currently follows?”

We have approximately 26 million small businesses in the USA. 98% of them have under 100 employees. Yet your current elected officials let the standard for defining a small business to stand at “under 499 employees.”  This means that corporations such a Bechtel compete with mom and pop operations for small business incentives.  The definition of “small” business needs to be changed to “under 100 employees”–a small but significant piece of legislation.

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STOP GOVERNMENT WELFARE TO ANY CORPORATION THAT HAS BEEN CONVICTED OF A CRIME.  Make it illegal to give one penny of US taxpayer money to ANY corporation who has been convicted of a crime–whether they paid the fine or not.

You may remember how our elected officials fell for the trumped up lie about ACORN and destroyed that grass roots organization by cutting off its funding.  Too bad that they are not so stringent on real Wall Street crooks.

For example, Archer Daniel Midland (ADM) a major Wall Street agribusiness corporation was convicted of price fixing in 1996.  Their CEO got out of going to jail because he turned stool pigeon  on his own marks– the people that he was trying to fix the prices with.  Yes!  How utterly outrageous is this!   This is a perfect example of just how crooked our current US taxpayer welfare system for the wealthy is and how far that many of our elected officials will go to support it.

In the fourteen years since 1996, we have given large agribusinesses like ADM billions of dollars in taxpayer handouts.  Every year we fork over $19 billion in farm subsidies. Of this ridiculous amount of money, only $350 million goes to support small American farmers who still live on the land that they farm.  The rest, slightly more than $18.5 million go to large agribusiness crooks like ADM and to wealthy gentlemen farmers.  For example, one of the Rockefellers gets several million in farm subsidies each year and Michele Bachmann, the faux grassroots/tea party participant has received in excess of $250,000 from farm subsidies.

We need to put an end to our handouts to the rich.  These handouts are fact, not fiction and they are robbing out nation’s coffers of money that could be better spent to build up our nation for the majority instead of tear it down for the few.

Here in the Third District, on Monday night of this week,  we got to see a sample of the buffoonery that is taking place in states all over the USA that are governed by Republicans as the Collin County Commissioners did their political posturing for Rick Perry, our governor who was elected with less than 40% of the vote of the people in our state.

WHY DON’T WE ASK THESE FAKE GRASSROOTS BUFFOONS WHERE THEIR INDIGNATION IS OVER THE FACT THAT AMERICANS ARE FORCED TO BUY CAR INSURANCE FROM WALL STREET PREDATORS?

How is it  OK for our only choice for car insurance to be forced by “the government” to purchase car insurance from a Wall Street predator?

How is it OK for Rick Perry and his Insurance Commissioner to be so in love with State Farm Insurance that they allowed State Farm in October of 2009 to keep $650 million in over-payments that Texas customers had made to them?

How is all that OK and it is a threat to our rights as citizens to be forced to pay a health insurance predator?  At least the Obama administration put a few protections in for the American people–something that Rick Perry and the Republicans never did.

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My platform? I don’t like any American being forced to purchase ANY product from a Wall Street corporate enterprise.  I believe we should have another choice.  And I darn sure don’t believe that these crooks should be allowed to keep money that they over-charged.  That money should have been returned to the customers with interest!

• Will work to improve the new health care reform and indeed—all types of insurance.  No American should be forced to purchase any product from ANY private company.  That includes not only health insurance, but also car insurance as well. As your representative, I will work to see that all Americans have a choice of public option pools for ALL types of insurance—not just health care.

And the War to control the farm lands and natural resources in Colombia continues. Five million people in Colombia have been displaced because of military and paramilitary violence. It is estimated that 60% of these people are farmers.

Narco News reports that rural populations of Tolima and Arauca appear to be slated for repression and forced relocation.  More unionists are murdered each year in Colombia than the rest of the world combined.  According to Jeff Vogt, Global Economic Policy Specialist for the AFL-CIO, there were 48 known assassinations of unionists in Colombia in 2009.

Troops of the 21st Mobile Brigade (the national army) have been present in the areas of Arauca and Tolima for two years now.  These troops have damaged the aquaducts that supply water to the populations, damaged forests that protect the small springs of water that flow into the aquaducts and polluted the water with trash–around the sources of water that the communities consume.  Anyone who makes a complain is immediately threatened with the paramilitaries or labeled a guerrilla.

Both Arauca and Tolima have natural resources coveted by transnational corporations.  Tolima is a major producer of rice, cotton and coffee as well as gold deposits.

In November of 2008, ASTRACATOL and a number of leading labor and human rights organizations signed a statement detailing a long list of abuses by the Army’s 21st Mobile Brigade, including ongoing contamination and disruption of the water supply and threats and arbitrary detentions against community members spuriously accused of being members of the  FARC.

In late January a mass grave was discovered in La Macarena.  The grave was dug by the Colombia Military and contains some 2,000 corpses.  The military claims these are the bodies of guerrillas killed in battle.  The grave was discovered as a result of children becoming sick after drinking run-ff from a stream located by the site.  SOURCE

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SO WHAT CAN WE DO?

We can write to our elected officials and demand that they end all aid to Colombia–especially military aid until Colombia has stopped abuses of farmers and union members.  Our elected officials should be supporting dialogue and negotiations for a just peace in Colombia instead of sponsoring this devastating corporate abuse of the people of Colombia that is supported by our tax dollars.

ENOUGH OF WALL STREET AND ITS SPONSORED MURDERS PAID FOR WITH THE TAX DOLLARS OF HARD-WORKING AMERICANS.

Prison is Sam Johnson’s Solution for the Immigration Problem of Displaced Persons from Mexico in the USA.

Sam Johnson supports a punitive approach to solving the problem of displaced people from Mexico in our nation. Apparently he is oblivious to the fact that 48% of the population of Texas is Hispanic and don’t like that solution. He voted for H.R. 4437 Border protection, anti-terrorism and illegal immigration control act of 2005. In other words, he supports treating the symptom (the presence of these people in our country) as opposed to the root cause (which is why they are here in the first place: NAFTA and $19 billion a year in farm subsidies for Wall Street Agribusinesses like ADM and Cargill).

WE NEED NEW AND MORE INTELLIGENT SOLUTIONS IN CONGRESS

An American Voice: A more intelligent approach is to treat the root causes–NAFTA and farm subsidies to large agribusinesses like ADM. Putting people in jail is a knee jerk solution to immigration problems which in the long run will only create more problems for us. First of all we don’t have enough prisons to hold 12 million human beings. Putting them in prison is not even logistically viable and it will cost taxpayers even more money. Any Hispanic or immigrant who votes for Sam Johnson is voting against their own best interests. Any middle-class voter who votes for Sam Johnson is voting against his or her best interests as well—regardless their ethnic heritage.

Our annual $19 billion in taxpayer farm subsidies to large agribusinesses enabled Archer Daniel Midland and Cargill, once NAFTA removed the tariffs that protected the Mexican corn farmer, to go in with their heavily subsidized low prices for corn and put the 2 million Mexican corn farmers out of business. This, of course had a domino on other aspects of the Mexican economy. As a result we have 12 million displaced people from Mexico in our nation today. Prior to the passage of NAFTA in 1994, illegal immigration was stable and had been for years. Nations all over the world have these same problems resulting from unfair trade agreements.  The reason that large agribusinesses like ADM and Cargill can sell their corn at cheaper prices than small farmers in other countries such as Mexico, South America and Africa is because American taxpayers make up the difference.  We are like the parent who gives their kid 30 cents for every glass of lemonade they sell.  Then they can under cut the neighbor kid by selling their lemonade at 20 cents a glass when the neighbor kid must sell at 50 cents a glass.  CORPORATE WELFARE IS EVIL AND WRONG. 12 million displaced persons from Mexico in our nation today is but one of its many results.

A REAL SOLUTION: Put the protective tariffs back in to protect the Mexican corn farmers and STOP THE WALL STREET HANDOUTS TO LARGE AGRIBUSINESSES. Take al l but $500 million for small US farmers who live on the land they farm and apply the $18.5 billion left for several years to cleaning up the mess that corporate welfare has made in ruining the lives of these people. THEN, after 5 to 10 years stop spending the $18.5 billion and return that to the American people. Remember—our nation, our Congress, created this problem of displaced persons from Mexico. The solution is NOT to put people in prison! Don’t be stupid like Sam Johnson. That will waste even more of our taxpayer money. Of course it will make billions in corporate welfare paid to privatized prison operations.

VOTE FOR A US REPRESENTATIVE FOR THE THIRD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF TEXAS WHO HAS BETTER SOLUTIONS FOR ALL AMERICANS.

EMMA BERRY

Http://emmaberry.org

National Defense Budget which results in the deaths of thousands of human beings every year is $1.03 trillion per year compared to the Health Care Bill  which is $1 trillion total over 10 years and will save the lives of millions of Americans!

IF REPUBLICANS WERE THE “FISCAL CONSERVATIVES” THAT THEY CLAIM TO BE . . .

They and the Obama administration  would be focusing on the huge bloated US defense budget–money that is used to support our imperial pre-emptive paranoid invasions of other nations.

Republicans want to eliminate the health care bill, a bill that will save the lives of millions of Americans, as a step to “fiscal responsibility”.  At the same time these people totally ignore and not only refuse to deal with, but continue to grow the Defense budget.  Their behavior as our elected officials in regard to their stance on health care reform can be compared to the parent who takes his child’s lunch money as a means to tighten the family budget while they spend $25 a day on lunch a work for them and their friends.

It is ridiculous!  Being fiscally responsible does not mean being irresponsible to the people that you were elected to support and protect.

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The current $1.03 trillion defense budget per year is more money than the top 15 military big spender nations of the world combined spend on national defense.  Our closest competitor is China and the USA spends twice as much on national defense than China!

We could but our national defense budget in half and still be the most militarily secure nation in the world.

ITS TIME TO CUT SPENDING WHERE IT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE.  AND WE NEED TO GET OUR MORAL PRIORITIES STRAIGHT AS A NATION.

ARE WE A NATION DRIVEN BY FEAR AND PARANOIA?

As a nation, our paranoia is doing us in.  The United States accounts for 47 percent of the world’s total military spending, however the U.S.’s share of the world’s GDP is about 21 percent. This paranoia goes hand in hand with the prison population in the USA:  The USA has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s incarcerated population.

HOW SECURE DO WE REALLY NEED TO BE?

Thanks to a lot of right-wing propaganda regarding ACORN, it is is now folded.  ACORN’s real crime as far as the leadership of the Republican party was that they gave the poor a voice and also registered the poor as voters.  These people are not the ones who would swell the ranks of the Republicans.

Right-wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh* painted ACORN as a group who registered non-existent voters and committed voter fraud.  As with any lie and propaganda, there is always an element of truth.  It is true that some of people that were “registered” were not real people.  HOWEVER, there was NEVER a chance in hell that any of these nonexistent people could ever have voted.  The way it worked with ACORN was that they hired people to go out and register others.  My guess is that these people were paid by the name.  Thus, some of them made up names and addresses in order to collect more money.

However–that was the end of it.  If voter registration cards were sent to these addresses, no one was there to get them and/or if they were sent to the addresses of the person working for ACORN, it is highly unlikely that these people would have been motivated enough to get fake ids to vote and/or would have taken that chance.  Simply absurd!

HERE, ON A SLIDING SCALE REGARDING SEVERITY OF CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE ARE THE REAL CORPORATE CRIMINALS.  Now what do you hear the Republicans saying about shutting down Lockheed Martin–the biggest crook of all?

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ADDENDUM

One of the most amazing things I find about our elected officials in Washington DC is that they not only continue to give away our tax dollars by the billions to Wall Street corporations,  they continue to fork over billions of dollars even after these corporations have been convicted of felonies!   That is absurd!

And it is not just defense contractors, it is Wall Street banks, Wall Street agribusinesses, etc.

For example, Archer Daniel Midland (ADM) was convicted of price fixing in 1996.  Their CEO got out of going to prison because he turned stool pigeon on the very people that he was approaching to fix prices with!

What is more outrageous you might ask?  Well in the 14 years since that event, our elected officials have forked over a good chunk of our annual $19 billion in farm subsidies that we pay to large agribusinesses like ADM and Cargill.

This is democracy?  Hell no.  It is plutocracy, oligarchy, government by the rich, of the rich and for the rich.

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*The reason that the Republican leadership tolerate people like Limbaugh and Tea Partiers and give then a nod, if not full support is because these fanatics, in their attacks on minority groups, and “liberals” deflect Americans from an examination of the real culprits.  They keep Americans away from real solutions that would diminish the Wall Street portfolios of almost half of Congress.

I still smile when I remember that Limbaugh’s choice of a country to escape to is Costa Rica–the only nation in the world that has no military.  LOL Of course, like anything else surrounding Limbaugh’s inflamed rhetoric, his promise to move to Costa Rica if health care reform is passed was a lie.