Get real. If you want the job done, fund the job. Else, stfu.
Link. Hypocrisy reigns. This Chamberlain guy is just like the Republicans' AG candidate Schultz. Schultz with his mantra, "Ellison is on the job and crime is rampant." And, kiss up to NRA for the orange mailing card, leave handguns readily available, and criticize people shooting at one another. Chamberlain, ditto. Add the meal program, hold the management money hostage, and than keen and moan.
There is a name for this ploy of, "Expand the traditional duties. Hold back additional funding for the addition. Then howl, 'Your fault for not doing more with less.' " It is called, "The Republican Way." They do it every chance they get. They practice it in their sleep.
YET - Even back in Pawlenty days, he wanted Northstar, he funded Northstar. He had to because it was him in office. NOT running on beggaring an agency and then throwing the first stone - from the outside, where responsibility is not as immediate a goal as criticism. And they wonder why voters get tired of it and trust Democrats to be the responsible stewards of executive government management.
It is probably a bottom line that you don't absolutely have to be a hypocrite to be a Republican, but it helps.
_________UPDATE________
As to the final paragraph above, you read that Strib article, and the one single sentence paragraph that stands out is:
Other Republicans on the committee backed Chamberlain's findings.
Lockstep something-for-nothing criticism does suggest they practice it while asleep.
Moreover, if you read the Strib item it cites a history of the Department doing the job,
MDE officials declined an interview request, but spokesman Kevin Burns defended the department's oversight of the meals program, noting MDE reported its fraud suspicions to the FBI and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the $200 billion meals program.
"MDE moved quickly and repeatedly raised the issue to federal authorities until we were able to find someone who would take the troubling spending as seriously as we were," Burns said in the statement.
"Even when MDE stopped payments to Feeding Our Future, a court informed MDE the payments must continue. Because of MDE's early action, the federal government opened an investigation, which we have fully supported."
Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture have declined to comment, citing the ongoing FBI investigation.
Sen. Charles Wiger, the ranking Democrat on the education committee, criticized Chamberlain for releasing his report without consulting the full committee. He accused Chamberlain of making a "partisan attack" aimed at hurting Democratic candidates in the fall elections.
"Could there have been additional things done? Yes," said Wiger, DFL-Maplewood. "And [MDE officials] have noted that more steps could have been done or should have been done. But it is under investigation now, and we are awaiting the findings."
More than 200 law enforcement officers raided the headquarters of Feeding Our Future and several of its key subcontractors Jan. 20, after the FBI accused the group of misappropriating more than $40 million from programs aimed at providing meals to low-income children.
Altogether, Feeding Our Future collected $197 million in federal reimbursements in 2021 as meal demand skyrocketed during the pandemic — up from $307,000 in 2018. The nonprofit shut down in February.
You read that segment of the Strib item and it becomes clear - the Minnesota Department of Education is not the FBI, not an investigational body but an administrative agency with the federal student meal program being an ancillary duty to the main institutional purpose, ensuring uniform quality public education for the children of Minnesota so that they grow up to be responsible citizens.
The DoE did try to pull the federal agency's chain, but it took time to waken the beast, and the FBI is still investigating.
Months after the search warrant was obtained the FBI is still investigating, i.e., after the DoE suspended the program, but lost when Feeding Our Future went to court.
Minnesota's DoE and its Attorney General control neither the federal Department of Agriculture, court decision making, nor the speed of a federal criminal investigation.
If things appear simple and negligent to politician Chamberlain, why does he say the FBI is taking so long to investigate something he views simply? Somebody should ask him that.
Without reading the actual Chamberlain report, we do not know what that politician says should have been done differently, when, and how outcomes possibly would have changed. It is a shot at the other party with an election soon, and stinks of partisan politics rather than any actual concern for a food program working correctly to see that the nation's school children are fed. Does Chamberlain think they should not be? There is no art to complaining, no skill required, while effective administration of multiple agency responsibilities, on budget, is a skilled task.
_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
In fairness to Chamberlain, his report is online (here first 3 pages only) and while the opening page is clearly partisan, he raises some questions. Readers have the link for evidence of what he posted, rather than relying on Strib or Crabgrass commenting.
As to saying "the opening page is clearly partisan" -
On January 20, 2022, more than 200 FBI agents (most temporarily reassigned from other states) served search warrants on numerous locations around the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. The cause of this unprecedented scene was a suspected fraud costing tens (and, perhaps hundreds) of millions of dollars in misused federal and state child nutrition (FNS) funds.
[italics added] Things did not start Jan 20, this year. Yet - It is still, this day, a suspected fraud. Nobody's convicted, no one in jail. And for each of us, tens of millions is a lot, but for government, there's more to say.
That MDE is claimed at fault is a contention needing a perspective.
If things were an MDE slam dunk absent laziness, the Chamberlain implication, why, so long after MDE ongoing effort finally got the FBI to get a warrant for a search and seizure. This "report" admits the FBI finally acted Jan. 2022. Things are hanging fire, still. All those months - over a full half-year - MDE's fault? Get real. If things were as easy as Chamberlain and Republican colleagues propose, it would be over already.
In Minnesota, the Department of Education (MDE) is the state agency assigned to oversee and administer the child nutrition funds in question. Early reports on the fraud echoed MDE’s claim that the Governor’s “stay-at-home order and telework policies interfered with the ability to oversee the program. According to MDE officials, this left the program vulnerable to fraud and abuse.” (See page 10.) [only p.1-3 are online??]
[italics added. The Governor prevented greater suffering and death under a raging pandemic, and writing that way of it is partisan.] Gov. Walz accorded policy with national public health expertise and recommendations. He did so while Trump misled a nation and kept us unprepared.
While it may be true that the Governor’s reaction to Covid created problems, numerous additional inexplicable shortcomings, and derelictions of duty at MDE greatly magnified the scope of the loss. A review of related documents and a series of three public hearings on the scandal paint a picture of agency leadership that either did not know how to responsibly manage FNS programs or found the faithful execution of those duties burdensome and optional.
Chamberlain good fellow, it may be untrue that the Governor's Covid reaction did anything but save lives. Be honest. In addition, Strib provided a series of very telling timeline reporting not provided by Chamberlain, with timeline facts mattering to any and all objective minds wanting truth:
USDA officials received a complaint accusing Bock and Feeding Our Future of "forgery and theft" in a February 2019 letter from Kara Lomen, who was then the executive director of Partners in Nutrition, Bock's former employer.
In the letter, which was obtained by the Star Tribune, Lomen said Feeding Our Future was created by the leaders of Partners in Nutrition when the nonprofit was mired in a lengthy dispute with the MDE over its application in 2017.
After the Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected the department's ruling against Partners as "arbitrary and capricious," Lomen and her colleagues did nothing further with Feeding Our Future, conducting all business through Partners, according to the letter.
Lomen said [in that letter, or elsewhere??] Feeding Our Future was not revived until after Bock was "terminated for misconduct" from Partners in June 2018. Lomen said Bock "stole the electronic files associated with Feeding Our Future," and forged Lomen's signature on various corporate documents as part of Feeding Our Future's new application for the meals program.
"These are pretty serious allegations," Chamberlain said in an interview Monday. "They should have looked into it. You shouldn't just blow them off."
In the complaint, [per the Feb. 19, 2019 letter to USDOAg] Lomen also accused Feeding Our Future of providing "false information" to her subcontractors about how the meals program was supposed to operate. For instance, Lomen said Feeding Our Future told subcontractors that they could claim reimbursement for meals "that are not actually served to children."
[...] Through her attorney, Kenneth Udoibok, Bock has declined to comment on Lomen's allegations.
"We wait for the federal government's charging decisions," Udoibok said recently in a written response to questions. "But we expect that Ms. Bock will not be charged because she did not commit any crimes."
[...] Other Republicans on the committee backed Chamberlain's findings.
"I am hopeful that everyone, including the Department of Education, can take away some lessons on how to provide better oversight in the future," said Sen. Zach Duckworth, R-Lakeville.
[italics added] After navigating Minnesota's Judiciary pages, not an easy task, at https://publicaccess.courts.state.mn.us/CaseSearch
we search and get more timeline, per a Minnesota state trial case filed by Feeding Our Family against MDE for MDE's terminating FoF from its implementation of the USDOAg.'s child feeding program, note the date:
Case Number:
Date Filed: November 20 2020Case Type: Civil Other MiscellaneousCase Title:
Case Location: Ramsey County, Ramsey Civil
Judicial Officer: Diamond, Patrick C.
Strange the US Dept. of Agriculture, those dates, was then under Republican control, Sonny Perdue, (Trump's choice to run the agency - this man who subsequently lost a Georgia U.S Senate election to the Democrats yielding the present 50-50 split). The USDOAg is much more massive than MDE, with this food program being their program. It seems that if casting shade at all fairly, unlike Chamberlain, the USDOAg at the 2019 Loman letter's date had the key "agency leadership that either did not know how to responsibly manage FNS programs or found the faithful execution of those duties burdensome and optional," as the Chamberlain report's first page words things, but, curiously, not about the Republican federal agency.
RECALL - Loman's complaint was to USDOAg and not to MDE, which locally administers the federal program. An Education Department administering a US Ag Department locally. I.e., Loman went to the source, not the agent.
USDOAg had the Barr DOJ and the FBI available in 2019 for forwarding matters it deemed of concern, but the appearance of nothing being forwarded then suggests nothing was of concern within the arms of that Republican federal system, despite Loman's giving unequivocal notice.
Possible motives for Chamberlain not fingering USDOAg -
Either he views them as faultless, out of his reach to harass, or of his own party and not the other party, where casting shade at one's own might be Verboten or nearly so, among Republicans knowing the insider handshakes.
Welfare to Farmers -
Another theory has more intrigue. All those rural farmers in Minnesota that seem for the most part to be habitual Republican voters suck the UDOAg teat. That being a comfortable status quo to Chamberlain's party, he chooses to not rock that boat. Only he knows his own heart. The rest of us can only guess.
Possibly Chamberlain dares not to inflame counter-voting habits among that base, which he in part represents in his district. If he casts shade on UDOAg in one program, they do have others where cast shade might inform Minnesota urban voters about what big welfare is really all about, never mind the Gipper's fiction mongering about inner-city "welfare queens." Facts matter.
Recall that tens of millions shock trooper approach Chamberlain used for the meal plan fraud? Some subsidy numbers, Minnesota industrial-strength farming:
https://farm.ewg.org/top_recips.php?fips=27000&progcode=totalfarm
Subtotal, Farming Subsidies in Minnesota, 1995-2020‡
Subsidy Recipients 1 to 20 of 127,972
Recipients of Subtotal, Farming Subsidies from farms in Minnesota totaled $14,342,000,000 in from 1995-2020‡.
Rank Recipient
(* ownership information available)Location Subtotal, Farming Subsidies
1995-20201 Harvest States Cooperatives Saint Paul, MN 55164 $48,257,875 2 Molitor Bros Farm * Cannon Falls, MN 55009 $12,566,001 3 Hader Farms Partnership * Zumbrota, MN 55992 $9,861,489 4 Commodity Credit Corporation ** Langdon, ND 58249 $9,755,331 5 Agcountry Farm Credit Services ** Valley City, ND 58072 $8,660,767 6 Oberg Farms Prtshp * Moorhead, MN 56560 $6,688,658 7 Sanders Farms * Truman, MN 56088 $5,959,839 8 Skaurud Grain Farms * Gary, MN 56545 $5,668,141 9 Far Gaze Farms * Northfield, MN 55057 $5,572,917 10 Jirak Bros Farming Partnership * Breckenridge, MN 56520 $5,141,161 11 Pederson Brothers Partnership * Bejou, MN 56516 $4,753,735 12 Deal Bros Farming Partnership * Doran, MN 56522 $4,720,691 13 Mattson Farms Partnership * Lake Park, MN 56554 $4,681,590 14 Stoltman Farms * Argyle, MN 56713 $4,635,526 15 Hector Farms II Partnership * Hector, MN 55342 $4,502,387 16 Anderson Family Farms * Belgrade, MN 56312 $4,170,501 17 Magnusson Farms * Roseau, MN 56751 $4,116,649 18 Waage Farms * Greenbush, MN 56726 $4,016,650 19 Ferrier Farms * Dover, MN 55929 $3,913,835 20 Brutlag Farms Partnership * Wendell, MN 56590 $3,901,543 * USDA data are not "transparent" for many payments made to recipients through most cooperatives. Recipients of payments made through most cooperatives, and the amounts, have not been made public. To see ownership information, click on the name, then click on the link that is titled Ownership Information.
** EWG has identified this recipient as a bank or lending institution that received the payment because the payment applicant had a loan requiring any subsidy payments go to the lender first. In 2019, the information provided to EWG by USDA began to include the entity that received the payment, rather than the person or entity that applied for it, which was previously provided. This move to shield subsidy recipients from disclosure enables USDA to further evade taxpayer accountability. Six percent of subsidy dollars went to banks, lending institutions, or the Farm Service Agency.”
‡ Data for 2020 includes payments made by USDA through June 30, 2020 and does not include crop insurance premium subsidies.
[...]
21 D & B Carpenter * Elkton, MN 55933 $3,716,259 22 Four K Farms Ptshp * Morris, MN 56267 $3,637,932 23 Gmg Farms A Prtshp * Euclid, MN 56722 $3,618,157 24 Vipond Farms * Norcross, MN 56274 $3,615,156 25 Sunset Farms Of Freeborn County * Albert Lea, MN 56007 $3,435,086 26 Peterson Farms * Wendell, MN 56590 $3,363,510 27 Bauer Farms * Erskine, MN 56535 $3,333,493 28 Son-d-partnership * Adrian, MN 56110 $3,311,941 29 Armstrong Family Farms * Owatonna, MN 55060 $3,291,960 30 University Of Minnesota Rosemount, MN 55068 $3,248,981 31 Frontier Family Farms * Albert Lea, MN 56007 $3,166,788 32 Two Dogs Farm * Benson, MN 56215 $3,064,167 33 Kuehl Brothers Farms Prtshp * Glyndon, MN 56547 $3,049,688 34 J & J Bitker Partnership * Halstad, MN 56548 $3,016,634 35 Ronnevik Farms * Fergus Falls, MN 56537 $3,005,637 36 Lismore Hutterian Brethren Inc * Clinton, MN 56225 $2,983,072 37 Robert And Darlene Yaggie Farms * Breckenridge, MN 56520 $2,967,840 38 Gilbertson Brothers * Montevideo, MN 56265 $2,868,014 39 R C & A Hart Farms * Elgin, MN 55932 $2,842,589 40 Peterson Partners * Sacred Heart, MN 56285 $2,836,978
Go to the site, page as much as you believe needed, get a sense of scale.
Another sense of scale site - you want billions, they talk billions -
Farm subsidies are government financial benefits paid to the agriculture industry that help reduce the risk farmers endure from the weather, commodities brokers, and disruptions in demand. But they have evolved to become very complex. As a result, only large producers can take advantage of farm subsidies.
Out of all the crops that farmers grow, the government subsidizes only five of them. They are corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.
Grains provide 80% of the world’s caloric needs. Grains can also be stored and affordably shipped.
The five states that have received the most farm subsidies between 1995 and 2020, are, in order, Iowa, Texas, Illinois, Nebraska, and Minnesota. These states have received 38.2% of the 240.5 billion distributed between 1995 and 2020. During this time period, the top 10 percent of commodity payment recipients were paid 78 percent of commodity payments.
There are also smaller subsidies for peanuts, sorghum, and mohair. Producers of meat, fruits, and vegetables can benefit only from crop insurance and disaster relief.
[red highlighting added] Same organization, a different webpage -
Farm Subsidies
Agricultural subsidies were originally created to help farmers ravaged by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression of 1929. The federal government guaranteed farmers a high enough price to remain profitable. How did it do this? It paid farmers to make sure supply did not exceed demand. The government subsidized farmers to keep croplands idle in order to prevent overproduction. It also bought excess crops. It then either stored them or gave them away to feed low-income people throughout the world.
Over time, the agricultural subsidy program grew massively, though its original intent may have been buried. Between 2013 and 2022 the average spending on farm subsidies was about 17.6 billion a year on average.
Here are some major touchpoints in subsidized farming in the U.S. in more recent history:
- Between 2010 and 2019, farms received subsidies averaging more than $74,000 a year. During this time about 75% of subsidies went to medium or large farming operations, with the average small farm household receiving little or no payments, even though 89% of farms were small family farms.
- By 2017, large farms dominated the industry. Farms generating $1 million or more in sales produced two-thirds of the nation's agricultural output. Only 4% of farms were that large. Big farms gobbled up small ones that couldn't compete. They relied on economies of scale to produce more food at a cheaper price. That sent prices down even more, putting more small farmers out of business.
- In 2018 and 2019, the Trump administration increased farm subsidies by an additional $23 billion under the Market Facilitation Program.
- In 2020 the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced two rounds of direct payments under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, valued at about $30 billion added to the existing farm subsidies.
[Italics/red highlighting added]
And it is all those Democrats and their welfare programs, right - Factually:
Farm Subsidies Ballooned Under Trump – President Biden Should Not Make the Same Mistakes
Under Trump, Farm Subsidies Soared and the Rich Got Richer
Biden and Congress Must Reform a Wasteful and Unfair SystemBy Anne Schechinger, Senior Analyst of Economics
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2021
Taxpayer-funded farm subsidies have long been skewed in favor of the richest farmers and landowners. But under the Trump administration, even more money went to the largest and wealthiest farms, further shortchanging smaller, struggling family farms.
EWG’s analysis of records from the Department of Agriculture finds that subsidy payments to farmers ballooned from just over $4 billion in 2017 to more than $20 billion in 2020 – driven largely by ad hoc programs meant to offset the effects of President Trump’s failed trade war.
Not only did the amount of subsidies skyrocket, but the richest farms also increased their share: In 2016, about 17 percent of total subsidies went to the top 1 percent of farms and about 60 percent to the top 10th. In 2019, the richest 1 percent received almost one-fourth of the total, and the top 10th received almost two-thirds.1
The staggering growth of subsidies and the worsening inequity in distribution underscore the urgency for the Biden administration and the new Congress to enact commonsense farm subsidy reforms that will benefit small, struggling farmers and the environment and make up for the mistakes of the Trump years.
Traditional Subsidies Are Dwarfed by Ad Hoc Programs
The 2014 Farm Bill established two traditional commodity farm subsidy programs that send payouts to farmers every year. These programs, the Agricultural Risk Coverage program, or ARC, and the Price Loss Coverage program, or PLC, are triggered if crop yields or prices are lower than expected. Farmers can choose to take part in either ARC or PLC for the entire length of each farm bill, typically five years. Not every farm receives payments from these programs every year, but many do, and the programs send out billions of dollars annually.
But even though these existing programs pay farmers for reductions in crop prices, the Trump administration established additional multi-billion-dollar ad hoc subsidy programs – subsidies for specific, limited and supposedly temporary purposes.
- The Market Facilitation Program, or MFP, paid billions to farmers in 2018 and 2019 for losses driven by tariffs that China placed on agricultural imports from the U.S. in retaliation for Trump’s trade war.
- The Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, or CFAP, sent billions to farmers last year. The USDA is still accepting applications for this year, but Biden has ordered a freeze on payments until further notice.
ARC and PLC payments, from their inception in 2014 through 2019, the most recent year of payments, were $32.04 billion. But ad hoc subsidies far exceeded the total payments from those traditional programs in the final two years of the Obama administration and under Trump: a total of $49.08 billion in five years of annual disaster payments, two years of MFP payments and CFAP payments through October of last year.
Altogether, since 2014, ad hoc and traditional subsidy programs cost U.S. taxpayers more than $81.1 billion.
The chart below shows the growth in farm subsidies since 2018, when the MFP began. Since ARC and PLC payments are made in the calendar year after the year the crop was grown, we won’t know the 2020 payments until this fall. So the chart below includes an estimate for 2020 ARC and PLC payments, provided by the Congressional Budget Office.
click the image to enlarge and read Farm Subsidy Payments Between Program Years 2014 and 2020
Source: EWG, from data obtained through public records requests to the USDA, and the Congressional Budget Office’s January 2020 Baseline for Farm Programs.
The majority of payments went to just eight states – Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas. Farmers in those states received more than $41 billion, or 51 percent of the total.
The interactive map below shows annual county-by-county subsidy payments since 2014. The 10 counties that received the highest ad hoc payments together received over $1.6 billion.
[...]
As USDA data shows, the great majority of both traditional commodity and ad hoc program payments go to the largest and wealthiest farms, which generally have considerable assets to fall back on in lean years. Small farms that struggle when crop prices are low or during the pandemic-triggered economic crisis get only a small portion of payments. It’s no accident: The programs are designed so that farms with the largest acres or crop production get the highest payments.
For example, through the MFP in 2018 and 2019:
- The top 1 percent of recipients received 16 percent of payments, with an average total payment for both years of $524,298 per farm. The top 10 percent received 58 percent of payments, with an average total payment of $185,340.
- The bottom 80 percent of recipients received only 23 percent of payments – an average payment for both years of only $9,109 per recipient.
The ARC, PLC and CFAP programs had very similar payment concentrations. But compared to other Americans, do farmers need all this money?
In December, the USDA’s Economic Research Service forecast that when all data for 2020 is in, the median income for all farm households is expected to be $86,992. That’s almost 25 percent more than the 2019 median household income for all U.S. households of $69,703.
Do you suppose they want you to know this? Would you guess them happier if the public is led to consider not those facts, but what Chamberlain would want known against MDE, despite the massive difference in the scale of things? That item continues.
Just looking at income from farming, the huge ad hoc payments of recent years have made subsidies a large chunk of total farm income.
Between 2019 and 2020, total direct government payments to farms increased by over 107 percent, bringing the share of farm income from government payments to almost 40 percent. As the graphic below shows, that pushed 2020 farm income levels significantly above the 20-year average.
There is more online, yet this seems enough for anyone as a start to researching more. As to the Republicans pulling a "Nothing to see over here, look over there, Somalis," recall their esteemed Secretary of State candidate Kim Crockett,
“I think of America, the great assimilator, as a rubber band, but with this — we’re at the breaking point,” Crockett said in the Times article. “These aren’t people coming from Norway, let’s put it that way. These people are very visible.”
Beat a Chamberlain drum over the very visible. Our Republican thing, Ag subsidies, silence is golden. Remember, we're white and could be from Norway. And if you want to get a giant share without publicity, what is needed is complexity - like the tax code, make Ag subsidization impenetrable to the average college grad, and sit back, enjoy and smile.
Or is that me casting too much shade?
Minnesota's Ag policy and provisions
A question a skeptic might ask, why was the federal USDOAg food program given locally to the MDE, with specialized expertise in schools, and not to MN DOAg who specialize in doling out cash? Possibly so poor folks get benefits, and if it splats, blame the poor and the educators, since blaming them has already worked so well.
Here is a thought about what MDA does for program administration. Cash flow out, and guess whether any of those programs is not the big fish feeding on the little.
Not the most transparent of stuff.
Dole a dollop to schools; looking like varied good citizens.
Contact the MDA if you've a question? Ask the MDA? Well, gee, . . .
In closing, the USDOAg does administer food stamps; serving the urban poor.
Yes, but the story also touches the rural poor, those not getting big subsidy payments from giant industrial scale farming. And who's the main beneficiary?
A new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows federal food benefits have more than twice the impact on rural communities than in urban areas.
The study, which looked at the period of 2009-14, shows the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, boosted spending and jobs at twice the rate in rural areas.
The report shows SNAP benefits increased economic output by 1.25% in rural areas compared to 0.53% in urban areas. The total number of jobs the benefit added to non-metropolitan areas increased by 1.18%, compared to 0.5% in metro areas.
“We could see that there are large spillover demands from the urban economy to the rural economy,” said USDA economist Katherine Ralston, one of the authors of the report. “So the urban households are buying food with their SNAP benefits, and most food is produced in the rural economy.”
And once that money is in rural communities, it tends to stay there.
“The farms are buying equipment,” Ralston said. “The workers they pay are spending their own money that, in turn, generates income.”
Local advocates for government spending on programs to reduce poverty said the research confirms what they’d expect.
“We have poverty rates that are the highest in our most rural counties,” said Dawn Fogarty, executive director of the Missouri Community Action Network. “So we are able to see that correlation, that there is such a huge economic impact with SNAP benefits.”
Fogarty said the report should push lawmakers to devote more tax money to food assistance like SNAP and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children at farmers markets and rural meat butchers.
As always, more to the needy suffering as a policy because more to the wealthy big farm plutocrats just costs too much with too little left over. But subsidizing plutocrats is a necessity. It keeps aware rural constituencies [the plutocrats] happy, happy, happy. As happy as a pig in shit. Voting accordingly. Chamberlian likely is no dummy about who butters his bread. Republicans are perceptive that way. Clinton Democrats too.
LOOK OVER THERE, DAMN IT! A mantra. Hillary giving Goldman Sachs speeches for personal gain, a quarter million a pop. Not news?
As a speculation, I bet Chamberlain wants to go to the Big Leagues. Bipartisanship of the right kind might help to get him there. We cringe.