From: Tiberius Gracchus (cryofan@mylinuxisp.com)
Date: Sat Jun 30 2001 - 20:31:40 MDT
On Sat, 30 Jun 2001 17:14:42 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:
>
>I believe it has been said that democracy fails when the public
>learns how to vote itself benefits from the public treasury.
Actually, I would think that it has more to do with the structure of
our govt, but mainly because the farmers understand the primary
dynamic behind American goverance as it now operates: Those who
organize best, and lobby best, win the game of the subsidies.
The farmers got their subsidies many years ago, when there were
actually a halfway decent reasons for the subsidies.
They keep the subsidies because
1. they live in rural areas and have greater representation per capita
in the Senate than do urban areas.
2. They organize and lobby well, and they are often very well off, and
so their lobbyists are well-funded. A well-funded, well-organized
lobby...that is hard to beat with the current setup.
3. The govt of America is not at all responive to public opinion....so
they keep their subsidies even though I am sure that if farm subsidies
were to face a national referendum, they would go down in flames.
Whatever happened to the national referendum, anyway? I seem to recall
some noise about that in the 70s....
I am not sure the title of this post is accurate. May be it should be
"POLITICS: when the peculiar form of Republicanism practiced in
America fails..."
>
>We have a really classic example of this in:
> "House approves $5.5 billion in emergency aid for farmers"
> http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/27/politics/27AGRI.html
>
>This is on top of the $20.5 billion they are already
>getting *after* they had supposedly agreed to the
>1996 Freedom to Farm Act, where "so long as they
>accepted the rigors of the free market and eventually
>weaned themselves of subsidies".
>
>It seems pretty clear to me that the farmers need alternate
>markets so they can get out of the food production business.
>Something like "growing" natural gas for electricity production
>would do the trick nicely.
>
>Robert
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